I have commented on two works by Solkide previously, Black Pearl and Radiazioni; those were abstract studies of form. His latest piece, Spitfire, is more puzzling; it feels as though it should have some sort of narrative, but I can’t untangle it.

As I view it, the work has two parts. The lower part is a metallic ball launcher that reminds me of a pinball machine. We see ghost images of a compressed spring and of the ball in earlier positions, suggesting the launch of the ball. There is, however, no visible mechanism to cause the compression of the spring or the launch of the ball. At the end of the chute where the ball travels, there is a cone of near transparent rings; inside the cone is a structure of partial arcs, and in the center a ball that reminds me of molten lava.

A literal reading might see the molten ball as the fire, and the launcher as something that “spits” out balls. But that seems a bit too pat. And where does the molten ball come from, anyway? The launcher is spitting out a metallic ball, nothing like the molten one. Perhaps the structure of arcs acts on the balls somehow?

Solkide may be moving into awkward ground here; enough representation to be not purely abstract or “hyperformal” (as Dancoyote would say), but not enough to offer a coherent story. I continue to enjoy Solkide work with form; I’m just a bit confused this time. But then, sometimes good art is confusing.

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Oxoc’s untitled work is a portrait of an unnamed model, overlayed with a tye-dye like, partially transparent animated texture. (It does not appear to be a self-portrait; I looked at the artist’s profile, which led to his Flickr page; on the last page of pictures you can see the artist.) The texture animation felt like a ploy to get the viewer’s interest; it reminded me of those horrible pictures with “moving” water that you used to see at Chinese restaurants.

I was all set to slam this as just another gimmick piece, but then I took a better look at the photo that I took for this blog. Without the distraction of movement, I liked the interplay of the colors with the portrait; this piece works better for me as a still. It reminds me of the old Rolling Stones song: “She comes in colors everywhere, she combs her hair, she’s like a rainbow.” A suggestion to the artist: if you ever sell this work, modify the script so the texture animation starts and stops with a click.

The colors in the photograph from Second Life dulled down a lot compared to what you see in the viewer; the picture in this blog has been altered to restore some of the richness of color.

(Edited to add: the small versions of this photo as resampled by Flickr for embedding on this page lose some of the fluidity of texture of the original. Click the photo to visit Flickr, click the “all sizes” button above it to view a larger version, and then “original size” in the list to get the full-size picture.)

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playground space was first placed last week; I took some pictures at the time but didn’t post a comment because I was still trying to figure out how I felt about the piece. When luntsberg candy castle went up, I posted on that and noted that it would have complemented the now-missing playground space; it looks like Selavy and Ichibot listened, because it’s back. Unless, of course, I just had a weird viewer issue the first time I looked at the castle and didn’t see the playground. SL is SL, it could have happened. In any case, both are there now, and Ichibot added a colorful striped pathway tying the two pieces together; the pieces of the path are named “cick” and “lunt”, so they are clearly intended as such, not that there would be any confusion anyway!

I’m ambivalent about playground space. On the one hand, I love the idea of it, and I like the way that the two artists have worked together on it. (The base build is by Selavy; Ichibot contributed the table and chairs in the third photo, and the ice pops on the raised platform.) The grass texture is really nice. There is some potential for interaction with the space; the swing operates, and you can kick around Selavy’s signature cubes. (For those of you who are new here, many of Selavy’s works include standard size cubes that have been used in creative ways.) There is even one of Arahan’s super happy fun balloons left over from the Injustice installation last week.

On the other hand, a lot of the execution left me flat. Selavy was probably trying for a minimalist visual style, but I think she went too far; a bit more detail in the build would have made it more evocative for me.

The photos of this piece presented some interesting challenges. The highly detailed grass texture foils JPEG compression; as a result, I had to compress these pictures more aggressively than usual to get the upload size below 300K. (Flickr doesn’t seem to like uploading images larger than that, at least not from me.) The third picture, the closeup of Ichibot’s table and chairs, also had to be cropped quite tightly, in addition to the higher than normal compression. The Windlight time of day was changed for best effect on each; the big overview picture (the one that shows the castle and the playground) is at 7:00am, but the table and chairs are at 4:40pm. The first picture (the one showing the entire playground, but not the castle) was from last week’s shoot.

There is a bug in the release candidate viewer that sometimes make the display screen / photo frame on the raised platform look washed out and blank. Oddly, photographs of the scene are fine even when it doesn’t look right on your screen.

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I took an astronomy class in college last year, so this one really appealed to my geeky nature. It has six cones that appear to spin (I believe it’s actually texture animation, as that can be started up and then it runs smoothly and automatically in the viewer); each of the cones has a different astronomical view. In front of the cones, there is a plane with six holes; you look through the holes to see the spinning cones, and you get the illusion of a rotating star field as you might see it through a telescope, except that the real ones don’t spin anywhere near as quickly. (The conic shape becomes nearly impossible to see when you’re looking at it straight on.) At a distance you can get the illusion that all six cones are really rotating star discs; up closer the angles throw off that effect, so you can only get that illusion for one or two cones at a time.

Viewing from the side and back are also interesting, though neither presents the same sort illusion of being something other that what it is. I didn’t perceive any great meaning here, just an attempt to present the beauty of celestial views and play with an illusion of perception. But that was enough.

In the picture the stargrid viewer is partially obscured by Juria’s latest installation, which appears to be unnamed. I didn’t feel that either piece was intended as a comment on the other; it’s just the sort of thing that happens occasionally in a crowded space like Brooklyn is Watching.

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Ok… i know june is not over yet… but i wasn’t quite sure i could say best artwork ever and best of the week just wasn’t BIG enough.

this work was already written about by amy- but now that i know who did it I need to give credit. IT was called soma.talk ( right Ichibot?) and it was by Ichibot Nishi- a bunch of invisible boxes around the sim which spoke words as if they were being said by avatars that had passed by previously.

I’m hoping Mr. Nishi will post on here and tell us how the hell he did this… but i just want to say a couple things about it real quick:

1) It wouldnt have worked in another kind of space — depends on people you know being the ones who ’said’ things to make you not be able to help but pay attention

2) the exact nature of the content of the words it said was PERFECT- great mix of banal and poetic.

3) it uses the very substance of the space of SL: community and communication– is this “hyperformal”?!! too bad DC is taking a break from SL– maybe he’s reading the blog still though– but you know what i mean? it is really using the medium.

Lastly i’m glad its gone because it was annoying.. which was part of what was good about it.

ok, that’s my two cents- what do the rest of you think? Nominate your most interesting artwork and give your reasons.

art, awards | 6 Comments »

When we started this interview (see above post) several days ago, we never could have predicted that we were walking into such a minefield – the Venkman/SL5B controversy seemed to be dying (or at least, calming) down – and our conversation was meant to be centered more on censorship in SL in general, rather than on any specific images or counterprotests. In fact, when I last spoke to Jay about Venkman, I told him that I had extended to him the same invitation that we had extended to every other artist in SL – the opportunity to place his work on BiW for critique – but that I strongly felt that nothing more should be done; that the ball was in Venkman’s court if he wanted to participate.

So it should be noted that I had absolutely no idea that Jay was going to go ahead and rez Venkman’s images on the island last night and certainly no warning that anyone was going to stage a counterprotest to their being placed there. And I find myself in a really difficult position: Either I have just wasted my time and my interviewee’s time over the last few days, or I inject the following conversation into an environment that was not the one we expected to have it be a part of.

I’m going ahead and posting the interview, mostly because I think it’s a good one and what my subject has to say is very relevant and timely, perhaps more than we knew when we started talking.

Not at all as a result of any of this (like, I said: Timing is everything), this interview will be my last post at Brooklyn is Watching for the forseeable future. I’ve decided to take what we can describe as an “extended leave of absence” from the project; I’m not totally sure if I’ll be back or not. It should be noted that I have neither been fired nor have I stormed off in a fit. Jay and I had a very civil, face to face discussion about all this earlier today and I’ve come to the conclusion that, at least for the time being, I should leave BiW.

I thank you all so much for reading my posts and for sharing your work with me and our audience. I am not leaving SL and hope to remain in touch with all of you and hope you will all keep me abreast of your latest artworks. Getting to know you all and writing about your work has been an absolute pleasure.

Be well,

Amy Freelunch/Wilson

art, dramatis_persona | 7 Comments »

So i just noticed this… i’m not sure when this happened but i want to unpack it. First- what happened– I rezed on the island because Amy altered us to the controversy some artworks for Stephen Venkman so we could have a discussion about his artworks that were disallowed at SL5B. Then Stephen came and made them look better because i did a really half-assed job of it and added a landmark giver to send you to his sim. THEN…. some one ( Obscured Quandry clearly someone’s alt) put up a kind of cage around the work with the words “wake up” over it and (more…)

Virtual Worlds, art, social, theory | 25 Comments »