Calm, calm.

Deep breath.

Ok, look. We’ve reached a bit of an impasse here. I’m constantly complaining that we need new people to leave us stuff at BiW, that I want to give new people a try, etc. So I actually get really psyched when I see an unfamiliar name attached to a piece. Really excited. I tell myself I will be nice and give them a chance - cut them some slack (after all, with many artists’ works you have to see several examples of it in order to really understand what is going on; witness how much Holly Hax’s work grew on me once she left us an installation to ponder).

And then… and then… we’re left something like this. At the entrance to BiW is an installation featuring a picnic table with various poseballs, a notecard giver, and a video.

In world, the video doesn’t work if you click on it. And so, I present to you Virtual Starry Night: Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night:

(note that wordpress is being glitchy… click here to see the video)

Welcome to the hell that is my life.

But don’t let the title fool you: Van Gogh’s Starry Night plays only a supporting role in this video. Actually, Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, 1889, features more prominently in it, but I suppose that title wasn’t quite as crowd-pleasing and attention getting as Starry Night. But actually, what figures most prominently than either painting (or any of the other paintings by the artist that flash by) are doe-eyed avatars who seem caught in some sort of mysterious half- slumber, posing and (almost knowingly) shaking their heads slowly, “no.” It’s hard to piece together anything resembling a plot because the song - which I suspect is being sung by a non-English speaker, with the English just being spoken phonetically - really distracts you from what is happening. But I’m also not totally convinced that’s a bad thing, either.

On the picnic table, as I mentioned, is a notecard giver which has hovering text that reads Is it really love? Click on it and the notecard you receive poses a question about whether or not love can exist in SL and then, to prove that it does, a laundry list of quotes by famous people on the subject (of love in general, not on love in SL in particular). If you sit your avie at the picnic table across from your beloved, I am lead to believe you can click on some poseballs to make the two of you smooch, possibly while one of you reads the list and the other watches the video.

I have never before doubted that real, intense, love relationships can exist in a place like SL, but this installation has given me pause. It is in fact so trite and syrupy sweet that it makes me actually question the entire notion of love itself, let alone the expression of such a thing in a virtual world.

This is poor timing on my part, as my RL husband and I are about to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary and frankly, this piece is kind of a bummer to run into at this exact moment. I’m just going to toss it out there - am I being unfair? Is there something I’m not getting?

(You might note that I have left out the artist’s name in this write-up. Since I got so harsh in my review, I thought it would be kinder to do that and allow that person a fresh start should they want to show us more work in the future. Again, tell me if this was not the right thing to do…)

Posted by Amy Freelunch on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:00 pm.