(Art:21) Performative Interventions: The Progression of 4D Art in a Virtual 3D World

Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza Odyssey 16 Nov 2009

Second Life artists are exploring how to captivate, or use the element of time to interact with an active audience. They have abandoned strict adherence to traditional hierarchies of art and embraced the virtual. In the past fifty years especially, ideas about time have shifted from passive to interactive and, currently, to perceptually immersive, via filmmaking and animation, the theatricality of performance, and virtual reality.

Nettrice Gaskins touches on Fluxus, Second Front, ZeroG Skydancers, RMB City, Bibbe Oh, Cao Fei, ColeMarie Soleil, DanCoyote Antonelli, Man Michinaga, Azdel Slade, echolalia Azalee, Stelarc, CARP, José den Burger, Velazquez Bonetto, Eva and Franco Mattes (among others!)

Read lots lots more on Art:21 (link)

Field Trip: Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

MoMA will show a retrospective of Marina Abramović's body of work March 14, 2010-May 31, 2010.


from Marina Abramović's Art Must Be Beautiful 1975, more info (link)

This performance retrospective traces the prolific career of Marina Abramović (Yugoslavian, b. 1946) with approximately fifty works spanning over three decades of her early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances, and collaborative performances made with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). In an endeavor to transmit the presence of the artist and make her historical performances accessible to a larger audience, the exhibition includes the first live re-performances of Abramović’s works by other people ever to be undertaken in a museum setting. In addition, a new, original work performed by Abramović will mark the longest duration of time that she has performed a single solo piece. All performances, one of which involves viewer participation, will take place throughout the entire duration of the exhibition, starting before the Museum opens each day and continuing until after it closes, to allow visitors to experience the timelessness of the works.

Read more at MoMA (link)


Marina Abramović Luminosity 1997, Marina Abramović Archive and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

"Marina Abramović’s performances, feats of endurance involving self-denial and even self-mutilation, are so influential that MoMA has asked 35 artists to re-create them for an upcoming retrospective—and so provocative that it is building a separate entrance for the show"

Read more at ARTnews (link)

"Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind."

Marina Abramović (Wikipedia) (link)

Also: Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces performed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2005 (link)

Brooklyn is Watching: Tuned to AM (Red)

Penumbra Carter captures a slice of Brooklyn is Watching:Push

Dekka Raymaker: Misprint Thursday placed AM Radio's 'How Fast We Fly' shack, Penumbra Carter added a 'Sculptie Horse' by Nomasha Syaka in a doorway, Dekka Raymaker placed the thin red wedge, Oberon Onmura placed red toy taxis and road, Misprint Thursday then placed 'phonesplosion' Solo Mornington placed cannon and target

Update: Maya Paris (link) adds to the Scarlet Wave (you can see her Fillybot in the video above but why not come inworld and experience it for yourself? (SLurl):

Misprint Thursday- AM Radio's "How Fast We Fly" + her own "phonesplosion"
Penumbra Carter- wall + Sculptie horse by Nomasha Syaka
Dekka Raymaker-thin red wedge
Oberon Onmura- road + taxi toys by Arcadia Asylum
Dancoyote Antonelli- Sculptie horses (as above)
Solo Mornington- Tree-ornament-shooting cannon + target
Maya Paris- Fillybots made from same sculptie horses + my fembots
L1Aura Loire- Sizzling frying pans + "Butter's carrot" by Jacqueline Bancroft

Art21 Blog (Art 2.1: Creating on the Social Web)

November 30, 2009: Art:21 Blog's Nettrice Gaskins draws a connection between the virtual in cave art and in Second Life®, going on to highlight interviews with Second Life® artists DanCoyote Antonelli, Bryn Oh, Maya Paris, Alizarin Goldflake, and Vu Sosa.

"... to truly experience immersive, virtual 3D art you have to go there."

Read more (link)

December 2, 2009: Today's column by Nicole Sansone on ETeam and their dumpster in Second Life®.

"... what struck me most about ETeam’s approach, and what always seems to strike me about art that deals with Second Life, is that ETeam was imbuing this utopian ideal with a small piece of dirty reality."

Read more (link)

Both columns are interesting reading, and the one by Nettrice Gaskins already has a ballpark of comments.

Also in this series:

On Virtual Worlds: An Interview with Filmmaker Victor Pineiro (Second Skin) By Jonathan Munar

Part 1 (link)
Part 2 (link)

The Temple of the Prim is closing

soror Nishi's spectacular The Temple of the Prim is ending its stay on Soup:Magoo with the turning of the calendar to December- hurry to see it if you haven't! (SLurl)

Mab has not learned to make machinima but offers this spiffy slideshow of images of soror's work in combination with the original music of Mack Gecko (link)

To see these images in higher resolution in a plain slideshow, large on black, look here (link)

The following lovely machinimas were made by kumi kuhr (link)





More on The Temple of the Prim (link) (link) (link)

Field Trip: Michael Snow

Michael Snow Place des peaux 1998, 34 wood frames with gelatin, lighting, 15,45 x 5,75 cm, Biennale de Montréal, 1998; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Photo: Guy L’Heureux (source)


Michael Snow Wavelength 1967, Ontario, 45 min.

The zoom is punctuated by what Snow laconically called "4 human events": a woman directs two men who carry in a bookcase and place it against the left wall of the room; two women come in and listen to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio; a man briefly appears after protracted crashing and glass-breaking noises, wheels around, and drops dead; a young woman comes into the room and makes a frightened telephone call reporting the dead man ("And he doesn't look drunk, he looks dead."). (read more)

On the soundtrack we hear (among many other things) an aural equivalent to the zoom lens shot(s), a sine wave which goes from its lowest note (50 cycles per second) to its highest note (12000 cycles per second). (read more)

Michael Snow (link)

Friday 13 Nov, 4-6PM SLT (7-9PM ET): You Are Invited: Brooklyn is Watching: Push!

Where doors and walls are made of mirrors, there is no telling outside from in, with all the equivocal illumination.

-- Walter Benjamin The Arcades Project (link)

An Invitation

Who: You

What: Brooklyn is Watching Re-opening Party

When: Friday, 13 November 2009, 4-6 PM SLT (7-9 PM ET Brooklyn Time)

Where: Inworld @Soup:Push SIM, Second Life® (SLurl)

Where else: Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (link)

How: Dance to tunes spun by DJ Nostrum Forder and come prepared for PRIM (Possible Random Improv Mayhem)

6 November 2009: Thanks to the capable efforts and organization of Misprint Thursday, a meeting was held on Push during which many important things were accomplished relating to the move of BiW from its temporary home on University of Kansas:Impermanence to Soup:Push. As you can imagine, coordinating such a meeting is akin to herding cats. Shown are Dekka Raymaker, Mab MacMoragh, Maya Paris, Misprint Thursday, Monet Destiny, Penumbra Carter, Selavy Oh, and Solo Mornington (Short machinima by Penumbra Carter here)


11 November 2009: A screenshot sampling of artwork left on BiW at one frozen moment in time. The work changes continuously and unpredictably in an organically chaotic process and is experienced as it is meant to be experienced by actively participating in it using the Second Life® avatar movement and camera controls. Work shown is by Betty Tureaud, Cheen Pitney, Comet Morigi. Corcosman Voom, DanCoyote Antonelli, Dekka Raymaker, Kat2 Kit, L1Aura Loire, Luka Loorden, Magina Forcella, Marko Seurat, Misprint Thursday, Oberon Onmura, Pol Jarvinen, Rezago Kokorin, Solo Mornington, Sunn Thunders, Suzanne Graves, Werner Kurosawa, and Winry Carver


17 May 2009: Monet Destiny interviewed on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe (link)

Soup and Lovers Lane Studios have held a warm relationship with Brooklyn is Watching (link) since inception, sharing a respect for artists and their choices and inspirations, as well as sharing a fascination with the frontier potential of the virtual environment and tools available in Second Life®. We both recognize that the challenges of working within evolving technologies and the enforced discipline of their limitations serve both to crystallize inherent forms and to incubate ideas and commentary not possible, not yet realizable, or not served so well in other mediums.

Along with the uncountable and inexpressible meanings that Art is invested with as reason for being, a basic mostly-agreed-upon-but-still-hotly-debated-in-pedantic-circles function is that someone experiences it with someone else as part of the shared human condition and thereby forms a mirrored perspective, a bit of a chance connection, ignition and flow. It is this reflected immersive experience/expression (not necessarily the SAME experience for each but one derived from relationship and time, such as found in intervals in music and not in fragmented notes by themselves) that elevates conceptual multiplicities–avatar created and driven worlds–to the level of fellowship, of engagement beyond proprietary platform. This is hard work. This is compelling. This is Art unfolding.

All of which is to say Soup and Lovers Lane Studios are thrilled to welcome Brooklyn is Watching to Soup:Push!

Brooklyn is Watching: Push SIM (Slurl)

Brooklyn is Watching Blog (link)

Jack the Pelican Presents, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (link)

More information about the genesis of Brooklyn is Watching by Bettina Tizzy at Not Possible IRL (link)

More information about Second Life® (link)

ColeMarie Soleil's vision of soror Nishi's Soup:Magoo

ColeMarie Soleil created this amazing machinima of soror Nishi's The Temple of the Prim on Soup:Magoo, which will be closing 30 November 2009

More on The Temple of the Prim (link)

(slurl)

Art:21 Systems Episode tonight

Art:21 tonight 10:00 PM ET "Systems" with Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, Kimsooja, and Allan McCollum.

Synopsis: Whether through acts of appropriation, repetition, or accumulation, the artists in this episode realize projects both vast in scope and beyond comprehension. (link)

Julie Mehretu's Grey Area for the Deutsche Guggenheim (link)

John Baldessari at Sprueth Magers (link)

Kimsooja's website (link)

Allan McCollum The Shapes Project (link)

August Coppola: a great man who devoted his life to teaching

image via the CRC Blog (link)

Dr. August F. Coppola (16 February 1934- 27 October 2009), Dean of Creative Arts at SFSU, professor of comparative literature, creator of the Tactile Dome at the Exploratorium (Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception) in San Francisco, world traveler who celebrated other cultures and peoples. Son of Carmine and Italia Coppola, brother of Francis Coppola and Talia Shire, father of Christopher Coppola, Marc Coppola and Nicolas Cage, grandfather to six; teacher and inspiration to countless students. Farewell Sir.

The Yes Men Fix the World

SurvivaBall! (shown at Warhol Museum 2007) image by 2Things@Once on Flickr (link)

Man Michinaga of Lovers Lane Studios and Second Front (Patrick Lichty) has work in the well-received (Sundance, Berlin) 2009 gadfly activist film The Yes Men Fix the World as animator. The Yes Men are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno.

“What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like,” Mr. Bonanno cheerfully explains at the beginning of the film. “We make fake Web sites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.”

Read more at NYTimes.com (link)


The Yes Men Fix The World (2009) official trailer

The Yes Men Fix the World (link)

The film on IMDB (link)

SurvivaBall (link)

Yes Men Videos on Babelgum (link)

Burning Life

Mab has been out sick, or traveling, or sick and traveling, for the past couple of months but did get inworld to juggle fire torches and watch the Burning Man in Burning Life burn down last night.

View large on black (link)

Burning Life (link)

Art:21 Fantasy Episode tonight

Fantasy presents four artists whose works or personal stories transport viewers to imaginary worlds and altered states of consciousness. With works that seem at times hallucinatory, irreverent, and sublime, each of these artists pursues a vision first held in the mind’s eye.

Art:21-Art in the Twenty-First Century tonight on PBS 10:00 ET Fantasy episode with Jeff Koons, Mary Heilmann, Florian Maier-Aichen, and Cao Fei, who identifies herself as the avatar of SL artist China Tracy:

Through a blend of documentary and magical realism, the artist investigates various aspects of role play: costumed youth and their families, workers’ dreams come to life at a Siemens light factory, and the simulated romance between avatars. The segment culminates in the artist’s ongoing project, "RMB City," an artificial island built in the 3D virtual world of Second Life that resembles a postmodern collage of landmarks, urban over-development, and Chinese landscape painting.

Read more (link)

Cao Fei biography (link)

Field Trip: How It Is

Tenth commission in The Unilever Series, Miroslaw Balka's new work opens today in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London and runs till 5 April 2010.

How it is, is only complete when you, the viewer, enter.

-- Curator's Introduction (Flash interactive exploration) (link)

The title, How It Is, is taken from Samuel Beckett's novel of the same name and Balka said the piece should be seen as being about everything and nothing. "There is no one single direct inspiration for the piece and the words of the artist are not so important. The work is important. It is good or bad. It works or it does not work."

-- Mark Brown, guardian.co.uk (link)

More information at Tate Modern (link)

Miroslaw Balka bio at White Cube (link)

eyebeam

video via Alan Sondheim (link)

Last Friday (9 October 2009) was SL Performance Night at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City. Artists/groups included Alan Sondheim with Foofwa d'Imobilité, Lily & Honglei, and Second Front members Patrick Lichty and Scott Kildall. The evening was also occasion to a formal launch party for Second Front's Second DVD of performance works, Avvie Road.

More:

Performing in Second Life (eyebeam.org) (link)

Lily & Honglei (Land of Illusion) (link)

Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (link)

Art:21

Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 5 begins tonight on PBS 10:00 ET with the episode Compassion (link)

Yoko Ono: Imagine Peace Tower

Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower practice lighting in Reykjavik, Iceland on left, and in SL on right- photos © Yoko Ono official (link)

Yoko Ono will unveil the Imagine Peace Tower in Second Life® Friday, 9 October 2009, soon after the real world lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland on John Lennon's 69th birthday.

Jura Shepherd writes in ROLE magazine:

The tower will replicate, as closely as possible, its real world counterpart which opened on October 9th, 2007 on Viðey Island in Kollafjörður Bay near Reykjavík, Iceland. The terrestrial version is made of fifteen powerful searchlights manipulated with mirrors to form a column of light that is tall enough to not only reach cloud cover, but has been seen to penetrate well beyond it. According to the University of Iceland, the light is so powerful that, if within the column itself, the light would still be visible with the naked eye from space and could be easily detected with instruments from much further away from our planet. The base of the tower is an elegant but austere cylindrical structure made of white stone that is meant to symbolically represent a well, specifically a wishing well. Circling the well are engravings of the phrase “IMAGINE PEACE” written in 24 different world languages.

More at ROLE Magazine (link)

Hamlet Au comments at New World Notes (link)

More photos and descriptions at Yoko Ono's IMAGINE PEACE TOWER Flickr set (link)

Information and schedules at Imagine Peace (link)

Imagine Peace Tower Island (open 9 October) (slurl)

soror Nishi on Magoo

The Temple of the Prim

Magoo (slurl)

NPIRL Preview 2 October 2009, 12:30 PM SLT

Opening 3 October 2009, 1 PM SLT

From soror Nishi's blog:

Increatum

The Prim is the Prima Materia of Second Life, everything is made of this "stuff", and like alchemy (often called The Art) we can, through diligence, ritual and devotion turn this humble prim into pure gold. "Everything is made by prim and without prim is nothing made that was made." (more)

The Temple of the Prim, Beta v 1.0

The Prim is totally neutral, even more neutral than matter which has imbued feeling depending on whether it is wood, silver, etc. The Prim ONLY manifests its creator's psyche, nothing else.

It is the blankest of blank canvases.

It is, actually, nothing. Matter is actually an illusion too. Atomic physics teaches us that electrons are energy defined by their general relative positions, there's no 'stuff'. Solid is illusion. (more)

Update: See Bettina Tizzy's report on NPIRL (link)

Field Trip: John Baldessari

John Baldessari's Six Colorful Inside Jobs 1971

Q To some degree would you say that Baldessari’s work is like an encyclopedia of maleness?

A Hard to say no to that question. I’d say that’s one of the bigger yeses in the history of answers.

Q To use or misuse the regularly bastardized word, does he deconstruct the male? 


A How could he not?

Q Does Baldessari’s gaze around and through the male gaze render a double-dude staredown? 


A Affirmative. There’s a German phrase for it.

Q Wissenschaftler der mannlichen Schwierigheit?

A Scholar of male complexity.

-- Benjamin Weissman on John Baldessari, in 'Men Swallowing Swords, Men Blowing Out Candles" frieze 126 (link)

John Baldessari talks to Jessica Morgan (curator of his upcoming retrospective at Tate Modern) in TATE ETC 17 (link)

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at Tate Modern 13 October 2009 till 10 January 2010 (link)

Baron Grayson on Magoo

High Seas Pirate Ship, Sanctum Ruins (partial), Aghamora Irish Cottage

From the notecard: The first version of this ship was built as part of an inworld adventure headed by Keith Extraordinare in 2005 for Burning Life.

Mab rezzed these structures temporarily on Magoo while it was empty to see what they looked like and took the opportunity to wear a pirate lady's dress she had in her inventory but had never unboxed (RFL outfit from M'Lady's, jewelry by Sue Stonebender) . They're vanished now but will be back in some form eventually. In some of the pictures Eryri can be seen in the background. The great white whale floating in the sky was made by Soup artists Penumbra Carter and Dekka Raymaker for the closing party of the SLon des Refuses, and the trees in silhouette are made by Sue Stonebender, as is the big house.

Field Trip: Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman's Doll Clothes 1975

One of the First Cindy Sherman's super-8 film,"Doll Clothes" has not been viewed since 1975, the year it was made. It comically crosses Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase with animated paper dolls in a sly, funny and clever precursor to the concerns that became signature elements in Sherman's remarkable body of photographic work.

More at UbuWeb (link)

Field Trip: Torbjørn Rødland

Torbjørn Rødland ACV10 (2009) showing at Standard (Oslo) till 26 September 2009

Perverted photography doesn’t sell a product or communicate a message. It’s not meant to be decoded, but to keep you in the process of looking. It’s layered and complex. It mirrors and triggers you without end and for no good reason, and that is erotic.

-- Torbjørn Rødland

More (link)

Torbjørn Rødland (link)

Field Trip: Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin, Untitled @Hirshhorn Museum (Music: Sigur Ros)

I couldn't find an image to illustrate the story of the stairwell so am using this video of Untitled instead.

"Then I ran into a utility stairwell which presented a very interesting situation. There were a couple things that were very nice about it. One was that while the front stairwell was very formal, with floating steps and everything, and was the architect's attempt to be very 'designed,' very artistic, in a way–I didn't like it particularly–this utility stairwell was simply that, a utility stairwell. It had the minimum. It met all the legal requirements, period, and nothing else. How steep it was–I don't think it could have been any steeper. It had those kind of institutional railings. The corners had an angle on them. It was the simplest kind of concrete shaft; I mean, in terms of architecture, there was no attempt to modify or make that space interesting at all. Institutional light fixtures, the whole thing, just by the book.

"But there was one thing funny about it: the architect, in wanting to continue his illusions about the building from an architectural point of view, did not want the exterior facade of the building to stop at a certain point; so he continued it on to include this utility stairwell, which was very funny, in a way, because it had nothing to do with the stairwell at all; it had all to do with this idea about facade. In other words, he ran this series of windows the entire length of the building so as to fit his modular conception.

"But the unintended effect of all of that was that that utility stairwell was quite a nice place. One of the things that was very nice about it was that all the light in there was reflected light. Only in the morning was there a little slit of direct light, but most of the light was reflected. And interestingly enough, in this situation it was reflected off an awful lot of different kinds of surfaces–a very red building across the way, some very strong green grass; it depended on the time of day you were there as to the color the stairwell was. I mean, it was subtle. Most people would have probably said it was white all the time; but to me, you'd walk in there, and at a certain time of day it was violet, and another time of day it was green, and another time of day it was a subtle mixture of colors. It was a very loaded kind of situation.

"So I did a lot of things in that stairwell. I changed a lot of things. I neutralized things and blocked things and removed things. I fooled around with the covering of the baseboard; there was a situation in terms of one of the windows where I made it look as though it continued where in fact it didn't. I covered up one section of one window so that the far corner looked as if it were angled as all the other corners were angled. All sorts of things like that, which no one really saw–which, by the way, they weren't intended to see; it was just the presence of the situation which I liked.

"Then, I think, I probably made an error, and it probably had a little bit to do with my not being on top of the situation. I put a piece of scrim material up near the second floor, up high, and stretched it out flat. It did a nice thing; I mean, it did work in the room in a way. But in a way it also defeated me in the sense that the few people who did deal with the stairwell at all finally said, 'Oh that's it,' and pointed, dealt with the scrim as though it were the art; whereas it was simply a device that I had used hopefully to try and get the situation maybe a little more strongly identified. Without the scrim I don't know if anybody would have seen it–maybe one or two people. And a curious thing, when the show eventually came down, I went back there and found a number of the things which I had done had not been removed. For some reason they either didn't notice them or didn't know that I had put them there. But in a funny way, even with a lot of the things removed, that stairwell still was doing exactly what it did so well. It didn't need my scrim. And in a funny way, maybe it didn't need any of the details I added. What was really essential was going on there anyway."

-- Robert Irwin to Lawrence Weschler, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees by Lawrence Weschler

Robert Irwin (link)

Robert Irwin @Hirshhorn (link)

Untitled (a variation) @MoMA (link)

Field Trip: John Cage

Changing Installation, 1991
Mattress Factory

More here (link)

Field Trip: In Brief

Even more important to Duchamp, I believe, is the ambiguity of his presence, due to the fact he is neither entering nor exiting the room, but, in Foucault's words, "coming in and going out at the same time, like a pendulum caught at the bottom of its swing."

-- Bradley Bailey, from "Once More to this Staircase: Another Look at Encore à cet Astre"

More at kostis velonis (link)

Field Trip: Warhol TV

La Maison Rouge (Paris) (link)

Via Walker Art Center (link)

SLon: Closing Gala DJ set by Arahan Claveau

SLon des Refusés Closing Gala (2009) by SteveMillar

Listen and dance . . .

Set List (link)

Pink Narcissus (a blog by Arahan Claveau) (link)

SLon: selected works reviewed on Brooklyn is Watching

Review of several works in SLon des Refuses 2009


L1Aura Loire and Sage Duncan were kind enough to review works by four Yip, Robin Moore, Man Michinaga and Azdel Slade currently being shown in SLon des Refuses (Magoo) on Brooklyn is Watching (more)

Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)

SLon: Closing Gala Invitation

You are cordially invited to attend the Closing Gala of the First Annual Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year One Festival Beyond Casual SLon des Refuses of 2009, exhibiting from 6 August 2009 to Sunday 30 August 2009 (please note extended closing date).

WHEN: tomorrow, Sunday, 23 August 2009

2PM SLT

WHERE: Soup sims

Party on Eryri (SLurl)

Art Exhibition on Magoo (SLurl)

DJ: Arahan Claveau

No funds or tips will be requested. If you wish to show appreciation you are asked to visit A Better World Island and donate to one of the various worthy causes there. (SLurl)

More information:

Brooklyn is Watching

Soup

Sincerely,

SLon Des Refuses

Curators: MonCherrie Afterthought, Dekka Raymaker, Arahan Claveau, Mab MacMoragh

Field Trip: Marcel Duchamp:The Art of Chess

Will Shutes in Frieze Magazine:

To use Naumann’s terms, Duchamp’s opening move was to develop – as with chess – an intellectual system of symbols and imagined mechanical movements between figures in his practice. This ambition was most fully realized in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23), which Bailey takes as a focus in order to illustrate the thematic and iconographic correlation between the aesthetics and concepts of Duchamp’s artistic production and his identity as a chess player. Proposing that chess is a critical and largely unrecognized thematic element in The Large Glass, Bailey finds within the work a disguised self-portrait.

. . . As Duchamp said, ‘The transformation of the visual aspect to the grey matter is what always happens in chess and what should happen in art.’

Read more (link)

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (link)

SLon: sine qua non

The Artists



Logo by MonCherrie Afterthought



Cake by Nebulosus Severine

(to be continued)

Final Five: Selavy Oh's The Final Show

To see this slideshow full-screen click here (link)

The Final Five artists in the Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Festival created new work using virtual copies of the original Jack the Pelican Presents gallery built by Dekka Raymaker. Finalist Selavy Oh chose to riff on the gallery itself much as a twenty-first century music composer might. The space was treated as theme and multiplied, with variation and the element of chance brought in to play by inviting friends to show new works of their own. Visitors shape their experience by exploring and interacting with the labyrinthine virtual galleries that disappear and reappear, some empty, some full, thereby becoming a part of and completing the art. The only way to fully experience Selavy Oh's The Final Show is to actively engage with it.


The Final Show machinima by Penumbra Carter

From the notecard by Selavy Oh:

In a virtual world, the notion of space has a different meaning. While a real gallery is limited by the size of the available space, a virtual gallery is limited by the number objects that can be shown.

A virtual gallery is not just a single space, but can be many parallel spaces. The gallery spaces can be exchanged, concatenated, they can be modified, they are only context but not requirement.

You may walk into the virtual gallery and see one exhibition, you turn around, and walk into the same gallery again to see something completely different.

Consequently, this exhibition features work by several of the artists whose work was chosen to be among the 30 best artworks of year 1 of Brooklyn Is Watching, but were not selected by the judges for the Final Five.


The Location

East of Odyssey (slurl)


The Artists:

Arahan Claveau– "Adrift"
Dekka Raymaker– "Artbortion"
comet Morigi– "*~comet Morigi Bio 090804"
Oberon Onmura– "Fight for Order"
Misprint Thursday– "Suspended Hang-Ups"

Curation and Space:

Selavy Oh

Update: Read MonCherrie Afterthought's parsing of Selavy's overtones and pitch on the Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)

SLon: Teleport SLurls to individual artists

Find more photos like this on Watashi Wa Iru

Slideshow by Arahan Claveau (link)

1. Ally Aeon Recur (slurl)

2. Arm Strom "Under water" (Footprints, ice, wasp and "fur objects") (slurl)

3. Azdel Slade Becoming Dragon (slurl)

4. Banrion Constantine Climbing Up (slurl)

5. Betty Tureaud Pot of Gold (slurl)

6. Butterflysmasher Dana Various Works (slurl)

7. Cheen Pitney Crossfire (slurl)

8. Cinco Pizzicato Macys Day Mishap (slurl)

9. Corcosman Voom Self Portrait in Red (slurl)

10. Dekka Raymaker Equilibrium Disturbed II Look What I Made (slurl)

11. elros Tuominen teardrops in the rain (slurl)

12. Ford Heberle Sycophant/Parvenu (slurl)

13. four Yip Magritte Therapist - Take a Seat (slurl)

14. Hollow Prim henry (slurl)

15. Jay Newt avatar as art (slurl)

16. Klink Epsilon Vermilion: Betrayal, Anger and Sorrow (slurl)

17. Man Michinaga 8 bits or less zoetrope (slurl)

18. Monet Destiny Object (slurl)

19. nessuno Myoo Dolce Attesa (Sweet Pending) (slurl)

20. Penumbra Carter Submission (slurl)

21. Robin Moore Tree Box All at ONCE, The girl on the sWING, "A tribute to my music teacher" (slurl)

22. Scotsgraymouser Janus Fortress of Solitude for Lynn2 (slurl)

23. Shellina Winkler second star to the right, big bang2, luminescence (slurl)

24. Shirley Marquez Shut Up and Let Me Go! (slurl)

25. Socks Clawtooth Egobox (slurl)

26. soror Nishi The Moonlight Tree (slurl)

27. Sowa Mai Ghost Story (slurl)

28. Strawberry Holiday Bog Tree (slurl)

29. Sunn Thunders Boundary Conditions (slurl)

30. Tsui Yamabushi Brooklyn is Wanking (slurl)

31. Tuna Oddfellow Odd Ball (slurl)

Field Trip: In Brief

Modern Art Notes: Tyler Green on Gerhard Richter's Uncle Rudi (link)

SLon: Tuna Oddfellow's Odd Ball Performance today

Tuna Oddfellow's not only performing SLon des Refuses' Opening Reception tomorrow (Monday) at the Odd Ball, he's also devoting today's Odd Ball to SLon as well! So if you can't make it to one, come to the other!

Sunday (today) 9 August 11AM SLT

Monday (tomorrow) 10 August 7PM SLT

The events will be at the Odd Ball (slurl)

More Tuna Oddfellow can be found here:

Oddfellow Studios (link)

The Odd Ball at SLCC (Second Life Community Convention) Friday 14 August 8PM to Midnight PT (link)

***

? SLon des Refuses? What's that? Look here (link)

SLon des Refuses on Magoo (slurl)

POL Arida and The O R I G I N A L S are back

POL Arida Screaming Song for a Retard

From the Youtube page:

The treatment of mentally disabled people in the UK by Social Services, Police, Judiciary and the Media. As with most of his songs, the key is to interpret the words. A piece of video art to explode the mind and expand our understanding of the mentally disabled. For his son.

Get the words to this song and more at POLarida.com (link).

POL will perform live today (Sunday 9 August) with the O R I G I N A L S, a group of Second Life® musicians who play original music live as a traveling group, in their own short sets, in various venues.



This month the O R IG I N A L S are Cylindrian Rutabaga, Avvy Barzane, Grace McDunnough, Mulder Watts, POL Arida, Dann Numbers, Pilgrim75 Swashbuckler, Blindboy Gumbo, Spence Wilder and Slim Warrior.

More info at Role Magazine (link)

The O R I G I N A L S can be found on MySpace (link) The schedule for today can be found there as well. POL will perform at 12:00 SLT.

Today's venue is Menorca (slurl)

SLon: DJ Party Update- SLon artists shown in RL Gallery- Some Background

Sowa Mai's Ghost Story is currently displayed in SLon des Refuses on Magoo, Dekka Raymaker and Mab stand at the end

Soup blog will temporarily be taken over by SLon des Refuses virtual world events and documentation. The usual sporadic but enthusiastic Soup postings will continue after SLon is over or as time allows. Mab sometimes tweets (link), if you would like to follow along, but only in the most irregular way as she has the attention span of a cat.

This is the (corrected) notecard that was sent out this morning to the Slon group in Second Life®:

Thursday 6 August 2009

Hi SLon Artists,

We're experiencing technical mire so the DJ party-on-the-grass with Arthole's Arahan Claveau (link) for Thursday's (today's) opening is postponed. We hope to get things straightened out and have it on closing day instead, which is Sunday 23 August. We're disappointed but such is life. We will keep you updated.

Update: Shirley Marquez will be DJ! Look for her on the green grass and enjoy the picnic! Arahan will be closing for us!

SLon Central on Magoo SIM (slurl)

The 2009 Unofficial Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 International SLon des Refuses (that's YOU!) will open in a relaxed and beyond casual way at 1PM SLT 6 August. The exhibition will occasionally be viewed live on a RL (Real Life) 52 inch mega-monitor screen by RL gallery visitors in the front space of the highly regarded RL Jack the Pelican Presents art gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, along with the SL 30 Best show hosted by the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas SIM ( KU ART to the South). To the North of 30 Best is the Impermanence SIM, also hosted by KU ART, where the new incarnation of Brooklyn is Watching now makes its home. So come to Magoo or KU and show off your avatar-as-artwork! Brooklyn will be Watching!

30 Best show on KU (slurl)

Brooklyn is Watching Now on Impermanence (slurl)

The RL Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery (link)

As you can see YOU are mentioned thusly (from the Jack the Pelican Presents website):

"Is virtual art for real? What is the nature of the medium? How do you talk about it? What are its conceptual and social-critical opportunities and limits? These are just some of the questions that Brooklyn Is Watching has been actively asking for the last year and a half.

Inside the gallery are five monitors, each featuring a virtual copy of the real space occupied by a different virtual artwork. These are "THE FINAL FIVE," created for this context by the nominated and elected best from hundreds of virtual artists who have exhibited in year 1 of Brooklyn is Watching.

This is an "official" show of virtual art. So much is at stake, it has already spawned a Salon de Refusés of over thirty virtual artists who didn't make the final cut."

The Final Five exhibition is being prepared inworld on East of Odyssey SIM. The opening is on Friday 7 August 4-6 PM SLT. The Final Five Artists are Bryn Oh, DanCoyote Antonelli, Glyph Graves, Nebulosus Severine, and Selavy Oh. They have each been given a replica of the RL Jack the Pelican Presents art gallery, recreated virtually by our own talented Dekka Raymaker, for their use in making new artwork for the Final Five show.

Final Five on East of Odyssey (slurl)

If you're nearby Jack the Pelican Presents in RL, join in the RL festivities and happenings which will occur simultaneously (they include commissioned work by Juria Yoshikawa, Oberon Onmura, and Jeff Ertz). Say hello to Jay Van Buren (Jay Newt inworld) and kiss Kristen Galvin (our very own beloved hardworking MonCherrie Afterthought)! Or vice versa.....

Read the Brooklyn is Watching blog for updates to the 30 Best and Final Five shows, as well as coverage of the panel discussion on virtual artists by Pavig Lok, Lori Landay, and Stacey Fox; and keynote speaker Jerry Paffendorf (Destroy Television).

Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)

Read more about these exciting RL events in this press release (link)

Although all the Slon Artists on Magoo are winners by virtue of being requested to be in the SLon in the first place, there are further rankings to be determined in the Official Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Festival, including the awarding of the People's Choice and the Golden Eyeball. The People's Choice will be made by online poll and the Golden Eyeball will be presented to one of the Final Five on the basis of votes made by RL visitors to the RL Jack the Pelican Presents gallery, not all of whom will be familiar with SL art or its intrinsic nature. The Final Five works will be shown for this purpose over the term of the exhibit on their own wall-mounted monitors in machinima form (link) by filmmaker (and SLon muse) Penumbra Carter.

Details on People's Choice and Golden Eyeball (link)

For those of you not familiar with Brooklyn is Watching even though your artwork was nominated to be in the 30 Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 (hey, it can happen!), here is a concise description by Juan Rubio from the press release:

"Brooklyn is Watching, conceived of by Jay Van Buren, executed as a collaboration with Boris Kizelshteyn and the Popcha! development team in February 2008, is a breakthrough relational art project that invites interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. It consists of a series of inter-related spaces for artists, audiences, and participants. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned), and an alcove in the Williamsburg art gallery–Jack the Pelican Presents where the sim can be viewed on a large monitor and entered via an avatar."

Brooklyn is Watching will also make a machinima appearance at SLCC in San Francisco, 15 August, in the Grand Ballroom (link)

###

SLon des Refusés 2009

WHAT’S THE TIME?

‘TIS TIME FOR LUNCH ON THE GRASS!

YUMMMMMM!

Crossposted from Brooklyn is Watching via MonCherrie Afterthought:

The beyond casual unofficial committee, of the first annual (Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1) SLon des Refusés, is pleased to make this very official exhibition announcement!

(This is where I imagine the horns blowing and red carpets rolling.)

With works by: Ally Aeon, Hollow Prim, Socks Clawtooth, Banrion Constantine, Klink Epsilon, Strawberry Holiday, Man Michinaga, Sowa Mai, Shirley Marquez, Robin Moore, nessuno Myoo, soror Nishi, Tuna Oddfellow, Cinco Pizzicato, Azdel Slade and Elle Mehrmand, Arm Strom, Sunn Thunders, elros Tuominen, Betty Tureaud, Corcosman Voom, Shellina Winkler, Tsui Yamabushi, four Yip, and others!

Location: Magoo
Exhibition Dates: Aug 6-Aug 23, 2009
Opening Reception: Monday, Aug 10, 7PM SLT, with a special performance by Tuna Oddfellow
Closing Reception: Special performances and festivities are currently being arranged. Check the Brooklyn is Watching blog for all SLon event updates!
Additional Performance: Tuna Oddfellow, Sunday Aug 9, 11AM SLT

About: Well there is a rich history of Salon des Refusés, most notably the Salon des Refusés of 1863, so why not in SL? It only seemed fitting to create a platform for twenty-first century brilliant rejects, care of the Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 30 Best jury and voting process.

The SLon des Refusés 2009 is at its heart a celebration of the artistic breeding ground that is Brooklyn is Watching. It is a nod to all of the hybrid SL/RL art that Brooklyn is Watching has showcased and inspired and contained and contended with over its first year; as ephemeral digital artworks left on the sim to be looked at and pondered and combined and chewed up, and as a group conceptual installation of an evolving artistic body of work in its entirety, including more than a year’s worth of ongoing dialogue and documentation. And beholding.

Finally, it is a love letter to Jay Van Buren who has the vision to encourage a real-life community of artists and muses against daunting odds, working hard to give them the gift of freedom to explore the potentials of digital art and at the same time to do what they find beautiful.

Art21 Season 5 and SL's China Tracy

China Tracy's i.Mirror part 1 (2007), part of the China Tracy Pavilion Project, exhibited in China Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale 2007

Today's Art:21 blog (link) featured a screenshot from Cao Fei's RMB CITY. Known as China Tracy in Second Life®, Cao Fei will be spotlighted in Art:21 Season 5 in the upcoming Fantasy episode along with Jeff Koons, Mary Heilmann, and Florian Maier-Aichen. The episode will air Wednesday 14 October 10PM (ET) on PBS.

Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century is the Peabody Award-winning series produced by contemporary art organization Art21. From the press release:

In its most international season to date, Art21’s four-part series reveals artists’ perspectives on current affairs, politics, economics, history and popular culture, as well as showcases the artists’ working processes and their studios. For the first time ever, the series is presented in high definition and made available, beyond broadcast, in its entirety on-line via Hulu, iTunes and other digital platforms. (more)

art:21's Youtube channel (link)

About Cao Fei (link)

China Tracy's RMB City on Youtube (link)

Field Trip: About Last Night

Congratulations to Terry Teachout and Paul Moravec on the first night success of The Letter, which was premiered last night by the Santa Fe Opera!

How it felt (link)

The Letter (link)

The Letter in the New York Times (link)

SLon: Salon des Refusés

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet

In preparation for the Beyond Casual SLon des Refuses being organized by digital curator MonCherrie Afterthought with Mab MacMoragh, to be composed of artists nominated in the wiki for Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 but not voted into 30 Best (link), Soup offers the following explanation for the spirit of the show:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects”, is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

It should be taken into account that during this time, Paris was a breeding ground for artist of all forms, poets, artists, sculptors, etc. Paris was the place to be, and the capital of the art world, any artist that wanted to be recognized, at that time, was required to have exhibited in a Salon, or gone to school in France. Being accepted into these Salons was a matter of survival for some artist; reputations and careers could be started or broken, based solely on the acceptance into these exhibits.

As early as the 1830’s, Paris art galleries had mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. The clamorous event of 1863 was actually sponsored by the French government. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, far more than usual. "Wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints," said an official notice, Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon. Many critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such now-famous paintings as Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and James McNeill Whistler's Girl in White. But the critical attention also legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting. Encouraged by Manet, the Impressionists successfully exhibited their works outside the Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the prestige and influence of the Paris Salon had waned.

Émile Zola incorporated a fictionalized account of the 1863 scandal in his novel L'Oeuvre (The Masterpiece) (1886).

Today by extension, salon des refusés refers to any exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show.

For information as to the progress of the juried show, see the official Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)