Watch this: GriefZilla - Second Life Machinima

made by Decomposing Monstre. He says: A film I created for the Fox Atomic Second Life Machinima Contest. It shows GriefZilla the giant duck as he destroys the world of Second Life. If you like it please vote for me in the contest! Here's the link.
http://www.foxatomic.com/#player:AssetId=9682
I could really use some votes :)

Well, vote and enjoy!

Art Administration's Birthday, 19th of February...

for Emmett Williams:"Little Fluxus People" Invade the Reuter's Building SL

Official photo

Friends of ICARDI confered in the atrium of Reuters Building (Second Life) on February 19th, 2007 to acknowledge Art Administration’s
Birthday. A little over a month after “Art’s Birthday” (January 17th), just over a million years ago, the object (a sponge in a bucket of water) from the
“Birth of Art” was discovered, labeled artwork, acquistitioned, evaluated, documented, conserved/cared for, placed on exhibit and pedagogically interpreted.

PRESS RELEASE
BL Niven, Director of ICARDI in SL, will confer with members of the art community and the press in the atrium of theReuters SL Building, to designate February 19th as officially 'Art Administration's Birthday'.

ACTION VS OBJECTS - "Art's Birthday" was the action - "the dropping of a dry sponge in a bucket of water" NOT what 'Art Administration's Birthday' celebrates "the sponge in the bucket of water"

While "Art's Birthday" (http://artsbirthday.net/) is remembered by relatively underground artists' events, 'Art Administration's Birthday', although indirectly pointing to the former, is expected to be its own highly promoted and financially supported celebration.

ICARDI is interested in the status of the artist in society.

Report from the event on Wirxli Flimflams blog HERE.

My Photoshop remix snapshot of the event to the left.
Ok, let's try to crack the codes of this mysterious event...
Art's Birthday: 17th January, an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, born 17th of January 1926, died 1987.
ICARDI: International Current Art Research & Developmentnt Institute
Director of ICARDI: BL Nevin aka artist, curator, art administrator Brian L. MacNevin. ICARDI is his idea and vision for the development of the town Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he is from. This website presents his ideas or proposal: click..... from 2004-5.
(Old town Lunenburg has been on UNESCOs World Heritage list since 1995. Take a panographic tour HERE! )
MacNevins proposal in short: Lunenburg hosting an international artist-in-resident program as well as a symposium on the status of the artist.
Brian L. MacNevin says: NSCAD (Nova Scotia Collage of Art and Design) has now set up an "artist in residence" in Lunenburg. ICARDI hasn't exactly "failed" there, it's become something else now... it's move on, it's mobile...

Well, ICARDI and mr. MacNevin has gone virtual, been born into Second Life, and already given us one more occation for having a party: Art Administration's birthday.

And mr. BL Nevin has founded a new SLgroup: Friends of ICARDI. "International Current Art Research & Development Institute (ICARDI) is interested in conferring with artists internationally regarding the status of the artist in society. ICARDI is establishing a presence, an "office", in Second Life to continue this R & D, by way of organizing symposia/conferences, exhibitions & presentations of current art and hosting an artist in residency program all of which focus on the role of the artist in their community."

BL Nevin dedicated the event last monday, 19th of February, to the late Emmett Willams, who died on February 14th. See a post on Jan Hermans blog: Emmet Williams, RIP
Nevins son is named after Emmet Williams. Nevins son is born on February 19th.

Well, we are very much looking forward to see all the wonderful ideas of BL Nevin aka Brian Lee MacNevin come alive in SL!

Written by Plurabelle Posthorn, also posted on Virtual Artists Alliance

"The Danish Poet"

Norwegian Torill Kove won the Oscar in the category Best Animated Short Film with her film The Danish poet.

FILM SYNOPSIS: Kasper, a young poet in search of inspiration, travels to Norway to meet the celebrated writer, Sigrid Undset.

More HERE. "Although Kove, 48, lives in Montreal and her project was backed by the National Film Board of Canada, the story "could not have been more Norwegian," she said."

Interview with Kove HERE, from February 23.
About Kove on nrk.no HERE.
About Kove on norway HERE.

New blog

I have had my first blog for one year tomorrow. Happy birthday plurabella! blog! On plurabella! I write about things that interest me: art, literature, frogs, Lapps, Ansur and so on. In norwegian.
Shortly after going in to the metavers Second Life in november 2006 I (as Plurabelle Posthorn) joined a group called Virtual Artists Alliance, or we met at Rezago Kokorins Blekinge sculpture park, talked and formed this group. Groupformer is Cyanide Seelowe. We started meeting once a week were we discused collabortive project. We started a blog: Virtual Artists Alliance. We had a succesful charity sculpture auction for My First book. And we are planning other collaborative projects. I have mainly been active writing about Second Life art on the blog. The blog came out of a discussion about how we could help newbies to find their way in the Second Life art world. An issue we're still working on. I have copied some of my posts and reposted them on this blog.
So why start one more blog? My plan is to write about Second Life art and post it on both the Virtual Artists Alliance blog and here. But I want to post more about my own SL-art activities, which would be to narcissistic to post on the VAA-blog... I also want to write a about real life art, mainly reviews of exhibitions in my town Oslo or of other art events that I might attend. I already do that on my norwegian blog, but here it will be in english. My english is not very advanced, but hopefully I will learn (more) by doing. And by having this new mixed blog about both 1st and 2nd life art, my own activities and others, I hope to find a playful way to connect Nina and Plurabelles lives.

Vancouver's always been ahead of the rest of the world...,

said Alan Dojoji at the first dorkbot meeting in Second Life which took place yesterday, 18th of february, in Odyssey.
Minutes after the meeting was over a short review of the event showed up at we-make-money-not-art HERE.
Here comes mine: Well, first Maximillian Nakamura, who had invited us to this meeting, held a short introduction to the dorkbot meetings idea: "a nerdy gathering of people doing strange things with electricity, which means also with digital technology, which would not exist without electricity." His blog: http://rhizomatic.wordpress.com/. His SL group: dorkbot SL electronic art meetings. Oh, his review of the meeting HERE.
Then we went to (Landmark:) Ah Sky Lounge, Odyssey (53, 192, 297) where the rest of the meeting took place.

Basically what happened during the meeting was that Wirxli Flimflam and then ian Ah talked about their works and ideas. We got loads of information which I will try to share with you here.
First Wirxli Flimflam:
Wirxli presented himself as Wirxli Flimflam from Second Front. Blogs: www.wirxliflimflam.blogspot.com, www.slfront.blogspot.com. The flesh&blood person behind Wirxli told us he "have been an avatar performance artist since 2001 and a net performance artist since 1996", so we're not talking newbie here. He has used Traveler (www.digitalspace.com/traveler) for a number of collaborations and performances, like the Gates (after Bill Gates). He co-created the very first in-world avatar documentary AVATARA. Then he "experimented in the Moove/Roomancer community as a performance artist". (I copied the chat history during the meeting...) And then he came to Second Life. Well, if you look up his blogprofile you will find a huge list of his other blogs and a summary of his life... Here is Wirxli:


In Second Life he formed the performance group Second Front in november 2006. Directly related to Western Front (http://www.front.bc.ca/), Vancouvers main New Media center, since 1973. Some NE Thing CO was also mentioned as a forerunner to Western Front. That's when Alan Dojoji uttered "Vancouver's always been ahead of the rest of the world"! And we got some links to feed our intermedia-history-knowlegde with: http://www.michaeldecourcy.com/intermedia/, www.greggsimpson.com. Some videos were streamed during his talk, the Gates and some of the Second Front performances, which he also told a litle about. And before he left the stage for ian Ah, he let us know that he is "also in a voIPunk band called The Hotmails that uses Skype and other messenger programs for performance". Review of the dorkbot meeting on Wirxlis blog HERE.

Second ian Ah:
ian Ah, or his flesh&blood, is an artist, not a special kind of artist, but simply artist. Been in the game since 1968 using many media. "I come from a tradition of visual artists who eschew the medium as a defination of our work. I would normally take this opportunity to make a work as "meeting". I have made works as "lecture" , "classroom" etc", said ian Ah, and continued:"The nature of my work is very context driven so when he [Maximillian] suggested it [the talk] be "educational",
my first response was to suggest I give an exam,...." "...In any case I think the topic should be "How can we have a Dorkbot meeting in SL?"" Well, as the meetings in SL usually are the avatars of todays meeting chated away and parallel discussions occurred... Or the discussion split into one about the practicalities of SL meetings, particularly this one, and ian Ah trying to rise a meta discussion about (SL) meetings. "Let me say that I am a very formal artist who sees networks as objects," he said. The meeting as object, this meeting as an object or an art object, the first dorgbot meeting in SL as an art object...?


Chuck Masala had asked Wirxli earlier on: "Is it difficult to "perform" in an environment where really everyone is performing?" With the dorkbot meeting; did it become an art obejct? Are all SL meetings (art) objects?
Now Maximillian introduced one of ian Ahs works: "Keeping on Top of the Top Song" from 1970 (nr 17 HERE). Them ian mentioned things he has worked with since: broadcast weather, soap operas, computer rules, computer games, education as colonialization, remote control. What about SL? "My interest in SL is to see how it predetermines action", he said. Remindes me of the Flack attack project which (also) question the autonomy in a precoded environment (like SL)... Mr Dress up was brought into the light of the meeting..., I've never heard of him before... Then it was time for beer! ian disappeared. I hope he didn't fall asleep in his bathtub!

Plurabelle Posthorn

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 19. February 2007

My first exhibition in Second Life...

This post was first posted at plurabella! 18. February 2007

The 24th of february will be the last day of my first art exhibition in Second Life. Or my, that will be my avatar Plurabelle Posthorn who has an exhibition... It will also be the 1 year anniversary of this blog.
Snapshots of Plurabelles exhibition at the Artisan Gallery under.
The pictures in the exhibition are made from Second Life snapshots which I have worked up in Photoshop later. Two of the sculptures are ordinary prims textured and linked, and in the white one with dotts I have several layers of prims with moving texture in the "window". All of it could be characterised as 1st generation SL-art, which means it mimics the ordinairy real life art and only slightly uses the possibilitys that are special to a metavers as Second Life, that will be things you can do in there that you can't do in real life, which of cause is much more interesting, but you have to start somewhere, not? Or? ;)
I've only sold one picture yet, but it was Gazira Babeli who bought it. I am a great admirerer of her, I shiver when I think about her likeing my picture... Or maybe she just pitied me? She is now a member of the performance group Second Front which have frequent performances in SL, they are interesting... and using the possibilitys of SL. They had a great performance at the opening of a great exhibition at the Ars Virtua Gallery, 5th of January, Ars Virtua is the best SL gallery I have found so far, the exhibition is called "Imaging places" and the artist is JC Fremont. Here's what he says about art imitating rl art:

“Well art that imitates art in the real world is repugnant. SL art that imitates RL art is irrelevant. Okay a painting served the ideology of 20th century consumer capital society. It became the ultimate commodity object. More profitable than gold or plutonium. Remember that art before the rise of commodity capital was sight specific. It resided in the cathedral or on the cave wall. No way to buy and sell. What could possibly be the purpose of making cartoon representations of paintings in a virtual environment? Art should be unrecognisable as such. In electrate culture the forms will change drastically. We don't know what electrate art will be yet. First, Electrate art will have no object, evade commodity consumption. If it can be commodified then it is not good electrate art. Second, never finished it will always be in a state of becoming, upgrading. Art needs to disrupt.”

Read the whole interview with JC Fremont about his "Imaging places" HERE.



Written by Nina Svenne

Crazy Colourful Art

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 17. February 2007

A few days ago I visited jjccc Coronets gallery on Laguna beach where she shows her large, wild, colorfull mostly 2d art but also a few sculptures. It was a truely refreshing experience! I landed in a kind of forecourt, a surrounded part of the beach with excotic trees, sculptures and a large screen streaming MTV... Very short after I had bought a pair of pants which I immediately put on and after strolling the gallery I met jjccc Coronet herself, and she showed me where the texture of my pants came from namely from one of her paintings or that will be one of her drawings.

This snapshot shows us chating in front of this drawing, a colorpensildrawing, so rich it looks like a tapestry. It was so beautiful, I didn't want to leave. Happily I now walk around with her drawing covering my lower and private parts.

She uses a variety of techniques a part from colorpensil, like collage handmade or digital, and motives like bugs, frogs, animalskeletons and so on, but everything crazy and colorful. Well, actually I didn't find it that crazy, I think it's because she obtains almost an "all-over-pattern" composition in her works which gives them some sort of calm.
jjccc Coronet is moving her gallery soon. Anyway it's always a good thing to search on peoples names, look up their profiles and go for their picks. So no SLurl for you here...
But her website and blog are here: http://jjccc.stumbleupon.com/

Plurabelle Posthorn

If you are in Italy or in front of your computer...

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 24. January 2007

...you might find these two events interesting:

1. The conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games" is taking place in Reggio-Emilia, Italy, from the 25th to 27th of January.
Website with abstracts and programme with links to presentation papers: http://game.unimore.it/game/Benvenuto.html
They are also going to videostream the conference. I think it will be from this site: http://tv.unimore.it (No, they didn't, but clips will be available in about two weeks. (Yes, if you go here: http://tv.unimore.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=7 and then on Recording of the event.)

I do not know if anybody explicitly is going to speak about (our metaverse,) Second Life, but the snapshot on their poster looks rather familiar, doesn't it? Here it is:

From the Introduction:
The purpose of the conference is to initiate an investigation into how current research on computer games touches upon philosophical issues. In line with this purpose, the conference is interdisciplinary, drawing together researchers from very diverse fields: philosophy, computer game-theory, semiotics, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

2. Piemonte_share_festival: 23.-28. January 2007. Exhibition, conference, workshops...
Website: http://www.toshare.it/
Today, at the conference, at least one speach was related to Second Life:

New media art communities
SIMONA LODI - REGINE DEBATTY -
SIMON GOLDIN
Contemporary artists choose to create a community on “Second Life” similar to “The Port”. The logic of commodification, however, seems to go beyond claiming immaterial ownership on every level. Beyond the question of copyright and patents there is also a fundamental question of who the peer is in peer-production?

(We will probably be able to see the lectures on the website later..)

The Port is an artproject initiated by the artists Goldin&Senneby.
Another Second Life-related artproject by them was "Objects of virtual desire": 5 virtual objects reproduced in real life... exhibited in Bergen, Norway, 2005.
There is more to say about them, but not to night.

Plurabelle Posthorn

Happy birthday, Art!

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 18. January 2007

Art's Birthday... Dear Perfomance Art Fans... you are invited...
So I went to the party on the 17th... cause art was born on 17th of january and because I'm a performanceartfan, I went to Second Fronts celebration of Art's Birthday. It all took place at Second Fronter Man Michinagas The BitFactory, also the home of the famous perfomancegroup. Not only a fan, I am now an offical groupie, member of Second Front groupies, founded on the 17th by Great Escape (does that mean I have to have sex with Second Front after their shows?).

The "Binge" performance, a colorful and beautifully chaotic performance. An important ingredient was the puke, everybody was puking loads of bloodlike redwine all the time, even I, because we groupies were invited to join the performance, so I puked (thank you, Man) like I never ever have done before, and there were pink flamingos, huge cakes and hamburgers, a withered xmastree with all the lights on.

So I joined in and had some nice interaction with Gazira Babeli. Better than sex we agreed...
Some scenes from the party:

Finally I was thrown out and up in to the sky with this red puke running out of me. It reminded me off something... Was it a way to say F... of, you stupid groupie! (?)

Plurabelle Posthorn

Second Front performance at Ars Virtua opening 5th Jan 07

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 6. January 2007

Last night JC Fremonts lovely exhibition "Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border." opened at the Ars Virtua gallery. (See extensive interview with JC Fremont in Slate Magazine here.)But I must say the exhibition was overshined by the rather spectacular performance by the Second Front group.

Second Front is the first dedicated performance art group in Second Life. To officially open JC Fremont's Installation at Ars Virtua, Second Front will be creating a realtime interpretive and site-specific performance based on JC Fremont's theme 'Borders' to compliment "Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border."

The perfomance lasted about half an hour or so. See pictures below.
Behind this group is the reallife Vancouver-based group The Western Front. If you missed last nights performance or happened to be there and like it, the next perfomances are not far away; during a festival called Art's Birthday 2007 from January 14 - 20, 2007, they are going to have different things going on online and I think they said a new SL-performance the 17th...





Plurabelle Posthorn

Ars Virtua

This post was first posted at Virtual Artists Alliance 30. December 2006

written by
Plurabelle Posthorn

Ok, let me tell you why I desided to be born in to Second Life (just recently). It was this post on a favouritewebsite of mine: we-make-money-not-art, among other things also about an exhibition at the SLgallery Ars Virtua (SLurl here): "13 most beautiful avatars". The exhibition is still on in Second Life at Ars Virtua and was on in real life at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York, from 30. nov.06 to 19.des.06. I HAD TO SEE IT…an exhibition crossing the borders of virtual and real life (not for the first time of course, but it made ME make myself a SL-account). Or was it just that for me to see the exhibition, because I’m located on the other side of the planet, I had to go to Second Life to see it?
Well, here I am, newborn, admiring the work "Janai Jarrico" by the artists Eva and Franco Mattes.

Well, a new work is being installed rigth now at the Ars Virtua gallery by artist JC Fremont and Rain Coalcliff. It opens on the 5th of Januray, so be there! I had a peek. It’s a marvellous piece of artwork; the startingpoint is a map of the earth with signposts (pointing to RLplaces around the world, focusing on borders). You click on the signposts to teleport to other locations in SL where you find maps on floating floors and then 360 0 photographs of that earthly location you "teleported" to, there are photographs of those places with its people inside spheres, and if you use you Alt-button you can be totally surrounded by that location. Makes me wanna cry, that’s how beautifull I found it! And it’s not even properly installed yet.

View from above.

Almost inside one of the spheres.

See you at the opening? And will Gazira Babeli , the opening-terrorist, be there? (Sure, Ars Virtua has asked her to come.... )

Another artist that is showned at the Ars Virtua is AngryBeth Shortbread. Two of her works is showned there right now, but if you really want to go in to her work, full extend, which I think you should, then go to The Port (The Port 251, 79, 26), find the teleport to The Pencil Factory gallery of Interactive and Phonic Art (The Port 32, 72, 26 ) where she shows a lot of her works like The DNA sequencer, The Email Invaders, the Cloud-Mapper and so on. Be sure to read the INFOsigns, because the pieces are all interactive, so to fully enjoy them you need to know how they work! I also found a lot of help in going to her blog: http://www.angrybethshortbread.blogspot.com/ (and website). There you can find videos of her work. Makes it easier for you to try them afterwards. Enoying art in Second Life is a complex thing. Get used to it!
And be sure to explore The Port once you are there. (Tell me if you were able to find Jeff Koons and On Kawara...)