Oxoc’s untitled work is a portrait of an unnamed model, overlayed with a tye-dye like, partially transparent animated texture. (It does not appear to be a self-portrait; I looked at the artist’s profile, which led to his Flickr page; on the last page of pictures you can see the artist.) The texture animation felt like a ploy to get the viewer’s interest; it reminded me of those horrible pictures with “moving” water that you used to see at Chinese restaurants.
I was all set to slam this as just another gimmick piece, but then I took a better look at the photo that I took for this blog. Without the distraction of movement, I liked the interplay of the colors with the portrait; this piece works better for me as a still. It reminds me of the old Rolling Stones song: “She comes in colors everywhere, she combs her hair, she’s like a rainbow.” A suggestion to the artist: if you ever sell this work, modify the script so the texture animation starts and stops with a click.
The colors in the photograph from Second Life dulled down a lot compared to what you see in the viewer; the picture in this blog has been altered to restore some of the richness of color.
(Edited to add: the small versions of this photo as resampled by Flickr for embedding on this page lose some of the fluidity of texture of the original. Click the photo to visit Flickr, click the “all sizes” button above it to view a larger version, and then “original size” in the list to get the full-size picture.)
