Art, oh boy! When you think about art, you have to know what art is. But art is a bit like Second Life itself and everything that is in it: changing faster than you can think. Everything in art has changed, ideas, materials……since….since the renaissance, since 1945, since 2000. Adorno starts his book “Esthetical theory” with the sentence: “It has become obviously, that nothing, what belongs to art, is still obvious, not in itself neither in its relation to everything else, not even its right of existence.” That’s it! Art is not to be defined. Every definition will be surpassed.
What then can still be said about art? This idea can be turned around. What somebody says about art, what art she prefers, it says more about this person itself, then it says about art.
So this blogg is not at all to criticize (well a bit it is….), it tells about Five more than about art.
The first thing you see, when searching art, for instance in the search engine of Second Life is framed pictures, of works from van Gogh, from Michelangelo, from all old masters. These can be bought. Sorry, Five doesn’t appreciate this, it goes well beyond her sense of humor!
This has nothing to do with art, this has only to do with earning money with nice things made by others: terrible! Shame on you!
We quickly go, and find galleries, sort of places where artists show there paintings, like in RL. This is a bit better, the work being, sort of, more real. But still it is nothing more than a not so imaginative copy of the real world. It is using SL as an alternative website. This can be done and is legitimate, but you could expect more of artists?
But I cannot imagine Leonardo da Vinci in SL doing the same things as in RL. I imagine an artist exploring, trying to find the frontiers of the possible, test the boundaries of emotions, trying to shock normality. This is just what SL makes possible, in a sense. Not to offend people, but to offer alternatives to real life which is often too normal to be true. Ok, that selling paintings is possible is quite well known. That paintings from the renaissance are interesting is known. (Everyone can download pictures from the web and upload them in SL?) Painting and drawing itself is an act is not possible in SL. Maybe that’s why paintings and drawings doesn’t seem to fit too good in this world.
So we have an ongoing search for “art” and artists in SL. Find out who is experimenting with new techniques and ideas. Who is inventive in SL?
In another blogg I already wrote about Julia Hawthorne, and her leopard. Later on I found a very nice tree, with a branch on which you could lie. Hidden things and possibilities always fascinate me. Hidden things are part of Five’s idea of art, art offering possibilities to dream, being itself an illusion…
Other items of her hand are displayed in her shop Elements-Greenmantle . But the strange thing is, although the ideas are brilliant, for instance the chair, all the things put together make a sort of strange atmosphere. Almost as if it is too much. These creations gain a lot when they are encountered in the rather dull everyday world of SL! But next to the shop, in the surf of the see, is a quite beautiful and interesting island Drymonia , which has a secret entrance undersea. This island really fits in smoothly with the possibilities of SL. It hasn’t at all the pretensions of being art. It just puts the visitor in a mood.
Then there are the buildings. Of course architects are more at home in SL. The building blocks, the primitives are quite like the bricks of the architect. And just where they explore new roads, like not so rectangular things, they are making the biggest impression.
For instance the structure in the sandbox Polkadot. Imaginative because of its nicely curved lines.
But the architect has the problem of reality. People want roofs, staircases, which are not quite necessary in SL. Later more about architecture and about sandboxes! (Maybe the real SL art is only to be found in the sandboxes.)
A bit between art and architecture is the place of Krystal Epic
Here the visitor is made a part of the structure, seeing being the color and the moving textures, and she can go on to other experimental settings, in a sort of guided tour. This place is really doing something with your senses, using the exotic possibilities of SL building and programming. Totally different is the place of Brainiacq.
He uses color in its brightest possibilities. Something which is not done too much in SL. He experiments with programming and has a made a playground of possibilities. Somewhere in this corner Leonardo could be found, doing his strange things, inventing machine without an appropriate energy source…
Back to the visual arts. Five really started in SL using its potential during a real life performance, which was a presentation of the drawings of Christine Deknuydt in Bremen.
Drawings were shown, fitted on a few flight of stairs. This structure as a totality becomes an installation. It was successful, also because during the real life presentation, these fitted drawings were rezzed in an empty sandbox, just like that, and at the end they were put back in the inventory. The audience was stunned! During the presentation persons, for instance Armoe Lipo, came along and asked what it was, Five answered on the fly. Later on Five experimented with more stable installations on a small plot of land, Contrechoc.
The most rewarding results are really underground, that is to say within the cellar. The floor above these cellars is half transparent, so a visitor has the possibility of discovering. But the display is going on high in the sky! Experimenting, exploring, changing all the time. SL won’t be a stable world…
Art is very much needed in SL. Without the inventiveness and exploration of artist SL will be a dull copy of the real world for a long time. SL needs artists to get rid of the feeling of emptiness that floats around, to give it meaning, a sense, and adventure!
