Ed Winkleman is a very smart dude- and he makes some points in his blog post about SL that i think cry out for comment from people more involved in SL – like those that read this blog. Like does the effect he’s describing go away after you already know alot of people in SL? His blog is probably the most well-read blog in the contemporary RL art world.

I think i agree with him about the space of SL being conducive to especially rich connections with people.

Also a friend of mine is reading his book and says its awesome for any of you out there who want to start an art gallery. Maybe you can replace Jack the Pelican (RIP).

View larger here

with commentary from Banrion Constantine featuring art by Juria Yoshikawa violet wing thing, Oberon Onmura Color Sway, Kicca Igaly Profile, Pol Jarvinen, Corcosman Voom kadencia, Fearchar Enoch Reaction 3 Banrion Constantine Taffy Pullers

Subscribe to Sowa’s Unofficial Virtual Art Podcasts on iTunes

The awesome background off-sim tropical mountains are by comet Morigi

Update:

This is crickets and crackers podcast 5:

View larger here

Pen illustrates good housekeeping do’s and dont’s, Selavy cant decide what to wear and Oberon thinks he’s alone. The music was playing on a radio station at pens house.

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® SLurl

Newark is Watching 3.7.10 from Penumbra Carter on Vimeo.

Hey, sorry it took so long to post this video from Penumbra Carter, Mab has been in La-La-Land and AFK since last week (away from keyboard). Pen will be making weekly films of her unique vision of the Brooklyn is Watching space as it goes through transitions leading up to the official changeover in June to the new & au courant Newark is Watching. This means we’ll have lots of documentation of this chrysalis period (yay!) in the form of podcasts from Sowa, Chance-Imagery slideshows from Mab, and hopefully other good things too.

Please let us know if you have images, video, audio, thoughts, critiques, accolades, suggestions or anything else to share with or to celebrate Brooklyn is Watching. The more the merrier!

Newark is watching now too! Change is good! To everything there is a season! Viva!

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® (SLurl)

~~~~~~

These unofficial weekly-or-so podcasts are being strung together in a vacuum consisting of the relative absence of official guidance or organization other than the positive environment generated by the artists who continue to build or place their work on the Brooklyn is Watching space at ::: Soup ::: Push, and the artists who are tending it (most especially Soup Estate Manager Dekka Raymaker).

Fortunately BiW virtual artists are an independent and spontaneous lot, creative and capable of forging ahead on their own strengths while details get hashed out on the forthcoming exciting (and enigmatic) Newark is Watching takeover.

Sowa is doing a great job of unofficially getting the artist’s voice on record (entirely on his own with encouragement from Jay- not that I, Mab, speak for Jay or for anyone else for that matter but it’s on the record here). Text chat counts! I hope you’ll support him in his efforts by talking to him about the artwork on Brooklyn is Watching, whether it’s yours or someone else’s. Yes, the dialogue is necessarily beyond casual (a longstanding trait of the seriously disheveled Lovers Lane Studios) but it’s essential to document ephemeral work to understand where we are and where we’ve been. Any dialogue is better than none! While you’re at it, contribute your voice to Sowa’s Field of Voices project and you’ll be heard in SL® as well as in RL galleries around the world (link). Do it now!

With the intermission of leadership at present things will arise, things will get put aside or re-thought (still waiting expectantly for the gestating Official Podcasts to surface), and things will be unpredictable. But how is that uncertainty different from anything else groundbreaking and worthwhile in life?

We’re all really real-life behind the screen, burning through real-life time with real-life concerns, and making real-life sacrifices. We are really laughing and we are really crying. No one here is not real, not even the scripted art-bots (who require real-life time and real-life mind to exist) Some of us are really artists, some are really art critics, some are really art scholars, and some are really art lovers. With all due respect and kudos to the fantastic and risk-taking Jack the Pelican Presents in Williamsburg (Good Link! Click Here!), Don Carroll, its administration and workers, its history, and especially its gallery visitors who randomly inhabited the everyman avatar Monet Destiny (sniff-now I’m going to cry…), the Brooklyn is Watching community has always been real, not unreal in any way, with a real history; and we’re still really watching NOW in hybrid RL/SL®!

~~~~~~

23 February 2010 Brooklyn looked away by Sowa Mai

Watch in larger format here

Participants are Sowa Mai, Banrion Constantine, Solo Mornington, Selavy Oh, and Mab MacMoragh

Art by Dekka Raymaker and Penumbra Carter, Oberon Onmura, and Solo Mornington

~~~~~~

5 March 2010 Brooklyn doesn’t care by Sowa Mai

Participants are Sowa Mai, Dancoyote Antonelli and Robin Moore

Art by Dancoyote Antonelli and Robin Moore

Sowa Mai: so tell us about your piece
Dancoyote Antonelli: this piece suffers from a contextual disconnect

Read the rest of this conversation on the YouTube page and watch in larger format here

~~~~~~

Because many blog readers in the modern world don’t actually visit the blog they’re reading any more but instead use aggregated feed-readers without all the sidebar stuff, I’m going to include the SLurl to Brooklyn is Watching at the bottom of my posts if I can remember to do it.

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® (SLurl)

Discuss in comments below or on Sowa’s YouTube pages. Suggestions welcome.

Chance-Imagery #3 from Mab MacMoragh on Vimeo.

View large or full screen here

Corcosman Voom, Dancoyote Antonelli, Dekka Raymaker, Fearchar Enoch, Giovanna Cerise, Gleman Jun, Identity Absent, Kicca Igaly, Mab MacMoragh, Oberon Onmura, Penumbra Carter, Pol Jarvinen, Robin Moore, Selavy Oh, Sowa Mai, Suzanne Graves, Werner Kurosawa

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® (SLurl)

Brooklyn is Watching: identity absent by Selavy Oh from Mab MacMoragh on Vimeo.

6 March 2010 Brooklyn is Watching (SLurl)

Ref: Previously on Brooklyn is Watching, Nusch Ray “Identity? Identity Who?” (link)

Ref: Selavy Oh “identity absent” (link)

Mab is not brave enough yet to try the new Viewer 2.0 Beta so she can’t see the html on a prim that Selavy Oh’s alt-bot Identity Absent is showing on Brooklyn is Watching. However she did try to search for Identity Absent through Autoscopia on the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra’s Portrait Island in Second Life® (Adam Ramona, Christo Kayo, and Jack Shoreland)

“Autoscopia is a psychological condition in which a person believes that they see their own body as another in the world. The artwork examines the derangement of identities through the projection of our personalities into digital environments and questions just how much of our identity is contained in the data surrounding us on the internet.”

Autoscopia on Portrait Island (SLurl)

It seems Identity is absent as a name in Autoscopia so there were no results generated. A common search for identity is a search for god, who has an accepted name, so look here for the results for god. (link)

[23:42] Autoscopia:
Checking ‘Identity Absent’ on Internet Names Database.

[23:42] Autoscopia: That does not appear to be a real first name.
[23:42] Autoscopia: Please try again. Names should be of the form:
“firstname lastname”
or
“firstname”.
[23:42] Autoscopia: Autoscopia cannot search on lastname only. Sorry!
[23:42] Autoscopia: If it really is a valid first name, please visit the Internet Names Database and add it:

http://inamedb.com

[23:45] Autoscopia:
Checking ‘god’ on Internet Names Database.

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Name exists on Internet Name Database

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Deep searching internet for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Searching images for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Searching online video sites for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Scanning print based collections for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Examining news sites for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Pattern matching “god” against blog entries…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Searching social networks for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Searching online image repositories for “god”…

[23:45] Autoscopia:

Checking public records for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Evaluating inter-relationship aggregates for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching forum threads for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching online shopping for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching academic publications for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Analysing online music for occurrences of “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Performing pattern search on results for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Examining source code repositories for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Constructing precedence index for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching movie databases for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching social bookmarks for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Applying Clemens differential to results curve for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Correlating results against Clemens curve for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Comparing curve-mediated results with precedence index for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Comparing curve-mediated results with precedence index for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Applying grammar model to possibility matrix for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Searching financial market data for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Normalising results set with NRC algorithm for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Calculating Nash-Dodds Index for “god”…

[23:46] Autoscopia:

Aggregating matrix spawn terms within results for “god”…

[23:47] Autoscopia: Nash-Dodds Index for god: -1032676493

[23:47] Autoscopia: Results of search on god published at http://autoscopia.net/pages/god.html
[23:47] Autoscopia: Search has also been Tweeted at http://twitter.com/Autoscopia1

But sometimes there’s something really unexpected. It took me a while until I even noticed this work: an avatar with the unusual name Identity Absent is standing on the yellow stage of BiW. Next time you look, the avatar looks different, but the owner seems to be away-from-keyboard. And next time yet another outfit! Sometimes shapes, clothes, and attachments seem to mix, a female pops inside the male clothes, the prim hair of the last appearance doesn’t vanish, the guy next door is wearing a pink prim skirt …

In front of the stage, there’s a simple white panel, and if you’re brave enough to use the new Second Life beta viewer, then you can see that the panel shows a Google search for “Identity Absent”. When I came closer to the panel, the page changed, and the search was now for “Nusch Raynier” !!!

The panel is by Selavy Oh. When you look at the profile of Identity Absent, the 1st-life entry says: Selavy Oh. The avatar, who is caught in an endless search for the right outfit, is the avatar of another avatar. A genderless Sisyphus on her/his quest for identity with a yet unsuccessful ego-google.

But in fact, while I’m writing this, Selavy Oh’s Flickr picture of the installation and her blog post, where she mentions that the changing outfits are the 16 default apperances supplied by Linden Labs, had already made it to places 2-4 of the search for “Identity Absent”. And here we get yet another twist in Selavy’s work: by writing about her own work, her avatar slowly assumes some kind of selfhood in a closed-loop system of self-referentiality. We exist because Google knows us: we are no longer what we look like, what we have experienced, or what our own episodic memory tells us. Now the memory is externalized, it is the web with its social networks that stores the determinants of our identity.

Hooray! Good news! Check out Newark Is Watching for more information!

Brooklyn is Watching : podcast feb 16 2010 by Sowa Mai

The mixed blessing of what to do when there are several artists present but too few of them on voice is turned into a lovely distillation of an impromptu discussion. It is hoped these informal meetups with Sowa Mai will occur as regularly as possible, Tuesdays at 2PM SLT, on the Brooklyn is Watching Soup:Push space (SLurl). Bring your voice if you can, but don’t let the lack of one stop you from joining in!

Brooklyn is Watching : Chance-Imagery #2 by Mab MacMoragh

Showing works by these artists (in alphabetical order): Betty Tureaud, comet Morigi, Corcosman Voom, DanCoyote Antonelli, Fearchar Enoch, Giovanna Cerise, Gleman Jun, Kicca Igaly, L1Aura Loire, luce Laval, Man Michinaga, Mab MacMoragh, Pol Jarvinen, Selavy Oh, Werner Kurosawa

Continuing Mab’s Chance-Imagery series, week 2 is a machinima since there were so many kinetic and sound elements on the sim. This is Mab’s second completed machinima in Second Life®, made with the help of Blaise Timtam’s View-Master HUD using the same opening vantage points as last week’s slideshow, and sound-shaped with the critical ear of Mab’s son, The Boy Wonder.

Although these two videos were captured on the same day under each other’s influence, Sowa and Mab made them separately, and unaware. It’s really nice they show different perspectives using identical material, with a convergence here and there. Sort of a Rashomon effect! Viva!

And then there are two pieces by Aminom Marvin: three advertisement billboards on one side: the Enforcer, the Consumer, and the Idealist; smart young people smiling from their walls who seem to make publicity for their way of life. And an animated cartoonish two-prim installation called Eternal Love (see picture above) on the other side. Two prims? Yes, two prims! Animated sculpties! Technically very impressive. But I should clarify that it was not the technical skill that made me enjoy this work, but seeing both these intelligent and ironic works together in the same space.