But David, does it change anything to know that the Diabolical figures are worse than devils… they are… artists! !!!!cue scary musici!!!! the members of Second Front –we discovered this when the artist was good enough to write in and explain himself in the comments of my earlier post. In a way this 2d image is a documentation of a performance.

Left by jvanb on May 28th, 2008

The inverted crosses aren’t part of “Nural” (Is that supposed to be “Mural”? Is the title misspelled? Or am I just being a dick?) — they are a piece by me called “Fuck Your God.” I wrote in my blog about it here:
http://chromotive.blogspot.com/2008/05/fuck-your-god.html

That set of crosses was something I recently added to my build at The Garden of NPIRL Delights, and I thought they’d be interesting paired up with the “nural” by Second Front at BIW.

Left by nebulosus.severine on May 29th, 2008

I didn’t mean to criticize your spelling, David; I noticed the title of the piece while I was there, too, so I know you’re just reporting the piece as it is labeled. I was wondering if the artist had inadvertently misspelled his/her own title! Haha.

Left by nebulosus.severine on May 31st, 2008

As one of the chief creators of the “nural”, a typo that I decided to leave intact because the word had a nice ‘feel’ to it (not ’slop’, but an accident I liked the sound of - a New-ral?). As a whole, the interpretations of Second Supper are many, and this shows, if nothing else, the evocative nature of the piece. I’d love to see onlookers’ takes of the 2m long _oil_ of the SL piece.

I’ve been reading BIW, and heard a real battle regarding theory, intellect, enjoyment. The ambivalence being decoded from the “Second Supper”, is wonderful. For me, that’s what makes the piece work; its familiar and confusing nature.

A couple clues might be useful to decoding the piece. First, one of the big cultural points/first doorways to SL is the recreation of “First Life” in SL. So many have been recreating history in SL - Second Front, the Mattes (100100100010010.org), many others. I think this is similar to criticisms of the US’s ahistorical culture. SL seems to be rebooting history to create its own for the community. History creates identity and culture, among other things. For some odd reason, the first thing SLites do (typically) is to import themselves, their spaces, their history - as an anchor. The Second Supper plays with that…

As for the center figure, Gazira Babeli, her operator lives within a kilometer of the actual site of Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, the site of the original. A limited edition set of postcards of the piece (500) has been created and some of them had been placed in the gift shop. Why? To show the infiltration of the virtual into the real, to poke a little fun like Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q., another use of Da Vinci for satire.

But also the creation of such an audacious work (and the unexpected performance on YouTube) is rollicking fun, muses seriously on the impact of virtual worlds, the lack of history in virtual worlds, and obviously creates an absurdist play through putting Gaz and Second Front as the Last Supper. How ridiculous is it to recreate the Last Supper in SL! Saying this, it should be obvious that we simultaneously look you squarely in the eye, speak seriously, with the toy arrow through the head.

Here is story that shows you what I’m thinking about. Two nights ago, I went to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with my friends Sabrina Raaf and Greg Lunceford (artists and curators from the Chicago scene). Sabrina and I are both professors, and Greg’s a curator in the city. We laughed at Indy’s trying to manage academic matters while escaping KGB, taking a quick moment to teach, jokes about pointy heads. But on the other hand, we also said that, “Jeez, I wanted more aliens! Movies just aren’t any good unless the have lots of aliens! Damn it! ALIENS!”

My point is that it’s healthy to operate on a lot of levels at once. Second Supper is strange colorful Pop fun that obviously made David research the DaVinci piece. That was an unexpected plus - bravo! But I also understand that not everyone wants “intellectual art”, and I agree. 80’s conceptualism was so dry it was like a joke where you had to read 4-5 books on Foucault, only to find that the joke was terrible, and that was the joke in the first place. I think the best work has a low entry price, and has a deep rabbit hole to go down.

But you’ve heard part of the content locked inside. It’s more of a poke at culture than religion, a winking muse about SL, even a poke at Second Front… The inverted crosses nearby, as noted by the maker, are most definitely not part of the piece, mainly because shitting on the altar tends to be overdone. Should have checked out the fields of rezzed pink ones in SL/RL Amsterdam last month. Marvelous.

The UPS truck fails to resolve. I like that. There is a story behind it, but it’s not what you think. Let me leave it at that and go see Avenue Q today.

Left by patlichty on May 31st, 2008

BTW, my last paragraph isn’t an indictment of the cross piece, merely saying that after Serrano’s Piss Christ, the bar gets raised pretty high, as the possibility for interpretation becomes severely narrowed. Therefore, I usually tend not to make sacrilegious work, not for any sense of reverence, but only because it’s a genre where it’s harder to navigate, or even less interesting to.

Also, if anyone’s interested in supporting it, I’d love to try a full-scale Rasterbation of the Second Supper.

Left by patlichty on May 31st, 2008

Argh - one last thing.

I’m also the media culture prof in a program in Chicago that’s also half a Game Design/Dev program. I know where you’re coming from David.

Best
Patrick Lichty
AKA Man Michinaga

Left by patlichty on May 31st, 2008