Category: Reviews

An Emergent centre of art in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Emergent Gallery, with Ilrya Chardin’s Art of War, foreground

Emergent is the name Ilrya Chardin has given to her latest gallery space in Second Life. Occupying a 1/4 full region minimally landscaped to present an setting pleasing to the eye and without overwhelming the viewer, the gallery presents a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces for the display of 2D and 3D art, and through until March 7th, 2020 (so I am getting to it on the late side), Ilyra is joined by four of Second Life’s more established and recognised artists: Sisi Beidermann, Eli Medier and Ladmilla, and PatrickofIreland.

When I first  encountered Ilyra Chardin’s art a good few years ago now, she was very much focused Second Life landscape images, capturing the places she has visited and offering considered reflections on their looks. Since then, she has considerably broadened her scope, up to and including a move to 3D art.

Emergent Gallery, Ilrya Chardin

The latter, in the form of Mesh sculptures, is very much displayed in the grounds and courtyards of the gallery, It ranges from quirky characters, each with a story to tell, through more brain-poking pieces, by way of abstract elements. I admit to being particularly drawn to The Art of War, which as well as cleverly drawing on Sun Tzu’s most famous (and oft-quoted) work, also reminds us that chess isn’t the only game of strategy that uses an 8×8 chequered board as its field of combat (although draughts doesn’t have quite such an astronomical number of potential game variations).

Sharing some of the walls of the outdoor spaces and present in the first of the gallery’s indoor spaces as a number of Ilrya’s 2D digital art pieces that are both worthy of examination and – in the case of those in the hall – point the way to her the larger hall, where her guests art displaying their art, commencing with Sisi Biedermann.

Emergent Gallery: Sisi Biedermann

I confess to being and admirer of Sisi’s digital art – as I’ve mentioned numerous times in these pages. She has become a master in the art of digital composition, presenting original pieces beautiful and most subtly layered, to present art that is instantly captures the eye, carrying us to marvellous worlds born of her imagination. This is instantly discovered in the first three images, sitting to the left as you enter the main hall. The Maid, The Boy on the Scooter and Ancient Beauty all offer black-and-white portraits from a bygone era, each carefully composited with soft-toned digital overlays to present three wonderfully evocative pieces. With her drawings, paintings and layered fantasy pieces also on offer, Sisi offers visitors a tempting look into her work.

Eli Medlier and Ladmilla are also no strangers to these pages. Describing himself as an “occasional poet in Second Life”, Eli has a gift with words he tends to share with images produced by his SL partner, Ladmilla, although looking at his website, it is clear he is no slouch when it comes to visual art, his photographs and images there as captivating as his poetry.

Emergent Gallery: Eli and Ladmilla

For this exhibition, he once again shares he words with photographs by the equally talented Ladmilla, an artist who has a unique and captivating way with visual artistry, and so makes an ideal partner to illustrate Eli’s words. In fact, so entwined are their imaginations that when viewing their work, it is possible to imagine each being inspired by the other, such that both words may have given rise to image, and equally, image may have given rise to image.

Similarly, PatrickofIreland’s art never fails to capture attention. Often thematic in presentation, his work is broad in style and frequently enmeshes narrative and social commentary.

Here, both indoors and out on the upper terrace, he offers a truly engaging mix of art that illustrates all of this, with images bordering on the abstract (Dawn of a New Era) and social commentary (Socially Connected) to fabulous fantasy pieces that stand entirely on their own to others that hint at possible hidden layering – looking at Empty Nest, for example, I found my imagination poking me with several narratives up to and including a play on the fall of Lucifer from grace – the fingers exhibiting claw like extensions as he is transformed into the devil, his angelic wings similarly transformed into what appears to be the fragments of a broken nest, symbolising all he has lost, sliding from his shoulders and down his plummeting back, more shards caught in the air through which he is falling…

Emergent: PatrickofIreland

An engaging, rich exhibition which, as noted, will remain open through until Saturday, March 7th, 2020.

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F L Y’s “Stories” in music: supporting Australia’s wildlife

Posted on by Inara Pey
White Mask: F L Y in concert, February 29th, 2020

On Saturday, February 29th, 2020 the Phoenix Arts Collaboration, in association with The White Mask Project, will be hosting a special concert event in support of WIRES – Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service, located in New South Wales, Australia, and which is currently particularly focused on rescuing and caring for animals displaced or injured by the wildfires in Australia.

This very special event will comprise a concert by violinist F L Y and her guests. The event will open at 08:45 SLT, with a short opening ceremony, with the concert proper running for two hours from 09:00 through until 11:00 SLT.

F L Y (FlyQueen)

F L Y (FlyQueen) is a professional violinist who has been performing in the physical world since 2007. Based in Istanbul, Turkey, start has performed with rocks bands and jazz groups at concerts and events, and has appeared at events in Washington State, USA, performing American rock, jazz and blues music on stage at events in Redmond, Kirkland, West Seattle and Portland.

She joined Second Life in July of 2015, and has been streaming her music into Second Life as a performer since June 2019. The White Mask project was started in January 2020 as a means for  F L Y to use her talent as a professional musician to provide a realistic concert type atmosphere to listeners in Second Life, in support of causes close to her heart. Her repertoire is broad, covering jazz, rock and pop from different periods, as well as more classical music and film themes. You can find out more about her – and hear a sample of her playing the violin – on her website.

Joining F L Y for this special event will be her guests Mimi Carpenter, Zachh Cale and Maximillion Kleenem who will be playing with her in dual-stream, after her solo presentation.

Please note that this is a formal concert with seating, not a dance event. However, having heard F L Y play, I can vouch that it is an event that is not to be missed, and donations to WIRES can be made via the Koala bears located in front of the stage.

White Mask: F L Y in concert, February 29th, 2020

About WIRES

WIRES was formed in 1985 with the mission to actively rehabilitate and preserve Australian wildlife and to inspire others to do the same. The organisation’s main activities are to respond to individual public reports of sick, injured or orphaned native wildlife. If necessary, trained WIRES volunteers will rescue, foster, provide and treatment and care for an animal and release it back into the wild once it is healthy. WIRES operates under an authority from the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW), allowing it to rescue and rehabilitate native animals, a practice which is generally forbidden by law in Australia.

In addition to the rehabilitation of individual animals, WIRES aims to improve native animal welfare generally through:

  • Raising awareness in the community and government of threats to native wildlife.
  • Educating the public about habitat requirements, and encouraging preservation of the natural environment.
  • Encouraging and undertaking research relevant to the conservation of wildlife and habitat.

A statement from WIRES on the impact of the Australian wildfires:

In WIRES history we have never seen a concurrent series of emergencies events like those that began in November. Hundreds of fires over weeks have burnt over 5 million hectares of land in NSW alone. Many animals were already struggling with a lack of water and food due to the drought. With the fires destroying unprecedented amounts of habitat, food shortages have increased and lack of suitable habitat will be a significant long-term challenge for surviving wildlife.

It is impossible to know how many animals have perished and it will be many months before the impact on wild populations can be better understood but ecologists at Sydney University have estimated over 800 million animals have been affected in NSW and over 1 billion animals in Australia since September.

Summer is a frantically busy time for wildlife rescue and there are still burning in NSW. In January alone there were over 28,000 calls to WIRES … and volunteers accepted over 3,800 rescues. 

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An abandoned vacation spot in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, February 2020 – click any image for full size

An Abandoned Vacation Spot in the 30s. Sometimes you can still see the glamour of the past….

So reads a part of the description for Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, a location we were drawn to courtesy of Maddy Gynoid. Designed by Dya OHare, this Homestead region presents a fabulous setting, an island sitting somewhere – possibly just off the coast or within the estuary of a broad river – that was once a place for holidays and fishing, but which has now faded well past its prime, the holiday makers long since departed, the water front now little more than moorings for fishing boats, but not a base of operations.

To say this is a beautiful setting would, frankly, be an understatement. The island has obviously been carefully considered and designed to present a setting that really could exist as much in the physical world as in the virtual. It’s made all the more natural through its single-track road which, just as might be expected of a vacation setting, neatly loops its way around the landscape, linking all the points of interest, and thus providing a natural means of exploration.

Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot – February 2020

The landing point sits in one of these aged waterfront buildings, one that is in slightly better overall condition than the rest, and home to Dya’s Gacha resale store.  From here, visitors have a choice: proceed on foot, take a bicycle from the rezzer a little further along the waterfront, or take the the steps down to the the piers where a motor boat rezzer awaits anyone who fancies pootling around the island by water.

The road runs both north along the the shore, and east. The former route fully brings home the faded nature of the island’s heritage, passing between water to the one side and buildings that are falling apart on the other, their signs and façades harking back to when the the paved street was alive with visitors – although a couple of folk appear not to have realised the bar is no longer serving customers!

Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, – February 2020

To the north, through a local rain shower, sits a more business-like wharf and buildings, where also sits the carved hull of a submarine whose shape looks born more of the Cold War era than from the 1930s. It sits as a single incongruity in the region’s overall design – and yet it still fits the setting, suggesting that while this was a holiday centre in the 1930s, time has indeed moved on, and the island has seen other uses.

Two beaches mark the south and east side of the the island, separated from one another by a rocky headland dominated by an old wooden lighthouse.  Both of the beaches reflect the island’s long-passed heyday; flotsam is scattered along sands that have a tired feel to them under the overcast sky, the trees along them apparently dead, marker buoys just offshore warning passing fishing boats not to get too close to the shore where they might run aground (and also mark the region’s boundary for those using the local motor boats to get around).

Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, February 2020

Both of the beaches are also overlooked by a ruins of an ancient church, a place that looks older than than the rest of the island’s structures. Neon signs hand from one end of this old building, advertising it as a hotel, but whether it ever served this purpose or not is open to question; there’s barely the space for individual rooms, so perhaps the signs – still flickering, and so under power, are meant as a joke by whomever still uses the island.

This ruin can be reached by following the loop of the islands-road, which also provides access to the beaches by means of board walks and steps. The road also runs past what is perhaps the last standing holiday home overlooking the sands and sea. It’s a modest place, the deck bigger than the house, but it is still in use, simply furnished and offering a sense of life within a place mostly given to the past.

Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, February 2020

While it has no obvious connection other than the period in which the island had its heyday being close to that of the book, where exploring, I couldn’t help but feel it sits as some kind of seaward Valley of Ashes from The Great Gatsby, albeit with strong differences; a place that, rather than being a place of run-down businesses, secrets and eventual tragedy, through which the rich of East Egg and West Egg pass under sufferance, the island sits as a place to be passed by and occasionally used by fishing as they travel to and from richer ports of call whilst plying their trade.

Why my mind should jump to such a connection, I’ve no idea; but it just seems to fit. What I can say is that with its wildlife and horses, sound scape and cloud-heavy skies, Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot is a captivating place to visit, rich in its own romance and utterly photogenic.

Dya’s Abandoned Vacation Spot, Februay 2020

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Art and idioms in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Vegetal Planet: State of Mind

Currently open at Vegetal Planet is an impressive 2D / 3D interactive installation led by Cherry Manga, made with the support of JadeYu Flang, that makes for a fun, and also thought provoking visit.

State of Mind is a journey through 20 popular idioms and expressions, taken without the need to move that far. It’s a journey that requires visitors to enable Advanced Lighting Model (Preferences → Graphics), although you do not require shadows to be enabled as well, if you’re concerned about viewer performance.  With ALM set, touch the sculpture at the landing point to deliver you to the main exhibition space.

Vegetal Planet: State of Mind

Located in a skybox, this is an environment that is in a state of flux, the scene within it changing periodically, gently paging through the 20 idioms. Visitors can either stand and watch the show or, by touching the east wall, can become a part of it, floating serenely as the scenes change around and below them.

Each idiom  / expression is presented as a complete scene, with the expression written in French or English and French against the wall that can set you floating. While is it easy to look at this and translate what is written, it’s more intriguing to observe the scenes as they appear and decrypt what is being illustrated. Sometimes this is easy – as with Head in the Clouds, Walking on Eggshells, Stars in (Your) Eyes, others may take a little time to figure out, and some may not have an literal translation from French / English, so may not always be familiar to everyone.

Vegetal Planet: State of Mind

All of the pieces are, however, cleverly presented, often inviting the observer not just to try to identify the idiom being presented, but also consider how it came about – particularly with those that border on cliché. Take Thinking Outside the Box as an example – where did it originate, and how did it descend into a management consultancy cliché? Turns out it may well have originated with management consultants in the 1970s as a result of the “nine dots” puzzle, only to circle back to them through wider use to become a common training cliché.

Consideration of the derivation each saying is encouraged by the lack of any explanation for each setting beyond the expression appearing on the wall. Thus, in looking at the passing scenes, the grey matter is naturally stirred into questioning just why such expressions have become so recognised, that nine times out of ten we’ll happily use any one of them without otherwise considering where and how it might have be born and then enter into common usage.

Vegetal Planet: State of Mind

Fascinating, intricate and engaging, State of Mind will, I believe, be open for at least the next month.

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A return of Bryn’s Hand in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bryn Oh: Hand

Bryn Oh first created Hand is Second Life in 2016. An immersive experience, it mixed art and storytelling with a touch of mystery and discovery.

Originally an installation that used Second Life Experience Keys, Hand recently transitioned to Sansar with the assistance of a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and which I recently wrote about in Bryn Oh’s Hand in Sansar. That grant has also allowed Hand to once again be resurrected in Second Life.

In writing about Hand in 2016, I noted of the installation:

This [is a] journey takes us through a strange, broken urban setting with decaying, collapsing buildings; a place where adults are almost (but not entirely) absent, apparently leaving their children to fend for themselves. Technology is still active – drones  buzz around and project adverts on walls and floors for whoever might watch them – presumably as a form of currency / earning, and lights flicker and play. Walking through the streets and buildings there appears to be nods to dystopian sci-fi: a hint of Soyent Green here, a reference to rampant consumerism there. While Flit [the principal character] and the other children brought to mind shades of And The Children Shall Lead, minus the space alien angle.

– Bryn’s Hand in Second Life, December 2016

Bryn Oh: Hand

This is still true, as is the use of Experience Keys to assist visitors, instructions for which are provided at the landing point. What is different with this iteration is that rather than using a teleport to reach the actual starting point of the story – Flit sitting in an underground station – visitors must find their way through a tunnel from one station to the next, where Flit is waiting.

From here visitors once again travel up the escalator and out into the the run-down setting of a city well past its prime. Here the story will unfold by finding, and following Flit as she appears at various points in the installation, either pointing the way through the story or ready for a chapter of it to be told. As you approach the latter, you should hear the narration (assuming you have local sounds enabled). However, if no audio is obvious, make sure local sounds are on, and touch the microphone alongside Flit.

Bryn Oh: Hand

Aspects of the path through the story do require some care – making your way over tightrope-like planks and fallen towers for example, or climbing up piles of the detritus of humanity. Also, cleverly woven into the story are hooks to several other elements of  Bryn’s work – so don’t be afraid to touch things as you explore. Take the scene of the girl with the golden crown and her little entourage waiting to be found whilst exploring the rooms of the main building in the installation: touching the girl or the insects and creatures will offer you the chance to watch a video about The Girl with the Paper Crown.

Hand, whether visited in SL or Sansar – and a visit to both shows some of the core differences between the two – remains a captivating story, one that encourages us to fill-in the blanks through our own imaginations, adding to the richness of the tale Bryn tells through character, setting and the words of her narrator.

Bryn Oh: Hand

SLurl Details

  • Hand (Immersiva, rated: Moderate)

A man of many faces in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Lost Unicorn: Razor Cure

Open through until Sunday, March 22nd at the Lost Unicorn Gallery is Razor Cure: Man of Many Faces, an exhibition of art by Razor Cure.

A Second Life photographer with a lean towards self portraiture, Razor doesn’t so much present characters and settings in eye-catching images, but actually inhabits the character he creates. some of these are born entirely of his imagination, others inspired by film or legend, while all of them reveal a man in love with stories, as he notes in writing about himself:

I go by Razor Cure, the name itself semi-borrowed from a book I was reading when I made my SL account … I came to SL for naughtiness, after my favour game, City of Heroes, died (and its back now, woo!) and ended up getting into picture taking. Now most of my time here is spent hunting for cool new outfits and attachments, exploring sims, tweaking poses…

The Lost Unicorn Gallery: Razor Gallery

This love of inhabiting characters and telling stories is very much in evidence in the pictures selected for this exhibition. Within it, we can join with Harry Potter at Hogwarts, ride a magic carpet with a Prince of Persia, watch as a Baby Groot borrows a certain stone-laden gauntlet, confront a Joker-esque villain or a masked anarchist; all of whom are framed in in a manner that sets them within a story our imaginations can unfold.

Alongside of these are pieces that might be regarded as more “traditional” avatar studies: the ring master, the cowboy, the hunter, and characters from fantasy. But again, Razor makes them characters he can inhabit, rather than just offer them as static studies, again making them stories in art.

The Lost Unicorn Gallery: Razor Cure

Man of Many Faces sits within the main hall of the Lost Unicorn and several of the surrounding halls. This both provides plenty of space for Razor’s art without overwhelming the visitor whilst also offering gentle encouragement to explore the other gallery spaces and the art and artists they have to offer.

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