The day i saw Gazira
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There's something about Second Life that totally repels me: its aesthetics. No matter how sexy W. James Au makes his adventures in the online universe sound, i just can't go beyond the barrier of SL's dull and flavourless look. On Saturday while i was visiting the Holy Fire exhibition at iMAL in Brussels, i got to meet with Gazira Babeli and change my opinion. Gazira Babeli is not a human being, she's an avatar performing and living inside Second Life.
Like everyone, i had read times and times again how SL residents actions inside the synthetic world impact on their daily life, how one can make a living there, how businesses and organizations were rushing to get a space inside the online gaming platform but yesterday was the first time i could feel SL's tangible effect on my life: i had bought a train ticket to Brescia (only 50 minutes from Milan). There, the Fabio Paris Gallery is dedicating a solo show to Gazira. I couldn't think of a better place to get to know her work with more depth. Yeah! don't smirk, please. I know i could do all that online but i'm old school. Still, i can't believe i took the train to see the work of an artist who was born only two years ago. An old entry of mine (The Second Life code performer) and a beautiful text by Domenico Quaranta will tell you all you need to know about what she does. I'll just move to what i saw in Brussels and Brescia.
The Brussels exhibition shows one of the episodes of Gaz of the Desert , a 23 minute movie which might very well be the first high definition movie entirely shot within a virtual world. Gaz of the Desert is inspired by Luis Buñuel's 1965 movie Simón del desierto (Simon of the Desert) which focused on St. Simon Stylites, a 4th century religious man who climbed on a column to be nearer to God and stayed there during thirty seven years preaching Christianity to passersby. If you were already taking for granted the fact that the virtual merges with the real, Gazira's machinima messes with your algebra by adding surrealism to the operation. The artist takes you on a rollercoaster ride which will drive you from dream to nightmare with the elegance of Buñuel, a Persian carpet, rows of call center employees, and a motorcycle killer. The movie is online.
In Brescia, there are several projects by Gazira. There's also Anna Magnani, an Italian actress everybody remembers as 'Pina' in Roberto Rossellini's neorealist masterpiece Roma, Cittá Aperta (Rome, Open City). Now Magnani was famous for that very Italian characteristic of constantly moving her hands and the expression of her face while talking. Gazira gave the actress' name to another video where the avatar gesticulates and where all kinds of expressions seem to fight and take power over her face.
If Gazira is Saint Simon, i've had my epiphany the other day in rainy Brussels: Miss Babeli is like Anna Magnani, she's not beautiful, she's better than that. Gazira Babeli's work is on view at the Fabio Paris gallery in Brescia and at iMAL in Brussels until April 30, 2008. |
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Yes, Regine, there is art in Second Life. Heh, somehow that sounds like "Yes, Virginia, there is a..."
Kudos for recognizing Gazworks, but alas, you are missing most of it by not entering the immersive environment that it was created in. It is like looking at a great cake, but never tasting it.
Gazira's entire body of work is unlike any other artist's in Second Life, and hers is among the most fun!, and thought-provoking (in ANY life). It is not for someone freshly arrived. You need to spend a little time in-world before you can fully appreciate the sarcasm, the JOY, the fresh thinking behind her work.
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/03/gazira-babeli-with-foot-and-show-in.html
There is much art and there is groundbreaking work going on.
Adam Ramona: http://npirl.blogspot.com/search/label/Adam%20Ramona
AM Radio:
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/01/far-away.html
DanCoyote Antonelli:
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2007/10/dancoyote-antonelli-overcomes-real-life.html
Tooter Claxton:
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2007/09/tooter-claxton-his-avatars-and-first.html
Scope Cleaver:
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2007/11/scope-cleavers-winged-superstructure.html
DB Bailey:
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2007/11/db-bailey-freshly-discovered-and.html
I could go on... literally, for hours.
Should you ever decide to stop on by, please contact me via email and I will be happy to give you a tour I am confident you will never forget.
BTW, James (Hamlet) Au was the one who gave me a heads up about your blogpiece today. I think WMMNA is one of the best sources anywhere, but don't spend nearly enough time at this address. I'll have to correct that.
Second Life does indeed have a thriving art scene, and we shouldn't be surprised given a long history of artists manipulating technology for creative means.
Our own project – Babelswarm was awarded a $20,000 artists in residence grant by the Australia Council, our Federal arts funding body.
You can jump in here (SL account required):
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ACVA/119/180/295/
Or read about it on our project blog:
http://babelswarm.blogspot.com/
Let's admit it : Second Life Su... ! This is a typical land for blabla. Someone who don't care about SL is not a bad person. Neither he is missing anything. SL is for people who think that the real world is finished and overcrowded by art and so that nothing new and famously true can be created in here. In fact, SL is for easy and fast "artists". Bye.
I think Tom is confusing SL as an alternative to the real world, which it isn't. As an emerging medium for artwork though it fits all the required criteria - basically it has tools you can make things with and restrictions which you need to overcome to produce mature work.
It's no different to doing something on a computer and presenting it as a Giclée print - I mean c'mon it's just bubblejet isn't it :P Folk decided to give it an alluring french name cause nobody took the medium seriously. Now giclée works happily hang in galleries next to the oil paintings and other "serious art".
Admittedly within secondlife I can make something that looks extremely impressive to a first time visitor in about ten minutes - that's fast art, but not very art. To make something that looks unimpressive to most folk may take me all week - but it'll be close to what I envisioned.
One of the reasons SL has a bad name generally is because everyone is encouraged to create stuff, so general craft type work dominates. Few folk have bothered to master the medium past toy phase, nor have the patience to labor at it to realize their vision. Of the tens of thousands of folk creating things for their own amusement in second life, only a small number are what you'd call artists. Those who have the tenacity to practice artistically though, must be true artists whatever their medium.
Gazira's work is accessible and very obviously "art" to folk new to virtual worlds and new media. Not all SL art is as accessible without prior knowledge or experience "in world". There are plenty of other folk, Mis Bettina has mentioned some, who produce similarly complex work. Art in virtual worlds isn't in competition with, nor in exclusion of, art in real life. It's just a different format to practice in.
Virtual worlds are already being used as a medium and as an expression tool, and Gazira Babeli is a wonderful example of this.
No need to dismiss Second Life itself. Very different kinds of people are already using it, for different reasons and with different aims. Most content in Second Life isn't interesting to me: but this is also true for most books and most movies.
Blame contents and their authors - not the medium or the environment.
When people react strongly in opposition to a medium/technique/methodology/approach, I take that as a sign something is going right since it most often seems to come from ignorance and an inflated sense of self-worth.
net.artists tried for year to avoid this error: doing with the new media the same exact thing you can do with the traditional ones (ie drawing the Mona Lisa with MS Paint).
I feel like gaz and 01.org with the latest actions are exactly falling in this pit. they re-do what was cool offline.
get a first life!
While this thread is a little old now, I thought I might add some news - The Australian Centre of Virtual Art (ACVA) has just won a major Australia Council for the Arts grant to build and run a series of virtual art labs.
While SL will play an important role, the ACVA LAB will be exploring all real-time 3D, and digitally networked spaces as creative platforms.
Yu can read more about the project here: http://blog.acva.net.au