Art and Ego

I feel best when my creative expression is a private dance between me and my emerging work. The intimacy of the process and the authenticity of the eventual work is diminished when my attention is drawn to an imagined audience. Twyla Tharp shares a few thoughts on the topic in this brief video clip.

Identity Circus Closes This Sunday

This week is your last chance to experience Botgirl's Identity Circus. I'll be removing all of the exhibits Sunday night at 8:00 PM, including the one-of-a-kind Avatar Transformer created by Zada Zenovka.

Here's the teleport.

Exhibit Opening: Stop Making Sense and Dream

Stop Making Sense and Dream opens this Sunday, October 19, at 11am in Second Life. It's a multi-artist collaborative exhibition exploring the nonsensical nature of dreams. I'm really psyched about a mountain-like sculpture Pixel Sideways and Trinity Halberstadt created for the show, based on my Digital Utopians sketch (pictured here.) Visitors will be able to fly into a dreamlike particle-filled torus and ascend to the Virtual Rapture.

The exhibition includes two shows on two venues on two sims. It begins at Angel Dorei/Solaris with "Prelude to a Dream" featuring Dream sketches and text and continues onto Caerleon Isle with a massive sky exhibition of 3d sculptural art representing the dreams of The Dreamer, whose dreamy narrative text weaves the ascending dreams together.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Solaris/208/135/91

Cuddling with Jacek: Testing animations for art installation

Although my inner clock keeps ticking louder and faster, I am making good progress checking off to-do items for Sunday's show. One of the exhibits I'm most looking forward to will give atendees a chance to cuddle with my chatbot. Sharing a romantic animation with an attractive yet empty avatar is a great way to get a feel for the power virtuality has to induce an emotional or even physical response.

Trouble was that I'd put off selecting an animation until last night. I went to Bits and Bobs, an animation store Gabby recommended. The animations that seemed to hold most promise required two avatars to test. I put out a request on Plurk for assistance, and Jacek Antonelli, noted and geekalicious artist, builder, scripter, animator and instructor was kind enough to offer to help.

Although we hang out with eros-Goddess Codie, Jacek and I are a bit on the, well, Spockish site of the street. So I felt a bit awkward saying a brief hello to my barely-konwn acquaintence and then jumping onto some very hot poseballs and watching us very, very closely in order to evaluate the animations.

It was a lot of fun. This Goldilocks had to try more than three before finding one that was just right. We both agreed that the animation eventually selected was a clear winner. It was good enough to make each of us feel a bit embarrassed be so seemingly physically intimate. And dare I say stir up a little feeling?

Anyone interesting in beta testing the cuddle bot exhibit before we officially open should drop me a line or comment. :)

Please welcome my new collaborator Sabrinaa Nightfire

I am very lucky to have some incredible talent helping me prepare for the upcoming art exhibition that will be premiering on Sept. 20 in New Caerleon. I'll be gushing a bit about all of them between now and then. Tonight, I want to appreciate Sabrinaa Nightfire who is building the structure that will house the exhibits and provide the thematic atmosphere (which we're keeping under wraps for now.)

Sabrinaa is an artist who has several major art builds on the art SIM, New Caerleon. She is also a sculptor, photographer and clothes maker in Second Life. She as six shops in Second Life and her main store features her underwater sculpture garden. Sabrinaa's first major build in New Carleon is the 300m tall science fiction museum she created for real life science fiction writer Kueperpunk Korhonen. She loves to defy the laws of real life physics and to create things that have never been thought of before.

She's a very generous soul who offered to help out about five minutes after meeting me and hearing about the project. I laid a challenging design concept on her and she didn't bat an eye, but took it a step farther. I can't wait to see it come to life!

Sex, Love, Art and Slavery

Rheta and Codie at Bloggers Ball and Slave Auction

Oh, what a weekend! Where to start? Okay...

Rheta Shan contributes land to start new Visual Arts Center
About a month ago, Rheta Shan, winner of Dusan Writer's UI Design Contest, posted an offer to donate her mainland plots for charitable or artistic use. Since I had been romancing the idea of creating an open source stage set area for those creating comics, machinima or other image-capture projects in Second Life, I emailed her right away. After a bit of email correspondence, we finally had a nice GTalk chat and she was kind enough to offer the land for my project. I'll post more on the project over the next couple of weeks, but for now I just want to send Rheta a big thank you.

Artist's Way group begins
On Sunday morning, I attended the first weekly meeting of Sophrosyne's The Artists's Way group. We'll be supporting each other as we go through the exercises in the book and work to enhance our creative life within Second Life.

I break my bank on slave purchase
I had no plans to buy or be sold when I arrived at the Second Life Bloggers Ball and Slave Auction later that afternoon. By the time I left, Zoe had purchased me as a slave, and I was the proud owner (for 24 cumulative hours) of the Number One Couple in Second Life: Codie and Gabby!

I first met Codie while I was still an obscure newbie in Second Life. I believe I had a question about her MachinimaCam and sent an IM out of the blue. We got to chatting and before you knew it we were talking about video, polyamoury and the joys and perils of virtual relationships. Over the months we chatted here and there and crossed paths quite a few times, including the recent mass migration from Twitter to Plurk. Over the months, I've come to realize that Codie is one of the authentic Lights within Second Life and models loving, emotionally-close and red-hot relationships for the rest of us, along with her extended family including main girl Gabby.

I don't know Gabby very well, outside of following her Plurks and keeping an eye on her blog. But our brief conversations have always been lovely and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting to know her better.

So what plans have I for my 24 hours of total power???? And what does Zoe have up her gun-toting sleeve for poor innocent Botgirl? Stay tuned.

Botgirl art exhibition slated for Sep. 20 on New Caerleon (corrected location)

I got Facebook email out of the blue the other day from Gary Zabel (RL)/ Georg Janick (SL), main founder of Second Life artist colony Caerleon Isle and experimental university sim New Caerleon. He asked if I'd be interested in doing a guest exhibition. It seems that one of their focuses is online identity. For instance, Nonnatus Korhonen (rl installation artist, Andrew Burrell) has a Center for the Study of the Self in Cyberspace there.

I met Georg and visted the sims last night. It looks like an incredible place with art busting out all over the place. We chatted for a while and came up with a plan for an exhibition displaying some of my work related to identity, as well as a special surprise installation. Surprise. That means I can't tell you yet. But it might involve a cuddle rug. It's scheduled for Saturday, September 20, time TBD.

(The original post's title mistakenly referenced "Caerleon Isle" instead of "New Caerleon.)

Avatar self-portraiture on Flickr: Art or Onanisim?

What's up with the incredibly prolific avatar self-portraiture evidenced on flickr? Here are a few categories I've noted:

• The shiny new parent/lover/toy syndrome: I have a pair of childless human friends who got married and bought a small dog. I must have received links to a hundred or more images for the first couple of month: Dog on the couch. Dog in the yard. Dog in the boat. Dog with the cute hat. I haven't seen any research, but my guess is there is some logarithmic curve downward for how many photos are produced for subsequent pets, children avatars, etc.
  

• Neo-Narcissism: This applies to Immersionists, both open and closeted. It seems to me that if one identifies personally with the avatar form, then having a gazillion photos of oneself on display on flickr is equivalent to a human doing the same thing. Obsession with one's physical form isn't always ickishly shallow. Not always. And self-love can be a beautiful thing. Or self-lust.
  

• Avatar as canvass: For those with a bona fide artistic nature, or wannabe's like me, we will never find a more patient model than our own avatars. They will pose for hours without complaining. They never ask for a royalty check. Although they may not be easy to work with, it's certainly a familiar and comfortable relationship. And you always get to sleep with the hot model, right?
  

Although this is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post, my guess is that there are multiple elements at work in many of our photographic exploits. Did I miss any categories, whether serious, semi-serious, farcical or otherwise?

Have a good weekend.