Virtual Art on & in the Unstable Platform: Transition in Form & Technique in the Virtual Conceptual Art of Oberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, & Glyph Graves

by LoriLanday on May 15, 2011

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Presented by Lori Landay at Media in Transition 7 Unstable Platforms: The Promise and Peril of Transition, May 15, 2011. ...

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Presented by Lori Landay at Media in Transition 7 Unstable Platforms: The Promise and Peril of Transition, May 15, 2011.

Full paper online (big pdf!); this section begins on p.9:
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit7/papers/Virt_Trans_Landay.pdf

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Virtual Art on & in the Unstable Platform: Transition in Form & Technique in the Virtual Conceptual Art of Oberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, & Glyph Graves — Presentation Transcript

Virtual Transitions: A Report from a Shifting FieldVIRTUAL ART
Media in Transition 7, MIT, May 15, 2011
Lori Landay, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies, Berklee College of Music

Virtual Art on/in the Unstable Platform:Transition in Form & Technique in the Works ofOberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, & Glyph Graves
QR Code to pdf of whole paper (big!):
Discusses a spectrum of responses to change in virtual worlds:
resisting a new viewer interface,
making art out of the transitory properties of the virtual world platform
embracing change and instability by being pioneers on the “new frontiers” of the OpenSimhypergrid
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit7/papers/Virt_Trans_Landay.pdf

What is virtual art?
Not all 3D virtual art is “clickable,” but that is shorthand for interactive, dynamic, & “not possible in real life.” The kind of virtual art in this presentation extends Conceptual Art into the virtual environment, where art is necessarily of the mind, not the material, and the artist’s—and observer/participant’s—agency is unquestionably central.

Transition, Change, & Instability in Virtual Art
In a piece, an artist can use scripts to change:
The object: its appearance, position, physical properties, how interacts with other objects, avatars, the environment
Avatars: what it is doing (poses and animations), where it is, visual point of view (taking camera permission), how it looks
The environment: windlight settings, which aspects of data trigger other changes, how and if sources from outside the virtual world (including media streams and web) enter and interact with the objects, avatars, & environment
How all three interact . . . and more

Virtual minimalism: Oberon Onmura
The blocks of “Plaza” changes color and height in response to transitions in the density clouds of the virtual world “weather.”

Virtual minimalism: Oberon Onmura
Chairs randomly appear and disappear, sometimes toppling over.

Virtual minimalism: Oberon Onmura
Change and instability seem cold and impersonal in this piece, suggestive of an unpredictable urban landscape, with its grayscale colors & inhospitable chairs.

Virtual minimalism: Oberon OnmuraSame script as “Plaza,” different effect: “Storm Cells”
In “Storm Cells,” the sim-wide scope, ethereal setting in the sky, and different palette create a sky ballet of the blocks reaching elegantly for the clouds that change them. Transition seems more “natural,” balanced, harmonious, even as it turns “stormy” and is no less predictable or hospitable.

Selavy Oh: Virtual Dadaist
Selavy often creates art experiences that interfere with you, causing transition, destabilizing your sense of space, place, self, art, object, and the platform itself.

Selavy Oh: Virtual Dadaist
In “Construct,” each space contains (or doesn’t!) a different experience, each built on a different day over 75 days. To experience “Construct” is to experience transition.

Selavy Oh: Virtual Dadaist
Some spaces connect. Others have walls that move around your avatar, trapping you.

Selavy Oh: Virtual Dadaist
The word “construct” appears in different ways throughout, verb or noun????

Transition, Virtual Art, & Instability

Glyph Graves: Transition

Transition, Virtual Art, & Instability

Glyph Graves: “Entropy”
deleted scene from “Open End: A Digital Silent Film Screwball Comedy about Irresolution”

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965)
In 1965, Kosuth juxtaposed a chair, a photograph of that chair where it was installed, and a photo of the dictionary definition of “chair.” The piece offers the object, the image, and the word, and was part of a movement that destabilized (once again) “Art.” Although each of these is fixed, when we take them together, there is transition, instability. And each time the piece is installed, it is different—a different chair, a different place, a different photograph.
Joseph Kosuth. (American, born 1945). One and Three Chairs. 1965. Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of "chair". Chair 32 3/8 x 14 7/8 x 20 7/8" (82 x 37.8 x 53 cm), photographic panel 36 x 24 1/8" (91.5 x 61.1 cm), text panel 24 x 24 1/8" (61 x 61.3 cm). Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund. © 2010 Joseph Kosuth / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. MoMA.

One and Four Timeboards
Lori Landay, 2011
Machinima of what happens when avatar
clicks on the timeboard in the installation

Conclusions on Artists’ Uses of Instability & Change in Virtual Worlds
Artists respond to the transitory nature and instability of the virtual world platform by making art about and from transition and change. Their pieces call attention to transition, to how objects, people, data, and the environment interact, and also to how the artist can control it all, and create an experience that varies from watching transformation to experience entrapment and disorientation.
One and Four Timeboards
Lori Landay, 2011

Virtual Art on & in the Unstable Platform: Transition in Form & Technique in the Virtual Conceptual Art of Oberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, & Glyph Graves

by LoriLanday on May 15, 2011

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Virtual Art on & in the Unstable Platform: Transition in Form & Technique in the Virtual Conceptual Art of Oberon Onmura, Selavy Oh, & Glyph Graves — Presentation Transcript