Category: Reviews

Blue Orange, is a new music and arts venue in Second Life, brought together by Ini (in Inaka), which opened its doors on Saturday, December 17th, 2016.

“[It] is project to pull together open-minded, friendly people to share time, music, RL and SL art understanding. (rl=sl=rl basically),” Ini says of the concept.  “At first it was an idea to mix urban style with something classy and create bohemian underground music club where people could hear a lot of different music styles, starting from underground alternative, industrial, grunge, indie, noise, psychedelic, folk punk and ending with jazz, neo-folk, instrumental and classical music … Later came an idea to invite creative people who would be happy to share love for art, this how they understand art, how they express themselves and to show how second life as virtual place let to us share it.”

The result is a skyborne “underground” club surrounded by art spaces. The club features a dance floor, two stage areas seating areas. At one end sit two curving arrows. One points the way down an old subway corridor, lined with art by Ini and Gitu Aura, to where ghostly trains rumble through an old station.

A bar by Eupalinos Ugajin sits between the rushing trains, offering those who dare occupy it a drink.  A set of double doors at the end of the platform direct people through to one side of the Art Corner area of the build. This comprises three display halls, of which more anon.

The second arrow in the club area points the way through a hole in the wall and a further art display area, while a set of stairs behind the DJ stage leads one up to an upper level display area.

For the opening, Ini has enlisted artists Igor Ballyhoo, Indigoclaire, Miu Miu Miu, Theda Tammas and Eupalinos Ugajin. Indioclaire and Eupa occupying the middle of the three adjoining halls accessed via the subway platform, with Indioclaire’s 2D art occupying the wall spaces and Eupa’s 3D work occupies the floorspace. Elements of the latter may be familiar to SL art lovers – such as the Dragon from Gravity Is a Mistake (read more here) – and others offer a little interactive fun (you can take a dance on Donald Trump’s hair if you like).

Leading off of this hall are two others. One houses Theda Tammas’ The Cortège, to which visitors are led via a poem inscribed on the floor. The second hall offers a isngle and highly evocative piece by Igor Ballyhoo Sacrificed Angel, which should be viewed under midnight lighting conditions.

Miu Miu Miu’s art sits in the hall reached via the hole in the wall from the club area, so when visiting, be careful not to miss it.

“I was unbelievably happy when so many people wanted to show their creativity and make Blue Orange bigger, much more ‘wider’,” Ini says of the art exhibits, “not only as music club, but as art project – which is open for all people.”

Music for the open of the club and the art exhibits will be provided by Gitu Aura (12:00 noon SLT through 14:00), Khaz Rotaru (14:00-16:00) and Niels Koolhoven  (16:00-18:00). Those interested in saying up-to-date with events can do so via the Blue Orange inw-world group. Ini informs me that artists will be displaying for 2-3 months at a time at Blue Orange, although they may make changes to the art they are displaying in that time.

SLurl Details

• Blue Orange (Empire State Island, rated: Adult)

Now open at MetaLES, curated by Ux Hax and Romy Nayar, is OpeRaAxiEty,  by JadeYu Fang. Reached via teleport from the landing point, it presents a haunting mix of ideas and images  intended to play on our anxieties – albeit at times in the most subtle of ways (make sure you have local sounds enabled when visiting).

A misty landscape awaits visitors, across which web-like lines faintly ebb and flow and the air throbs with a steady beat, warping at times into the high-pitched beep of an electrocardiogram. These combine to offer the first play on feelings of discomfort.

In the distance, a huge structure glimmers its way into the sky, figures limned against its glow while darker shapes sit on the horizon. Closer to hand, a hill rises from the surroundings, crowned by twin human torsos atop stilt-like legs, each holding a sphere in which two more figures, back-to-back, stand surrounded by eggs as large, blood-red spiders sit on their abdomens as if about to suckle. Apparently genuflecting before this scene on the slope of the hill, is a crystal Arachne (as perhaps popularised more by fantasy than mythology).

A web forms a bridge from these figures to the floating crystalline structure, its arches and general form suggesting a temple. Here, green female figures fade and form as one cams around them, bright trails of light curling and twisting around their bodies, kneel in a circle as a black arachnid female offers up eggs to a female human. Above all of this, watching, sits another crystal Arachne.

Elsewhere, human figures lie wrapped in webs, tended by more arachnids, while before the glimmering, cathedral-like structure stand three android torsos raised on great plinths. Within the arches (vaults?) of the “cathedral” white human forms float over their barbed wire doppelgängers. Flanking this, on either side, are two groups of plinth-mounted female forms, heads encased in televisions sets / computer CRTs.

With the ebb and flow of the webs on the ground at this point giving way to flickering data displays (which also form the walls of the cathedral), and data wrapping itself through the misty air, OpeRaAnxiEty offers an ethereal, fascinating environment. But what might it all mean? The artist offers few clues; it is for us to create our own narrative.

To me, the arachnids are a metaphor – albeit perhaps a multi-faceted one. There is the obvious spider-as-phobia element. Many of us are put on edge on seeing spiders, and it would seem that is the intent here. But it is also true that we are by nature complex creatures;  we weave and create so much that often it can ensnare us or confuse us – hence the webs. This idea is also perhaps manifested in the armless figures with their heads encased by screens: they are helpless to prevent their total immersion in a media-driven overload of information which creates is own reality around them.

Thus, OpeRaAnxiety might offer a warning: that the unequal blending of humanity and technology may give rise to something potentially unpleasant. Hence (again) the use of arachnids and their link to images of gestation and hatching / birth (might even the heartbeat throb in the air and the ECG be indicative for new life?).

But perhaps there is also hope here as well. Might the figures floating over their barbed wire doppelgängers within the data-walled vaults of the great “cathedral” be a metaphor representing the potential for technology to yet free us from the mortal constraints  imposed by our own bodies?

OpeRaAnxiety will remain at MetaLES  into the New Year.

SLurl Details

• OpeRaAnxiEty, MetalLES (MetaLES, rated: Moderate)