SO in a few days the Final Five will be announced so they can start making the work they’re going to have shown at Jack the Pelican.
(They are each going to be given a copy of a virtual version of the JTPP front room that they can do whatever they want with- make art in it, around it… whatever)…
But even after that announcement there are two more awards to be given out in this Brooklyn is Watching Best of Year 1 Festival. They are the coveted Golden Eyeball and the People’s Choice Award. Here’s how this will work:
THE GOLDEN EYEBALL
In the Final Five show, there are going to be 5 flat screen monitors on the wall. Each one will show a machinima of one of the final five artworks. (these are basically advertisments trying to entice gallery visitors to go over to the couch and sit down and use the keyboard and mouse to pilot Monet to see and interact with the real things on their own – remember many of these people will be rank n00bs who will be much more comfortable watching TV… so baby steps… you understand) Next to each of those monitors will be a clipboard and a pen – people will sign their name next to the work they like best. The pieces of paper will be scanned and posted at the end of the show. Whoever gets the most signatures wins the Golden Eyeball.
THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE
This will be determined by open voting on the web. However, I think instead of doing it like we did the web-based portion of the pick of the 30 best, we’ll do it with a blog post. This will make it a little more of a pain in the neck to tally for me, but check this out, I think it could be good. I’ll post a blog post that is the official voting post. Then people will make a comment, the comment will be simply the name of the artist and the name of the work, chosen from the 30best. Then on each of the individual posts we made for the 30 best (get to them from here) people can explain why they picked that one, or argue the merits or demerits of the works. That way only people who are willing to put their name on it can vote. Sure, people could create phantom accounts and vote more than once but I hope they will feel ashamed, very ashamed, as they do it. I think its good to be able stand behind your opinions they way people do on this blog every day- and assuming the edit comment function is working — i’ll get it working– people can even change their minds.
Oh by the way, part of the point here is just to get more people looking at and thinking about this art… in fact to me that’s more important than who wins. Everyone who is participating in this festival is winning in terms of getting more people seeing their work and, if they stay long enough to read a little bit, getting exposed to the lively and thoughtful debate that gets going here. Also don’t forget this isn’t over when its over… in fact its never over- the first rough draft of art history is getting written every day.
And one last thing- The whole thing (i think) helps raise the over all profile of Second Life art- letting people outside SL have a window on the fact that the SL art scene is varied and complex.
Left by jvanb on July 17th, 2009