The Best of BIW Year 1…. shall we call it BOBIWY1 ? is a two month-long festival spanning parts of 3 sims and the RL space at Jack the Pelican Presents in williamsburg, with artist talks, panel discussions and two art shows leading up to the BOBIWY1 Prize:
The “30 best” artworks will be exhibited at the KU ART sim from July 7th to August 23rd. The Super-Stupeduous Judges Panel will select five winning artworks and the artist who made them will be “the final five”. The final five will have an exhibition in Jack the Pelican presents from August 7th to 23rd. The best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Prize (the golden eyeball) will then be awarded on August 23rd 2009. The winner will receive the coveted golden eyeball award (you may start coveting it now). We are very excited about this – i’ve been wanting to announce this for months while i was getting all the various ducks into the proverbial row. There are two exhibitions and three stages to this thing and its a little complicated (of course… because… i’m involved). A step-by-step explanation follows.

please take this image and post it on your blogs, on your flickr streams, on your facebook pages, everywhere you can think of to help us spread the word.
STAGE ONE: OPEN NOMINATIONS – Now through July 1
Eligability Requirements:
- the artwork was at Brooklyn is Watching in its first 52 weeks (counting by podcasts because that makes it easier so anything before podcast 52)
THAT’s it. It need not have been talked about- it need not have been blogged about – if you think it was amoung the best artworks in the first year, nominate it.
Nominations are on the Nomination WIKI.
You CAN nominate your own work – do not be shy and nominations are free so feel free to nominate as many of your artworks as you want.
ONLY WORKS THAT ARE NOMINATED CAN BE CONSIDERED FOR STAGE 2 and therefore STAGE 3
STAGE 2 – “30 BEST” – July 7th – August 23rd – SHOW ON KU ART (University of Kansas Department of Visual Art) SIM
An invitational exhibition of the 30 best artworks from BIW’s Year 1
From all the nominations on the wiki, 20 artworks will be chosen by people who have been guests on the podcast and 10 artworks will be chosen by open voting on the blog resulting in a list of 30 artworks – that will be in a two month-long exhibition at the University of Kansas SIM. Open voting on the SIM will allow visitors to choose “The People’s Choice Award”. Simultaneously those artworks will be judged by our super-stupendous panel of celebrity judges:
- AM Radio
- Amy Freelunch
- AngryBeth Shortbread
- Bettina Tizzy
- Sage Duncan
Those judges will select five winners who will get to go on to stage 3 — ONLY THE STRONG SHALL SURVIVE!!!!
STAGE 3 “THE FINAL FIVE”- August 7th – August 23rd-RL SHOW in BROOKLYN and SL SHOW in Odyssey space
The five winners from stage 2 will be invited to create new works or adapt existing work to be displayed in SL at Odyssey and at Jack the Pelican. Each of the five will be given a copy of a virtual scale model of the front room at Jack the Pelican to do with as they will. They will be able to create work in and around (if DC is one of them we can bet it will be around the room not in it) the virtual version of the room. Visitors to Jack the Pelican in brooklyn will be able to navigate the five virtual versions of the room they are in to see the five artist’s creations .

Here is my quick sketch of what it will be like:

people will come into the space and be able to watch 5 small screens that will be on the walls of the space- each one will show a machinima of one of the 5 artists creations with BIW podcasters talking about the work. (the idea here is that many of the people coming in the show will not no how to pilot an avatar so this gives them an easy super-noob’s “way in” to the work). They’ll be looking at a virtual version of the space they are actually standing in with whatever virtual art sitting in it/ through it/ whatever (please note that the art need not look like giant triangles and blobs like in my hastily drawn drawing). Visitors who’s curiosity is piqued by the videos or who already know what SL is will be able to use the regular BIW set up, which will still be there of course, to view the works themselves. Next to each screen on the wall will be a clipboard where the brooklyn gallery goers will sign their names to vote for the one they like best- the one with the most signatures will get the coveted golden eyeball award. Artists will want to contact everyone they know in the NYC area and get them to go vote. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
The 30best show continues through the time of the final 5 and there will be teleporters on both end so people in the gallery in brooklyn will be able to go see for themselves not only the final 5 but also the group from which that 5 was chosen to see if they agree or disagree.
We expect this festival to get a lot of press both locally in NYC to draw critics, collectors, artists and galleriests and generally speaking to get alot of attention in both RL and SL – Be a part of SL art History!




Yay! How exciting! Can’t wait to see what happens…..
Left by Mab MacMoragh on June 13th, 2009