Category: Art in Second Life

The question of identity / pseudonymity has been linked to Second Life pretty much since the platform from the start; we have complete agency of how we represent ourselves and how much of ourselves we chose to reveal to the world. It is often said that this pseudonymity allows us to more fully express who we’d like to be.

But who are we, really? The person we are at home and among family is not the same as the person we are at work;, and that person is not the same as the person we are when with friends, and so on. Even within our family group, who we are with loved ones – husband / wife, children, parents – can change from moment to moment.

And all of these personas are very different to who we are when alone; those intimate moments of oneness in which we perhaps most truly reveal who we are without fear of observation / ridicule / rejection. And so, too, are multiple areas of overlap – each and every one of us is an individual; but the question still remains, given all these multiple facets to our make-up, some self-imposed, others placed upon us by society / those around us, who are we – really? And can we use avatars to express not who we’d like to be, but who we are?

It is this exploration of self through our avatar that is the focus of Intimacy, an exhibition / installation by Scylla Rhiadra which opened at the end of February 2022 at the Onceagain Art Gallery curated by Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili).

Set within an environment that is as much a part of the exhibition, are twelve images designed to better inform us as to who the person who inhabits “Scylla Rhiadra” actually is. To quote Scylla’s introductory notes from the exhibit:

The pictures in this exhibit represent my attempt to communicate that extra “something” about myself. They do so, not by removing the barriers that separate who I most truly am from how I represent in a virtual environment, but by leveraging virtual images and appearances to convey it … Here you will see “Scylla” (who has never washed a dish in her entire virtual existence) dancing as she washes dishes, getting dressed in the morning, and eating ice cream at outrageous hours of the night. These are intended not merely to provide some insight into “what I do” in real life, but more vitally “who I am” there – which is, pretty closely, also “who I am” in Second Life.

– Scylla Rhiadra

Of course, one might say there is a certain hubris in trying to use an avatar in this way; at the end of the day, whatever is done, the avatar is not the person operating it, neither in look nor in perception by others. Plus, said avatar is a puppet; any image of it must posed, the setting staged; thus any attempt to use it to bring forth a broader expression of “self” must itself be something of a manipulation of perception as much as any other use of our avatar to impart a persona.However, this is far from true. While the images may well be constructed to bring forth a specific aspect of our personality, the fact remains that the aforementioned pseudonymity baked-in to Second Life also frees us from the usual impediments (fear, embarrassment, etc), that might otherwise stand in the way of our revealing more of ourselves to strangers never seen or known. Thus, they are the perfect vehicle, staged settings notwithstanding, by which we can “be who we really are” and express what might otherwise remain hidden, as Scylla notes in her introduction to Intimacy:

One of the most important opportunities afforded by Second Life, and virtual embodiment generally is the chance to represent facets of ourselves that we cannot, or do not, express in our material lives. That I am doing something that is really quite the opposite of this – representing my more mundane self virtually – doesn’t change the reality that a virtual self can be not merely liberating but also revelatory. Just as the fictions of a good novel can reveal Truths with greater clarity than more factual forms of discourse, so too, I hope, does my artifice here strip away some of the barriers that separate me from . . . you. 

– Scylla Rhiadra

Thus, these 12 images are deeply engaging and fascinating in their depictions; so much so, that any thoughts of the “falseness” of their staging / posing is quickly lost. Instead, we are invited to share on the most intimate expressions of how Scylla views herself, and the moments from the physical world that make up many of the facets of who she is in the world of pixels and zeros and ones.

As noted, this is an exhibition in which the setting plays as much as role as the images themselves. From the night sky (make sure you have Use Shared Environment checked via menu → World → Environment), through to the maze, the lamps that illuminate each image as we approach it, to the props to be found throughout the space, everything has a role to play. The maze, for example, might be seen as a metaphor for our exploration of who we are, either as others try to understand us, or as we look upon ourselves. Such explorations can involve wrong turn (misapprehensions) and back-tracking (re-evaluation). Similarly, the lamps alongside each image represent those moments of realisation / revelation that spur our understanding onwards, and so on.

Provocative, revelatory, rich in content and presentation, the images offered in Intimacy, are highly personal both in their exploration of Scylla’s sense of self, and in the way they can chime with each of us and our own considerations of who we are in life – digitally and physically. They are also marvellously composed and framed as individual artistic pieces that can be appreciated in their own right. All of which makes this a thoroughly engaging visit.

SLurl Details

• Intimacy, Onceagain Art Gallery (Peaceful mountains, rated Adult)

It’s taken me a while, but I finally managed to drop into Onceagain Art Gallery, owned and operated by Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili). The occasion for during so was to visit Drawing a Dream, an exhibition of of images and drawings by Onceagain herself.

It’s an exhibition can be reached in one of two ways – via direct SLurl, as given here, or by dropping into the gallery’s main landing point and taking the teleport from there to Onceagain’s personal exhibition space. One on the platform, one will find a winter setting, heavy in snow and with a slightly otherworldy look to it thanks to the huge mushrooom trees and and tall crystals, which also help give the suggestion of a place from dreams canopied by the a starlit sky.

This open space, marked by stepping-stone paths and a shallow pool of water, is home to horses (complete with poses alongside them for those who may wish to take photos with them) and a collection of pictures by Onceagain that are drawn from both the physical world and Second Life, all of them on the subject of horses – animals for whom Onceagain has an understandable love. As such, I’ll leave it to her to explain her exhibition:

I live in a small farm and among the different animals that populate it there is a mare. She’s been with me for 23 years, I consider her like a friend. She is a barefoot horse, most of the times I’ve ridden her without saddle or just allowed her to follow me like a friend; but she is old, she just grazes.

For twenty years I have made drawings of her, and ten years ago I start to take photos of her. Now I doe the same with horse in Second Life. What you will find here are a mix of all these three things. The pictures in dark frames are from real life, and those in the light frames from Second Life.

– Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili)

The result is the most fascinating selection of equine studies it’s been my pleasure to witness in Second Life. All of the images have been finished so as to give the impression they have been hand-drawn,whether they originated in the physical word or were created from photographs taken in Second Life.

Predominantly offered sans any backgrounds or other distractions, they are drawings that perfectly capture these beasts that have been a central put of so much of humanity’s history, and with whom it is so easy to form a special bond. Each piece speaks to the strength, grace and beauty of these magnificent animals – and also speak to the love and understanding in which Onceagain herself holds horses.

For those wishing to have one of these pieces, they are available for sale – but only in limited quantities – available numbers are displayed with piece piece in hovertext when viewing up close.

An exceptional selection of art that perfectly blends the physical and virtual worlds.

SLurl Details

Drawing a Dream, Onceagain Art Gallery (Peaceful Mountains, rated Adult)

 

 

 

Wednesday February 22nd, 2022 saw the opening of the first half of a 2-phase art installation by Gem Preiz. Presented under the over-arching title Exoplanet, the installation carries the sub-title One Step Further, and is located on a sky platform within the region of Akikaze, held and curated by Akiko Kinoshi (Akiko Kiyori) as a part of her “Akipelago” group of regions.

This is another exhibition by Gem that combines a prim-base build with his always fascinating fractal images; as such it follows in the tradition of past installation such as Arcadia, Skyscrapers, Elusive Reality, Sapiens, and The Anthropic Principle, allowing the visitor to consider an architectural theme and / or enter an immersive environment in which his fractal art offers an extension to the environment. At the same time, it is also something of a harkening back to installations such as No Frontiers, his two-part series Heritage: Vestiges and Heritage: Wrecks and Rhapsody in Blue Fractals, in which the fractal images are the nucleus of a tale – a journey, if you will, of the imagination to futures and places within the cosmos that await our discovery.

In terms of the the build, this takes the form of a human outpost on another world. Where this may be is anyone’s guess; the environment outside suggests Mars, but that belies the main title for the exhibition – Exoplanet – so I prefer to think of it as somewhere beyond our solar system. It’s a curious place, sitting within a geodesic dome (which for me carried echoes of a much smaller dome sitting within Gem’s Skyscrapers city), powered by solar arrays which sit alongside a communications array beyond its curving walls.

In all, 14 different locations can be explored within the dome, either on foot or via the teleport HUD that is offered to visitors on arrival (and which contains a 15th destination – a point just outside one of the dome’s access points). These range from a control centres through to crew habitation units, although not all of the buildings are necessarily accessible. Within the base are also a number of vehicles: shuttles, hover cars and tracked rovers, which can be sat upon and driven, adding a dimension of fun, while the base is staffed by static NPCs that have a slight Star Trek edge to their uniforms.

A point to note here is that  the base isn’t supposed to be in any way “accurate” in its representation of a stellar outpost, as Gem explains in the installation’s introductory notes:

Exoplanet does not intend to look realistic or even consistent from a scientific point of view. Rather, it aims to create an immersive 3D environment which evokes space exploration. It deliberately uses, as with all my builds, prims with their SL attributes (bumpiness, shininess, alpha etc.), and does not rely on meshes or textures to reproduce reality — except for crew avatars.

– Gem Preiz

Turning to the art, a total of 18 pieces are offered within the installation and can be seen in one of two ways: via a large screen that hangs to one side of the dome, the 18 images displayed on it as a slide show, or by visiting the needle-like Tower that faces the screen from across the dome, where the images are displayed across several floors connected one to the next by wall-mounted teleports (note also that this tower also incorporates the Observation and Headquarters destinations on the teleport HUD).

While they may not necessarily all be new, these are pieces that all tell a story that is literally cosmic in its theme, carrying us to strange, new worlds orbited by vast space station-like structures, or upon which a civilisations has created massive cities and structures, and out into deep space where more structures are huddled – but whether they under construction or damaged and broken by events unknown and their age or finished articles built to some strange design ethos, is left entirely to our imaginations.

With the facilities under the dome suggesting a human base sitting beyond our solar system but still on the very edge of the rest of the galaxy, the images present suggestions of both humanity’s journey to reach this point in history (BZ Fractal SF9, BZ Fractal SF18, BZ Fractal SF1 and BZ Fractal SF13), and of the far older alien civilisation whose remnants have both drawn humans to the remote location in the inky blackness of space, and which even now is the reason the people of this base are preparing to venture still further from their homeworld.

There is another aspect here as well, as again noted by Gem in his introductory notes:

The purpose of the combined mixture of fractals and 3D interactive build, is to make them resonate : the space base offers an immersive 3D experience, even if it is in a simplistic environment, while the fractal images show a complexity impossible to reproduce in 3D. 

– Gem Preiz

All of which makes for an engaging exploration. When visiting Exoplanet: One Step Further, be sure to not the recommended environment setting displayed at the landing point. And for those interested, Gem has produced another of his soundtrack videos on You Tube, which offers a mixes of pieces that contain within them echoes, perhaps of M83 and Hans Zimmer.

SLurl Details

• Exoplanet: One Step Further (Akikaze, rated Moderate)

Tabula Rasa is a Latin phrase meaning “clean slate”, it is a term often used by some epistemological philosophers to encompass the theory that we are born without built-in mental content, and all the knowledge we attain comes purely through experience or perception. We are a clean slate upon which our natures are formed as a result the nurturing and influence we receive from those around us, and through the environment we live within.

It’s a doctrine that sits in opposition to that of innatism, which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge and traits which form the basis of our nature and personality, and thus are unlocked, rather than formed through the process of gaining experience and our developing perceptions. Both doctrines have long histories, tabula rasa can be traced back to the writings of Aristotle, whilst innatism was a doctrine held by the likes of Plato and Descartes.

Tabula Rasa is also the title Theda Tammas has selected for her latest installation, which recently opened in Second Life. It Occupies a sky platform on which is set a stark setting – a construction site, if you will – has been established; a place of beams both horizontal and vertical, here and there with sheets and strips of fabric attached. Within it, and under the overcast sky, figures stand, walk and twirl on the spot. Most do so individually although some are in pairs; all have their faces covered as they appear to be exploring their environment.

The symbolism here is clear: the covered faces reference the idea to the blank slate, the we are all initially vessels empty of knowledge; their motions and poses of the individual figures suggesting they are exploring their environment – that through these acts, they are embodying the core concept of tabula rasa – that the knowledge we gain, we we become, is the result of exploration, experience and the growth of our perception.

This is further exemplified by the pairs of figures, their poses encompassing both the idea of experience and the concept of nurturing: in one place a hood figure cares for another by carrying it; in another two hold a loving embrace, suggesting the love and care passed from a parent to a child, further helping the latter gain understanding of love and care through the contact.

Nor does the symbolism end there; it extends to the construct that forms the setting: the fact that the setting is that of a construction site underlines the idea that who we care, what we become, is a process of construction through experience and growing perception – just as a building is formed the the bringing together of beams and joists.

Whether or not one agrees with the doctrine of tabula rasa (studies have show innatism can be shown to exist, whereas tabula rasa is much harder to establish), this is a fascinating and rich exploration of the latter. When visiting – and as per the sign at the landing point – make sure you have ALM and shadows enabled (Preferences → Graphics), and use the local environment settings (menu → World → Environment and make sure Use Shared Environment).

SLurl Details

• Tabula Rasa (Sevenfold, rated General)