Second Life – Revisited
So this past Thursday was my Digital Art History class’s in-game Second Life class session.
First we visited LSU CCT’s digital simulation of our campus. We were briefed a little on the functions and points of interests of the sim, and I must say I was very impressed. The sim had the clock tower, the quad, various school buildings, and the outdoor amphitheatre — all perfectly replicated. Apparently the whole sim had been constructed in merely a few months! I was surprised to hear that an entire part of the department had been rigorously working on a parallel virtual replica of our campus in SL and that most people are completely unaware of its existance due to the restrictions of the sim.
After breaking to explore the LSU CCT sim for a few minutes, we set off for SL-renowned artist, Elros Tuominen’s personal gallery. Elros creates dynamic, moving, immersive sculptures that are displayed in many prestigious areas scattered around Second Life. His works have an awe-inspiring effect when you enter a sculpture and view it from within in a first-person perspective.
For more information on “elros Tuominen” here is a video of a virtual interview filmed directly in a Second Life environment:
After a few minutes of discussion there, to our surprise, elros Tuominen himself popped in to answer our questions and participate in our class discussion. It was quite a treat. I was actually disappointed to be leaving early from the area, because I was more interested in what he had to say about his work, more than anything else we viewed that afternoon.
A screenshot (serving as a sort of proof, for you non-believers) of our conversation can be found here:
http://dahlsu.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/picture-62.png
(Keep an eye out for me, “Damien Axel”, hovering in the background.)
After we had to cut our meeting with Elros short, we promptly teleported to our second exhibit on our itinerary, an area called BioSphere2. The artist here, created digital kinetic sculptures that the viewer could interact with and manipulate. The notecard that could be received from the area stated that the artist was both influenced by his knowledge in biology as well as various other SL kinetic sculptors — including Elros Tuominen, himself. After exploring this sim and interacting with the various “sculptures”, we teleported to our last destination.
The group of artists that hosted this sim, the 0100101110101101 group (which we had once discussed in class), produced artwork that was very different from the kinetic sculptures of the first two artists. The artists would reenact installments of famous performance art within the simulated environment of Second Life, including Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed, and Chris Burden’s Shoot. The really interesting thing I found about this was that just a few weeks previously, the university had been visited by Vito Acconci and we had discussed Seedbed among his various other works with him.
Here is a link to the video of the 0100101110101101 group’s SL reenactment of Vito Acconci’s Seedbed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRXOmLC_mD0
After browsing the screenshot gallery of these performances within the sim, we moved about to explore some of the island’s interactive art. After a classmate got stuck within a large Campbell’s Tomato Soup can that would spam something along the lines of “You love pop art; pop art hates you.” in open chat channel, Professor Ryan decided it was time to wrap-up the avatar class.
In our final discussion, we debated whether the creation of art in a simulated world was really relevant to the world and if it really made a difference. What was the point of it all? We decided that the same debate could be made for the artworks created in the real world. Artists make artwork to make a statement, to invoke a certain reaction upon the viewer. If at least one person was reached and the message had an impact, could that work of art not be considered a success? I’d like to think I, myself, as an artist would be pleased to have reached someone and passed along a message or invoked feeling upon my artworks’ audience. The artists within Second Life, I believe, have the same goal — only, they reach out to a different audience: the Second Life community.
Overall, I’d say it was the most fun class meeting I’d experienced all semester. There was more stimulating discussion and a more relaxed atmosphere. I suppose it was the anonymity of the whole thing… 
(For more information on the 0100101110101101 group and to view more videos of their performance art reenactments, please visit: http://www.0100101110101101.org/)
