Category: Art in Second Life

Djehuti-Anpu (Thoth Jantzen – TJ to those who know him) is an artist specialising in immersive,  interactive audio-visual presentations within virtual spaces. His work is a captivating mix of light, colour, sound, and interaction that many have likely seen at various venues across Second Life, including several SL Birthday events, where he has frequently presented microcosms of his work as featured artist at those events.

On Saturday February 13th, he opened Immergence, an installation featuring music, sound, light and colour that is made up of a series of experiences joined together through a common hub.

The very title of the piece is itself an interesting fusion, given that the two words  can be taken as opposites: “immersion” tends to suggest being subsumed into something, confined by it, whilst “emergence” might be said to be moving out of something, to be free of its constraints.

However, when put together like this, they suggest the act of opening oneself to experience, thought, stimulation and ideas through the act of immersing oneself into a single medium – in this case, a series of interconnected virtual environments, each with its own form and purpose, but all of which combine to present a contiguous, provocative and evocative experience.

Before visiting the installation, there are a number of settings that should be enabled within your viewer:

• Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) – must be enabled (Preferences → Graphics → ensure Advanced Lighting Model is checked)
  • Note that you do not need to enable shadows as well if rendering these places a significant strain on your computer’s rendering capabilities.
• Ensure you have set the following media requirements (Preferences → Sound and Media → Media):
  • Media auto-play = ON / checked.
  • Allow in-world scripts to play media = ON / checked.
  • Play media on other avatars = OFF / unchecked.
  • Media Filter (TPVs only, if part of the viewer) = OFF / unchecked.
• Ensure your viewer is set to Use Shared Environment (menus → World → Environment → make sure Use Shared Environment is checked).

Do note as well, that those sensitive to moving or flashing light or who may be particularly motion sensitive may find elements of Immergence unsettling.

The landing point offers information on the installation – presented by the HAL-like THJ-900 computer, together with a series of teleport portals that lead to the surrounding experiences, some of which can also be found at TJ’s New Khemmenu spaces at Ars Simulacra NMC’s SL Artist’s Showcase Island.

There is no set order of portals to take, so just choose those that pique your curiosity and step through. Similar portals within each of the environments can be used to return you to the landing point:

• Khemennu University: immerse yourself in one (or more) of a number of discussions on a range of topics – ethics, philosophy, physicalism, memetics, and more, and test your own knowledge.
• Marbles: float and / or dance amidst the dancing marbles as they capture and reflect the lights and patterns of the sphere that encloses you.
• Mothership: take to a purple pod and lose yourself in music as the camera reveals the many environments within Immergence – just tap the ESC key a couple of times once folded into your pod.
• Ramalama: I think this is about using a canon to shoot yourself into a tunnel of light, but I confess (possibly because of a shortcoming with my Bluetooth keyboard) I could not get the canon to work.
• The Gauntlet – embark on a walk through space, light, time and more; best appreciated if you can manage it in Mouselook.
• The Hippycampus: float through the brain, Superman-style.
• The Mind Melter: wander halls of colour and reflection in what appears to be an endless space.

The two remaining portals – the large stargate and the Starburst portal – access event spaces that I gather will be used for special events.

In addition a green diamond formed by a pair of pyramids at the landing point will allow you to rez a little flying car (and companion) and zoom around the installation, whilst a second platform reached via a semi-transparent bridge, is home to a further series of portals connecting to other arts environments, including Ars Simulacra, mentioned above.

Obviously intended to be experienced rather than written about, Immergence is fascinating in its presentation, offering visitors an immersive, visually and aurally stimulating opportunity to both escape and, should you so wish, have your grey matter informed and exercised.

SLurl Details

• Immergence (Akimitsu, rated Moderate)

Currently open at Imago Gallery, owned and curated by Mareea Farrasco is an ensemble exhibition entitled Landscapes and featuring the work of Blip Mumfuzz, Carelyna, Michiel Bechir and Tresore Prada. Together they present views of regions and places within Second Life that encourage a desire to visit them whilst also allowing us a glimpse at them through the artists’ eyes and narrative framing.

Within the gallery’s lower floor left side hall, Tresore Prada offers thirteen pieces that might be said to reveal places within Second Life, but also the passing of the seasons from winter to summer and mixing cooler shades that might suggest spring and autumn.

These are pieces that all immediately draw the eye and offer a story;  whose house is that beyond the snow-bound bridge? Does it belong to the artist, or to a friend they were on their way through the deep snow to visit? Has the cat lying on the sun-warmed wall simply found a place to rest whilst wandering, or does it call the little cottage across a summery river home? What are the promises to be found off the canvas of each of the trio of images depicting little boats on or near the water? The threads of possible stories exist within each piece, simply awaiting you imagination to thread them together.

Across the hall, Carelyna also presents a baker’s dozen of images, all of which have been processed and finished to offer a painted-like composition of the settings she has captured. Suggestive of a mix of oil and watercolour works, these offer some unique perspectives on popular SL destinations. Take Littlesquaw’s Midnight in Paris (which I wrote about back in November 2020) as an example; normally witnessed at night by visitors, Carelyna here offers a view across its rive Seine towards the Eiffel Tower rich in the colours and tints of an Autumn day. On the opposite wall, her take of Takoma presents a impressionist style take on the subject that brings to mind the likes of Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire.

The upper floor of the gallery is split between an open mezzanine area and a second hall running across the back of the gallery. The mezzanine is home to the display by Michiel Bechir, who offers a selection of eight images that stand not only as landscape pieces but also studies of the architecture of Second Life, with two focused as they are on a large manor house seen under different conditions with two more  presenting views of settings redolent of older parts of US cities like New York. Offered as both colour and monochrome images, this selection allows us to see the diversity of Michiel’s approach to, and presentation of, his SL photography.

In the rear hall, Blip Mumfuzz presents a series of images in her own inimitable style. Far removed from what might be called “conventional”, they border on the abstract; rich in colour, their form taken by the rise of grasses against the sky, against a backdrop of open water or curtain of tress. Frequently flecked by out-of-focus elements dotting the air above them, these are pieces that are very much reflective of the moment in which they were captured – the soft-focus elements suggestive of seeds caught on the breeze, carrying with the the promise of new life; the colours reflecting the fact that these are not images of places just seen, but places both seen and re-imagined by the mind’s eye in the same instant.

Blip’s exhibition is also semi-immersive: climb the steps and  walk the photo-mural of the stream;  imagine the coolness of the water about your feet and look out into the scenes on either side and both in front of you and behind you, and let your mind wander free…

Four very individual and very captivating exhibitions well work dropping in to see.

SLurl Details

• Imago Gallery (Broken Mountain, rated Moderate)

The Linden Homes in Bellisseria lend themselves to many uses beyond that of home; people have turned them into clubhouses, pubs, cafés group meeting points, museums and galleries. In the latter regard they can be particularly attractive, in that their limited internal space means that they are ideal for what I’ve started calling “pocket exhibitions” – small exhibitions of art that are easy to visit and take in within a cosy environment and which don’t overwhelm visitors in terms of the size or number of pieces on display.

One of the people who has especially leveraged her Linden Home as a gallery space is the incredibly talented and giving Owl Dragonash. Having turned her home into the Hoot Suite Gallery, she uses it to invite artists from across Second Life to exhibit within in for a period of around a month, and February 2021 see her hosting The Many Shades of Blues, a pocket-sized exhibition by anther of Second Life’s talents: musician and artist Blues Rocker.

Perhaps regarding himself first and foremost a Second Life Landscape artist, Blues is far more; as this exhibition ably demonstrates. Carefully brought together under the exhibition’s title is a selection of pieces that richly presents the full spectrum of Blues’ artistry, with individual pieces carrying the subliminal theme contained within the exhibition’s title: shades (or tints in some cases) of blue.

Found across the two floors of the gallery are avatar studies, photo portraits of physical world musicians, reflections on Second Life’s rich diversity of art that includes images of pieces by Mistero Hifeng and a marvellous portrait of Bryn Oh that, as well as combining the themes of portraiture and art in SL, capture the essence of Bryn’s creative spirit as expressed through her avatar. In addition, some of the pieces contain layered artistic references and / or pay homage to art as a whole.

The latter is perfectly demonstrated in The Bridge of Sighs, located on the gallery’s ground floor. Its title evokes thoughts of the bitter romance of the Ponte dei Sospiri bridge in Venice, whilst also evoking thoughts of he songs by Ralph McTell and Robin Trower, thus reflecting Blues’ own status as a musician. At the same time, with its rendering of the Golden Gate Bridge presented in an impressionist style, it both demonstrates Blues’ love of painting and adds an expression of the beauty to be found in man-made works, calling to mind as it does the many photos of that bridge caught within the white blanket of low-lying cloud or peeking through San Francisco’s famed fog.

A further demonstration to Blues’ passion for art can be found in Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. An evocative piece, it carries within it a wonderful homage to the artistry of van Gogh, whilst across the room from it Once in a Blue Moon again combines romance and song within a photograph that captures the magnificent natural desolation of our natural satellite and on the floor lies a rug by Blues that encapsulates abstractionism in its expression.

Small it size but overflowing in expression The Many Shades of Blues will, I believe remain open through the rest of February 2021, and definitely should not be missed.

SLurl Details

• Hoot Suite Gallery (Ruthsburg, rated Moderate)