Tag: Cica Ghost

Fade Away is the name of Cica Ghost’s latest region-wide installation, which opened on May 5th, 2017. The title is drawn from a quote by Bob Dylan, “Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.” It’s a quote from his 2004 memoirs, Chronicles 1,  which ostensibly looks back on his arrival in New York and immersion into Greenwich Village life.

It’s a quote which has tended to be used as a reflection of mortality, the passage of time and / or the sometimes transient nature of relationships. It is a fitting foundation for this installation, which is a deeply personal piece for Cica, for reasons those who know her are aware, and which I’m not about to reveal here without her permission. Suffice it to say, the meaning behind it is something with which we all identify at certain points in our lives.

Within a ghostly, misted landscape sits a bedroom, part of an old house, where a gaunt figure has apparently just risen from bed. An alarm clock states the time is some ten minutes before six. As we watch another version of the figure fades into view, apparently departing the room, looking over his shoulder, and down along a path, more versions of the figure fade in and out of view, copies of the alarm clock still frozen at ten before six sit close by, until the figure reaches a pair of wooden gates set within a rickety fence.

Nor is this all; outside of the house, and along part of the route, ghoulish creatures appear to watch and mock the figure’s progress, while he also passes through groups of cloaked figures, apparently caught in their own world. One more of these hooded figures sits apart from the rest, before a table, two cats providing him with company. Another alarm clock sits close by, also showing the same time.

Symbolism here is heavy – but what does it all mean? Perhaps the answer lies with a lone figure of a woman standing to one side of these various tableaux. She stands separated from them by the rickety fence the lone figure appears to be making his way without ever actually arriving, watching his progress.

Is the fence perhaps a metaphor, the dividing like between the woman’s physical presence in the world, and her memories of someone no longer in her life? If so, this perhaps makes the various tableaux across the rest of the region memories of that loved one, and his passage through (her) life. If so, might the hooded figures perhaps be more distant remembrances of time spent with him, echoes from deep within memory? As Dylan also said, “I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.”

Life is transient; however we feel about ourselves and those around us, we – and they – are only mortal. This would seem to be the message within the ghoulish characters gathered around the house. But at the same time, there is more to each of us than our physical presence, although that is often the most missed.  Through memories, we can hold on to those dear to us, however they have moved on from their physical presence in our lives so that, to one again use Dylan’s words, “when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.”

Fade Away is a poignant, heartfelt piece, rich in symbolism and deep in personal meaning, deserving to be seen and contemplated.

SLurl Details

• Fade Away (Noula, rated: Moderate)

Under the Sea, Cica Ghost’s latest region-wide installation in Second Life opened on Friday, March 3rd. It is in some ways a follow-on from her previous Frogs, in that it has a decidedly aquatic lean.

“There is a strange world under the sea,” Cica informs visitors, who arrive on a wooden platform, open on three sides and lacking a roof. A brief set of instructions are provided on how best to enjoy a visit (in short, enable Advanced Lighting Model and make sure Shadows: Sun/Moon + Projectors is active – Cica has taken care to minimise the performance hit with the latter as much as possible). Once done, follow the steps down beneath the waves, and discover that strange world.

Here can be found all manner of creatures, familiar and exotic. fronds of seaweed and forests of kelp undulate under the pressure of passing water; schools of fish hover at the edges of some of these copse-like knots of green, staring nervously outward. A great sea snail expands and contract, as if making its way across the sandy floor without moving. Other fish hover nervously at the empty eye sockets or under bleached ribs of even bigger creatures which have long since died, while splashes of vivid colour are offered by anemones, starfish and strange plants standing tall on cage-like roots.

Two great tanks sit on the sea floor, one with a glass panel through which you can walk. Inside are two denizens of the deep, each equipped with some rather vicious looking teeth, although both remain oblivious to visitors, content to share the tiled space with little sea horses – and you, if you opt to swim with them (touch the bed). In the tank next door, which has one end open and partially buried in the sea bed, an audience of fish floats, seemingly enraptured by the creature at the far end of the tank. Again, a bed is offered for visitors.

The scale here has to be seen to be appreciated. Everything is huge, with some of it a little threatening. The sabre-toothed fish, for example, may not seem interested in you, bit walk or swim close to one, and you start to wonder if it will suddenly dart forward and try to gobble you. Nor is this feeling of perhaps being a morsel in the food chain restricted to the fish; approach the great sea snail from the right direction, and you’ll feel like it is stretching its toothed maw up towards you in hope of a bite.

The entire region is fascinating to explore – swimming is by far the best way to enjoy it – and there are, as always, various points where visitors can become a part of the scene. The beds mentioned earlier offer swimming animations as well as sitting and sleeping poses, while mouse-over some of the shells and things scattered around, and hidden perches are revealed.

Under the Sea makes for a delightful visit, and will remain open through March 2017. Should you visit, do please consider a donation towards Cica’s work and don’t forget to visit her little store (LM at the landing point) should the mood take you.

SLurl Details

• Under the Sea (Aggramar, rated: Moderate)

Frogs, Cica Ghost’s latest region-wide installation in Second Life opened on Sunday, February 5th. After the poignant, provocative Burning (which you can read about here), Frogs sees Cica in a lighter mood, with a little play on fairy stories – albeit with a little touch of pathos.

Across one of Cica’s familiar undulating landscapes sits a huge house. Or at least, part of a huge house. We’ll return to that in a moment.  A few trees, some a little scrawny, others tall or fat, are scattered across the landscape, some with their trunks ringed by flat circles of round stones. But these hold the attention for the first few seconds after arrival, before eyes are drawn inevitably to the frogs of the title. Given their size, they are a little hard to miss!

By default, seven of the amphibians occupy the region, sitting either individually or in little groups, their croaking filling the air as they bounce up and down on their hind legs as little children might seem to rise and fall when suffering a bad case of hiccups.  All of them crouch with forelegs folded over the top of pot bellies, mere bumps caught between belly and folds of fleshy throats. Wide-eyed and horned, six of these frogs are green, while the seventh sits alone and aloof, upon the stump of a tree. Its skin glistening and brown, it stares out to sea unaware that it is being watched by one of Cica’s crows, also perched on a tree stump.

It’s a wonderful, whimsical sight – although it is hard to know quite what to make of it on first sight. But then the fact that it brings a smile to one’s lips, and the opportunity to join in the fun by donning the free frog avatar Cica provides at the landing point, and go hopping off across the landscape is reason enough to simply enjoy the moment.

It is at the aforementioned huge wall where the mood shifts. The side facing the landing point has a little girl dressed in a simply knitted dress, feet shod in heavy boots, drawing what might be a self-portrait upon it: a little girl dreaming of a prince who might sweep her away to a different life. On the far side of the wall (touch the huge door if it is not open when you arrive), we catch a glimpse of her threadbare life, complete with an image of times past.

The juxtaposition between the poignancy surrounding the little girl and the whimsy of the frogs is striking, while the link to childhood fairy stories so subtle it might at first glance be overlooked – but it is there. If you need more convincing of the connection between little girls and the frogs hop (so to speak) onto the table in front of her little girl, and make a choice. Might it even be that the lone brown frog is, in her imagination, an enchanted prince, hence its difference to the rest of the frogs on the island?

Frogs is another gem from Cica, offering a gentle blending of humour and pathos, where visitors themselves can become a part of the scene. Should you pay a visit, do offer a donation towards Cica’s work so more delights like this can be shared.

SLurl Details

• Frogs (Aggramar, rated:  Moderate)

Burning is the title of Cica Ghost’s latest region-wide build, which opened on Sunday, January 15th. It is a piece which stands in contrast to several of her recent builds in that it is of a darker tone and style. Under a lowering, cloud-heavy sky, lit by a distant sunset, a town burns. The land around it is scorched and aflame, ashen tree trunks, bereft of branches and leaves, point to the heavy sky like gnarled, accusative fingers.

Within the town, the tall buildings are charred, their pain blistered and blackened as flames lick doorways and windows. Some walls carry some of Cica’s usually light and happy stick figures, which here are cast in a new role as poignant reminders that this was once a happier place. A single bridge spans what might be the parched bed of a vanished body of water, offering a way into – or perhaps an escape route out of – the conflagration.

The who, what, how and why of the fire’s origin are not revealed. The burning landscape and buildings are an open page on which we can write our own view of what has occurred. However, with all that is going on in the physical world, coupled with the general presentation of Burning, it tends to cause the name Aleppo to spring to mind. So is Burning perhaps a political commentary?

Possibly. But before we decide or judge, Cica provides a possible clue to interpreting the work. It comes in the form of a quote: time is the fire in which we burn. It’s part of a line from  a 1938 poem by Delmore Schwartz entitled, Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day (also sometimes called For Rhoda), which is by coincidence, a poem I know quite well. In it, Schwartz records how we go about our daily lives largely unaware of the uncontrollable passage of time and the fact that, with every moment, we are closer to our own deaths and the deaths of those we love. From childhood through adulthood, we are so often caught within the minutiae of our lives that we lose track of all that is really important – or should be; only in our closing years do we realise what has happened – by which time all may lie burnt by time.

So is Cica presenting us with a philosophical piece with Burning? “I didn’t know about the poem,” she told me, “But I came across the line while searching for quotes about fire, and it fitted what I wanted to say.”

The quote in question attributed the line as coming from a character in the movie Star Trek Generations, hence why Cica didn’t make the connection. However, she has perfectly captured the tone and meaning of Schwartz’s poem as a whole, from the melancholy through to the way in which we do hurry through our lives – as exemplified by the visitors Caitlyn and I sat and watched from one of several perches in the installation (hover your mouse around to find them) as they hurried back and forth through the buildings and trees before vanishing.

That Cica has captured all of the nuance within Calmly We Walk…. may have been serendipitous, spinning outward from that one line from the poem, but that doesn’t matter. Serendipity is often the cousin to artistic expression, and the pairing of the installation with the entire poem broadens our understanding and appreciation of Burning. It also perhaps sits with that image of Aleppo which pops into the mind when first arriving. Schwartz wrote his poem shortly before the outbreak of World War 2, a time when towns and cities burned and lives  – and generations – were shattered; thus another layer of poignancy is added to the installation.

SLurl Details

• Burning (Aggramar, rated:  Moderate)

And if you’re ever feeling lonely just look at the moon,
Someone, somewhere is looking right at it too.

So goes the little verse which has found its way into all corners of the Internet over the last few years, and now frames Cica Ghost’s latest full region installation, Moonlight, which opened on Thursday, April 14th, replacing Strawberryland (which you can read about here).

This is another wonderfully evocative piece guaranteed to delight the eye and tickle the imagination. Sandwiched between teal sea and sky upon a rocky island thatched with tall stalks of wind-blown grass, sits a quintet of Cica’s quirky narrow houses. Immediately recognisable, they give an instant feeling of familiarity to admirers of Cica’s work, together with a suggestion of continuity with some of her earlier pieces.

This is a place wrapped in magic: a crescent Moon reclines overhead, eyes closed as if asleep, kept company by a little gathering of pulsating stars which add their light to the landscape below.

Nor is the Moon the only one caught in slumber: across the rooftops of the houses stand night-gowned figures, eyes closed, their presence apparently the result of sleepwalking. Below them, stardust drifts over the surrounding grass and between the houses, perhaps the cause of all this slumber.

While the little verse tells us that when lonely, we need only look at the Moon and know we’re sharing the view with another, somewhere, one little girl has taken things a step further. She has managed to cross the gap between her rooftop and the Moon, and now sits upon his chin as he sleeps, her head bowed even as her faithful cat attempts to gain her attention.

The cat appears to be one of only two inhabitants of the island to be awake; the other being a gangly giraffe ambling incongruously allow the shoreline, somnambulant residents oblivious to its presence.

Should you find the stardust drifting through the region causes a little drowsiness, or if exploring the hamlet and the surrounding landscape leaves you a little tired, you can always hop onto one of the beds which drift through the air, some perhaps escaped from the houses after their erstwhile occupants found their way to the rooftops. With both sitting and reclined poses, the beds offer a relaxing way to drift across the landscape and enjoy all it has to offer.

I’ve always enjoyed filming Cica’s work, and while time doesn’t always permit me the luxury of doing so, Moonlight brought to mind the lyrics of Rogers and Hart’s 1934 song Blue Moon, together with Cybill Shepherd’s rendition of the song from 1985. So once that was in my head, I had to put a little film together. I hope you enjoy it :).

SLurl Details

• Moonlight (Rated: Moderate)

Living In A Bowl is the title of Cica Ghost’s latest installation, which opened on May 10th. It presents the visitor with a tropical island where almost everything is on a gigantic scale: flowers stand taller than an avatar, their delicate heads large enough to offer shade from the sun; coconuts the size of a man hang from palms and gigantic wooden-framed tanks and enormous fish bowls tower over the landscape, holding huge fish and seahorses within their watery confines.

At first, this might seem some giant’s idea of cruelty to fish; the tanks are all placed within view of the oceans from whence these curious fish may have come, almost as though to taunt them. Indeed, the huge glass bowl with its seahorses appears to have been intentionally placed on a rise in one corner of the island, as if daring its captives to perhaps try and unseat it and so gain their freedom in the open waters below.

But are these fish even aware of their circumstance? They drift in their tanks and bowls, in ones and twos, seemingly completely unperturbed by their situation, their movements languid and almost hypnotic as they float over and between the ornaments placed in their tanks – some of which would pass for a modest house for you and I.

Are they the observed, or the observers? There is a serenity about them which suggests that perhaps they know more than we might imagine – or equally, that they are content in their ignorance. And what of their fossilised brethren scattered across the sandy landscape?  What do they say to us – or to the fish drifting in their tanks?

If all this sounds disturbing – it’s not. Quite the reverse in fact; the sound of the waves lapping on the shore, the gentle song of birds in their air together with the odd plaintive call of a gull, all combine with the gentle undulations of the glass-encased fish and soft swaying of the palms in the wind, to created a soothing feeling. The entire effect is, frankly, tranquil and further enhanced by the audio stream, a beautiful selection of music that had me exploring the island to a gentle, lyrical piano and then to soft a cappela Georgian chanting. Little wonder that those on the region with me all appeared to be rooted in contemplation and lost in the music and the motion of the fish.

Such is the peace offered in this strange, other-worldly environment, that I found myself drawn to the watchtower sitting on a little hill in the north-east corner of the island, and there sit down and watch the fish, the music washing over me.

Living In A Bowl will be open for the next few weeks, and is well worth a visit.

Related Links

• Living in a Bowl (Rated: Moderate)