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)

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: 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)

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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!

Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1

Best of Brooklyn is Watching 1
Add nominations here