I don’t remember seeing anything by Juria for a while; he’s back with Tunnel Vision, a collection of brightly colored rings that form a tube or tunnel. The textures on the rings move and various parts of the tubes glow (in reasonable amounts) and the rings are slightly transparent so you can see other things through them. A sound loop which sounds like an atonal collection of found sounds and musical fragments plays inside the tunnel. I’ve given a few different views of this work here; other angles (including looking at the rings from the side) are also worth trying.

For me Tunnel Vision works well both as an immersive work (if you walk into the tunnel and let the colors surround you) and as something to observe from outside.Try it both ways and let me know what you think!

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This is one of the first two works by Josina Burgess that I have seen at Brooklyn is Watching. (She has a second work, widows, on display in addition to this one.) In the past I’ve pounded out the theme of making sure you have at least basic shaders enabled so you can see glow; this work is the exception that proves the rule. This is a nice enough work, but the artist has the glow turned up much too high; on my system, at least, the colors completely wash out. These pictures were taken at midday, but changing the time to midnight made no difference.

I discovered what was up with this work by happy circumstance. I first came back in-world tonight on my laptop; on that system I normally have shaders turned off because that makes its frame rate a bit more tolerable. (It’s a dog at any settings, just a bit less of one that way.) So I first saw this work as it is in the second picture, with colors that you can actually see. Later I went to the fast computer (with an NVidia 8800GT and the graphics settings turned up mostly to Ultra, though I use Reflection Detail/All Avatars and Objects rather than Reflection Detail/Anything because the latter setting makes watching video very laggy) and saw what you see in the first picture. The second picture was actually taken on the fast computer as well, but with Basic Shaders unchecked in Preferences/Graphics.

The rendering of glow in the Second Life viewer varies between systems; video card and driver version are the main variables. It’s possible that this work will look just fine on your system, and I assume that it does on Josina’s computer. Josina, I suggest that you have a look at this work on another computer, and perhaps make adjustments to the glow level.

Aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did I like the play? Quite well; I enjoyed the play of color and shading in the overlapping boxes (although the artist calls the piece “light cubes”, the boxes are not all cubical). Welcome to BiW, Josina; I hope we see more of your work here in the future.

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Usually I write about Second Life art here, but today I’m going to branch out and talk about an RL artist, Tara Donovan. She has an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston that ends Sunday; if you’re in or near Boston I highly recommend going to have a look before it’s gone. Many of her works cannot be transported; the artist has to recreate them on-site for each exhibition. (The cups and drinking straws and so forth DO get reused in future exhibitions or recycled.)

I found Donovan’s work to have a strong relationship to the kind of art that people create in Second Life. Here’s a quote from the ICA site: “For over a decade, American sculptor Tara Donovan has transformed huge volumes of everyday items into stunning works of phenomenal impact. Layered, piled, or clustered with an almost viral repetition, these products assume forms that both evoke natural systems and seem to defy the laws of nature.” Her works are constructed from large numbers or quantities of everyday objects: Styrofoam or plastic cups, drinking straws, Scotch® tape, toothpicks, pins, buttons, and so on; in many cases, held in place by gravity alone. Recreating her works directly in Second Life would be impossible (the prim counts would be prohibitive!) but I see the same spirit in the way that SL artists create art from simple objects.

The image above (of a work made of metallized Mylar) is from the slideshow available on the ICA site. Another set of Donovan images is available from the ACE Gallery, and an image search on Google will yield even more. Sadly, the ICA does not permit photography in its galleries so I can’t bring you any pictures of my own. No still images even approximate the impact of these works, but perhaps they will inspire some of you to go see the real thing!

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I need a little help from everyone out there today- what do you suppose this means? Do you like it?

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