Nina & Plurabelle on 1st and 2nd Life Art: EXHIBIT A at the Odyssey SIM.

This post is also posted at the Virtual Artitst Alliance Blog.
A new gallery opened in the Odyssey SIM to day.
Landmark: Odyssey (38,30,23)

The Odyssey SIM is financed by Dynamis Corporation in the UK, an internet company that dels in business, said one of the curators of the exhibition, Sugar Seville, to the press earlier today. The other curator of the exhibition, Beavis Palowakski and Sugar have been working on the structure - Beavis actually built the gallery, and I must say, they have done a beautiful job with it.
The whole Odyssey SIM, is for art and performance. Some individual artist are already installed, like Ian Ah, Max "dorkbot" (Maximillian Nakamura) and Wixli Flimflams PR-office. Sugar:"Odyssey will be hosting prescence for a number of real life galleries". I asked which ones, but no names were revealed...

The exhibition is a group show. "Most are artists that we met in world," says Sugar. "Some are rl artists." "This big painting is by David Scher (av-name: Nitido Cortes), a NYC artist. It was in the armory show and reportedly sold". The artists are from all over the world, like Italy, Japan, UK, US, Ireland, Korea, Canada. The artists are: Ian Ah, Gazira Babelli, Isra Batra, Nitido Cortes, Alan Dojoji, Fau Ferdinand, Masami Kuramoto, Pavig Lok, Man Michinaga, Koga Nishi, Beavis Palowakski, Sea Ra, Bacon Rolls and Chi5 Shenzhou.
Here the curators, Sugar Seville and Beavis Palowakski:

Can't mention all of the art works here, great works all of them though. You must go and see yourself. But...

Alan Dojoji (rl Alan Sondheim) is showing a video I find really interesting (picture above). This is what his notecard says: "Droste and Berber in rehearsal never before released footage from the original production with new tabla accompaniment especially commissioned by the hairs of Droste and Berber cut off from the bodies of Droste and Berber as well as accompanying avatars created from cloth and wire held in suspension creating a perfect framework for this first time and perhaps only this time a framework where Berber first sadly languished then rose to the occasion of Droste's bizarre accompaniment this silent film direct from the Weimar era salvaged from numerous bunkers of works of tired cinema lay sadly in shadows where reels of film were found presented now almost in their pristine original condition the hairs of Droste and Berber were tangled sadly among the reels where memories of Droste and Berber languished among the clubs of old Berlin http://www.asondheim.org Maud Liardon: dance; Foofwa d'Imobilite: choreographyAlan Sondheim: animation, mise-en-scene, sound 2006-2007" As for that, it's really fascinating to see how the avatars in the video deform, and the mingeling between avatars and rl dancers. What's interesting about our avatar anatomy is how awkward it is... I've seen some "nice" SL-nude photogaphy that (maybe involuntarly) captures this. Like we have some sort of skeletal disease. Also made me think of the SL performance tomorrow at the Office, Production of Architecture: Second Life First Life Dance, which I don't how will be, but am so excited to see it. They are going to mix SL and rl perfomance realtime.
Another work in the exhibition involving deformation: Gazia Babellis "Avatar on canvas".
SPOILERWARNING!!!Don't read further if you don't want to know the end.

The painting, a Francis Bacon appropriation, with a chair you can sit on. Sit there for a short time and you start to deform! Or jump of and walk around while you deform, "thrown back to (Second) life more violently" so to speak. So cool! I like very much that the viewer becomes a part of the art work. That's great! (Picture to the right shows me and Max deforming.)
And this one; Isra Batras "the space". A textured box with this pink colored man with boobs/ woman with large dick figure working very hard (masturbating). Nice humour!

During the opening, I got to know a litle more about Man Michinagas drawing robot from Man himself (rl Patrick Lichty http://www.voyd.com/). The robot is the blue thing in the photo belowe, and he is making more robots: modified sumi-e pens. He shows serveral of his "Zen for Bot" which are "Real Life works created by interacting with a small, semi-autonomous robot for which I developed/hacked the software." "The name "Zen for Bot" comes from the early Fluxus work, "Zen for head" by Nam June Paik, in which he dipped his head in a bucket of ink and dragged it along the paper like a calligraphy pen."