Crescent Moon Gallery currently has an exhibition of the work of Mr Light Waves / Starax Statosky the virtual world artist and sculptor. I went to visit with my virtual camera and recorded these pictures for Cyberloom.
Dragon by Starax Statosky
Ghostly Eagle by Light Waves
Lion by Light Waves
Touched by Starax Statosky
Goliath by Starax Statosky
Kong by Starax Statosky
Dialogue box for 3D building.
Alchemy?
As far as I understand it all the above sculptures were created using one of these dialogue boxes and all these creations only exist in the virtual world.
Rumsey Maps is a brilliant demonstration of how virtual and real worlds can intersect (or, as in this case overlay each other) to create something educationally richer than either world could provide independently.
Looking out from ‘Clouds Rest’ above Yosemite Valley (topographical map created in 1883).
David Rumsey’s Maps Island opened at the beginning of this year and I encourage you to visit NOT POSSIBLE IRL by Bettina Tizzy for an in-depth explanation of David Rumsey’s work (plus links to a slew of blogs who talk about this sim).
Closeup view of World Globe (1790) and Celestial Globe (1792)
David Rumsey set out to share his antique map collection by using the latest technologies to present them to the widest possible audience. There is an excellent video (about 30 minutes long) shown at his virtual museum in Second Life and on his website David Rumsey Map Collection. You can marvel at the work of creative cartographers and compare antique maps with their modern day counterparts (be prepared to be amazed). This web site is rich and multi layered and also provides what may be the classiest sign up point available for registering to enter Second Life.
An avatar seated upon an orrery inside the world globe
What is so special about maps? For one thing they hold a lot of information yet they can also be framed and displayed like works of art on the wall. Old maps are like old photographs recording the past yet adding another dimension to the present with insights into lost places and ancient memories. They hint at possibilities, unsolved mysteries even hidden treasures; showing us landscapes that existed before motorways hacked through hills and valleys to link up our sprawling car parks.
Virtual map reading wearing an explorer’s hat
Walking across the map of Yosemite Valley converted into a contoured landscape reminded me of making my way through snow (as it was white and dirty gray like real snow) and I was sinking into it. The difference of course is that names are not written across hills and valleys in our physical world, though there are times when this would be useful!
Cyberloom making her way along a river in Yosemite Valley
Crossing a landscape created from a map within a virtual world is thought provoking to say the least. For a start where is this virtual world located? In servers in California? In the 0,1’s of computer coding? In our imagination? Yet, we use maps in Second Life all the time to see if anyone is around, to find SLurls, so get a feel for our ‘location’ in relation to the virtual environment. We can visit in-world planetariums and fly amongst the stars and planets of outer space. And now, we can hike across old maps and stick a push pin into a world chart indicating our real world location.
A truly immersive experience… Cyberloom sinks up to her virtual hat in a virtual river
We have an instinctive need to locate ourselves. We want to identify our personal longitude and latitude in relation to whatever reality we find ourselves in. We take emotional and physical bearings and orientate ourselves to the people and objects that surround us. Part of the success of virtual worlds is due to their ability to provide a ‘place’ for us to position self and thoughts within abstract dimensions. Part of the success of maps is their ability to provide a ‘place’ for us to locate our physical self in relation to time and the landscape around us. And part of the success of Rumsey Maps Island is that it places us inside a metaphor with an x, y, z axial relationship to real experience.
How do avatars fly? Maybe they flap their arms really fast like a bee? See the honeybees in this New Scientist video for the correct arm movement. Trouble is your arms get really tired… and you fall out of the sky.
Now, if we could only move as fast as Jools Holland playing ‘Bumble Boogie’ perhaps we could achieve Boogie Woogie flight?
Tarantula Hawker takes a very final bow before vanishing in a cloud of self-actualization.
Abraham Maslow’s ghost found its way into ‘needs’an exhibit by students studying virtual environments at UCSD on March 18th, 2008. The exhibition raises intriguing questions about Maslow’s hierachy of needs (see Wikipedia) when applied to a virtual world.
Need for Belongingness
The first thing that struck me when I arrived was that I was surrounded by outlandish avatars. Most Second Life residents feel the need to look like youthful fashion models but here the students had deliberately avoided the ’super-hunk/nubile-chick look’. Ironically, their various statements of individuality helped to identify who ‘belonged’ in their group. Feeling my own need for acceptance I quickly went bald, donned a pair of goggles and wrapped a scarf round my avi face. Now I could blend in… be a part of the crowd (half of whom seemed to be over excitedly running round with ray guns).
Urinal by Narddog Samtan
Physiological Needs?
Avatars dine on electricity, drink code and clear their cache on a regular basis (or be in serious trouble). They have ’scripted’ sex, clothe themselves in pixels and take ‘afk’ catnaps. Yet our need for the virtual world to simulate the physical world is so great it is perhaps a new dimension of physiological/psychological need? SL coders tend to reproduce Newton’s Laws of Gravity to help avatars ‘know’ what is expected of them as they maneuver virtual space. Virtual worlds could in future become integrated desktop platforms blending the physical world with 3D metaphors of ‘reality’. We may login to a virtual room rather than stare at the flat two dimensional desktop metaphors of Microsoft and Apple? Our need for physical exercise will remain but perhaps coffee proof keyboards will have been invented by then?
Self-actualization in virtual worlds
Don Bui runs a blog ‘A Franciscan in Azeroth,’ accounting for his progress in World of Warcraft (link above). He writes: “Is Poverty and Morality Possible in Azeroth while leveling? Total Time Played: 11h 12m Total Money Donated to the Church: 63s 53c.” The blog was more of a record of his progress than an account of ethical dilemmas faced, but it is intriguing that he has added this quest for self-actualization to his game. He is consciously creating an ethical avatar at a time when the mass media assumes the anonymity of the Internet and virtual worlds encourages immorality.
Social networking
Need for Safety
Finally, I misguidedly clicked on the exhibit ‘name_map’ by Zomg Ogopogo and permitted some script to be attached to my avatar. The next thing I knew, my avatar was unable to move according to my commands and was tugged and bounced around then wedged against another avi. No words were spoken, other than ‘zomg, zomg, zomg’, and the names of avatars. This no doubt symbolized the shallows of social networking but it reminded of ‘griefing’ and how, even in a virtual world, we have a need to ‘feel’ safe. It was time to shore up my need for self-esteem and leave!
You need to see this thought provoking exhibit and draw your own conclusions! (Just watch out for Zomg)
Political is Personal is “a collaboration between PleaseWakeMeUp Idler and Sherpa Voyager that explores the personal nature of violence through the lens of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.”
I teleport to Emily’s Nest in Cryphia and immediately feel a sense of foreboding. As the area ‘rezzes’ around me I see I am surrounded by a wall. I wait, and a narrow slit in the wall appears. I look up to see clouds moving high above me.
The political is personal
… is political
Always take it personally
Always
I step through the gap into a courtyard overgrown with nettles and surrounded by prison walls. I walk past dead trees to a warehouse. A blood red mist fills the shadowy interior.
A rotating image called ‘Bibles and Korans and Guns’ spins in the entrance. The image consists of two photographs stuck back to back and I see boy soldiers on both sides. American boy soldiers holding Bibles and guns and a lone Iraqi boy soldier holding the Koran and a gun.
The boy who used to have a
conscience
who used to have a life
who used to have a love
Give him a gun
give him fear
give him anger
It’s all political
It’s not ever personal
It’s only one life.
I walk further into the warehouse, stepping into the red mist and see strange pipes with people’s faces on them. The pipes twitch and move when I come close. Some pipes rear up and bend over me and the face is staring down, watching. I don’t know who the people are but guess they represent the men, women and children who have died in Iraq. I wonder why the pipes? Perhaps they are periscope worms rising out of the ground? They are shaped like question marks and remind me of the hearing trumpets used by deaf Victorians. There is no sound here. I am deaf too.
The faces follow you at night
the eyes are watching you
asking you why
the cries haunt your sleep
asking you why
if you want to save us
why kill us first?
you say you want to
create something
yet we are the ones dying
why are you killing us?
I turn to look at the glass panels.
I step up to the panels and then begin walking into them.
As I walk I see hundreds of names appear before me. I walk through the names. The names of casualties.
The picture is never
whole, complete
the mirror has shattered, shards of
glass reflect drunkenly
what we thought to be true
who we thought to be us
when we thought we were right
we never were
Installation created by artist PleaseWakemeUp Idler and poet Sherpa Voyager. All quotes above are by Sherpa Voyager. I could not record all elements of this installation, take a look at it yourself in Second life.
Reactive art piece presented by Feathers Boa during Art Talk! at Mandel ‘BRAT’s and BREW’, 10 March 2008. Location: Artropolis (70, 101, 25)
This virtual world is a giant interactive art exhibit.
I first ventured into Second Life to look at the Goldsmith College of Art, 2007 degree show after reading about it on the BBC . Students put up a digital replica of their art and displayed it in a virtual gallery. Since, that first venture into SL, I have found hundreds of visual artists at work. In fact this virtual world is a giant interactive art exhibit in a constant state of flux, or ‘lag’; perhaps I should say ‘SLag’ or ‘flug’ instead? (To describe SL ‘go-slows’ and crashes.) Artists are no longer bound by the laws of physics, or financial constraints (just the aforementioned technical hiccups) they exploit this by creating unique digital art often on a grand scale. This post is about an artist, Feathers Boa, who makes ‘Reactive Art’ i.e. art programed to respond while you look at it or walk into it.
“its not real art is it?”
When I heard Feathers Boa speak she was asked by the audience if she shows her work ‘in the real world’. She said she is currently an art student and she does not show her SL art anywhere. She believes her art school would not take it seriously “they would laugh at what i do here- its not real art is it?” There is a problem here! Feathers might be right that the school would not take her work seriously. On the other hand, there might be some interested faculty there but art schools can be very intimidating places. Sadly, sometimes these institutions can have an altogether negative effect on student’s creativity. Feathers is making art to be seen in a virtual world and a surprising number of people will see it there. Obviously, at the moment, more people will see her work there than in the physical world.
Second Life as a kind of sketch pad or experimental ‘ideas book’
This makes me wonder whether art schools might benefit from using Second Life as a kind of sketch pad or experimental ‘ideas book’? Send students in there to make art. Encourage them to create media ‘mash-ups’; explore their images and virtual sculpture; get them to experiment with their art on a huge virtual scale. Instead of discouraging students it makes sense to see what they are doing; consider how to bring their ideas into the real world; at the same time start taking people into immersive virtual gallery space. This is just what Course tutor Matt Ward at Goldsmith College of Art did in 2007.
Feather’s Boa
And now a look at just a few of Feathers Boa’s art pieces. I photographed the works at a distance so that you can get a sense of their scale. She has more work but I only managed to capture these pieces. I am not doing them justice here as they are ‘frozen’ by my camera. In SL, I could walk into some pieces, hear them or see them move before my eyes. I have added some of Feathers Boa’s words beneath her artwork. (Words saved from the text message of her presentation at ‘Art Talk!’) Also see PleaseWakemeUp’s (Art Talk’s host) introduction to Feathers at the end of this post.
Heart of Steel
ok this one is weird
very little reactiveness
the contrast is beauty and hardness
industrial and cold
the heart is rusty
and u can hear the beat (it’s true, the room is filled with the sound of heartbeats)
you’ll notice details
the corrosive materials
label
the broken tile
the rustiness
Haunting Beauty
this is a self portrait of sorts
the face is RL me
the rest is an old picture and a montage
now watch (Feather’s walks towards the picture and the face changes into a skull)
this is about death and spirits of the past
i found this photo and it intrigued me
it was in some stuff of my families
i wanted to make my portrait as if it was haunted
when i was a little girl i felt i was ugly and weird
i do alot of self portraits now
its the idea we are haunted by the past
our own
and others
Living Book invites Feathers to walk into its pages
Alice in Wonderland
you walk into the book
and it changes
Living Book: Walk into me!
your perception changes inside
from outside
Living Book: Walk into me!
the pages shift
Living Book: Walk into me!
and you never can be sure what they say
its the constant shifting of perceptions
Layers in front of this image move like ghostly curtains
Frigid
and its a self portrait
this was my first reactive
more 3D mixed with photoshop and objects
she is frozen
trapped and trying to escape
About the Artist – PleaseWakeMeUp Idler’s introduction given at ‘Art Talk!’:
“Feathers Boa is the avatar of a 19 year old female art student from the Boston (U.S.) area. She creates richly textured and incredibly detailed digital paintings that blend modernist and antique styles seamlessly. To create the pieces, she trolls junk shops and back alleys to find interesting objects such as old sepia photos, newspapers, postcards, letters, broken watches, etc. She either photographs these objects using a consumer grade Nikon digital camera or uses her Epson RX580 scan bed to scan them directly into Photoshop CS3. These “found” objects usually form the central images of her pieces. But she also uses Cinema 4D r10 to create wholly digital 3D objects. She sees textures everywhere and never leaves home without her camera in her handbag or backpack.”
Social Presence Theory (SPT) was developed by the social psychologist John Short (1976). He conducted examinations of different media to see to what extent users experienced each other as ‘real’ people (rather than just vague presences) at the other end of impersonal communication devices.
The intensity of our sense of the social presence of others depends on the particular media in use. This, in turn influences our behavior by how much we experience others as breathing, thoughtful, emotional beings with whom we might share some degree of empathy. When Short was first developing this theory he was largely pre-occupied with the influence of the telephone! Today, social presence is a term that pops up in the area of computer-mediated communications (CMC) and distance education.
Avatar closeup
So, how does Second Life stack up as a media form in terms of social presence theory? How does it compare to the phone, Skype or instant messaging?How much information can we gather together to feel a sense of social presence through our strange blinking avatars and IMs?
My new (but limited) understanding of SPT gives me the sense that the more we can add up a picture of each other, then the more comfortable we can potentially feel in the communication, and thereby with each other. The social presence ‘fragments’ we draw together tell us whether the other person is a sympathetic or an aggressive presence. The more information we can add up, the more we experience the social presence of each other, but in SL there is the added dimension on drawing these elements together through avatars. (A human representation of the media itself?)
Singed Angel dancing
These SL avatars can have an uncanny ‘human’ appearance. The avatar moves around as though it was alive, fidgeting, moving its eyes and adjusting its posture without you controlling these subtle movements. As you move around your computer screen your avatar studies your movements, following the trail of your thoughts as you move your mouse through on-screen menus. The avatar certainly seems to take on a life of its own.
Two avis chatting in a birdcage
One observation is that Second Life by-passes many of the natural reservations and constraints that we would have in ‘real life’. It intensifies communications and can convey a sense of ‘closeness’ with others through the use of avatars and text. SPT notes the fact that people select media for its degree of social presence and its particular suitability for the task they wish to accomplish. That is, we decide whether to meet, speak on the phone, or send an instant message depending on what we want to say and how we want to say it. Well, now we can add virtual reality and avatars to our list of media options. Second Life does convey a strong sense of social presence that readily puts people at ease. This is a peculiar phenomenon considering we are fully aware we are communicating via the artificial facial expressions and body language of avatars. Sometimes these avatars are striped tigers, exotically dressed humans or creatures that are part human and part animal (furries). Perhaps then, a large part of Second Life’s social presence is due to sharing the same joke?
Dance-pole tiger
Reference:
Short, J. Williams, E. Christie, B. (1976). The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. London.
Trickster sinking into the sand – this view shows the tail!
Trickster avatar created by Max Hatfield. Purchased at the store named ‘Grendel’s Children’. Grendel’s Children is filled with fabulous (in the true sense of the word) avatar designs.
Location in Second Life: at Avaria Tor 202, 142, 249. Grendel’s Children. dragons. The Birdworx & more.
Neon Dreaming 2 by Glyph Graves. Firespire 39,148.4
Q: ‘Second Life – Why would you go there?
A: To be creative and express myself!
Perhaps it would help to point out that Second Life is literally what you make it. This is possible because Linden Labs handed over the means to build and organize the virtual world to its users. That said, some people cannot manage this kind of freedom; they arrive in SL and find there is no structure; they have to make decisions for themselves; they feel lonely and aimless and leave never to return. However, others thrive on this kind of freedom.
The Dutch think tank EPN state in their report ‘Second Life. The Second Life of Virtual Reality’: “It is striking that those surveyed who spend considerable time in Second Life frequently belong to the creative or IT professions. These professions offer relatively high incomes and are populated by those who call themselves “producer”, or who make things. It appears that a creative vanguard (IT and creative professionals) has ensconced itself in Second Life.”
The report talks about creative and IT professionals but you will also find plenty of other people who work in less obviously creative professions. I have met accountants, educators, social workers, nurses and students amongst others; who are also using Second Life to create things from jewelery and poetry to virtual furniture, islands and flying saucers. In my view they are all making art. Not the kind of art you hang on the wall. This is art you immerse yourself in and share with unexpected (and often funny) results.
Second Life is unpredictable on many levels from platform crashes, system ‘lag’ and some bizarre manifestations of human behavior on one end of the spectrum. At the other end we have imagination unleashed with beautiful environments, live music, art exhibitions and cutting edge educational classes (and the list goes on). This is art where others are invited to participate and ‘share the paint’.
Q. ‘Second Life – Why would you go there?
A. To look at books!
A visit to Publishing Island Book Village (SLurl 3,172, 36) is like walking through a magazine about new writers. Books are displayed in shops and the best ones have creative ways of displaying excerpts from their books. There are many places to visit… in fact you can get lost in the winding streets.
Sitting at the table in the Chronicle Room and a bit green from drinking the tea…
Above you can see a recreation of Tayna’s Chronicle Room from the book OTHERNESS: RIFT by Rina Slayter (aka Twyla Briggs in SL). She writes “This big red book is called the Rede and is a very important, powerful spell book. In my novel, it truly has a mind of its own…” she adds: “The crystal ball here is almost as active as the one Tayna uses and the cup of green tea she drinks is nearly as strong. Simply click on the book and you are wafted away to Rina Slayter’s web site.
Kim Umscheid’s studio
The Artwork of Kit Umscheid. This is a great place to visit, a veritable treasure trove of goodies! Kim Umscheid has illustrated a children’s book called ‘Pirate’s Alphabet’ and you can view an electronic version in the shop. She has also put up a display that shows how the illustrations were created step by step. Make sure you look around and delve in the drawers, there is lots to see! You can look at books on the shelves and get a free version to keep. I picked out H.G Wells ‘Time Machine’ and upstairs in Kim’s studio she appears to be building her own time machine.
Sunhead Mind Cafe has a display of beautiful book covers. You can click on a cover and then you will receive the following options: ‘Buy the book in Real Life.’ ‘Book Notes’. ‘Author Information’ and ‘Recommend’.
“Open Books publishes classic, modern and avant-garde high-quality fiction and non-fiction. All Open Books publications are paper-free, published online, and available to read free.”
Free! ‘Nothing to shake a stick at!’ as they say in these parts!
