Digital Afterlife

This is what the afterlife might look like in the future when we have technology implanted into our brains which continues to stimulate our optic nerve after most of our biological brain functions have stopped. A hallucinatory heaven mediated by microprocessors that force feed our senses for the period between life and rotting in the ground.

Either that or it's a snapshot of a new build I am working on in Second Life.

Beauties Part 2 and so on.

I've installed "The Beauties of Flourescent Blur; Usher Out Our Tungsten Glow" a second time at the 'Art Maniacs' gallery in Second Life (VIT World, 33,33,33). The build is much bigger this time and includes an optical illusion that attempts to 'bend' space and further the message of the piece, if you are interested, you can read my statement here.

In other news, Georg Janick, a professor at the University of Massechuchets has purchased an entire island inside of Second Life which will become the home of an art collective/social experiment playing with socialist ideals and open-source style knowledge sharing. The island is not yet live but it will host a small community of artists from many different disciplines who will work together to learn, teach and express themselves. Will keep you posted.

In yet other news, the Node Zero Gallery has recieved a bit of a facelift and a new exhibition is installed there (Vaoetere, 60,217,289). Here are some snapshots...

The trouble with virtual life...

Is that is has no expiry date.

The Beauties of Flourescent Blur

Here is a snapshot from my latest piece entitled, "The Beauties of Flourescent Blur; Usher Out Our Tungsten Glow".

It's an intentional maze of flourescent lines and semi-transparent walls which, in it's dauntingly confusing navigation, begs the question, "Why has our obsession with compartmentalization of space from the physical world so directly leaked into our virtual ones?"

Streaming Video

So I haven't updated my blog in a little while... ahem.

I have been struggling with how to present my thesis study at the end of the year show... It's really hard to present my experiences and art pieces that I have created inside of Second Life without the piece just becoming about the medium itself. When I installed my virtual gallery at the awards night, I quickly realized that very few visitors were checking out the art, they were just asking questions about Second Life as though I was a spokesperson for Linden Labs rather than an artist.

I had a meeting with Mark Argo the other day and explained my perdicament to someone who was being freshly exposed to my project. At the end of the discussion we came up with the idea of not giving users control and simply presenting documentation of my study. Video/audio captures of my discussions with other virtual artists, photo demonstrations of some of the works I have built, etc. I like this idea in that it definitely overcomes the issue of the foregrounding my work/study rather than the medium of SL itself, but it feels as though its a bit of a cop-out in the sense that I am studying this very interactive, social, and dynamic medium but presenting it in such a static way.

With that said, I have been experimenting with streaming live video/audio into and out of SL and I think that might be a nice middle-ground for my presentation... I can show static documentation of my piece, but in addition, I will have a projection of Second Life and will feed live audio/video of the visitors into SL, projecting it onto a sculptural 3D virtual artwork that avatars can experience in the virtual world. So viewers will be able to see themselves in a live video feed into, and communicate with avatars looking at their enormous head through their voice.

I did a quick video/audio streaming test and the images above were the result. The first, just a large-scale flat screen, the second was the product of me getting a little more creative with the geometry that the live video is projected on.

I am assimilated.

I am assimilated...

Revised Proposal

I had yet to post my revised project proposal to my blog until now. You can view the .doc file here.

The revisions essentially consist of clarification that my piece no longer focusses on creating stand-alone virtual spaces which are designed in collaboration with homeless members of society. In lieu of this idea (which unfortunately never felt properly developed enough and was limited by the difficulties of it's execution [e.g. finding collaborators willing to work with me]) I am shifting my focus toward revealing the new aesthetics inherent within social, virtual realities as a venue for the creation of art. I feel much more comfortable with this project and am already well underway in my hunt for unique beauty that exists outside of physical reality.