The sounds coming from Selavy Oh’s piece are called Ursonata, by Kurt Schwitters.

He’d stand up in front of an audience and do that for 40 minutes.

Something I learned from the linked page above, which is now one of my favorite art history facts: “In 1940 when Germany invaded Norway Schwitters fled to England where he spent 17 months in an internment camp (where all the inmates learnt the Ursonata).”

Left by SoloMornington on November 29th, 2009

Darn. Wish I could have heard this better. I kept listening to Tezca’s first review over and over to try to understand who’s work he was talking about, but to no avail. Great to hear Glyph and Hay’s voice, btw!

A suggestion: Whoever is recording this (is that you, Jay van Buren?), turn down your sounds in preferences before you record a session. Or turn them on very briefly so your listeners can hear what you hear and then turn them off.

Left by Bettina Tizzy on November 30th, 2009

not completely through, but i’m definitely enjoying the schwitters part!

more seriously, i didn’t expect such a massive impact, and next time i’ll remove the sounds before placing something at BiW.

Left by Selavy on November 30th, 2009

Heyas Jay,Glyph,Andrew,JayJay and BiW audience!

Thanks for talking about my work, especially Glyph who nailed the nature of the piece even if it had been actually returned! (what remained was the cubic residue)

The title of the work you were discussing is “Hephaestus Lewitifier”. This is a reference to Hephaestus who was the blacksmith of the gods (Greek) and to Sol Lewitt whom Selavy and I both owe a debt of gratitude.

To answer a few questions that were on the podcast…Hephaestus Lewitifier was on the sim before before Sel’s Irregularity. I doubt that Sel placed his work on the sim in response to mine. That’s just not Sel’s style.

Jay and Glyph nailed it though. HL (Hephaestus Lewitifier) and Irregularity are related in some art historical and virtual sociological way that one hopes will be studied by art history students some time to come…

…and Andrew, I do want you to know that the the work did in fact have a way to derezz the dreaded white cubes! I left the piece open ended to the whim of the visitor in that all they had to do was say “/2 die” in chat and the cubes would be removed.(this was in hovertext over the main cube)

In fact the first week the piece was present at BiW, the sim was prim locked and the HL was not able to perform its function!

Also, I agree with Andrew that geometry doing its native thing in virtual space can be one dimensional and banal. However I hope you look past this for other conceptual layers! (because I always put them there for those who look for them)

For instance, Glyph and Jay had it right that the HL is a social sculpture, that empowers the BiW visitor to create cubic masterpieces and explore the range of possibilities with this primitive object just as Sol Lewitt stepped us through variations of the cube, the Hephaestus Lewitifier brings this ability to the visitor, along with the bittersweet ability to derezz the whole shebang at any time!

Cheers!

DC

Left by DC Spensley on November 30th, 2009

The thing about the Lewitifier is: The original rezzer cube is the first thing you place. All subsequent prims will be autoreturned after it. So the method of derezzing goes away first, while the other prims remain.

Left by SoloMornington on December 1st, 2009

You are quite right. I see this is another interesting quality of the work. The work exists to fulfill a purpose, to empower the visitor to step through a process similar to the way Lewitt deconstructed geometry.

The persistence of the artifacts created by users outliving the tool provides a unique half life for the visitor created artworks. These are of course returned according to their creation date like anything else in the sim. The creators get their allotment of time like anyone else.

Thanks for your thoughts!

-DC

Left by DC Spensley on December 3rd, 2009