All right folks, this is my first review, so I’ll be gentle if you’ll return the favor… I have to admit, I was an instant fan of this piece. It is subversive and dark (and maybe a little humorous), which is an irresistible pair for me. I also appreciate a new approach to something old. Especially something like the Last Supper - a painting that can usually be found hanging in the living room of an elderly church-goer or the bathroom of an irreverent friend. I can’t think of a time when I’ve given that particular piece any significant amount of thought - which is perhaps one of the things to consider about Nural. As I was preparing to write this article, I found myself searching the internet for information on the Last Supper - something I most definitely would not have been doing otherwise. Maybe this is “art” enough in itself. Getting a non-religious cynical optimist (confused?) game development student to put any level of thought into a Renaissance period Religious work is no easy feat after all.

Beyond the art of unlikely reaction, there is certainly an element of social commentary here. The UPS truck in the background sends a strong message - the Church of today bears quite a resemblance to the Corporations of today. The advent of the mega-church and the “prosperity message” have changed the face of Western Christianity. (more…)

2d, art | 8 Comments »

When you first land at Brookyn is Watching, one of the first things you see is a classic Starax sculpture, Samson. It’s a wonderful piece of work, but Starax is already one of the legendary art gods of Second Life, so I don’t need to say more.

Next to it are two works by a newer Second Life sculptor, Charlot Dickins; today I’m going to have a look at Afraid To Be Late. The sculpture features a young woman on a horse, with her skirt flying in the breeze. It has an astonishing fluidity of line; I’ve never seen such graceful curves on a statue as those of the horse and the woman. Dickins appears to have used sculpted prims in the design; sculpties behave in an idiosyncratic way with LOD as you move your camera away from them. (Sculpties seem to be a running theme in this week’s reviews! LOD means Level of Detail; it’s something that the Second Life viewer does to keep the burden of rendering a scene manageable. As you move farther away from things, some of the smaller details are no longer rendered. With sculpted prims, a lower resolution version of the sculpt texture is used.)

The picture below isn’t the best angle of the sculpture. But it was one of the only angles I could get that was free of background visual clutter, and Second Life wouldn’t let me rez a background prim tonight to block the clutter. You’ll just have to view it yourself and find even better viewing angles.

It’s too late to buy a Starax from the artist; he left Second Life a while ago, so the only way to get one of his sculptures is to convince a collector to sell one. But it’s not too late to buy a Dickins; look up her shop and studio in her picks.

Virtual Worlds, art | No Comments »

I’ve known Dancoyote Antonelli for a long time (since mid-2006 or thereabouts). We first met when he did an exhibit at The Bluffs, a nature preserve, art area, and general nice hangout that is next door to my house in Lappet. I went to a couple of performances of the Sky Dancers, and a couple of my friends were performers. So I’m not an entirely unbiased observer; now you know.

Dancoyote has never been one to do things in a small way. The Bluffs exhibit was a multi-level sky platform thing that filled half the sim, and other exhibits of his that I have seen have also filled the space as well as the imagination. His exhibit at Brooklyn is Watching, Reactor Core, is no exception. It’s actually a much smaller number of prims than many of his past creations, but that’s because it is made of 256m megaprims (sculpted, I believe, but I can’t verify that without edit rights). Dancoyote’s description: Reactor Core is an evolving algorithmic monolith 500 meters tall. March 21 2008. No, this one isn’t new, but (as I said earlier) I’m also going to have a look at some of the existing work.

Reactor Core is displayed about 600 meters up. There are two sets of four chairs at ground level that take you up; all the chairs take you to pretty much the same place, so the choice isn’t important. Sit on any of the chairs and pick 1 from the menu to ascend; you’ll go through a couple of other sky exhibits during the ride up.

You’ll need patience once you arrive. On my system (Pentium D, NVidia 7600GS) my frame rate drops to under 2fps when I look at Reactor Core with my normal settings; it rises to over 20fps if I look away from it. The frame rate hit is not as severe in a non-Windlight viewer (I got about 6fps with the OnRez viewer, which is based on 1.18.5.3), but you’ll want WindLight (1.19.1 or later) for this exhibit; it’s much more beautiful in a current viewer with atmospheric shaders enabled. (In the OnRez viewer, the color lost a lot of its richness.)

What you see is worth the wait. Reactor Core is a rich, ever-changing, glowing mix of greens and purples. It rewards long observation and repeated viewing. A minor gripe: Dancoyote hasn’t provided any way down, so you’ll have to teleport back to ground level or walk off the edge of the observation platform.

Uncategorized, Virtual Worlds, art | 2 Comments »

I’m Shirley Marquez, and I’ll be your blogger. I’m going to be writing here regularly about art at Brooklyn is Watching; I’ll mostly be looking at new installations, but I may write about existing pieces from time to time. Besides enjoying art and music, I’m a model, and I was a greeter at Virtual CSI:NY.

Just before the weekend, Fearchar Enoch placed two works; he has already described them in an email that was blogged here by Amy Freelunch. In short: Fearchar took two pictures and used the images as both the sculpt texture for the prims and the image on the prim surfaces.

Fearchar raises the question: is it art? In large part, that depends on your feelings about found art; that is, art that is discovered by the artist rather than being intentionally created as art. The original pictures (if they were applied to a normal flat surface) would be art in the more traditional sense, but the sculptured prims are happy accidents. To my eye they are successful accidents.

Fearchar’s first object (shown below) is an image of the BIW tower. As a shape, this is the more interesting of the two pieces; I found the play of angles and colors fascinating. The second is Fearchar’s profile picture; the interest here is the enigmatic hint of a face, distorted by the complex shape of the prim.

What I would change: lose the rotation script. I would have preferred to be able to enjoy these sculptures at leisure and use my camera to choose my own angles, rather than having them constantly rotate. I would also like to see the original texture for the Tower sculpture; you can see Fearchar’s profile picture by looking him up in Search.

As always with sculptures, still pictures can’t capture the full effect! Come examine yourself, and move your camera to get different points of view. Try forcing different times of day; I especially liked Sunset.

Virtual Worlds, art | 2 Comments »

In addition to this great thread that we got going on the topic here at BIW, there’s an interesting article about Kiss the Sky over at NPIRL

Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

This was just left for us… I wanted to post it before it got lost during the long weekend:

I’ve left two pieces at about 82, 181, 22. Are they art? That’s open to interpretation.

So there you have it. But is it art?

I will admit that I have never, ever had the scenarios that Fearchar describes (”Have you ever created a sculptured prim…”) but that all the same, I’m intrigued to see what these things are he created.

art | 1 Comment »

Thanks to Jenn Hienrichs for this great write up with tons of pics on SL things to do.

press | No Comments »