Ribong Gallery Artspace – Quadrapop Lane: Art is What You Make It
I’m starting this article with an apology for San (Santoshima), curator / owner of Ribong Gallery. In mid-February, she sent me an invite to attend Art is What You Make It, the (at the time) new exhibition by Quadrapop Lane … and I managed to mis-file it in inventory. As a result, I am late getting to it and writing about it – but the exhibition is currently still open and well worth viewing.
The easiest way – to a point – of explaining this installation is to use Quadrapop’s own words:
Art is What You Make It is an installation of art made from other art, starting with textures used on prims, mesh and particles from quad’s RL photos, designs created in photoshop, digital drawings, and quad’s physical drawings and paintings. These images are often recycled through SL screen shots that may further be manipulated and uploaded as textures.
The images have been altered and recycled repeatedly so that their source is often unrecognizable to the maker: Art is built of layers of experience, personal and cultural, built on an artist’s response to the world. The results may bear no resemblance to the initial motivation or concept.
– Quadrapop Lane
Ribong Gallery Artspace – Quadrapop Lane: Art is What You Make It
The result is a walk through 2D and 3D art that is genuinely and stunningly visual. There are elements of animation, abstraction , particle and physical art. To see it at its best, you’ll need a reasonable Draw Distance (96m recommended) and have Advanced Lighting Model (ALM – Preference → Graphics → make sure the option is checked). The installation is divided into six areas – four on the same level, which can be visited in a counter-clockwise direction and end with a surprise (take the angled tunnel).
These four areas include 2D, 3D and animated art pieces by Quadrapop (with the latter including particle emitters). ALM is required as projectors are used throughout, so without the option being enabled, you’ll miss a lot. A spiral ramp rising from the centre on the four rooms, rising to a mezzanine level with further art, including a walk-through element which can be intense in terms of the lighting, and a marvellous 3D animated fresco hanging in space.
Ribong Gallery Artspace – Quadrapop Lane: Art is What You Make It
The remaining level is reached via teleport from the lowest level (look for the TP disk on the four of one of the rooms), and takes the form of a maze-like walk through light to the centre and the TP back to the low level.
Describing all that is here is a little wasted, as this is an entirely visual installation, one fully deserving to to be seen and enjoyed. So I’m going to shut up now and encourage you to visit while there is time enough to enjoy Quadra’s work for yourself.
Ribong Gallery Artspace – Quadrapop Lane: Art is What You Make It
There is another world, but it is inside this one.
– Paul Eluard
This is the quote Cica Ghost has selected for the description of her March 2022 installation, Green Planet, which opened on Saturday March 5th. Whilst most quotations give Eluard as saying “in”, rather than “inside”, it is nevertheless an entirely appropriate quote for the installation, and for at least two reasons – which I’ll come to in a moment, and promise not to offer an entire treatise on them!
Follow the SLurl (or the LM, if you have that!), and you’ll be delivered to the bowl of what might be an ancient impact crater, almost completely ringed by green-covered hills. The only way out – worryingly – is a gaping maw overseen by a single large, roving eye, and from within which rise or hang green stalagmites and stalactites – or might they be teeth?!
Cica Ghost: Green Planet
However, the maw is not that deep and is not waiting to chomp down on you when you attempt to pass; rather it is a gateway to a curved gorge-like canyon, its walls and floor again almost slimed in green and from which green flowers point their trumpet-like blooms at the strange orange-green sky.
The far end of this valley opens out into an even more alien landscape, a place inhabited by strange slug-like creatures as green as the their surroundings, some with what we would regard as the normal complement of eyes, others with decidedly monocular vision and still some with no real indication of any form of eye or eyes. Fat-lipped and bulbous-headed, they are clearly not of Earthly origin, and the mix with more of the strange maw-like creatures and one or two that have legs.
Cica Ghost: Green Planet
Throughout this landscape, more of the trumpet-like flowers point to the sky, and many of the undulating features have the feel of having been extruded rather than formed, while green globs drool from fronds and rocks as if someone has thrown green paint across this place – or perhaps it is the gunk thrown out by whatever caused the impact crater that is home to the landing point! Also to be found here are little fumeroles that periodically burp forth green bubbles that drift upwards, while grass-like fronds that have escaped any smothering by the green goop curl gently.
Sitting pristine within the setting is a silvered metal rocket, panels heavily riveted and a single viewport looking out over the scene – but the creature with its face pressed to the thick beaded glass does not appear to be human. The presence of the rocket and its traveller, together with a glass-domed very Earthly-looking flower, add perfectly to the overall surrealism of the setting.
Cica Ghost: Green Planet
And surrealism is one of the reasons the quote Cica has chosen for the setting is so apt: Eluard was one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, dedicated to opening channels in the mind as a means for the unconscious mind to express itself. In this respect, there is much to be said about Second Life and the manner in which we can use it to express ideas of our own and unlock our imaginations in a way that somewhat parallels surrealism’s attempts to unlock the subconscious.
The second element in the fitting choice of Eluard’s quote is that just as there is a myriad of worlds out amongst the stars of our galaxy, some of which – perhaps many – might will harbour strange and exotic life that might be celebrated through the bizarre creatures Cica has given us here; we have only to look inwards to find equally fabulous “other worlds” as they sit within our imaginations. Worlds like Cica’s Green Planet – wonderfully bizarre and captivating, unusual, engaging and fun (be sure to mouse over things – there are hidden dances awaiting discovery and a number of fun poses to be had – although you might have to look up at what is drifting around overhead to find the latter!).
Cica Ghost: Green Planet
As always, another great installation from Cica, who never fails to offer something fresh and eye-catching each month, so do please consider making a donation to her on-going work when visiting! And don’t forget the gift at the landing point!
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?
Onceagain Art Gallery: Scylla Rhiadra – Intimacy
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
Onceagain Art Gallery: Scylla Rhiadra – Intimacy
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
Onceagain Art Gallery: Scylla Rhiadra – Intimacy
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.
Onceagain Art Gallery: Scylla Rhiadra – Intimacy
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)
In 2021 Titus Palmira, Sofie Janic and Megan Prumier opened a region build called Skrunda-2, an interpretation of a deserted Soviet-era military base and town built by Russia in Latvia during the 1960s for the operation of their Destnr early warning radar system, before eventually abandoning it in the 1990s.
It was a popular build, attracting photographers and bloggers alike (see Skrunda-2 an atmospheric slice of Soviet history in Second Life), as did its successor (see; Skrunda: the returning in Second Life). One of the latter is Blip Mumfuzz, an artist / photographer with a gifted eye and an ability to create images that are so natural in angle and composition, they sit as scenes we might naturally sport for ourselves when visiting a place – as she richly demonstrates with Images of Skrunda, now open at Frank Atisso’s, Art Korner.
Art Korner: Blip Mumfuzz – Images of Skrunda
Set within an environment suggestive of a deserted town with slab-like blocks rising from all sides that stand as reminders of the blockhouse-like bulk of the great apartment buildings of Skrunda, and surrounded by ruins the offer a further echo of their study, these are genuinely remarkable images. Through a considered use of focal length, focus, and angle, Blip presents pieces that are so life-like in composition they might actually have been taken within the aged, deserted remnants of Skrunda itself, whilst they also offer a unique sense of place and time entirely of their own.
Take Skrunda Drone, for example: it is hard to to imagine one is looking out from a high vantage point across a run-down corner of a township. Meanwhile, it is hard not to look at Skrunda Dream and not feel one can walk into it and take a peek through the open door or climb the rusting steps up to the gangways above, and onwards among the gantries and tanks; similarly, Skrunda-3 12 gives the impression one can hop onto the old rails and walk along them, following the railcar that appears to be vanishing around the bend in the tracks that sits between graffiti-painted buildings.
Art Korner: Blip Mumfuzz – Images of Skrunda
This is another genuinely engaging collection from a gifted photographer and storyteller that helps to recall a genuinely engaging Second Life region build.
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.
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
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)
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
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.
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
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.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
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.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
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.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
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
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
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.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
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
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: OneStep Further, February 2022
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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 