Farewell, Spawn of the Surreal!
During the summer, I finally decided to put some order in my web activity. I buyed a new domain and started uploading there all my stuff. So, the moment came to take a decision about Spawn of the Surreal as well. I started the blog about two years ago, in July 2007. At the time, I was intrigued by the possibilities of art in virtual worlds, and mantaining a blog was a good way to keep the grasp and go on researching on the subject even when my work was bringing me in other directions. I posted on it quite regoularly for about five months. It was a wonderful experience, I learned a lot and I met great people.
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HAMMERING THE VOID
On May 29, 2009 opened Gazira Babeli’s second solo show in real life, and the first one in Berlin, at DAM Gallery. Gazira asked me and Patrick Lichty to write something for the exhibition. Here you can find my short essay. Patrick did more, writing a beautiful, passionate sermon titled Gazira Babeli: Hammering at the Truth. You can read it on NPIRL.
MACHINE ANIMATION & ANIMATED MACHINES
The following text has been published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Eddo Stern: Flamewar“, curated by Ilana Tenenbaum at the Israeli Haifa Museum of Art (January 24 – June 20, 2009). The book also features texts by the curator and New York based art critic and curator Ed Halter. Enjoy!
Re:akt! 7 – Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG Reenactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s Imponderabilia
A sample text from RE:akt! Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Re-reporting, a book published on the occasion of a show opening tomorrow at MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, and then traveling to SKUC gallery, Ljubljana (March 25 – April 17, 2009) and MMSU – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka (May 22 – June 21, 2009) – more infos and texts at http://www.reakt.org/
For God’s Sake! Catalogue essay (part 2)
etoy – http://missioneternity.org/
“God games” are one of the most successful videogame genres, and together with the satellite vision made popular by GPS systems and Google Earth, they show how much we enjoy having an omniscient, commanding view of the world. What the Greeks regarded as the sin of hubris is commonplace for us, almost mundane, as is another divine prerogative man has granted himself: that of taking on different forms and using these to operate in different worlds.
For God’s Sake! Catalogue essay (part 1)
FOR GOD’S SAKE!
“God Always Uses the Latest Technology.”
In the little town in northern Italy where I live, which is economically prosperous, culturally sleepy, religiously bigotted and politically conservative, there is a small but interesting “Museum of Art and Spirituality”. It presents part of the collection of contemporary art that belonged to Giovanni Battista Montini, a.k.a. Pope Paul VI, an illustrious local man and possibly the last Catholic pope to believe that contemporary art could convey a religious message.
FOR GOD’S SAKE!
A little bit of self promotion (please forgive me for that – more thoughtful contributions will come soon, hopefully!) On November 24, Spawn of the Surreal was featured on the blog artcareer.net, in a “100 Must-See Art Blogs” list. The list itself is a wonderful resource for art surfers…
And now, the thing that has kept me away from this page for weeks 
On December 5th, 2008 the 9th International New Media Art Festival Pixxelpoint will open at the Nova Gorica City Gallery (Mestna galerija Nova Gorica). As the curator of this year’s edition, I suggested the festival’s theme and curated the exhibition. You can find the press release below. Among many other things, the exhibition features 7UP, a brand new work by Gazira Babeli and Patrick Lichty; The Absolutely Last (and Final) Supper, one of the first ground-breaking performances by Second Front; and Havingfunhead, a pre-Second Life avatar study by Alan Sondheim.
7UP is a series of 12 micro-performances set in the virtual world of Second Life and captured on video. In actual fact, as often happens in performance art, the video is freed from its subordinate role of mere “documentation” and becomes the real object of the artists’ observations. This sits perfectly with the nature of performance art in virtual worlds, which are perceived by those who operate in them as settings for real action, and by those who merely passively observe them as a flow of moving images on a screen. The minimal nature of the action, combined with the repetition generated by the loop, makes these works into little animated paintings. It is no coincidence that the artists explicitly refer to Renaissance portals decorated with panels that tell a story. The story told by 7UP is that of two projected identities (avatars) that seem to have acquired independence: the absurd, boring and slightly vacuous life of two demigods who, when their wirepullers are away, get together to try and find a way – an entirely inhuman (or rather superhuman) way – of passing the time. They sit immobile in a cell, under a clock that measures time standing still, or retreat to a tiny desert island, where they go endlessly round the same palm tree. Or they become statues in a crypt full of Mickey Mouse skulls, or live out the American dream of life on the road, until they run up against the papier-mâché and polygon scenery…
The Absolutely Last (and Final) Supper is a re-enactment of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, and was described by the authors as a “Da Vinci Code tableaux for the 21st Century”. The work challenges the popularity of masterpieces which holds sway in Second Life, packed as it is with reproductions of famous paintings and sculptures. Yet, profaning the painting with an improbable punk twist, they obviously profane the sacred history in the same time. Thus, at least, if we look at the members of Second Front, vomiting wine and bread on the sacred table, as mere alter-egos of real people. But if we look at them as the semi-gods they are, everything becomes clear: they are just playing with one of their peers, and using all the freedom that their status gives them.
In January 2007, this video was embedded as a backdrop for Second Front’s Art’s Birthday performance that was streamed live into the Western Front in Vancouver. A video here.
Alan says about Havingfunhead: “Havingfunhead was produced at the Virtual Environments Laboratory at West Virginia University, using avatar head modeling software. I’ve always felt very uncomfortable with the piece, because of its abjection and what it seems to say about human relationships. The head is wounded, filled with ‘junk,’ and possibly female. The piece is an allegory of war and the objectification of war. The voice that is speaking does not represent my point of view, but just the opposite; it’s a piece of horror…” A video here.
Other works that may be interesting for this blog readers will come soon.
Now, the press release…
——
PIXXELPOINT 2008 / FOR GOD’S SAKE!
Kulturni Dom Nova Gorica (Slovenia) is pleased to announce the 9th International New Media Art Festival Pixxelpoint, that will open at the Nova Gorica City Gallery (Mestna galerija Nova Gorica) on December 5, 2008, at 8.00 PM. The festival will run from December 5 to December 12, 2008.
Pixxelpoint is one of the most successful and renowned festivals of new media art in Slovenia and also abroad. Its purpose is firstly, to bring the information technology and new media art closer to the general public, and secondly, to raise awareness about a different potential to use computer among the young.
FOR GOD’S SAKE!
This year’s edition of the festival focus on the theme “FOR GOD’S SAKE! How the media change the way we imagine / represent / honour / curse the divinity”, suggested by the Italian art critic, teacher and curator Domenico Quaranta. In his words, “contemporary artistic projects have often raised such issues as technological fetishism, the oracular nature of the internet, the fideistic attitude we have towards the media and the evangelizing bent of those who produce them. This art often takes a critical approach, but also looks for an authentic vehicle of spirituality in the media. Taking this as its theme, Pixxelpoint 2008 addresses saints and heretics alike, showing projects which explore the relationship between media and spirituality at a key point in human history, a time of civilization clashes and neocon upsurges, apocalyptic nightmares and hopes for a new enlightenment.”
Among the works, distributed between the two spaces of Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica and Galerija Tir in Mostovna, the ones selected through the international call for artists are presented together with the ones proposed by internationally renown artists invited to take part in the exhibition. As in the previous editions, the festival program involves panels, workshops, musical events and the screening of a movie. The events will take place on both the sides of the border between Italy and Slovenia: together with Mostovna, Associazione Lucide and Dams – Università di Udine, located in Gorizia, have been involved. They will produce Pixxelmusic, a parallel festival that will run from December 10 to 12, 2008.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition, distributed between Nova Gorica and Mostovna, is the result of a difficult process of selection of the more than 110 applications arrived this year; a selection that should take into account not just the quality of the proposals, but also their ability to embody the suggested theme in a different way, and to integrate effectively the projects shown by the invited artists. The exhibition consists of 30 works by 30 different artists. Among them, etoy’s Mission Eternity project, described as a “digital cult of the dead”; the network of meditating computers set up by the German artists Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger; the Empathy Box by the Italian collective Io/cose, which helps building a spiritual community based on the sharing of pain; the anti-institutional, new media rituality suggested by Otherehto; Martin Conrads and Ingo Gerken’s conceptual work, an interrogation on the ritual use of communication technologies; and then Gazira Babeli and Patrick Lichty’s video-installation 7UP, a research on the meaning of an avatar life, and Janez Janša’s remake of Koyaanisqatsi, which uses Google Earth as a source. The video screening, situated in the Galerija Tir in Mostovna, collects all the videos on show at the festival, putting together some brand new works with recent “classics” such as Negativland’s The Mashin’ of the Christ (2004) and Eddo Stern’s Deathstar (2004) , an exploration of the relationship between religion and violence.
Below, the complete list of all the participating artists:
ALTERAZIONI VIDEO (Italy); GAZIRA BABELI & PATRICK LICHTY (Italy / USA); BridA / JURIJ PAVLICA, TOM KERŠEVAN, SENDI MANGO (Slovenia); MARTIN BUTLER (Netherlands); MARTIN CONRADS & INGO GERKEN (Germany); BRYANT DAMERON (USA); ETOY (Switzerland / International); UTE HÖRNER & MATHIAS ANTLFINGER (Germany); IO/COSE (Italia); JANEZ JANŠA (Slovenia); JAŠA (Slovenia); MARKUS KISON (Germany); CLEMENS KOGLER & KARO SZMIT (Austria); OLIVER LARIC (Germany); LES LIENS INVISIBLES (Italy); KEVIN LOGAN (USA); MANU LUKSCH (UK); MOLLEINDUSTRIA (Italy); PETROS MORIS (Italy); NEGATIVLAND (USA); OTHEREHTO (Cyberspace); PASH (Germany); CRISTIANO POIAN & PAOLO TONON (Italy); SECOND FRONT (Second Life / International); DANA SEDEROWSKY (Sweden); GULI SILBERSTEIN (Israel); ALAN SONDHEIM (USA); EDDO STERN (USA).
PIXXELMUSIC
On December 10, 2008, at 6.30 PM Pixxelmusic, a related festival, will open in the restaurant “Al Falegname” in Gorizia, Italy. The festival will run until December 12, and includes many different events. Pixxeldinner, a dinner / panel (coordinated by Marco Mancuso, director of the editorial project Digicult) that will take place after the opening mixing pleasure, conviviality and culture, will involve the following speakers: Claudio Sinatti, filmaker, vj and video artist; Antonio Riello, artist and teacher; Peter Mlakar, head of the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy of the NSK; Jurij Krpan, director and curator of the Galerija Kapelica in Ljubliana; and Claudia D’Alonzo, indipendent curator. Pixxellab (December 11), a vj session with the Dutch artist EBOMAN and the Italian duo Mylicon/EN, and Pixxelnite (December 12), with the group Useless Wooden Toys, will close the festival.
PROGRAM
December 5th 2008
8 p.m. Opening of Pixxelpoint – 9th International New Media Art Festival
Mestna galerija Nova Gorica (City Gallery)
December 6th 2008
6 p.m. Workshop with members of art group Etoy
Mestna galerija Nova Gorica (City Gallery)
9 p.m. Electro Music Night
DJ set Roli, Gogo, Krle
Mostovna
Entrance fee: 3 EUR
December 9th 2008
6 p.m. eXistenZ, D. Cronenberg (Canada, UK, 1999)
Kinemax, Hall 2 (P.zza Vittoria 41), Gorizia
In collaboration with organization “La Farfalla sul mirino”.
Film will be screened in Italian language. Free entrance.
December 10th 2008
6.30 p.m. Opening of Pixxelmusic08
Restaurant Al Falegname (Via Maniacco 2), Gorizia
7.30 p.m. Pixxeldinner
Restaurant Al Falegname (Via Maniacco 2), Gorizia
Participation confirmation needed. Contact pixxeldinner@yahoo.it.
December 11th 2008
3 p.m. Workshop with art group Mylicon/EN
Palazzo del Cinema, Dams Cinema, Red Hall
(P.zza Vittoria 41), Gorica
In collaboration with Universita di Udine, DAMS Gorizia.
9 p.m. Pixxellab
Participating: Mylicon/EN, EBOMAN
Performances
Auditorium della Cultura Friulana (via Roma 5), Gorizia
December 12th 2008
10 p.m. Pixxelnite
Mostovna
End of the festival
MORE INFOS:
Alan Sondheim, the Accidental Artist
Issue 31 of the CIAC Electronic Magazine, entirely devoted to art in Second Life, has just been published. The magazine features, along with a really interesting essay by Patrick Lichty, a text by the net pioneer Fred Forest and some nice reviews (Babeli’s Olym Pong, Molotov Alva, Eva and Franco Mattes, Alissa 1969 Seriman), a short review I wrote about Alan Sondheim’s impressive installation The Accidental Artist (Odyssey 48, 12, 22). I reblog it below with some more images.
Julu Twine dancing
“In my world, there are no errors, only seductions!”
Alan Sondheim
“[My work] is concerned with inconceivable positionings of one’s own avatar, positionings within which behaviors pile on behaviors, creating ‘behavior collisions’ that create, for the viewer (distinct from the performer) a disturbing and/or dis/eased representation of the body, an abject body that indicates something else other than normative is occurring, something that can’t be absorbed. With Gaz, this occurs first-person – the change is to ‘me’ and my image/imaginary; with my work, it is third-person and in a sense stains or transforms the mise en scene into something abject and unexpected.” 1
I commissioned this text some months ago, upon Gaz’s suggestion, for a book I was editing. Translating it into Italian was hard, but also a wonderful experience. Doing it, I encountered a writer who uses language in the same way that the artist Alan Sondheim uses textures, codes, scripts, physical laws to bring his ambitious, disturbing, absorbing and overwhelming Gesamtkunstwerk to life. And what are textures, codes, scripts and physical laws, if not language? Language and body: these are the pillars of Alan Sondheim’s work. Both are concerned with the issue of identity, but not in an obvious, prosaic way. Both language and the body are the result of a mish-mash of human and machinic, natural and artificial:
“In SL your bodies intended, there’s nothing given but the slate. [...] it’s the projections that fundamentally characterize it – introjections from SL body to organism, projections from organism to SL body.” 2
Sexed. Photo Alan Sondheim
Identity. Since the dawn of the internet, it has been a given that a homepage is a projection of oneself on the net. Sondheim’s website 3 doesn’t even have a homepage: it is just an index page with an alphabetical list of files. There are no folders or any other devices to help you make sense of it all. Txt files, html files, images, videos, mp3s, essays, personal data: everything is on the same level. Take all this stuff, put it in a shaker, mix it with whatever you can find in a digital landfill such as Second Life (scripts, porn images, prims, active objects, textures etc.), and lastly distribute it upon three levels (underground, ground-floor and sky-sphere) – and you get The Accidental Artist. 4
“The human figure’s place in art gets turned inside out here in this world of unfolded and refolded geometries. What remains of the body in the domain of the virtual? What survives the transition? Could this still be called a body? Where are we going in this crossing over into bits, why are we going there/nowhere and what does it say about the nature of human desire? At what point does a beautiful accident become a tragic mistake? Is there truly such a thing as a mistake?” 5
The Accidental Artist is a body turned into an environment 6, which abuses both users – kicking them around, throwing them up into the sky or down to hell, and, by virtue of its very existence, challenging those of users – and the place it is built in, bypassing all the rules of SL. In a text, Sondheim enlists his “not inconsiderable” sins in SL: “I have overburdened the servers with far too many video and image textures. / I have added too many prim scripts to too many objects. / I have required far too complex screen redrawings time and time again. / I have taken apart the building where the exhibition is held…”, he writes. We could say that The Accidental Artist is the aesthetic of sin and disobedience. If paradise is a masterpiece of simplicity, complexity is evil; thus Sondheim is a sinner, and his installation is too. He doesn’t like things simple, and even if he gave visitors two pages of recommendations on how to get the best out of his installation, he knows they would never understand its complexity. There is no linear way to describe or explain The Accidental Artist. Sondheim knows it, and that is why he created it, instead of writing an essay. In a way, The Accidental Artist is a visual essay. In his list of sins he confesses: “I have overlaid the whole with far too much theory. / I have thought too much and have left little space for spontaneous creation with the exception of the tunings and retunings that constantly occur.” This is true, but not entirely. When you enter The Accidental Artist you are overwhelmed by the range of possibilities it opens up, and contents and theories it displays. Sure, you can’t isolate them, UNDERSTAND them: but you SEE them in a glance, or better still, you EXPERIENCE them, and that is awesome.
At the same time, The Accidental Artist is a body of work that, while it occurs, while it is being experienced in different conditions by different users, generates other works, and other considerations. Sondheim is the first user of his own creation. The various series of videos and images he has put on his website are the best proof of this. Falling Sky, made in the skysphere with the sky set to midnight, is abstract, flashing, absorbing. Sexed, focused on the body, is fleshy, bloody and repulsive.
Falling Sky. Photo Alan Sondheim
In their end works very few artists manage to hide the creative process and render it as perfect and finite as a diamond. In SL, Babeli is one of them. Her works are classic, simple, easy to experience, and do not need settings. Most artists fail in the search for simplicity. Sondheim points to a completely different target: he doesn’t make the diamond, but gives us the furnace. He doesn’t point to a final work, but explores and exposes the process. Try it. Looking into the fire can be a great experience, no different from looking into a diamond.
Julu Twine
NOTES
1 : Alan Sondheim, “I met my Baby, Out Behind the Gaz-Works”, in Domenico Quaranta (ed.), Gazira Babeli, Brescia: Fabio Paris Editions, 2008, p.81.
2 : Ibid, p. 79.
3 : See Alan Sondheim’s website : www.alansondheim.org.
4 : To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist, sign up on Second Life and go to slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22.
5 : From The Accidental Artist’s notecard.
Alan Dojoji
6 : Alan Sondheim’s first avatar, Alan Dojoji, actually is a body turned into an environment. She is a kind of nebula, a luminescent agglomerate of abstract and human shapes and other particles that move and fade in the sky. His second avatar, Julu Twine, has a female shape, with a real penis between her legs, and usually performs slow, enigmatic dances that turn her body into a spineless puppet.
WHY THERE IS NO VIRTUAL REINASSANCE
Tomorrow (October 24, 2008) I will be in Florence to speak at the panel “Arte solo per avatar?”, together with many other speakers: Margherita Balzerani, Fabio Fornasari, Stephan Doesinger, Miltos Manetas, Davide Borra, Fabio Paris, Maria Bettetini, Rosanna Galvani, Giampiero Moioli, Pierluigi Casolari, Marco Cadioli, Laura Gemini, Berardo Carboni, Paolo Valente, Clare Rees, Carlo Infante and Giuseppe Stampone.
I uploaded on Google Docs a visual speedrun of my presentation. You can watch it below or at this link.
THE ARTIST AS ARTWORK IN VIRTUAL WORLD – PART 2
Eva and Franco Mattes, Reenactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s Imponderabilia – Synthetic Performance in Second Life, 2007.
Apart from what is produced, we have to say that everything in a virtual world is, first of all, a cultural construct . And everything, including the artist, can be considered as an artistic project. In other words, an avatar artist who works in Second Life, no matter the means he uses, is the artistic project of a real artist in Second Life platform.
This concept can affect all sectors, not just the artistic one. And the good results depend on how people can work on their virtual (or avatar) alter ego. Aimee Weber and Anshe Chung (one of the most popular designers and the first millionaire of Second Life respectively) were successful not only thanks to their work and the contracts they signed: they’ve been able to play in an excellent way the role of popular designer and millionaire building speculator. A bad painter is a bad painter in Second Life too.
However, it could be an interesting project to create the character of a bad painter able to infest with his bad works the citizens’ houses.
Playing a specific role has been a popular strategy in contemporary art. Giorgio de Chirico, in all his life, played the ironic role of the conservative “Pictor Optimus”, enemy of every kind of modernism. Andy Warhol was able to successfully manage his public mask, like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. With Second Life you can create real identities that can become independent.
Here a Marcel Duchamp could create different and several Rrose Selavys; he can make them interact with us, and make them more real than himself. He can give them a (human, humanoid or totally abstract) body, a story, a behavior. In SL art what is important is the artist creation. Let’s see some examples.
Eva e Franco Mattes
Once upon a time there was an artistic group called 0100101110101101.ORG: a misleading name, that hid an ambiguous group of people. They plagiarized websites, misrepresented some organizations (such as the Vatican or the Nike), created new ones (Darko Maver), and interacted with people under different names every time. With their group of projects called “glasnost” (the first one was Life Sharing in 2000), 0100101110101101.ORG chose the digital transparency. Life Sharing allows everybody to enter their computer, shared online through a file sharing system, and to interact with their data: you can read their e-mails, copy their data and see what’s inside their folders. Someone considers it a “digital pornography”. The following project, Vopos (2002), allows to monitor their movements on a world map through a GPS system. 0100101110101101.ORG is now more transparent, but its identity is still incomplete. We have just some clues, some documents and data about their Darko Maver: but is all this enough to prove their existence?
In the following projects, 0100101110101101.ORG introduced two new names: Eva and Franco Mattes. Are they husband and wife? Are they brother and sister, or cousins? They have the same surname, but Eva Mattes is a German actress and singer, one of Werner Herzog’s muses… All these doubts about the new identity mean that it is still a “cultural construct”, an identity mask. They said: “Eva and Franco Mattes are a construct just like 0100101110101101.ORG, maybe even more” [14]. With Portraits, the Mattes became aware of the huge power of virtual worlds, the chance to make real these masks. And they became aware of their power. Watching Lanai Jarrico wearing the clothes she was wearing in 13 Most Beautiful Avatar s is like a revelation: she is saying that the portrait proved her existence. An avatar is real and not a projection of something.
Even Eva and Franco, in SL, need an avatar. This could seem bizarre, but it is a logical choice: “Since within virtual worlds you can be whoever and whatever, we find more interesting to be ourselves [15]”. Ourselves? They create avatar so similar to Eva and Franco Mattes that sometimes you can meet them in the real world: average height, thin and nervous body, a sober and dark outfit, black and unruly hair for him, long and blond hair for her. Does this mean “to be ourselves” in SL? I don’t think so. This means to transform your own body into a mask, and this mask into a new body.
In SL, Eva and Franco Mattes show the performances by Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Gilbert and George [16]. They need it, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. For this reason the performances are a reflection about what happens to a performance when it is interpreted by virtual bodies, and about such physical elements as violence, decency and sexuality in a virtual world.
Gazira Babeli
“My body can go barefoot, but my avatar needs Prada shoes.” [17]
Gazira Babeli is one of the many Second Life avatars who decided to hide the identity of their “real” alter ego: it is really frequent for ordinary people, but not for popular people who usually want to make clear who they really are.
This is because their popularity in SL can be a promotional means in their real life. It works for artists, and this is one of the reasons of Gazira’s interest in it. She is one of the most popular and estimeed artists of SL. Her ambiguous identity is one of the reasons of her popularity. She doesn’t use SL as a promotional means: it is her own place, the only place where she can exist. Her works help to draw her portrait and her personality – it is a rare case, since the avatar is often considered as a mere tool to interact with people and create works. Gazira is the irascible witch who unleashes earthquakes, throws pizzas and records, imprisons her audience in cans of Campbell’s Soup; she is the rebellious artist thrown out of the official art places. She is the only artist who broke SL taboos, she deformed avatars, literally “giving” her own body away and stealing other avatars’ skins.
n her isolated island (Locus Solus), Gazira is not so different from Martial Canterel, the bizarre inventor who – in Raymond Roussel’s novel [18] – creates new objects from creative manipulation of language. Gazira manipulates scripts and calls this “performances” (even if it is a sculpture, a painting or an installation). She experiments on her own skin her actions.
Dancoyote Antonelli & Juria Yoshikawa
Unlike Gazira, Dancoyote and Juria are really different from their own avatars. These two artists developed, in different ways, a similar “formalist” work, focused on the exploitation of aesthetic and multimedia potentialities of this tool. They think SL is a kind of exploitable software and not a social universe to interact with. Maybe, unlike Gazira, they couldn’t understand that in a virtual world software and social universe belong to the same concept: creating an installation always means interacting with the world. Anyway, their work is appreciated by SL cultural elite and by the Lindens themselves, who think it’s the way to make their creativity dream come true.
In real life, Dancoyote Antonelli is DC Spensley, a not too young artist whose work looks like the late “cyberart” of the first 1990s: digital creations and three-dimensional software. However, in SL he is an avant-garde artist, and he recently collected his most important works in a futuristic museum. But we can’t say that his work improved just thanks to SL. By creating Dancoyote, DC Spensley made Philip Rosedale’s dreams come true. Dancoyote is a creative, imaginative and dynamic boy; he is aware of his own role and he can make his dreams come true because he understood that in SL “the only limit is your own imagination” (Does it sound a bit rhetorical? Well, it is one of Lindens’ mottos).
Juria Yoshikawa is definitely more modest. He appeared in SL for the first time in 2007, presenting her works almost everywhere. She transformed the three-dimensional spaces of SL into translucent panels and coloured lights losing the space sense, in a sort of visual digital nirvana. She is small, with Oriental features and light blue hair. For this reason some months later it was a surprise to find out that Juria is the digital artist Lance Shields, popular in the Japanese new media art scene since the first years of the 1990s
Shields speaks of Juria in third person: “She inevitably chooses scales larger than conventional gallery work because she is interested in people experiencing the work in a physical way – flying through them, riding on them and socializing within the art. To Juria virtual art is about freeing oneself up to create in ways she finds impossible in real life.” [19]
Juria Yoshikawa and Dancoyote Antonelli don’t depend on their own creators anymore. It seems they have created a new kind of art. Actually, Juria and Dancoyote are the best work by two artists who understood the potentialities of a second life.
NOTES
[14] Domenico Quaranta, “L’azione più radicale è sovvertire se stessi”. Interview to Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.ORG). In Eva e Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.ORG): Portraits , by Domenico Quaranta, in the exhibition brochure, Brescia, Fabioparisartgallery, 2007.
[15] In AAVV, Nothing is true, everything is possible , 2007 – http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/performances/interview.html
[16] I’m referring to Synthetic Performances , a collection of re-interpretations of classic performances. Eva and Franco Mattes are developing it in Second Life. Cfr. http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/performances/index.html
[17] Gazira Babeli, in Tilman Baumgaertel, “My body can walk barefoot, but my avatar needs Prada shoes”. Interview with Gazira Babeli, in Nettime , 23 marzo 2007,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0703/msg00032.html
[18] Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus , 1914. Giulio Einaudi Editore, Torino 1975
[19] “She inevitably chooses scales larger than conventional gallery work because she is interested in people experiencing the work in a physical way – flying through them, riding on them and socializing within the art. To Juria virtual art is about freeing oneself up to create in ways she finds impossible in real life.” Cfr. http://memespelunk.org/blog/?page_id=39
