At first glance this just seems to be yet another of the moiré experiments that seem to be the work du jour at Brooklyn is Watching. (Dancoyote started it with DC-07-026 / Moiré of Less, and Rezago Kororin has put up interference experiment, interactive, ver 1.) But there is more going on here that is not evident unless you zoom in closely; I missed it until I read the notecard that is available from the notecard giver near the piece. Arahan says this about his work:
“Arahan Claveau (aka Steve Millar)
From a distance the eight panels seem to form part of an abstract work. It is only when the camera is zoomed in very close that you can see it is made up of thousands of tiny photographs of a shirtless soldier pointing a gun. When zoomed out and the camera or avatar moves, an optical effect occurs (Moiré). The effect is intentional.
*The panels are also individually scripted so they change colour when walked (or flown) into.
Model : Anonymous British soldier
See a video of the work in its orignal location here:
http://arahan-claveau.blip.tv/file/216190″
Most of Arahan’s work is confrontational and political. This one is different in that the message is hidden behind an apparent exercise in form, and so it can be seen on two levels, the abstract and the political. I see that hiding of the message as a message in itself, a comment on how important messages are often buried under the surface of our society.
While I was writing this blog entry, Arahan came by and we talked about it for a while. The photograph was something he found on MySpace, and the title reflects Arahan’s ambivalence toward the subject. On the one hand, he finds the violence of the man repellent; on the other hand, he finds the human being appealing. (I won’t be outing Arahan here by mentioning that he is gay; it’s already well known, and another of his works here, Injustice, was a political work on how badly gays are treated by the legal systems of many countries.)
Hi Shirley,
Thanks for taking a look at and writing about ‘fuck me/shoot me’.
I think it is possible to display RL photography and video in SL and make it interesting, provided you do something with it that uses the tools of the virtual world. This is quite a simple but I think effective example of how a flat image can be manipulated, after it has been uploaded. If I had just presented one large photo of the soldier on a blank prim it would be deeply uninspiring.
What I did want to say was how I think it’s interesting that we often fetishize things that are a source of anguish, I certainly seem to have done so with this piece.
On the video at 7.35 minutes in you can see the Moire effect occurring, which might be of interest to anyone who can’t get into SL to see it.
Left by Arahan Claveau on July 21st, 2008