[-empyre-] Greetings

[Kathy Cleland <kathy.cleland@arts.usyd.edu.au>]

Hi everyone, and thanks for the introduction Melinda :),

Although I have been investigating virtual worlds since the late 1990s, 
I'm still a bit of a Second Life newbie.
I logged onto SL for the first time in mid-2006, but various 
frustrations (including an old computer) made the experience quite 
difficult to negotiate and I still find the whole Second Life phenomenon 
both intriguing and frustrating - often both at the same time! However, 
I actually find the newbie experience a particularly interesting one and 
will post more about that later.

First though, it's been great reading Patrick's postings about using 
Second Life as a performative space and, in my own limited experience of 
Second Life, the most interesting stuff I have come across is definitely 
the performative. As Patrick has already mentioned, Eva and Franco 
Mattes' re-enactments of famous performance art pieces of the 1960s and 
1970s, as well as the work of Second Front and artists like Gazira 
Babeli make the most of the real-time graphics capabilities of virtual 
worlds and their ability to involve the audience as active participants 
rather than just passive viewers and audiences. I've also been quite 
enchanted by Adam Nash's interactive artworks/musical instruments but as 
he will be joining the discussion himself in a few days perhaps it's 
best to leave that discussion until then ...

Visiting Gazira Babeli’s retrospective exhibition 'Collateral Damage' in 
the Exhibit A gallery on Odyssey Island is a Second Life experience that 
shouldn't be missed. It's a bit like entering an Alice in Wonderland 
world, simultaneously magical and uncanny. Describing herself as a 'code 
performer' Babeli makes use of the elastic virtual physics of the 
digital terrain to create interactive art works where audience 
interaction sets off a series of playful, unpredictable and sometimes 
disturbing animations. Her Andy Warhol inspired work 'Second Soup' traps 
your avatar in a looped animation within the soup can (‘You love pop art 
but pop art hates you!’ the work tells you). Another work, 'Come 
Together' enables audience avatars to morph and merge into a collective 
living sculpture. Or you can even take on Gazira's identity - buying her 
self-portrait (for the very modest sum of 1 Linden $) enables you to 
wear her avatar. Everything is interactive and you have to be careful 
what you touch, and what you agree to sit on! Taking up Gazira's 
invitation to sit in a chair in the exhibition, my avatar was possessed 
by one of her voodoo-like ‘performance codes’ and began to spontaneously 
make strange arm and hand gestures. Sitting on a chair in one of the 
paintings on the wall triggered an even more disturbing transformation 
as my avatar body was grotesquely distorted and deformed, body parts 
stretching and swapping place even after I freed myself from the chair 
and tried to escape! There's a fine line between performance art and 
griefing in Second Life!!


Kathy Cleland

--

Lecturer, Digital Cultures Program

S316, John Woolley Building A20

University of Sydney

phone: + 61 2 93514721

mobile: 0411 474 551

www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalcultures