I agree with Selavy Jay, this is not a good move. I know I complained about Ichibot not making it to the final five but the judges decision was made and it should be final.
Hmmm. My initial instinct is to give it more time for her to respond but that is just me. I can understand the need to fill the 5th spot and the “curator and jury” holds that responsiblity in this case-so that is a very hard call.
What has been the most interesting thing to see unfold is handling this paradigm shift from the open free for all otherwise known as Brooklyn Is Watching to this nitty gritty selectivity which is highly reflective of the art world and is “normal.” The transition from this open unjuried salon like experimental space to a more formal exhibit with qualifiers that are “final” is a dramatic change for the artists and the audience who have been involved in BIW.
It’s not bad. It’s just-different than what is expected.
Let me say it like this: If you go to grammas and ALWAYS get apple pie and then suddenly you get fried trout balls with a side of slaw you start to wonder-is gramma ok and what the heck happened to my apple pie? Gramma has a right to make trout balls, and they might even be really good, but she is known far and wide for her apple pie. And people want it and miss it when it is gone. I think we have this going on a bit-we miss our pie-formerly known as “at BIW everything is in the show and that IS the show.”
ps what the heck are trout balls and vote for dekka woot!
Arahan as far as I know the idea is to have five people picked from the 30 to do the final exhibit. There is no rule here that says that says a finalist can not be replaced if they can not show. As I understand the situation Gazira can not be contacted and there is doubt whether she will be able to show (though more on this later). The judges were all contacted and duly asked to decide who should replace her in the final five. Neither of these decisions by the judges are any less final than the other. Or if you prefer both decisions are valid and final.
I do share Selavys concern however that through a misunderstanding of what was being requested or some other reason other reason Gazira has not contacted Jay but may still be expecting to have something ready in time for the machinema. For this reason and as a matter of simple fairness I would be willing to prepare something but place it only if by the 1st of August Gazira is still not contactable.
Glyph
I’ll make something too, in case Glyph disappears, Ichibot isn’t available and if the other 23 can’t be bothered to slip in.
Glyph, I am merely echoing Selavy’s concerns, and from what we’ve been told it seems rather hasty. Congratulations of course for being chosen.
As you mentioned the rules, when Lonetorus declined to participate I was the only person that suggested to Jay he be replaced, not only because it was the “30 Best of” not “29 Best of”, it seemed the right and fair thing to do. Jay was quite reluctant as he told me it meant more work, it was well over a week before anything happened and I do believe if I hadn’t said anything a replacement might not have been chosen.
So my point is Jay wasn’t in a hurry to replace Lonetorus, why the rush to replace Gazira? If she didn’t know when the dates and deadlines were then there’s been a communication problem somewhere that should have been evident long before now.
I’ll make something too, in case Dekka and Glyph disappear, Ichibot has gone skiing in the South of France, and the others catch swine flu.
Jay I really hate to say this because I think you always have the best intentions at heart, good intentions are a noble thing and I’ve been a long-time supporter of the project, but the organisation of this competition has been chaotic and confusing for the artists and the judges.
Gazira is a busy lady, but what doesn’t make sense is that she was in the Best of show so she must have known she could be in the final 5? To announce this change at this late stage seems weird.
I’m aware that I may appear ungrateful or a terrible and evil person for daring to say what’s on my mind, but BiW has always been about an open dialogue.
And none of this is intended to take anything away from Glyph or anyone else, I’m just trying to make sense of everything. Me and Selavy are not the only people concerned about the process, maybe others will come forward and say what’s on their minds.
Boris and Jeanette being held up in chairs sounds Like a SL kink. Hey Jay put the bloody laptop away and get pissed. You can come back to this another day.
Edit: Arahan posted as I did, so the reason for this add-on. The process has been chaotic and irregular. The main problem I see often is that there is perceptional problem with Second Life art & artists, I am concerned often with statements like “I’ve been busy in real life”, “…took time out of their busy schedules”, which I take to mean, time spent with virtual art is less important. I posted about this before, we the artists are human beings with exactly the same time in our lives, whilst we are making virtual art in a virtual world, it takes a real life person in the real world to do that, why doesn’t anyone but the artists get that?
Are we not men?
I am starting to take statements like those above as being disrespectful to time I spend making virtual art and towards Andrew MacLachlan a ‘real’ human being, I am not just Dekka Raymaker a avatar, I am a real person, my work doesn’t magically appear out of some clever virtual machine, I have to think, make prims, texture, script and pull it altogether in the end and much much more!
Prims ARE theft, Dekka.
Brooklyn is Watching/Jay is trying to draw attention to SL art. He set this best of BIW thing up, picked judges went through a process by which he believed it would work for a gallery audience. The gallery will have people who know very little to nothing about SL. They will be chatting and drinking, there will be tons of distractions as anyone who goes to openings knows. Often the actual art is the last thing noticed. Virtual art may be even less interesting to them especially seeing as they will not be in the 3D environment. Thejudges picked five artists and hopefully these artists can capture the attention of the visitors. One artist may not be available, so jay is not waiting until the last moment to get someone else, the judges picked again and chose Glyph. We want Glyph to have enough time to capture the audience.. if we delay too long waiting for Gazira then Glyph’s ability to do so will diminish with each day we wait. If nobody at Jack the Pelican presents becomes fascinated with SL art then BIW will eventually close down, unless they can get ongoing grants to do this and not pay tier fees or whatever expenses they have. In the end we want to get a real life audience interested which will be good for us all, to do this the work must be of a very high quality and glyph needs time to do this.
This show is not the end-all-be-all of BiW, or virtual art. It is one small snapshot in a huge year of a smallish sector of virtual art. This final 5 show with its highlights and failures really has no impact on the work that has been placed and critiqued this past year. Whether Ichibot, Oberon, Dekka, etc etc etc got in the final 5 or not really doesn’t mean much in the end if their work is good and they continue making strides as artists. There will be more shows. There will be more art. This is not the end of something-I think its the beginning and I truly appreciate the hard work that has gone forth by ALL to get here.
I am not suggesting it is Misprint. I am saying that this is a rare situation where SL art is being shown in real life. Each opportunity like this should be used to its maximum.
I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings about the Best of BIW, and it seems to just be getting more and more complicated; more and more confusing. I feel as if my brain is getting torn apart from all sides.
If this event had been planned a bit better, and if the artists had been given more time, then I think it would be more successful on the whole. To plan a RL art event like this would cover the span of some months, not a few weeks. I’m beginning to wonder if we can even make the deadlines at this point.
This has all descended into chaos. I wish the Year One event had been handled completely differently, without the concept of competition in mind. For example, it would have perhaps been more interesting if participating BIW artists were allowed to re-rez their favorite piece that they had submitted to BIW. Something like that.
for your information: gaz showed up, i talked to her. she said she missed the deadline (was there a deadline?), and that it is ok.
Ok, so now i’m back home and can really respond to some of these comments more thoughtfully.
First off, I think that my above post was rather hastily written and short on details which probably created the impression that this was a decision made lightly and quickly- when it was not — as i’ve explained elsewhere — there was much discussion behind the scenes- and attempts to contact Gazira through several people. You all didn’t know that – all you had was my saying “great efforts” had been made and some of you chose not to just trust me on that– that’s fine- I don’t believe everything i read either — i probably should have explained better.
To Arahan Re: the 30th artist-replacement issue- it did take a week but we were not sitting on our asses- walter and I were working hard to figure out if we even had enough prims to put a 30th artist and what to do exactly -finally we got it sorted out-I was too cavalier about that probably in talking to you and its because i was having a bad day- feeling especially tired – i am sorry about that.
On Dekka and “are we not men?” yes clearly we are- except for those of us that are women- i agree with you 100% — all artwork takes tremendous effort- many of us don’t get paid for it- and that makes it really tough. I personally have been having a really hard time earning my living lately because my primary clients, art galleries, are all struggling and are not buying very many websites leaving me to scramble for whatever work I can get — i designed a newspaper last week for example
–i say i’m having a hard time– i mean– its all relative, right? I rent a nice apt. on the edge the Clinton Hill neighborhood in brooklyn stocked with plenty of food…i’m a lucky man…. but I am working many more hours than normal to maintain my cushy middle-class lifestyle. I like my apartment, i like eating, so I make that my first priority. Sometimes I will say “I have to go get back to work” when i’m in SL and its not because I think working on this project is not work, its just acknowledging the truth that I have to put keeping the roof over my head ahead of this project- not because I think its less important, but just because that is the financial reality of the situation. This weekend was the wedding of my good friend Boris, so that was the reality of that situation- thanks to Dekka for his advice, i took it.
Now, you might ask “why would you try to put this show on in the middle of a period of time when you’re having to work crazy hours at your day-job and with your friends wedding right when you’ll need to be working on it?”
Well- because I wanted to have it actually happen and this was the time that JTPP was willing to give me. Getting a commercial gallery to give what amounts to a non-commercial show space in a time when all galleries are struggling to pay the bills is not easy and I was not about to say “um… august is a bit soon.. how ’bout october” — just wasn’t going to happen- and I didn’t find out till… whenever it was that i announced it… that i had the time 100% confirmed on JTPP’s schedule– so the whole thing was a little time-crunched and it was just going to be crunched or it wasn’t going to happen at all. I chose to go for it. Time will tell if that was a mistake.
On arahan
I’m aware that I may appear ungrateful or a terrible and evil person for daring to say what’s on my mind, but BiW has always been about an open dialogue.
yes you are a terrible, evil person. J.K. 
No, seriously, I’m glad you speak your mind Arahan, i hope you always will.
To talk back a little here, I feel that it could be that you exaggerate the degree to which people are confused and the number of people who are confused- i’ve actually had very, very few people contact me with questions- I hope that anyone who is confused about anything will email me jay@early-adopter.com or call me 785-220-2344. I am aware that this festival is very complicated (perhaps more than it needed to be, i’ll admit) but I did have my reasons for setting it up the way I did at the time — some lessons learned are that we needed way more time for the 30 best show to get set up – that i should have probably given the judges 3 days instead of a week to judge so that in case one of them took a long time to get back to me there would still be enough time for the final 5 to make their work – maybe i should have had open voting on who the judges should be instead of just picking them? Maybe i should have asked for a team of volunteers from the community to help run the shows instead of asking walter, a very capable but not all that experienced intern to do handle most of it.
On Misprint’s Trout balls example- yes this is quite different from what BIW has been – good analogy- this is our biggest chance so far to get some real-world exposure on a very different level- much of this was in Bryn’s point later down- thanks for that — and I specifically made a point of making sure the 30 best show, and the regular BIW sim (now at impermanence) stayed up through the final five show so that both those spaces could benefit from the attention that we all gather from the final five show and that everyone could see that although the judges did judge and did pick that there is lots more that didn’t get picked and the picking was only one group of 5 people’s opinions and everyone should jump in with their own commentary – that’s also why we’re doing the “people’s choice award” – has anyone checked to see who is in the lead?
Gazira finally did email me today and was very polite and understanding (thank you very much Gazira!) about my need to create a deadline by which i had to have either heard from her or replace her – I really think that is all going to be fine- i hope to catch her in world later to talk.
TO Nebulosus — this is not descending into chaos. Really its not. Some examples: I’m paying for the chair rental for the panel discussion. Ordered them today, 25 white chairs and one table, they’ll be delivered on the day before the panel. The monitors are coming in 4 days before the show opens. I’m going to buy the headphones, and we’re using my wife’s projector to have all the machinmas playing on a continuous loop projected on the wall toward the back of the gallery in addition to the five small monitors each showing one of the final five and the big screen in the front where people can interact with the art. Interns are coming to help with installation on the fifth. Today Don and I talked about which of the seating options we have from a local design store we should use for people to sit on while they look at your art on the big screen TV that boris put on his credit card and that he and I and the other podcasters are gradually paying off. A local design industrial design company is working on the golden eyeball and I’m making another one as a back up in case they don’t come through. Penumbra is working on the plan for shooting machinima and Misprint just got us a space at SLCC. Norene, Jenna, Beth and Steve are all ready to record thier thoughts on the final five. Juan and Bianca have organized a panel discussion that Sage is flying in for and L1 is driving down to participate in along with Pavig. Dekka and Walter did a great job making the gallery that the final five are all using. Elenna is working on the press release and getting help from Scott on ways to promote the show in brooklyn- Noreene is on hand to help her write the press release as is Don. Walter is going to make teleporters and signage to help people go between the shows. Last week I traveled to Newark to talk to some folks at an artist-run space who may do “Newark is Watching” next spring. Things are happening, stuff is getting done. I would have loved to have more time to plan this but I didn’t get the go-ahead till i got it and i got the time slot i got so i’m just doing the best I can. We had a little trouble with one artist who was unreachable– and amy doesn’t like the way the voting happened and is saying so. This is not chaos. We could have had a completely non-competative process, but I thought having this narrowing down of work would give the project additional visibility, and I hoped get people arguing about what work was good or what wasn’t – and it would give the show in the gallery space some focus. Maybe next year we should do it differently and i’d vote for you to be one of the people to help figure it out for sure- very much appreciate your input — and i’m really excited to see what you’ll do with this final five show- i’m sure it will be excellent.
I think what all of this is pointing up is that we have a project here that has grown well beyond what it was at first -there is a true community of people that care about it and work on it and maybe its time for there to be some kind of board of directors or something other than just me running the damn thing – i don’t know — i’m really just trying to focus right now on getting the final five show to happen and making it come out as good as it possibly can- I think its going to be great! and get as many people to see it as possible and then in late august and early september i think i’m going to take a break and re-group and try to make some structural improvements maybe some of you will help me figure out what those should be.
thanks to everyone who is complaining and everyone who is not – I’m very grateful that you care. And thanks to everyone who are taking the various balls and running with them because if it wasn’t for all of your hard work this would be chaos.
Jay, I saw this and felt very encouraged, you seem to be listening to people and keen to work things out, but I guess you posted this before you saw the other topic, because in the other one you appear quite hostile, to me at least.
Anyway, I am sure everything will turn out great for the final five show, it certainly sounds like it’s all coming together.
Something to say?
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jay, honestly, this is a ridiculous decision. just because she’s not online over the weekend, you cannot throw her out. if she didn’t decline, then there’s no way to change the initial decision right now. i’d highly recommend to take back this note.
Left by Selavy on July 26th, 2009