Reposted: Newark is Watching open to RL this Saturday

This is the final week of Brooklyn is Watching before it hands over the prims to Newark is Watching. evonne has posted this notice on the Newark is Watching blog. I think there's going to be a tower takeover event then but I don't actually know any details! Gallery Aferro will be showing Newark is Watching to the public in their New Media Room (link for event). Come if you can and help inaugurate the new space! Will there be chaos? Probably. Will there be someone at a party in an art gallery watching? YES!

On June 19th, from 7-10 PM EST, the RL public attending Gallery Aferro’s 2nd annual benefit party will be able to operate Monet and look around. Not sure what to expect, but there will be more people in the gallery than at almost any other time of year.

So if you want to say hello or watch as Monet staggers a bit, please do visit.

Visit the Newark is Watching blog

(crossposted)

Brooklyn is Watching: The new Amy Freelunch show 3: Exploding Selavy

Sunday 13 June 2010: Amy breaks Brooklyn is Watching's simulated physics with her endlessly gushing Selavy Oh/Mosmax Hax pipeline art piece combining big bang scripting with Whitenoise freebies, discusses the art movement called Virtualism and how it could relate to several big pictures (info & info), and examines nerdy-funny robot art assembled with found objects by Cheyenne Palisades (who, by the way, has announced her candidacy for CEO of Linden Lab® here). Mab, who is definitely a nerd, has not had time to be inworld since last week so is illustrating this great Amy Freelunch podcast with an itty bitty slideshow made previously (above) and also a nice image (below) of a water skiing robot made by Cheyenne so you can squint your eyes and imagine seeing the things that Amy describes so well at Brooklyn is Watching.

Listen to the podcast here, or go to the SoundCloud page. The new podcast is currently in rotation on Soup radio inworld on the Soup sims. The radio is reset most days at 1PM SLT, which means that Amy's podcast can be heard at that time, as well as intermittently the rest of the hours. After a few days off, podcasts 1 & 2 will rejoin the playlist inworld again.


'Who Says Robots Can't Water Ski?' by Cheyenne Palisades

The new Amy Freelunch show, ep 3: Exploding Selavy by Amy Freelunch

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® SLurl

(crossposted)

Brooklyn is Watching : Chance-Imagery #5

Chance-Imagery #5 by Mab MacMoragh

29 May 2010

Virtual Artwork filmed in Second Life® at Brooklyn is Watching

Artists: Betty Tureaud, Dancoyote Antonelli, Gleman Jun, Glyph Graves, Kicca Igaly, Monroe Jigsaw, nessuno Myoo, Oberon Onmura, Solo Mornington, Werner Kurosawa

Music: 'I'd Like That' by XTC

xtcidearecords.co.uk

brooklyniswatching.com/
newark.iswatching.com/

::: Soup ::: Push

slurl.com/secondlife/Push/121/51/22

crossposted

The new Amy Freelunch show 2: Originality in SL Art

Betty Tureaud's Mountain of Colouers


As Arahan notes in his comment under the previous post, there's a new podcast from Amy! This time she discusses works by Betty Tureaud and Oberon Onmura both onsite and offsite Brooklyn is Watching.

The new Amy Freelunch show, episode 2: Originality in SL Art (direct link for download)

The new Amy Freelunch show, ep 2 by Amy Freelunch

Both of Amy's new episodes are currently playing in rotation on Soup Radio which can be heard 24/7 on the Soup sims (Push, Eryri and Magoo). This month Amy's shows come round about every three hours starting at 1PM SLT most days (when the radio is reset).


'Transition Zone' by Oberon Onmura from Mab MacMoragh on Vimeo.
15 May 2010

Virtual Art Filmed in Second Life® at Two Fish Sim
Hosted by Rose Borchovski
Appearances by Jo Ellsmere, Mab MacMoragh, and Pixel Reanimator
Music: Threnos by John Tavener
Performed by Natalie Clein

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life® (SLurl)

(crossposted)

The new Amy Freelunch show!

Amy Freelunch at There's no bible in here? by Dekka Raymaker & Penumbra Carter, Soup Magoo

Amy's back with her radio show! She skates through Brooklyn/Newark is Watching to think about Penumbra Carter's Lighthouse and Rod Mandel's Koons appropriation in between feeding her dog treats and playing music.

Listen daily streamed through Soup Radio on the Soup sims inworld at 1PM SLT (and in rotation the rest of the day) or in your media player (link)

(crossposted)

art:21- Call + Response: Collaborative Art in Virtual 3D Worlds

Brooklyn is Watching/Lovers Lane Studios and SLon des Refuses artists Misprint Thursday, Sowa Mai, Oberon Onmura, Cinco Pizzicato, Solo Mornington, Selavy Oh, and Azdel Slade (among other great SL® virtual artists) are featured by Nettrice Gaskins on today's art:21 blog. It's the third piece in two weeks to focus on virtual art!

Art production in virtual 3D worlds brings together people with different knowledge and skills.

Read more (link)

(crossposted)

First Podcast: Newark is Watching - Getting to Know You

NIW getting put together: photo via Brooklyn is Watching on Flickr (link)

The inaugural Newark is Watching podcast from Gallery Aferro is here (link)

art:21-code as concept and responsive art

Second guest blog-post by Nettrice Gaskins on virtual art this week on the fantastic art:21 blog! Viva!

Selavy Oh and Glyph Graves, both part of the Brooklyn is Watching 30 Best and Final Five last year (and both Lovers Lane Studios artists), are prominently featured in today's blog post by Nettrice Gaskins, along with Brooklyn is Watching SLon des Refuses (and Lovers Lane Studios artists) Sowa Mai and Banrion Constantine.

Second Life® virtual medium artists Wizard Gynoid, Opensource Obscure, AM Radio, and theorist Georg Janick (Gary Zabel) are also mentioned.

Using scripts, artists can transform objects into virtual robots inhabited by software agents that work behind the scenes while human-driven avatars interact or become immersed in the art.

art:21 blog- Nettrice Gaskins "Responsive Art & Evolving Artificiality in Virtual Worlds"

read more (link)

~~~~~~

About Art21:

Art21 was founded in 1997 with the mission to increase knowledge of contemporary art, ignite discussion, and inspire creative thinking by using diverse media to present contemporary artists at work and in their own words.

Art21 produces the Peabody-winning PBS series Art:21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century, as well as books, internet-based resources, and public programs. What makes Art21 a bold new endeavor is not only the caliber of the artists featured, but the media in which they are presented. The accessibility of television and the Internet makes it possible to reach an extremely large audience.

read more (link)

~~~~~~

Full episodes of art:21 on PBS can be viewed here (link)

(crossposted)

7 April 2010 Brooklyn is Watching : with Monet Destiny

7. Brooklyn is Watching: with Monet Destiny from Mab MacMoragh on Vimeo.
7 April 2010

Virtual Artwork filmed in Second Life® at Brooklyn is Watching

Featuring ménage à trois by Selavy Oh

Artworks shown by: Banrion Constantine, Betty Tureaud, Oberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, Sowa Mai

Avatar appearances by Allegory Ordinary (bot), Identity Absent (bot), Imaginary Difference (bot), Mab MacMoragh, Monet Destiny, Oberon Onmura, Solo Mornington

Brooklyn is Watching's Jay Newt (Jay Van Buren in Real Life) took part in a podpourri on the theme of 2.0 Digital Love at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn.

Galapagos Art Space

See previous post

Jay only had a few minutes to present the Second Life® SIM to the Real Life audience steering through the eyeball avatar of Monet Destiny. Afterwards Monet was left with the poetry-bots of Selavy Oh, reciting lines from Charles Baudelaire's volume of French poetry, Les Fleurs du mal. Their recitations were intermingled with an interventionist text-bot by Sowa Mai and Banrion Constantine, from which green lines of prepared chat appeared to come from and to be about locally identified avatars. All this text dialog was interspersed with the improvised natterings of Mab MacMoragh, Oberon Onmura, and Solo Mornington. If Mab had been using the new Second Life® Viewer 2 with its shared media capabilities, the machinima would have shown the chat text generated from these three sources scrolling in real time on the walls inside the white box.

Brooklyn is Watching

Visit Brooklyn is Watching in Second Life®: (SLurl)

(crossposted)

Brooklyn is Watching blog is down up!

The official Brooklyn is Watching blog is undergoing renovation and repairs so it's currently down. It will come back all shiny and new. In the meantime, Jay Newt will be twittering updates on its status here. Big news coming in March!

Jay Newt on Twitter (link)

Update: It's back up!

http://brooklyniswatching.com/

(crossposted)

Brooklyn is Watching: Off Sim by Werner Kurosawa- machinima by Mab

This is Mab's second attempt at Second Life® machinima (her first attempt, Selavy Oh's State of Formation, is still in bits and pieces).

Werner Kurosawa's Off Sim provides a way for Mab and Nebulosus Severine to sit together outside the SIM and contemplate the rotating ephemeral conceptual artscape created by artists on the Brooklyn is Watching SIM at Soup:Push, where anyone can build a temporary installation, art is in constant transformation, and the real art lies in the way the works appear and disappear as the artists collaborate (knowingly or unknowingly) changing the meaning of the immersive space over time much like the game Exquisite Corpse played by the early Surrealist artists.

Familiarities arise and themes emerge, growing and playing off each other as happens in the music used here, a fragment of Bach's Aria from the Goldberg Variations, performed by multimedia enthusiast and artist Glenn Gould in 1981.

www.glenngould.com
www.glenngould.ca

Brooklyn is Watching

(Teleport to Brooklyn is Watching at Soup:Push, walk to the platform in front of the big blue watchtower, sit on the seats you'll find there, and voila, you are orbiting the sim at 512 meters outside it! More than one person at a time can go!)

(crossposted)

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

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)

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: 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.

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)

Arahan Claveau's Brooklyn is Watching Best of Festival Slideshow

Find more photos like this on Watashi Wa Iru

Slideshow via Arahan Claveau at Pink Narcissus (link)

Brooklyn is Watching: 30 Best Press Release

Selavy Oh's Spiral and Ichibot Nishi's Episodic.Atomized @Biw 30 Best (slurl) (link)


From Jay Van Buren:

The Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas Sim is proud to present “The Brooklyn is Watching 30 Best,”a juried selection of the year’s best artworks installed on the Brooklyn is Watching SIM in Second Life (SL). “The 30 Best” is part of the Brooklyn is Watching Year One Festival, and runs from July 7th through August 23rd in both SL at KU ART SIM, and in real life at Jack The Pelican Presents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The festival began in SL with open nominations in June, and in early August a celebrity judge panel will select the top five artworks. Judges include SL greats Amy Wilson, Annabeth Robinson, Stacey Fox, and SL avatars AM Radio and Bettina Tizzy. The festival continues in real life at Jack The Pelican Presents, where the top five will be on display from August 7 to 23rd. Panel discussions, performances and other programming based on the competition will be announced late July.

Nominated artists include: Dancoyote Antonelli, Dekka Raymaker, Gazira Babeli, Glyph Graves, Juria Yoshikawa, Misprint Thursday, Patriciaanne Daviau, Oberon Onmura, Pavig Lok, Rachel Breaker, Rezago Kokorin, two time nominated Arahan Claveau, Comet Morigi, Ichibot Nishi, Nebulosus Severine, Selavy Oh, Solkide Auer, and three time nominated Bryn Oh and four time nominated Alizarin Goldflake.

Brooklyn is Watching is a project, started by Jay Van Buren, and Sponsored by Popcha.com that takes place in Second Life, as well as the real world. In Second Life there is a virtual space where artists from all over display their computer art to be seen by people at Jack the Pelican Presents, a gallery in Williamsburg.

The Year One Festival began as a way to archive and celebrate the best pieces accumulated over the year, but also confirms that Brooklyn really is watching, inspiring and challenging artists to continue making computer arts.

For more information, please . . . visit our blog at Brooklyniswatching.com.

The Brooklyn is Watching project has been written up in the New York Times Magazine and Brooklyn Rail. Its podcasts have featured Tyler Coburn of Brooklyn Rail and Barbara London of MoMA.

Jack the Pelican Presents is a trendsetting Williamsburg gallery specializing in contemporary art and owned by Don Carrol, founding editor of Art Lies Magazine.

Popcha! is a boutique media technology agency focused on making virtual worlds work for its clients. As one of Second Life’s first Gold Solution Providers, Popcha! has been been singled out as a highly qualified provider who has demonstrated a high level of client satisfaction and has developed successful projects on behalf of businesses, governments, educational institutions, and other business organizations in Second Life.

Located in Lawrence, Kansas, The University of Kansas is a member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and is a research 1 University. The Department of Visual Art is comprised of 30 full time professors who teach painting, sculpture, printmaking, new media, ceramics, textiles, metals and art education, and has impressive studio space.

There will be an opening celebration on Friday at 6pm eastern 3pm SLT. The reception for the artists’ will be on August 7th at 7pm eastern 4pm SLT.

Now is the time for all good Second Life® virtual art-lovers to come to the aid of Brooklyn is Watching!

Beholder Monet Destiny & Mab in the Watchtower, February 2009, on the occasion of Mab's first visit to BiW's Popcha sim

Open voting now until 5 July 2009 11AM SLT (link)

Wiki with full list of nominated artworks and descriptions (link)

Full explanation of Best of Brooklyn is Watching Festival (link)

Don't wait! Go now! It only takes a few minutes and anyone can vote! (link)

Vote!