This afternoon I chatted briefly with Torley Linden and gave him a tour of Brooklyn is Watching. Torley’s official position within Linden Labs is as Resident Enlightenment Manager and he is known to aficionados of the official SL blog as a constantly effusive, enthusiastic, and endlessly helpful presence. I know Torley mostly through what he’s done on Flickr, where his highly manipulated photographs of SL locations take on an almost painterly and nostalgic feel, like old, hand-tinted Victorian postcards.

What drew me to want to speak to Torley is that he seems to be the Linden with the biggest interest and commitment to art, just based on comments I’ve seen him make on blogs, his personal interest in photography, and that sort of thing. I was basing my assumption of this on very little – just an impression that I had – so I was rather relieved to hear him describe himself as “passionate” about the arts. (He mentioned Pathfinder Linden as another member of the company who is interested in what artists are up to in SL.)

So what is it about art that interests Torley? His position at LL is rooted in educating residents, and he liked how the creation of art can be used as a learning tool – as a way to learn more about SL via just playing around with the technology and building things for fun. He also appreciates the way that artists find new or under-utilized uses for materials – how an artist in trying to just simply solve a problem for a sculpture can actually unlock a whole new way of working with the technology they have before them. And, what’s more, Torley spoke specifically to the way in which art “opens [the viewer] up to new emotions,” which I thought was a very nice touch – a way to see art as a process of unfolding layers of meaning and resonance rather than a simple means to an end.

We took a stroll along BiW and talked about the various artworks we encountered. He seemed most taken with works that were making use of the 3-d space (ie, works that were not flat), and pieces that were highly colorful or involved sculpted or flexi-prims also caught his eye. From his vantage point, it’s clear that he sees art very differently than I do; his entire basis of approaching the work couldn’t be more different than mine. I know barely anything about building in SL whereas he is definitely an expert; I don’t tend to even consider how a piece was made, but for him this was the starting point for his appreciating each piece.

That made for a pretty interesting conversation and Torley saw many things in the works that I had totally missed. Upon looking at Mencius Watts’s piece, which Torley described as “ambient wind chimes,” he noticed right away that the collision sound (the sound that your avatar makes when running into something) had been tinkered with by the artist. He spoke about how the piece in general made him more aware of sound, something “we don’t pay enough attention to” in Second Life. And he likened the music the piece generated to that which accompanies a suspenseful movie.

He was very enthusiastic about Charlot Dickins’s Cat and Mouse Games, which he thought were both “very fun” and mentioned that he “always likes to see cats playing pianos”(!). In particular, he singled out the expression on the rat’s face as a highlight – again, something that I missed – and got the piano (actually a player piano once you get the animation going) to play.

Approaching Andres Watanabe’s tower intervention, Torley excitedly exclaimed, “I see glow here!” and was very impressed by the scale and the clash of textures being used. I attempted to draw him into a conversation about Hyperformalism but he resisted. It’s clear to me that his interest in art is rooted in play and fun (these are not bad things by any means!) and he wasn’t terribly interested in the larger connection to the RL art world.

It did, however, prompt a conversation of what I think is one of the great potentials of SL, and I was happy to find that Torley had reached the same conclusion on his own. I have been very interested in the way in which SL delivers both endless free supplies and endless free space (if you use sandboxes) to people to experiment with. This is in sharp contrast to the expense normally incurred in setting up a RL art studio. He agreed, and also mentioned the idea of “instant results” and “the low barrier of entry” – meaning that anyone, once they are in SL, can give art a whirl.

He showed me at this point a sculpture that he had made:

Sort of a combination between an upside-down UFO and a futuristic Barbie playset, the piece glows eerily; were it fashioned in real life, it materials would undoubtedly be of the plastic/vinyl family. I definitely appreciate its quirky sensibility even if I’m not totally sure what he’s up to in this piece.

Lastly, we spoke about Kat2Kit’s cyanotype projects, which are located in the far right of the island. (Technically, before we spoke about this, Torley informed me that the big black thing with the numbers on it is a D&D dice. See? These references totally escape me.) After a brief explanation of Kat’s process, Torley described this work as “mixed reality bending” which produced for him, “a Philip K. Dick moment.” He also spoke admiringly of Marlene Collas’s photographs of an obelisk in various wind/light moments and mentioned his appreciation of “simple forms in nature.”

It was a quick chat, but very informative. If anything it drove home to me the importance of having members of the art community meet with SL residents. The ensuing conversations in which both sides bring something to the table (the art folks bring the history of the making of fine art with them; the SL folks bring an understanding of the facture of SL objects, as well as their own set of cultural references) are really the only way we’re going to get to the root of what exactly is going on with art in SL.

Posted by Amy Freelunch on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:12 pm.