Maryva Mayo, Red Randt, Filthy Fluno and Feathers Boa at the Aho Museum

on The New Media Consortium Campus

Tayzia Abattoir, the Aho's curator, has again put together an exceptional exhibition combining established and emerging artists. It is Red Randt's first exhibition, and Filthy Fluno is the best known artist to emerge from the virtual world of Second Life to the "real" world, having had a six page article in The New York Times Magazine.

Waning
by Feathers Boa

We have previously seen Feathers Boa's "reactive" artwork, but the current show is a leap ahead and is particularly well put together. A series of images with text is on the walls of the gallery, each showing a stage of a woman's life. A feature of the work is that you cannot "camera around" to view it. Each one changes as your avatar approaches it, so if you try to observe this exhibition by standing in one spot, you will not see it. This has been a continually developing aspect of Feathers' works, hence the term "reactive."

In this case the proximity dissolves the woman's image, revealing the remainder of the text. It is a thoughtful and satisfying series. The artist has mastered the technical aspects of this medium and is applying a maturing sense of narrative sequential art and metaphor.

We have seen many artists use interactivity in gimmicky ways, or for its own sake, but in this case it is integral to the work.

This is the first time we have seen Italian artist Maryva Mayo's work, abstract images that are in motion. They are beautiful, but transcend the decorative with a confident sense of spatial depth and interaction of line, form, and transformation.

The influence of abstract expressionism and gesture painting is strong. "La rinascita," for example, evokes Mark Tobey and Rothko.

La rinascita - La renaissance-The rebirth G
New introductions of energy
by Maryva Mayo

The images on this page are just snapshots of a moment in each of the works--you have to stay and watch them "perform" to fully experience them.

Cosmic explosion
by Maryva Mayo

You also can use your camera to go inside these works and experience them as a full screen light show, as in this internal view of "Dream / Sogni."

Dream / Sogni by Maryva Mayo

The 26 works by Red Randt exhibit a wide variety of techniques, primarily sculptural. Some are stationary, while others are active. "The Wobbly Building" (right) is a flexi prim work that collapses and "inflates."

Several of this artist's works are "hommage,"--tributes to artists including Magritte (a pipe that says "This is not a Magritte") and this "soft" building, which is a tribute to Claes Oldenburg.

The Wobbly Building
by Red Randt

These works are well done and fun, with a sense of pun and wordplay. The artist's extensive notes, for example, are dispensed by clicking on this sculpture of notes:

Notes
by Red Randt

Filthy Fluno continues his exploration of Surrealism, Expressionism and Symbolism with mixed reality works that involve images inspired by his virtual world experiences, executed in real world pastel or oil paint, photographed, digitally manipulated, and imported into Second Life.

In some cases the image is duplicated and flipped, creating a bug-eyed creature from which the multilayered content emerges. The current work reminds us of Alfonso Ossorio.

New Glasses Mirrored #1/5 Aho Edition
by Filthy Fluno

Changes are coming to the Report

If you haven't been to The ArtWorld Market Report website recently take a look at the new format. The archived features now headline the site, making it easier for people who are new to the SL art world to see what has been going on the last few years.

In the past we have directed much of the editorial content of the Report toward Second Life residents, and the language often reflected the assumption that our readers were familiar with and had first-hand experience of life in a virtual world. In the future we will be directing content toward the real-world resident who may have limited or no knowledge of virtual life, presenting the work of artists who use the virtual world as a creative medium.

The goal of this shift is to reach out to the "real" art world with reviews and critical essays that establish virtual art as a recognized field in "New Media" that will enable artists to secure funding for virtual art projects.

If you have theoretical, practical, or critical comments or articles you would like to contribute to this effort, please get in touch with ArtWorld Market.

FILTHY TIMES

Filthy Fluno is the subject of a six page feature article in The New York Times Magazine

We have been writing about Filthy since December, 2006, before he started the island art colony of Artropolis in the Second Life^® virtual world. The New York Times has now discovered him, and delves into the question of whether building a virtual career as an artist can create a real world career. Well-duh...it got him six pages in the NYT Magazine of Sunday March 8, 2009. The article quotes ArtWorld Market, in his real world identity as Richard Minsky. You can read the article online if you can't get the paper edition. You also can scroll down and read our articles about Filthy.
The NYT article also includes some good quotes from Dancoyote about virtual art, and below is our review of his current ZeroG SkyDancers performance. The journalist also visited Brooklyn is Watching, and interviewed researchers who have discovered that obese people who have thin avatars are more likely to lose weight.

Filthy Pictures Bridge Two Worlds

Filthy Fluno is a master of the real/virtual interface. His works use traditional media, like oil paint and pastels, to create abstract representations of virtual places and characters. He then markets the images in the Second Life^® world as virtual limited editions that com with a real-world giclée print, and also sells the original paintings and drawings. He has had several international exhibitions that came about through virtual contacts.

Read the article that originally appeared in our archival paper limited edition, which is now out of print

Read about his real/virtual CounterpART Gallery.

Let Love Live

Must See This Month:

The New Media Consortium
hosts
DanCoyote's
Zero-G SkyDancers
in
Let Love Live (L3)

Through March, 2009

If you have never seen the ZeroG SkyDancers then you are missing a spectacular and riveting experience. This show raises the standards for evaluating performance art, not just in the virtual world of Second Life^®, but in all media. It incorporates original musical composition, choreography, set and costume design, as well as computer code scripting. The current iteration was photographed by ArtWorld Market at the performance on Sunday, February 15, 2009. There is no way a series of images can communicate the sensation of being immersed in this performance, with the dancers in their immense costumes, called "cascades," swooping past you. The scale is so huge relative to the size of the avatars that the figures of the dancers are rarely seen, and the visual impression is a ballet of pure light.

Read the compplete review and see ArtWorld Market's photos of the February 15 performance.

Digital Reproductions

[reprinted from the old blog site 4/16/07, with comments]

Karen Schreiner makes a point that requires a new thread:

I'm still unhappy with the notion of "reproduction" when it's applied to digital art. Someone has yet to tell me where the original exists in order for it to be reproduced. No doubt this argument has already taken place many times but I've obviously missed it. If there is no "original" then I'm perplexed how there can be a "reproduction". It's beginning to seem to me we have to re-examine the whole model because we've shifted to an entirely different paradigm. Perhaps the terms "original" and "copy" no longer have relevance in this context. There may even be good reasons to consider *any* rendering of any image that's been entirely produced by digital means as the "original". This seems a little more satisfying than saying we have reproductions (or copies) without an original.

"Original" is certainly a slippery word in this context. The code is the original in the way that a copper plate or litho stone is an original. It's not the object that is intended to be viewed. A print is usually issued in an edition and each iteration is called a "copy." A reproduction of a print (i.e., of a copy) involves scanning or photographing the print and reproducing it in another medium, as in a picture in a book or magazine. A facsimile of a print involves a similar process, but printing it on the same paper, or other medium that the "original" print was on.

The 3D metal prints of Bathsheba are created from original code. So are the 3D SL objects, like Bathsheba Dorn's RhombdO. We have not been calling them prints, but perhaps we should.

We can tell an original print on paper because it's signed by the artist. The signature signifies approval of that copy as authentic. That notion requires more thought, and a lot of thought has been done on it. I suggest reading the essays and their commentaries on Authenticity in Art by Denis Dutton, From Original to Copy and Back Again by James Elkins, along with other papers and discussions at the Art and Cognition Workshops.

To call any rendering of a digital image an original is dicey. In Second Life, for example, a copy may be sold with permission to modify. Someone can modify it and then sell it as an "original" without modify permission, and it will still have the original creator's name on it. The end user may not know it went through an intermediate change. It is called an original.

Zero Point Disaster

[reprinted from the old blog site 7/21/08, with comments]

Yesterday's front page article on the disappearance of Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point stimulated a lot of response. Zero Point was one of the best known and artistically influential builds in the virtual world of Second Life^®. Many residents were incredulous about its disappearance and concerned about the impact of this on every aspect of the virtual world's economy.

This one from an institutional leader summed up the sentiments very well:

... stuck on a plane at LAX and saw this on my treo. ugh. why couldn't linden do a rollback or other recovery? if not possible to recover from things like this, SL can never be a place for serious business. Also makes me wonder about the sanity of my own research investment in SL if this can happen. Linden really can't afford this type of publicity if SL is to be taken seriously! Hoping to hear a solution will be found and very sorry to learn of this.

This morning I wrote to Pathfinder Linden, who has been exceptionally supportive of the arts, asking why they have not done a rollback, and asked "What can I say to the readers--artists, collectors, gallery owners, curators, writers, business owners and institutional leaders--who now doubt whether they should continue creating, collecting and investing in a virtual world where years of work can disappear irrecoverably?" If I receive an answer I will post it.