Five looking for art in Contrechoc

It had to happen: to write about what Five “themselves” produces in a small backyard on a messy continent. Always talking and writing about others. Is it art in Contrechoc? That is the big question! If Five cannot show what art is on this tiny plot of land, how to criticize other peoples ideas and solutions? Actually this is the nature of art: being rather….difficult to grasp, always eluding, and ephemeral. It should be. Art should be beyond, showing other ways, questioning existing solutions. But is questioning enough, when it is clear that the answers will never be given - by art? Art can be thought of as a continuing exercise to think outside the boundaries of the actual. In this sense SL as a whole is in this category. Although a lot in SL is trying to be a copy of RL, it will continually develop to become a world of its own. Back from the largest, the global of SL, to the local of Contrechoc. What is shown will change every instant, things will be added, things will be deleted, so don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize the pictures. Five is experimenting with images coming from real life art, and the possibilities of SL.

Five has invited friends to contribute. This makes it possible to see what happens with different kinds of styles and personalities. As “doing” painting or drawing is not possible, (although you meet an easel with a painter here and there in SL) these more classically orientated styles don’t fit too well in Five’s idea of art. On the other hand the prims need surfaces and these can be very convincingly real, for instance with images of graffiti, see other bloggs about this!

An nice aspect is the possibility of making underground spaces and to show what is in it by making the upper surface semi transparent.
This has the effect of the hidden while maintaining visibility, giving a bit of a clue where to look. In the same construction, you can make the ceiling of the spaces under the floor totally transparent. This gives a possibility to add layers, which can only be seen by looking up. Difficult to explain, just look at the picture and you’ll understand. The option of letting things float in space, being not “physical” gives the rather interesting chance to experiment with, for instance, drawings, which are placed as if on a wall, without the wall actually shutting of the space. This wall simply isn’t needed; the drawings float against the background of the surrounding landscape.

For installations, the form of art where the artist arranges a whole space instead of just producing a painting, SL is very appropriate. Five reproduced some installations made in RL, and put these bigger themes in spheres. For instance very SL like is putting a panoramic picture on the inside a sphere, making the outside transparent. You walk into this sphere and the image closes around you. These 360 degrees images in spheres cannot be well reproduced in snapshots, you must be in SL to really see the effect: that’s a good sign! The goal is to construct installations which originate totally in SL, and which distinguish themselves totally from RL. This is Five’s side of looking beyond the copying of RL! Also real SL solutions can be found in the possibility of using the space above the bought land – everyone can fly in SL! This space is actually very large compared to the surface (if you can compare surface and space….). The experiments of Five are well extended in height. The problem is then the coherence between the different layers or just the differences between these levels. The instability, the incredible fast rate of change in SL makes it difficult to establish a final solution, but this is just what is the decisive character of the idea of art which Five is looking for….. Experimenting and exploring is what is stimulated by the whole nature of SL. Five didn’t yet speak of the programming possibility, which is quite extensively used in Contrechoc. For instance the positioning of the benches of the dodecahedron, floating above the lower structures, is done by a script. In the connection of scripting and drawing the two worlds of Five, say science (more technology) and art are become more intimately connected now. Something which Five dreams of is the possibility of making images in world, for instance by scripts. In writing this text, and in showing these images, Five acknowledges that Contrechoc also, like the rest of this world, suffers from being still too closely connected to RL. But okay, it’ll take time to build another world, it wouldn’t be fun if it was there outright!
(Five ends this blogg naming the artist friends whose work are shown and who agreed to publish their "real" names, such as Tilman Rothermel, Hermann Komar, Hans Wap, Christine Deknuydt and Marie-Christine Grosliere.....)