Remediation of Art in Second Life

R e m e d i a t i o n o f A r t i n S L Lythe Witte/Christy Dena Slate Night Magazine 19 th Oct 2006 Impact of Digital Media Symposium New Media Consortium

“ Digital visual media can be understood through the ways in which they honor, rival, and revise linear-perspective painting, photography, film, television, and print. No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. ” Bolter & Grusin, 1999, 15

Remediation Spectrum New Media as container or window for improved access to old media: transparency New Media emphasises difference as improvement on old media: translucent Older and New Media represented as a collage: refashioning Older medium absorbed to reduce discontinuities: absorption

‘ The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden floor is polished so that you click along clinically or carpeted so that you pad soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as the saying used to go, “to take on its own life.” The discreet desk may be the only piece of furniture.’ ( Society of Control )

Stage/Type 1: New Medium is Transparent ‘ [W]here the older medium is highlighted and represented in digital form without apparent irony or critique’ (p.45)

Second Life Museum of Art

Ars Virtua, New Media Center

Two: New Medium is Translucent The new medium ‘seeks to remain faithful to the older medium’s character’ but ‘the electronic version is offered as an improvement’ (p.46)

Samuel F. B. Morse's Exhibition Gallery at the Louvre (1833)

Random Calliope’s Crescent Moon Museum

Three: Refashioning The new medium tries to ‘refashion the older medium or media entirely, while still marking the presence of the older media’ (p.46)

Lordfly Digeridoo's Public Art Museum

Four: Absorption

When the new medium tries to ‘absorb the older medium entirely, so that the discontinuities between the two are minimized’ (p.47)

‘ We started this project with a sense of excitement arising from the potential of the digital achieve to change how art is created and experienced. […]Let us try to do one better than merely translating Lynn’s [Lynne Hershman] art into something virtual. Let us discuss and investigate how we may come with a suggestion for a new language for art in virtual space. Because art that is native to this new medium deserves the respect its own language implies. This is what I believe we should be doing here.’ Henrik Bennetsen , Life to the Second Power

Experience is the Artwork

DanCoyote Antonelli's ZeroG Skydancers ( picture sourced from SL Art News )

Davan Camus’ Cubes

All Pixels Are Created Equal

Mysterio Wearable Art

Plot your Path

JC Fremont/John Craig Freeman

“Well art that imitates art in the real world is repugnant. SL art that imitates RL art is irrelevant.

[…]

Art needs to disrupt.”

Imaging Place SL

‘ Aporia and epiphany are quintessential to the creative process. The artist block always precedes the creative breakthrough. We tend to forget about the block as soon as we achieve breakthrough. Most people never recognise the pattern. Old synaptic connections must be turned off before new ones can form.’

References

Brian O’Doherty’s ‘Inside the White Cube: Notes on the Gallery Space’, Society of Control [Online] Available at: http:// www.societyofcontrol.com/whitecube/insidewc.htm

Brian O'Doherty (and Thomas McEvilley) (1999) Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space , University of California Press, Expanded edition Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media , MIT Press, Massachusetts.