From Bryn Oh’s blog:

The artist wants to capture the viewer and suspend their disbelief. Make them feel like they are within the painting. I like to work on large paintings to block out the viewers peripheral vision. Don’t let them see a light switch or another painting or even another person in thier peripheral because that only anchors them to the knowledge that they are in fact within a gallery setting looking at a 2D image. Those elements prevent the viewer from becoming fully immersed. And this is where Second Life comes in.

I believe the next big art movement will be immersive art, and I think second life is the start to this. We still look at a computer screen and can be distracted by our peripheral, by the need to use a keyboard, by our cat or by the phone ringing. But we have taken the step to be immersed in a 3D environment rather than viewing a 2D image. When space is available I create a story to catch the viewers attention. I create mysteries or environments for participation, and I am constantly trying to think of other ways to further immerse the viewer. We are at the beginnings now but I imagine the art of the future to be when someone comes home from work and plugs into an environment. They might be transported to a canoe on a lake with calling loons or their grandmothers kitchen. But perhaps the real test of an artist will be drawing out the shiver one feels when their virtual lover caresses their cheek. The feeling of love for an entity which does not exist in the real world, but was able to draw forth such an emotion due to the viewers full immersion into a storied environment.

I want to think about what Bryn wrote here and about her current piece at BiW — Irrevocable.

We see two female, faceless figures on a small, low oval pedestal, both facing toward a short end of the oval. They are slightly larger than the average avatar. The one in front reaches poignantly back to the one behind her, taking her hand as though to lead her. On the back end of the oval pedestal is a a big bulb on a tall pole, with a shade over it, shining light down on the two figures. The figures resemble lay figures — with short black hair, dressed in girlish costumes, and with body parts that appear mechanical — they both have metal rings or bolts where some of their joints would be on their hands.

The front figure — slightly more human, and less abstract in her face and neck — wears a black and gray geometric skirt that moves just a little in the wind, and she has cat-like ears, springs for knees and three small wheels in place of each foot. The back figure, who seems to follow somewhat reluctantly, has stick-like legs and tiny feet. The front figure has on long sleeves, and the back figure has short sleeves, and where we can see what would be their skin, the texture seems to be almost like wood painted white. with marks that look almost like stitches. The texture of the back figure’s dress looks like white cracking and peeling paint.

Like my mother’s jewelry box that seemed so magical when I was a child (when opened the ballerina would spin, and music would play), when you type the title of the work “Irrevocably” in the chat window, a circle on the back figure’s face slides open and lining the inside we see a map-like image and a small picture of a similar figure carrying an umbrella in front of her. Click on that image, and a lone violin plays a melancholy tune, and the following poem appears one line at a time:

Sing me a song
Sing it under your breath
If the salvage bots hear it
Then it will mean our death
My love is a program
Installed onto me
I gave it to you
Irrevocably
If the Robots do find us
Then run quick from me
I will record your face
So it’s the last thing I see

Combining old with new and future technologies. Pieces of a narrative. Figures — part Victorian doll, part mechanical machine, part robot — on the run in the darkness, in danger, feeling attachment for each other. A sense of loss, of the passing of time, of nostalgia, of the vulnerability of childhood, of evil…

So much of art history involves the creation of images that seek to transport us to another world… and here in Second Life, that becomes possible in an unthinkably, deeply emotional way. Thinking about this reminded me of this great Ted video of David Perry talking about the future of video games — lying not in great graphics and audio, but in their power to make us cry, to get to us emotionally.

The art here — it’s in the melding of the words, the music and the image. It’s wonderful, and moving, and chilling. This is virtual, immersive art that is different from the art that literally surrounds us and takes over our avatar. This is immersive in the way that it draws us in, the way that it asks us to look at small details, to interact with it in various layers, the way it occupies so many of our senses. The figures seem to belong to another dimension that we have gotten a peak of, and we want to know more about who they are, and what is happening to them. I don’t think the effect would be the same at all in a RL gallery, where you physically pressed buttons on the figure (why is the mouse not quite the same?), and speakers played music. The fact that this is NOT physical — that the technology that makes all this happen is more invisible so to speak, makes it all the more poignant and magical, and immersive.

Reminds me a little of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market — a haunting Victorian poem about childhood (and so much more)…

Days, weeks, months,years
Afterwards, when both were wives
With children of their own;
Their mother-hearts beset with fears,
Their lives bound up in tender lives;
Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time:
Would talk about the haunted glen,
The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits like honey to the throat,
But poison in the blood;
(Men sell not such in any town;)
Would tell them how her sister stood
In deadly peril to do her good,
And win the fiery antidote:
Then joining hands to little hands
Would bid them cling together,
“For there is no friend like a sister,
In calm or stormy weather,
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”

Posted by beth.harris on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 9:29 pm.