What: Jack the Pelican Presents, Popcha! and Oddfellow Studios Present “Gateway” at Brooklyn is Watching
Where: Jack the Pelican Presents, 487 Driggs Avenue, and In Second Life at the Popcha Sim
When: Saturday October 11th 6-9pm (performance starts at 7)
For 6 months, the Real-World / Virtual World “mixed reality” project Brooklyn is Watching has been gaining a following within Second Life and the New York art world. Now the “most famous avatar in the world” brings a reality-mixing spectacular to this venue creating a show that will unite the physical space at Jack the Pelican Presents in Williamsburg and Brooklyn is Watching’s premier sponsors Popcha!’s plot of virtual land, or “sim” in Second Life.
Brooklyn is Watching has been described as an “attention economy wormhole” punching a hole between the exploding world of artists exploring the potential of Second Life as a medium and an educated, and eager audience ready to talk about new sources of meaning in the cutting edge Brooklyn art gallery. At all times when the gallery is open a 52 inch tv screen shows a view into a special spot in second life where any SL artist that wants to can create virtual art. In the gallery, visitors use a keyboard and mouse to move through the virtual space to look at art and talk to artists. A blog and Art Critique Podcast complete the circle giving virtual artists lively, honest feedback.
To this thriving art and art criticism community now comes Second Life superstars Oddfellow Sudios comprised of Matthew “Fish the Magish” Fishman and Shava Nerad.
Tuna Oddfellow’s performances gained recognition outside SL last year when NBC’s staged a promotion in Second Life for their wildly popular show, America’s Got Talent. A cattle-call audition brought hundreds, who were pared down to a dozen, judged by virtual world celebrities to a handful of finalists, and an audience of about three hundred voted Tuna Oddfellow the “Most Talented Avatar” in Second Life. He has been praised as one of the most original artists in virtual space, even the most original.
Besides a spot on the NY auditions episode and the twenty best acts of the summer episode of AGT (in avatar form), NBC gave Tuna one million “lindon dollars” — the in-game currency of Second Life and the equivalent of about US$4000. At the time it was the largest reward ever given in a contest in SL (although Shava topped this, winning a US$8000 marketing contest this past spring).
Their performance art creation is called the Odd Ball, and it’s in regular performance. Besides their “EU” show every Sunday at 2pm eastern, and their US show on Mondays at 10pm eastern, they do shows for corporations working in SL, recently charging US$500-1000/hr.
Their clients include 7Days Bakery, CMP Publishing’s “Life 2.0” Conference, Viximo, Hublot luxury watches, the Immersive Education Summit, the Second Life Community Convention, and opening ceremonies, weddings, private parties, and festivals all over Second Life.
Their celebrity was such that when their avatars were married in a huge affair in SL in February, the story of their courtship and the video of their Second Life wedding was featured in Business Week, and their real life wedding is planned as part of the event calendar of a festival in Harvard Square.
Tuna and Shava’s static art has been commissioned by art festivals and clients in SL, including a piece on the theme of global justice that was commissioned by MacArthur/Annenburg earlier this year.
The Odd Ball – their performance art dance party – is a staple of the art and neophile crowd in Second Life. Dancing amid a psychedelic cloud of images, a typical crowd of 100 a night comes to see the show twice a week or more. The parties are known as a salon, where politics, philosophy, and perception are not unusual topics. However, they are best known as the most powerful virtual high in Second Life. Typical attendees report that they are “stoned” or “tripping,” “ecstatic” and “transported.” It’s common fare for a new person to be brought to the show unaware of the reputation, so that the effect is not primed. The following is nearly cultish.
Well over a thousand people have attended the shows over the past year in avatar form, many attending a minimum of once per week to get their “Tuna fix.”
Out of this intersection of cognitive and perceptual science and sheer trippy artistry, Fish and Shava have formed the company Oddfellow Studios, to further develop the applications of their discoveries in the area of induced altered states.
The Odd Ball uses several mechanisms by which the endocrine system and vagal system is stimulated to produce a natural high, catalyzed by visual stimuli and aided by music. In a way, it is the technical distillate of shamanic traditions throughout human history.
What’s new is this marriage of art and science that allows this principle to be transmitted through the virtual world environment.
Projects under investigation, development, or validation at Oddfellow Studios include applications in entertainment/art, marketing science, and therapeutics, including:
- visually- and aurally-based euphorics, deliverable via internet
- “pocket universe” virtual world content sets – the realization of the 3d movie
- a revolution in dance club lighting environments (that also make you stoned)
- the real counterpart of the myth of subliminal advertising, the antidote to the fast forward button
- addiction therapy
- relaxation therapy
- seizure reduction therapies
The company received its first investment from a former Arthur D. Little consultant and Rutgers business professor last month, and intends to file a preliminary patent on their tech this month.
Shava and Fish will give a short introduction before the mixed reality performance, which can be experienced by the projection of Shava’s point of view on the large screen, or as an avatar in Second Life in the Brooklyn is Watching space on the Popcha.com sim. After the performance, they will answer questions about the art, philosophy, tech, and business of Oddfellow Studios.
They represent the vanguard of a set of innovations that will be “exported” from the virtual space to improve the lives of people who have never experienced a virtual world.
As an additional treat, Second Life virtual art empresario Filthy Fluno (aka Jeffrey Lipsky) will be recording and interpreting the night’s festivities by making an abstract narrative drawing. He will set up his easel and drawing tools and capture the Oddball visuals, avatars, and real people in attendance. Visit jeffreylipskyarts.com for examples of Filthy’s “live event” artworks..
Just as Brooklyn is Watching has been for the last 6 months, the Odd Ball will serve as a “gateway” to lure skeptics into the virtual world environment, broadening perspectives on what a shared virtual space can mean, become, and create.
Contact: Shava Nerad – shava@oddfellowstudios.com - +1 617-767-6735 http://oddfellowstudios.com
Popcha! ia a boutique media technology company focused on making virtual worlds work for you. If you are interested in engaging your customers, employees or students with persuasive content; we have the experience to do it right. Sticky builds, complex interactivity, breathtaking machinima and life-like avatars: Popcha! delivers. http://popcha.com
Jack the Pelican Presents is a contemporary fine art gallery in Brooklyn New York.
Brooklyn is Watching is the brain-child of Jay Van Buren, an artist and designer living and working out of Brooklyn New York . He has been an artist, curator, teacher and writer working in the New York art scene since 1997. He was the founder and director of the legendary Videoland gallery on Manhattan ’s Lower East Side, and his artworks have been exhibited in Kansas City , New York , Washington DC , Amsterdam and Rotterdam . His recent artworks and events have veered into the realm of Relational Aesthetics creating encounters between people from radically different subcultures that are enjoyable for. He holds a BFA in painting from the University of Kansas , and an MFA in painting from Parsons, the New School for Design. He also currently teaches at Parsons.
Matthew “Fish the Magish” Fishman was practically born into performance. At age four, he learned his first magic trick, and he’s been creating magic ever since. He went to Emerson, and became a well-known street magician in Boston, particularly a staple of Harvard Square – where you can find maps that refer to Brattle Square colloquially as “Fish the Magish Square.” On his own, and with his beautiful assistant Shava, he has mystified Boston, Austin, New Orleans, Chicago, NYC, Tampa, and Des Moines. But he is most renowned as “Tuna Oddfellow” in Second Life.
Shava Nerad was practically a born polymath, working in arts, education, and Internet (with forays into marketing and lobbying and other evil and profitable passtimes). She started online in 1982, the same year she was Chief Software Engineer on the first commercial multimedia development system – the group that, among other things, invented the touchscreen kiosk, pre-PC. But she was sucked into computers, like so many smart young turks of the late 70’s, away from her training in arts and anthropology.
They tend to refer to themselves as “co-conspirators” rather than as a couple.
Tuna puts on a great show, you’re in for a treat. I DJ’d alongside him quite recently, was a lot of fun. Sadly I won’t be able to make this event (going to see the band Calexico) but have a good time.
Left by Arahan Claveau on October 8th, 2008