selavy oh

der schauer

2011-12-21T08:50:00.003+01:00

"der schauer" is an evolving and ever-changing full-sim installation for my 5-month residency november 2011 - march 2012 granted by the Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA). the title is german and refers to both a shower (not taking a shower, but a rain shower, a shower of meteors, etc.) and the feeling of shivering. this installation has no static elements, everything is growing, falling, changing, or rising.

pictures from the location can be found at my flickr. machinima shot on location by jjccc Coronet in mid-december, by Mab MacMoragh end of december and mid-january, by MimesisMonday also end of december. Maddy Gynoid wrote a german blog post about the installation. "What's this art" recommends the installation on her blog. Another blog post by Honour MacMillan initially misunderstood the title to be "the spectator" and i have to admit that i don't mind. Dividni Shostakovich blogged "der schauer" together with oberon onmura's "wave fields" just one sim further.

the rules

2011-10-15T18:52:00.001+02:00

the rules, part I & II
installation for the LEA art shows
InterACT! curated by Lori Landay
and
Hyperformalists curated by DC Spensley

opening october 15, 2011, 1pm and 2pm SLT

the installation consists of two parts. in each part, 6^3 cubes are distributed over a space of 7^3 cubes. the spatial configuration of the cubes is slowly changing over time. the visitor can walk or fly through the space or just watch it. it is possible to navigate through the space - some cubes will act like an elevator moving the visitor one level up, others will move away to open a new corridor.
in part I, each cube reacts to interaction - touching, sitting on it, or colliding with it. part II of the installation reacts to interactions performed by the visitors of part I. the specific reaction of each of the cubes is not due to random chance but is determined by an inner logic - the rules.

see saveme oh's blog for some fun critique and a machinima by laurel leavitt.

random walk

2011-07-28T14:00:00.003+02:00

"random walk", conceived for Split Screen curated by Dividni Shostakovich, is a continuously changing algorithmic installation belonging to a series of permutative spatiotemporal works. visitors can actively influence the evolution of the installation by flying through it or can incorporate the avatar into the work by 'sitting' on one of the elements.

viewer recommendations: use the newest Linden Lab viewer (version 2.7 and better), switch on shadows. try different daylight settings (noon or midnight work well).

opening: Split Screen, July 31, 2011, 2pm SLT.
see Dividni's blog for more info, and read Flora's blog for a review!

LPDT2

2011-06-11T22:56:00.000+02:00

the new version of LPDT2 on opensim will be shown at ISEA 2011. for the inworld experience, register at http://ngrid.org/blog/?q=node%2F3, or go from elsewhere on the hypergrid to hg.ngrid.org:8002.

construct @ humlab

2011-05-08T22:02:00.002+02:00

code for 75 days

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents

CONSTRUCT by Selavy Oh

11 - 18 May 2011 @ Humlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am - 4pm Weekdays

Opening: 11 May between 1:30pm - 4pm

Artist-Talk at the Opening via Second Life at 2pm

SL Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ HUMlab/95/215/351

Curated by Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with James Barrett at HUMlab

"CONSTRUCT is a 75-day project performed during Selavy Oh's residency at Yoshikaze/HUMLAB. Selavy Oh was present every day adding one cube representing one day to the installation. The resulting installation built of 75 cubes, most of them reacting in various ways to the presence of visitors, can be conceived as collection of dynamic time capsules, a spatial blog or diary, that transforms time to space and thus breaks up the inevitable causality of its development by folding it to a multidimensional ensemble allowing for novel relations between its constituents. Moreover, the single days continuously exchange their positions, resulting in an everchanging labyrinth of cubes - some days even becoming inaccessible - which allows the visitor to discover new connections and associations that go beyond formal or semantic similarity." (Selavy Oh)

For the HUMlab RL exhibition, Selavy Oh adds another dimension to her inworld installation by exposing codes she has employed for the construction of her work. By letting a code represent each day of her residency in the same manner as her inworld cubes, Selavy Oh's CONSTRUCT conceives a highly conceptual artwork, in which multiple representations can be cross-referenced and examined via a thread of a day, revealing creative process of interconnections, transformations and even contrasts between virtual construction, subjectivity and the behind-the-scene hardcore coding. (Sachiko Hayashi)

Mab Macmoragh from Soup/Lovers Lane Studio has kindly contributed with a 23-minutes-long beautifully edited machinima of CONSTRUCT to the RL HUMlab exhibition. Mab Macmoragh's thirty-seven "mini" machinimas, each depicting various scenes from Selavy Oh's inworld installation, are online and can be viewed at SL: Selavy Oh's construct

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches. For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University. Original exhibition poster design by Carl-Erik Engqvist.

See summary by Jim Barrett.

CONSTRUCT

2011-02-14T23:45:00.012+01:00

remembering the future
imagining the past

for the upcoming residency, i chose to construct a dynamic structure - one component for each day of the residency - that can be accessed by my visitors. each component will be a place-holder for the day it has been built. the components may contain artefacts, sounds, interactive elements, or may be empty. once the space is filled, the residency will be over.

the residency will be filled with time. the space will be over. the structure may be empty. the component will be dynamic. the visitor is chosen. the artefact may be accessed, sound be interactive, elements be place-holders. each day will be a space. each time will be filled. the residency is upcoming. the residency is over. the day has been built. the components may be filled. the space may contain time. i chose to construct.

more info at yoshikaze.
teleport to HUMlab.
see also the blog posts at soup by Mab Macmoragh.
watch chair cam sequence at day 29.
time lapse video until day 60.
camera sequence shown at HUMLab.
Oberon Onmura's blog post at New World Notes.
blog post by Dividni Shostakovich.
interview with Jim Barrett.
machinima by Lori Landay.

thanks to Jeremy Owen Turner for suggesting selavy for this residency.

chatroom

2010-11-21T23:37:00.003+01:00

Installation for the Second Life part of the Cyberfest in St. Petersburg, curated by Pinkpink Sorbet. See Pinkpink Sorbet's blog or the Cyberfest page for info.
The installation is a simple white box, which makes extensive use of Second Life's shared media feature for presenting sound (a computer-generated voice reading a book from the project gutenberg), video, and text display on the walls. The text chat of the visitors is answered by two instances of a pandora bot, which is listening and responding to itself in a positive feedback loop.
A discussion at a forum dedicated to chatbots mentions the pandorabot Identity Absent several times.
The behaviour of the chatbot was slightly changed following a mail from Richard Wallace:

Hello, your bot Identity Absent is taking up a lot of resources on our community server at www.pandorabots.com . Please contact us at info@pandorabots.com or call me to talk about how we can better assist with your project.

Best regards,

Richard Wallace
Chief Science Officer
Pandorabots, Inc.

changing room

2010-11-05T19:30:00.007+01:00

Collaboration with Arahan Claveau, part of Michael Takeo Magruder's Changing Room project. See Arahan's blog, his slideshow, and his machinima for more info and visuals. See Michael's documentation about the event with even more pictures!
And here is a text written by Nusch Ray specifically for this occasion:

We, the visitors in the virtual world, are not the audience of this collaborative work of Arahan Claveau (Steve Millar) and Selavy Oh. In fact, we do not even know what the audience outside was experiencing, or whether there was such an audience at all. The changing room does not exist, even though it is documented. Changing Room is a conceptual work of Michael Takeo Magruder, who invites artists to work under heavy restrictions for a very brief time and remix a virtual space, that is, change the space by using only the virtual objects that are already present in that space. The visitors in the gallery, here it was a space in Belfast, can watch the transformation on a big video screen while it happens: a performance of restricted creativity.
Arahan Claveau and Selavy Oh used the time and space for a Warholian composition on the role of the audience: the space, which was supposed to be seen by the visitors in the gallery, was transformed in a non-space, an auditorium full of empty chairs, while semitransparent screens featured a film by Claveau, a succession of avatar portraits, clearly inspired by Warhol's screen-tests. Claveau and Oh not only changed the appearance of the virtual room, but also the function of the real gallery space: the virtual room became the auditorium for watching the visitors of the gallery at the other side of the screen, who would see the screen as projection surface for Claveau's 'screen-tests'. And to make these changes completely confusing, we can think of it as the artists' work within the work of another artist for an invisible audience, which then became the subject of observation, referring to the work of an artist who reflected on the relation of artist and audience ...
Nusch Ray, November 2010

Changing Room was a very challenging experience, it pushed us as artists to work within constraints that were in direct conflict with our usual practise, but it was these limitations that really defined how the space evolved throughout the construction. The inability to reproduce objects in the usual way forced us to approach the build differently, and we had to work closely together to overcome certain obstacles that would normally not be an issue. We started with some initial ideas which developed throughout the day, because there was a time limit and much of that was spent making and positioning objects and experimenting with scripts, we really had to focus on creating a space that would be visually strong but still use the medium of Second Life to its full potential. The end result we felt successfully conveyed our concept; a deconstructed cinema where real-world rules such as physicality did not apply, and when that was taken out of the equation it allowed for a disorienting environment that was contrary to conventions and expectations, something that was importantly in tandem with the spirit of the project.
Arahan Claveau, January 2011

spherical topography

2010-10-10T19:27:00.002+02:00

dynamically changing cloud of cubes based on continuously changing homeomorphic transformations of a sphere. shown at magoo and the contribution of the museo del metaverso for the !D.A.! festival.
featured by soror nishi on her blog.

LPDT2

2010-09-01T01:00:00.054+02:00

LPDT2 is the Second Life incarnation of Roy Ascott’s groundbreaking new media art work La Plissure du Texte (“The Pleating of the Text”), created in 1983.

LPDT2 will be projected into Real Life in Seoul, Korea during the INDAF new media art festival held at Tomorrow City, Songdo, Incheon, throughout September 2010 (link to project). The project will also be open to visitors in Second Life during this month, starting from September 1st. See here for an in-depth description of the project (text by Alpha Auer).

Roy Ascott’s project has been co-authored in Second Life by Selavy Oh (programming and architecture), MosMax Hax, aka. Max Moswitzer (architecture and terrain) and Alpha Auer + Alpho Fullstop, aka. Elif Ayiter (avatars and soundscape). Further associates are Frigg Ragu, aka. Heidi Dahlsveen (avatar animations) and i-DAT from the University of Plymouth, UK (Real Life SMS input). Special thanks go to the University of Applied Fine Arts, Vienna, who have made the project come to life through the provision of their Second Life island for the duration of the show.

More information at the official LPDT2 website. Slideshow by Alpha here (this video is also shown at the Shanghai WorldExpo in the Madrid Pavillion in the program of OpenThisEnd).
See sentences sampled by the text generator and selected by visitors at the twitter stream!

Teleport directly to the installation here.
Download custom sky settings for the Second Life viewer here!

See Mab MacMoragh's machinima and her blog post, Frigg's machinima, Clarissa Ribeiro's blog, a German blog post by Stephanie Posselt, and Garrett Lynch's blog post! but that's not all, the installation has been used to shoot fashion pictures, make machinima or use it as backdrop for sl photography (see the flickr group).

scripted chair cam, video taken by mosmax hax

Ascott R, Ayiter E, Moswitzer M, Oh S. LPDT. Metaverse Creativity 1:81-100, 2010

a space to talk

2010-08-09T13:53:00.009+02:00

letters provided by mosmax hax

performance on tuesday august 10, noon SLT, at the Odyssey Performance Art Festival 2010 (teleport).

selavy oh will be present during the whole performance. the duration of the performance is determined by the visitors.

during the performance, every letter chatted by the visitors is transformed to a prim-letter, which is created above the visitors. the artist will not participate in the chat. the letters are forming a structure, similar to a frozen fountain, above the visitors. since only a limited number of prims can be created on a given simulator, the performance ends as soon as there are no more prims available. at the end of the performance, the duration is announced and all letters fall down onto the visitors. after some time, the letters start floating away.

see my odyssey picture album, mab macmoragh's slide show, nicolex's machinima, and the official machinima by liz solo! read garrett lynch's blog about the event.

second performance, renamed to the limits of communicative space, saturday september 26, 1:30 SLT at ECNCS for the opening of the french Centre national du costume de scène et de la scénographie. the performance unexpectedly lasted 4523.758 seconds, that is almost 1.5 hours, and the letters used over 9000 prims. the organizer marc moana was generous enough to let the performance run until the very end.

don't be afraid

2010-07-15T20:35:00.004+02:00

work for the group exhibition "It was a blur" curated by Radio Signals. to clarify: my contribution are just the moving letters.
opening july 16th, 6pm SLT, closes august 16th. teleport to mirror.

all participants had to obey several formal restrictions, such as objects being full bright, no glow, use either a given grey texture (HEX: #d1d0d6) or the blank white standard texture. only 2D objects laying on the ground were allowed to use colors or other textures. selling objects or wearable art was explicitly allowed.

see also arahan claveau's critique of the show, and bryn oh's machinima.

homology

2010-06-06T12:39:00.009+02:00

ho·mol·o·gy
Pronunciation: \hō-ˈmä-lə-jē, hə-\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ho·mol·o·gies
Date: circa 1656
1 : a similarity often attributable to common origin
2 a : likeness in structure between parts of different organisms (as the wing of a bat and the human arm) due to evolutionary differentiation from a corresponding part in a common ancestor — compare analogy b : correspondence in structure between a series of parts (as vertebrae) in the same individual
3 : similarity of nucleotide or amino acid sequence (as in nucleic acids or proteins)
4 : a branch of the theory of topology concerned with partitioning space into geometric components (as points, lines, and triangles) and with the study of the number and interrelationships of these components especially by the use of group theory —called also homology theory — compare cohomology

Live performance with qiezli Hixantapo (Jeremy Owen Turner) at the Museo del Metaverso, Wednesday, June 9, noon SLT. Streamed live at the Viareggio Art Project!

Left: qiezli as abstract avatar consisting of colored geometric shapes and Selavy. Right: "undressing" the avatars reveals the underlying human shape of both avatars. After being completely undressed, both avatars swapped shape and appearance and slowly dressed using "clothes" and attachments of the other, thus becoming the other.

watch machinima by mab macmoragh and screenshots by selavy oh.

Re-performed November 20, 2010, together with qiezli for the mixed-reality event Zeitgeist, a project by Nora Furlough, which was seen at the MuroGallery in Geneve and on Odyssey.

big bang

2010-05-30T18:30:00.004+02:00

work in collaboration with mosmax hax (Max Moswitzer) for the Scien&Art contest. big bang comes in two flavors: one for collectors, and one for exhibitions.

the collector version consists of a single object, the seed, that is given to the collector. once unpacked, i.e., rezzed from the user's inventory, the object triggers the big bang, which lasts about two minutes and results in complete self-destruction. due to the properties (permissions) of the seed object, which cannot be copied, a repetition is impossible, because the seed object is destroyed together with the big bang. thus, the work can only be experienced once and is part of the collection only as long as it is not experienced.

the exhibition version consists of a seed object, which triggers the big bang upon touching it. after teh first touch, the visitor gets the following message: "do not touch the forbidden object again unless you want to trigger the BIG BANG. triggering may violate the rules of this land and may lead to expulsion. triggering the BIG BANG will be at your own risk." after touching a second time, the message is: "probably you accidently touched the forbidden fruit again. you are warned for the last time. triggering the BIG BANG really is at your own risk!!!". the visitor can then trigger the big bang.
notes about the exhibition version, distributed in a notecard:

Forbidden Fruit: A Theoretical Model for the Big Bang

Selavy Oh

The Big Bang is the prototypical creatio ex nihilo that either seems to require the touch of a cryptic god external to itself or constitutes a mysterious everlasting cycle of creation and destruction. Here we propose the Big Bang contained in the Forbidden Fruit as a theory that unifies the expanding and contracting versions of current cosmology. We suggest that the universe created by the Big Bang is vanishing into the void, but that the creative act performed by the avatar, who assumes a god-like attitude, will start the cycle again. The touch of the creator may, however, be violating the underlying laws, the laws of physics dictated by the terms of service, and instead of being able to admire the successful creation, the creator may be punished by expulsion. Several further side effects of the Big Bang are explained by the proposed scheme: the time dilation accompanying the Big Bang can be observed in the statistics panel, the repetitive nature and limited number of the generated elements is clearly visible, the variability in size has a fractal character, and the cumulative energy consumption equals that of an average laptop computer. Finally it is concluded that the similarity in overall appearance of the generated universes clearly proves that the creative mind was not the one triggering the Big Bang, but the one inventing this concept.

"The Competition aims to expose and reward the best artworks created in Second Life to communicate scientific concepts."
Scien&Art Competition (2010)

art does not illustrate. art never communicates any concepts outside of art. if an artwork is concerned with scientific concepts, it does so in a critical discourse. art can talk about concepts and topics that are inaccessible to science. art and science are the two faces of the Janus called culture.
Selavy Oh (2010)

another way of putting it might be that art deals analogously with the state of things “beyond physics” where philosophy had to make assertions.
Joseph Kosuth: Art After Philosophy (1969)

note: surprisingly, this work was not among the winners of the contest.
but see the blog post by zorro hirvi for another opinion, and listen to the podcast by amy freelunch!

the inner workings of perspective

2010-05-08T11:17:00.003+02:00

new work for the museo del metaverso (see also here) investigating once more virtual physics, but also the context of museum space. the structure uses a distance-dependent spatial scaling, which contradicts the normal perspective: its size is proportional to the distance of the nearest avatar (see my pseudo-giants). due to technical limitations of the medium, the rescaling of the structure is not smooth, but rather jerky and happens in quantized steps, as if the visitor would be able to observe the actions of the laws of optics. the consequence of the inverse scaling is that the structure plays with the rules of the museum by ignoring the boundaries of the confined space that is allocated to each artist. when seen from far away, the structure breaks out of the walls of the museum and invades the adjacent booths. but as soon as the visitor is close enough to see what is in those booths, the structure is small enough to fit in its assigned space.

ménage à trois

2010-04-07T10:45:00.006+02:00

work for brooklyn is watching featuring three automated performers reciting french poems while walking in a square and changing gender. loosely connected to BiW's digital love theme. the text on the walls is generated dynamically by using the new shared media feature of second life viewer version 2. any other chat text, such as the english text in the picture above, will also appear on the walls and randomly mix with the poems.
see blog by steve millar (arahan claveau), art:21 blog post by nettrice gaskins, and machinima by mab macmoragh.

last exit

2010-03-21T23:48:00.008+01:00

"LAST EXIT - ARS VIRTUA" (2010) - Selavy Oh and Qiezli Hixantapo

WHAT: Performance in Second Life.
WHEN: Friday March 26, 2010 - 1 PM SLT UNTIL DOOMSDAY!
WHO: Selavy Oh and Qiezli Hixantapo.
WHERE: ARS VIRTUA, Second Life - Dowden 26, 47, 52
SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dowden/26/47/52
Web: http://www.arsvirtua.com

SUMMARY:
Ars Virtua as one of the leading contemporary art organizations in Second Life, once hosted a popular gallery/museum space.
On March 21, 2010, Ars Virtua's main gallery in Second Life was utterly destroyed by the performance art troupe, Second Front.
On March 22, 2010, Ars Virtua put their property up for sale on the real estate market.
On March 26, 2010, you will have one more chance to exit the razed Ars Virtua space with dignity before the property itself will be sold and gone forever!

ESCAPE THE SPACE! ENTER THE LIGHT! EMBRACE THE VOID! THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO EXIT TO A FAMILIAR REALM BEYOND ART!

image by jeremy owen turner

for documentation, see jeremy's youtube or facebook
part 1, part2, part3

previous announcement
collaborative performance for three bots, a couple of prims, some scripts, and an avatar

by jeremy owen turner & selavy oh, ars virtua, ~~march 21, 10pm SLT~~*

keywords: ars virtua, last rites, transition into the light, cyberheaven, life after art

*update: performance was cancelled because Second Front performed first and wrecked the space

identity absent

2010-02-28T12:24:00.011+01:00

work for Brooklyn Is Watching consisting of two elements: 1) a bot (a script-driven avatar) called Identity Absent that continuously switches its appearance between the 16 default appearances supplied by Linden Labs (the pictures above shows an overlay of three different looks), and 2) a simple media-on-a-prim doing a Google search for the name of the closest avatar (to see this, you need the new Second Life viewer version 2.0 beta). if no one else is near, the search is for "Identity Absent", and will, after some time, certainly come up with the blog post that you are reading right now. read also nusch ray's blog post at BiW and watch mab macmoragh's video and read her blog post!

a new version of identity absent, called the empty chair, was shown at UWA's monthly contest as entry for july 2010 (see soror nishi's blog). identity changed appearance, when new visitors came, she greeted them, and when they tried to sit on the chair, identity would not allow them to do so, saying "sorry, but this is my chair".
identity won "The Honourable Mention Prize for MYSTERY (L$1,000)", and she was very very happy! see the official UWA post, the primperfect blog post, miso susanowa's blog, and metaverse arts.
a discussion at a forum dedicated to chatbots mentions Identity Absent several times - she is now famous as one of the chatbots (see chatroom) with the most traffic. a mail from the chief science officer of Pandorabots confirmed this.

intervention

2010-02-16T00:32:00.005+01:00

an architectural intervention at DB Bailey's sim Cetus. Zachh Cale approached me whether i wanted to contribute to DB's upcoming show "CETUS, the conflagration", and i gladly accepted this invitation. my contribution consists of a central tower of 158 moving panels, each panel being textured on one side with the invisiprim texture. opening probably monday february 22.
watch gleman jun's machinima about the show!
and here some more info about the show from DB Bailey:

CETUS, the conflagration.

Imagine being able to actually walk into one's inventory. A great storage room filled with oddities the original purpose of which has been long forgotten. It is sometimes too easy to recycle those old textures and objects. Sometimes in order to move on to new realms, one has to clean out the attic. Sometimes a good old bonfire is the best solution. So DB Bailey's inventory high above CETUS is in flames. Soon to be gone forever. Amongst these artifacts are forgotten works by such artists as Patch Thibaud, Chrome Underwood, Keystone Bouchard, Selavy Oh, Glyph Graves, Eshi Otawara, Nomad Molly Nostrum.

You are invited to come visit the conflagration and final days of CETUS. The fire will rage through mid-March, at which time the history of CETUS will come to an end. And DB Bailey will start afresh with a whole new box of toys.

See anything you want?....just ask DB!

see cyberloom blog: ... DB Bailey’s Cetus is the first to be preserved in this fashion by Stamford University Library and the Library of Congress ... and one more

the wedding

2010-01-09T00:30:00.010+01:00

the heads have fallen
the couch did break
the cake was eaten
the wedding was fake!

the bots with bodies
saw you naked and naughty
where was your dress?
you were such a beautiful mess
the bride stipped bare

INVITATION NOTECARD

The performance of 01.10.10 a wedding

SLURL
UPON ARRIVAL PLEASE TAKE THE TELEPORT TO THE CATHEDRAL

You are invited to the SL wedding performance of Selavy Oh and Misprint Thursday on Sunday January 10th at 1pm slt. THIS IS A FAKE WEDDING. IT IS PERFORMANCE ART. The performance is a reflection and celebration of "creative community" and how we intersect and play off each other's work, ideas and environments. The objects, costumes, props and personas in this performance are reflective of the playful and creative domain of SL art.
Why a wedding? The performance of a wedding grew out of a poetically whimsical "faux proposal" from Misprint Thursday to Selavy Oh. The proposal was accepted and the faux partnership was formed. From there, the fantastic thread has unraveled leading us to this culminating encounter. We are all "wed" in our experiences and connective creativity in this environment in many ways aren't we?

To view the performance:
Set to Midnight
Have your sounds and video enabled
Grab the Info In the Cathedral Foyer when you arrive

In keeping with the performance please feel free to participate by dressing any combination of "ecclectic formal".

Much thanks and appreciation to Corrine Cerise for the generous land use to host this event and Marko Seurat for providing the wonderful builds on said land.

Tremendous YAY for all the artists and actors to participate in this fast paced, fun and surreal community art event. CHEERS!

ARTISTS:

Misprint Thursday and Selavy Oh
collaborators and co-conspirators in performance

Marko Seurat-Set Design (cathedral and sky build)
Bryn Oh-Catherdal Art curated and placed by Marko Seurat
Suzanne Graves-Cathedral Art curated and placed by Marko Seurat
ColeMarie Soleil-Machinima Documentation
myvegancookbook Bolissima-Costume for brides
Dekka Raymaker-Wedding Documents
Solo Mornington-Rings
L1Aura Loire-Nuptial Couch
Rod Mandel-Interactive Wedding seating
Ze Moo-Minister 1
Xenophile Neurocam-Minister 2
Penumbra Carter-Minister 3 and cake creator
Joonie Jatho-Deflowered Girl
Arrow Inglewood-Best Man and Ice Sculpture creator
Captain Pike-Usher
Positive Hinterland-Bridesmaid
Negative Overland-Bridesmaid
Dekka Raymaker-Wedding Documents
curmudgeon Krasner-Witness
Peri Afarensis-Witness
Azdel Slade and echolalia Azalee-Augmented Reality Performance
Oberon Onmura-Reception Art
Jo Ellsmere-Reception Chairs
Maya Paris-Table Centerpieces

concept, idea, organization, poem, and notecard text by misprint thursday. for some pictures, see blog posts of chestnut rau and apmel. reposted by azdel slade at transreal.org! mentioned at post-medium critiqué. mentioned again at art:21 by nettrice gaskins.

erasing the spiral

2009-11-07T19:00:00.016+01:00

poster by helfe ihnen, 2009

Opening Nov 7, 2009, 1pm SLT at East of Odyssey. Curated by Helfe Ihnen. Text for the exhibition (see below) by Nusch Ray.
Blogged by soror nishi, tangoafton apmel, and alpha auer. further pictures taken at the opening by Helfe Ihnen, and machinima by Helfe Ihnen, bark Aabye, Saveme Oh!, and Siss Criss. Recommended in Linden Lab's destination guide. yet another blog by apmel about positive!

"A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement."
Robert Smithson, 1970
In 1970, Robert Smithson constructed the Spiral Jetty, a large earthwork in the Great Salt Lake, Utah. The Spiral Jetty was visible only for two years and then became submerged in the water of lake. Even though Smithson didn't anticipate the drowning, the idea of entropy, of the inevitable change of his sculptures by the forces of natures was a central element of his work.

"Erased de Kooning Drawing is iconic because it stands for an era when something seemingly negative could, in fact, turn out to have positive repercussions."
Vincent Katz, 2006
In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg asked Willem de Kooning, whether he could erase one of his drawings as an act of art. De Kooning agreed, and, playing his part in the performance, gave Rauschenberg a drawing that was specifically difficult to erase. This "Erased de Kooning" has become one of the most important works of art of that period. In an interview, asked what this act meant for him, Rauschenberg answered: "It's poetry".

Selavy Oh's work erasing the spiral consists of scripted terraforming covering almost the whole area of the art simulator East of Odyssey in the virtual world of Second Life. A spiral slowly emerges out of the virtual water, white spheres cover the ground like pearls, structuring the ground and reminding of the salt crystals in Smithson's work. And suddenly, like a splash, a huge wave consisting of virtual ground forms and propagates over the water, erasing the subtle traces of the spiral. Then the cycle recommences and the spiral is slowly rebuilding.
Apparently, Selavy Oh's "scripted landart", as curator Helfe Ihnen calls it, refers to both these icons of modern art. But what could be more pretentious than attempting to re-enact Smithson's work, so depending on the context of nature, in a virtual setting? And, if that was not enough, to erase it by an earthquake simulation, pretending this to be a reference to Rauschenberg?
Or did we fall into Selavy Oh's trap when asking this question? Is this the question we should ask ourselves, just to realize that we are looking at a piece of software, producing an illusion of water and earth, of creation and destruction? The reference as an illusion, pretension as calculated or simulated provocation?
But there's more about it. We, as visitors, can also trigger the wave: when we let our avatars fly and land in the shallow water, the wave is released and erases Selavy's spiral. Even the small platform, a simple representation of the space, can be used to trigger the wave by clicking on it. Doing this several times may eventually lead to complete chaos, uncontrolled waves emerging everywhere, erasing the spiral before it is even drawn.
Admittedly, this playful destruction is amusing, and watching the intertwining waves shovelling avatars and white spheres around is an enjoyable experience. Perhaps, it is this tension between sophisticated pleasure and ironic reference to art history that makes this piece an excellent contribution to Odyssey's programmatic role in the yet underestimated world of virtual art.

Nusch Ray, November 2009

irregularity

2009-10-17T00:00:00.015+02:00

irregularity, conceived for burning life 2009, consists of 1872 identical poles. the poles are arranged so that they form edges of a three-dimensional regular grid of 2.5x2.5 cubes. by omitting cubes and edges, the remaining poles, still organized in a regular grid, form a hollow sphere. thus, constructing the sphere can be conceived as removing those parts of the grid which do not contribute to the shape, like a sculptor carving wood.
initially, the structure is completely symmetric and regular, but becomes more and more irregular over time. each visitor actively participates in this transformation: when avatars fly through the structure and collide with it, the edges touched fall down and the structure temporarily becomes damaged. after a certain time, which depends on how many visitors are present, the edges will start to rise and slowly move back towards their original position. however, they never end up in exact the same position, thus resulting in an accumulative disarrangement of the structure. read also bettina tizzy's NPIRL blog post, poid mahovlich's metanopsis blog (with interview), ana's blog, and michele hyacinth's blog with her picture of the work at the end of burning life after a week full of visitors, showing the avatar-induced distortion of the installation.
a slightly different version was shown at Brooklyn Is Watching and was discussed in podcast 74.
sounds: samples of Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate (performed by Kurt Schwitters, original recording May 5, 1932)

state of formation

2009-09-15T20:28:00.016+02:00

presented by IBM EXHIBITION SPACE (IBM 3, Secondlife)
Curated by Andrew Sempere (Tezcatlipoca Bisiani)
OPENING: 2pm SLT (5pm EST) SEPTEMBER 16th, 2009
SLURL: IBM 3/83/39/22
IBM SPACE: Gallery Information

UNTIL: December 1st, 2009

blogs about state of formation:

tezcatlipoca bisiani (the "official" blog)
soror nishi
arahan claveau
hamlet au
masoon (a japanese blog, no idea what's written there)
avenue magazine, october 2009, page 219 ff (by nazz lane)
featured in lyric lundquist's sideways time

notecard text for the show by Mab MacMoragh:

An expressionless blank avatar turns, seeming to be a fountain statue, centered over a dark round basin. Around the well, little black cubes crawl on a white ground splattered in black, a big white cube orbits the air generating a suspended vanishing trail in its wake, and five identical white chairs await. All is enclosed within a constantly transforming structure of semitransparent panels screened with typeface characters.

Selavy Oh's state of formation reveals itself only to the one willing to explore the installation beyond its superficial appearance. Beginning outside, the visitor walks through moving lettered planes and leaves behind short-lived traces of landforms risen in the water ringing the center. Finally, the visitor reaches the inner boundary to sit on each of the chairs facing the fountain--and to surrender control. The visitor's fixed gaze is taken over in a brisk encounter with changing viewpoints and flashing images.

fourty four flowers

2009-09-14T11:48:00.006+02:00

forty four flowers is a sound piece for mab macmoragh's sim eryri, and has also been shown at the artificial lawn of brooklyn is watching (mentioned by jay in a comment to this blog, but erroneously attributed to another work, see other comments). invisible moving sound sources play the names of forty four flowers, whispered by two different speakers. the visitor is confronted with the contradiction between the simulated environment, the invisible whispering human voices, and personal memories evoked by the flower names.
voices by amy freelunch (amy wilson) and arahan claveau (steve millar). arahan also made a video (well, more a sound recording) of it, see it here.

dancing mountains

2009-08-28T17:02:00.022+02:00

the dancing mountains are the first artwork in Second Life using scripted terraforming. dancing mountains, being more a sketchy proof of concept than a fully developed piece of work, gained much attention for pushing the boundaries of artworks in virtual worlds. thanks to bettina tizzy for the blog at NPIRL, and mab macmoragh (see soup blog) for giving me the possibility to realize this work.

the galleries: final show

2009-08-13T18:09:00.011+02:00

machinima by penumbra carter

contribution for the final five show of Brooklyn Is Watching, on display in SL at East of Odyssey and in RL at Jack The Pelican Presents in NYC (picture of the gallery setup).
contributing artists:

Arahan Claveau – "Adrift"
Dekka Raymaker – "Artbortion"
comet Morigi – selected works
Oberon Onmura – "Fight for Order"
Misprint Thursday – "Suspended Hang-Ups"

see also mab macmoragh's soup blog, comet morigi's blog, moncherie afterthought's blog post at BiW, and the interview with jay at the npirl blog, and it was mentioned at art:21 by nettrice gaskin.

talking art

2009-07-22T23:26:00.003+02:00

there are no pictures of this work, because it was an invisible chatbot specifically written for brooklyn is watching. you can read about it in jay's blog post "art critical chat bot" and hear what they said in their podcasts 58 and 59. the bot scanned the environment for objects, and made specific comments about them on the chat channel, mentioning the title and the owner of the work embedded in a statement such as "did you see XXX by YYY?".
here's part of my comment at the BiW blog to some of the reactions to the work:

what the bot chats is “rather empty”, it lacks subtlety, it quickly becomes “boring and annoying”. yes. this was my intention. the bot’s phrases are dull, repetitive, and uninformed. that’s the reason why i used a pretty simple ‘algorithm’ for generating the phrases, about 20 prefabricated ones (including one with a typo) with a placeholder for the work. far from anything intelligent. i even chose a fixed delay between each utterance, which adds to the machine-like stupidity.
why creating such a work? this spambot was my reaction to the decreasing quality of discourse at BiW, a reflection on the current state of BiW, and as such it should mention the names of the objects on the sim and their owners, but it was intended to be uninformed and annoying (again: i really like the comment in the podcast: smart but uninteresting, yes!).

the circle (chain reaction)

2009-07-12T14:31:00.005+02:00

the circle is the centrepiece of my level at the museum of hyperformalism curated by dc spensley. it evolved from several experiments with uniform units influencing each other locally, that is, within a certain range. each of the 180 cubic cells of the circle is identical, and touching anyone of them will start the chain reaction, which slowly will destroy the whole circle. upon touch, a cell will spawn rectangular prims, which slowly float away from the mother cell. when one of the child cells collides with another cell, that cell will also start spawning. each cell can only spawn a limited number of children before it vanishes. once all cells have vanished, the circle will start its life-cycle again by rebuilding itself.
a modified version of the circle can be seen at imagine plus: 180 portraits together with bark aabye, see the video by bark!

rebuilding structure

2009-07-09T23:03:00.004+02:00

work for the show THE POST-CRISIS ERA curated by aino baar (for that occasion, i called it resurrection, but i prefer the more descriptive title). a chaotic pile of simple white poles slowly configures itself to a perfectly regular structure when an avatar comes close enough, and breaks down again when the avatar leaves. the work was also shown at BiW, but with an additional component: each breakdown caused some poles to get lost, because they went off-world or ended up on adjacent parcels from where they could not return. thus, the structure became more an more incomplete, slowly loosing its form, and never returned to its initial perfection. see machinima by DC Spensley.

the basic cube

2009-07-06T12:39:00.005+02:00

sketch by sol lewitt. particle cube by selavy oh.

the particle cube consists of one base prim and one moving prim for each edge (12 prims). the edge prims draw the edges by dropping so-called particles, i.e., two-dimensional texture patches.
a larger interactive version of the basic cube is on display now at the museum of hyperformalism curated by DC Spensley (aka DanCoyote Antonelli).

mapping space

2009-07-02T12:14:00.004+02:00

work for the contest of the Spencer Museum of Art of the University of Kansas. a slightly different version than the one in the image was submitted, and was awarded the second prize. the work consists of 27 prims and is 2.56x2.56 m. the whole area of the sim is represented by 26 prims, which scan the space, collect data on cloud density and ground level, and display these data as particle relief, scale 1:100, with the particle luminosity reflecting cloud density. since all prims are completely transparent, only the particles are visible as flickering three-dimensional pattern.
the black&white version is on display at mab macmoragh's soup project.

representation

2009-07-01T14:49:00.003+02:00

site-specific installation for Brooklyn Is Watching consisting of a miniature version of the exhibition space, an avatar tracking system, and modifications to the original exhibition space. the installation was discussed in podcast 57, but unfortunately the severe modifications to the exhibition space (hedges, stage, tower, stairs) escaped the panel. in my comment to the podcast, i mentioned that

there was actually more about the miniature version of the BiW space. the mini-space was an abstraction of the original space. just as the visitors, the avatars (not being but representing the visitors), were represented by their appropriately scaled bounding boxes (their virtual-physics representation). when i worked on achieving an appropriate abstraction/representation of the original space, i realized that the easiest way would be to also transform the space itself. i placed green prims around the hedges, covered the stairs, and placed appropriately colored prims around parts of the tower. thanks to these transformations, the original, but modified space and the representing miniature space were almost exactly scaled versions of each other. constructing the representation modified the original.

modified base and stairs of the BiW towermodified upper part of the BiW tower (the cabin was no longer visible)

pseudo-giants

2009-06-28T22:10:00.004+02:00

the pseudo-giants are based on a freely available avatar model, the noob, which has originally been created by art laxness. my version shrinks when approached by an avatar, thus contradicting the normal laws of perspective, just like mr. tur tur, the pseudo-giant in michael ende's fantasy novel for kids "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver".
shown at formes nocturnes and later at brooklyn is watching.

community

2009-06-28T19:58:00.002+02:00

a reaction to a discussion about the future of odyssey and to work by gazira babeli at odyssey east (the meteors in the image), this temporary large scale installation dealt with a specific aspect of space in second life: the number of available prims (building primitives). once that number is reached, building becomes impossible. the community of flexible poles, swaying gently in the virtual wind, occupied all available prim space. the space was already almost inaccessible due to gazira's work; after installing community it was not only inaccessible, but also unusable. however, every visitor, who managed to access the area despite the meteors and the slowing down of the user interface caused by the number of flexible objects, destroyed part of the installation, not temporarily or reversibly like in previous work, but irrecoverably. every member of the flexi-community, which was touched by a visitor, moaned about the intrusion and floated away for once and ever. the visitor had the choice: creating new space for new work, but acting as an intruder, or staying away from the work accepting its occupation of the space.

three samples

2009-06-18T16:59:00.005+02:00

three samples was conceived for the primavera exhibition at angelgate. after my previous experience at that sim, where i had to create a work without scripts and came up with decomposed, i decided to make another unscripted work, but this time completely non-interactive. it is a recording, a frozen moment in time, the application of the physics engine to a couple of prims stopped in time, and caged in a simple white box. read also soror nishi's blog post. a notecard offered a brief explanation:

"three samples" is a small static work composed of 30 white prims presented in a small white cube. The composition of the work results from a simple experiment: three poles of 10 rectangular prims each are exposed to the effect of the physics engine for exactly one second.

for the interested reader, this work is once more a reference to marcel duchamp, this time to his work on chance, the trois stoppages etalon.

space occupied

2009-06-12T17:47:00.003+02:00

misprint thursday invited a couple of artists, among them oberon onmura and four yip, to show work at her artpounce gallery. my installation was relatively simple: part of the space was occupied by a kinetic object, the scanner, which moved in regular time intervals to a new location in a space restricted by a transparent cube. the space occupied by the scanner was not accessible to the avatars. a simple chair was placed in front, as if to provide a seat for watching the scanner. however, sitting on the chair directed the viewpoint to the avatar's face, which underwent distortion upon sitting down. here is a short text by nusch ray about the work:

When we enter Misprint Thursday's Artpounce Gallery, the left side of the first room, providing a nice view on the virtual ocean, is occupied by a moving object that reminds of a three-dimensional plotter: a small cube intersected by three bars, all moving together within a semi-transparent cubic volume of space, adopting a new position every now and then. A simple chair invites us to sit down, perhaps to contemplate the motion or to discover its underlying meaning. But upon sitting down, we first see our avatar's face undergo a horrible distortion. After that initial shock, which effectively perturbs our so accustomed feeling of embodiment, our view remains on the face of our digital representation, as if our screen turned into a mirror showing us our digital appearance. On one side the cube, carrying its own coordinate system, travelling on its random path unable to escape its impenetrable transparent cage. On the other side the viewer, thrown back to solipsistic self-reflection. This installation, simple and unpretentious, effectively works as an allegory of the medium, opposing work and viewer to each other, but separated and confined to their self-referential universes.
Nusch Ray, January 2009

a study on space

2009-06-08T10:52:00.004+02:00

when odyssey was declared to be open for building for all members, i contributed a grid-like structure at the main exhibition area, calling it new structure for odyssey. my simple, regular grid interfered with the huge, almost chaotic and constantly transforming work of alan sondheim that was already present. alan asked me to first remove the grid to document his work in isolation, but then to put it up again. the resulting installation was constantly modified by alan, and photos from different stages can be seen at the odyssey page. for me, this collaborative work reflected the uncertainty about the future of odyssey, the past confusion, the need for a new administration, new rules, but at the same time transparency and freedom of work.

incomplete cube

2009-06-06T11:24:00.004+02:00

the incomplete cube consists of 9 small cubes which can be used as seats. given that enough avatars are present, the 9 cubes change position to occupy the 8 corners of a cube and its center. the avatars are then used to form the edges of the cube. since a maximum of 8 edges can be formed, the cube created by the avatars' bodies will ever be complete. the first version, used during my talk for the finissage of systems of reference, used a triggered command, the second version shown at BiW (but unnoticed by the critics) was self-triggered once more than 5 of the 9 seats were occupied.
the incomplete cube was now nominated at the BiW wiki and here's the text written for this nomination (see also jay van buren's comment at my flickr stream):

Sometimes there is work at Brooklyn Is Watching, which is continuously overlooked. And sometimes there is work which appears to be a litmus test of curiosity. Selavy placed nine small white cubes in front of the stage, and you could sit on each one of them without anything happening. Only if five avatars would sit at the same time, the nine white cubes would reveal their mystery: they suddenly would start to move, animate the avatars, transforming them avatars into a 'living' sculptures, forming the edges of a larger cube with their bodies. Eight cubes for the eight corners, one for the center, but eight avatars being never enough to make the cube complete, to provide all its twelve edges. A social sculpture? Or a complete failure, conceptually embedded in the work? Even though there was a notecard handed out to every avatar sitting on one of the cubes, even though the nine cubes were at BiW for three weeks, the "Incomplete Cube" was only activated once when Selavy spontaneously called a group of friends to help.
-- Nusch Ray

(un)structure

2009-06-02T23:16:00.007+02:00

the final appearance for nur moo's sim formes nocturnes consisted of a sim-wide grid, which was broken in the center, a central structure used as dancefloor (see below), and a couple of smaller features, such as an interactive gallery for nur's pictures, a gray forest by soror nishi, later on the pseudo-giants (see also blog), and the dance party environment from sintetika.

the central structure

the installation at formes nocturnes was featured in several machinima, for example by colemarie soleil (her blog) or by lyric lundquist.

poles

2009-06-02T23:08:00.004+02:00

when nur moo offered me the possibility of taking residency at her newly acquired sim formes nocturnes (see npirl blog), i gladly accepted. after some considerations, of course, but i felt that the chance to use a full sim as playground wouldn't come very often. the poles, a sim-wide installation, was one of the first pieces, only shown for a very brief period of time. for those interested in the art historical reference: check out walter de maria's lightning field.

bistability

2009-05-31T00:08:00.009+02:00

sometimes, a piece is overlooked, even though it is set up at a prominent location. this one, a white featureless cube, is such an example. it has been at the kiss the sky exhibition curated by dc spensley at one of the NMC sims for several weeks , but it perhaps looked too simple and unspectacular. it is one of a series of works playing with the aspect of freezing time or taking a 3D snapshot, but also belongs to my examinations of the cube as a metaphor for three-dimensional space. once touched by the viewer, it exploded into 125 small cubes, which stopped their travel in mid-air. touching any of the small cubes again reverted the work, just like pressing an undo-button, so that the visitor determines the appearance of the work, and leaves that as initial appearance for the next viewer. bistability can now be seen at the museum of hyperformalism curated by dc spensley, and here it is noticed: bryn oh was so kind to write about it.

environment

2009-05-29T16:47:00.006+02:00

environment (see more pictures here) was created for nur moo's poetik party at the sintetika sim as commissioned work. it consisted of a dancefloor inside a large box with several interactive elements, which allowed the party goers to actively participate in forming the appearance of the environment. so-called dance balls, which allow the avatars to dance, were positioned at the walls in various orientations. one lounge with furniture was placed on the wall, another one hidden in the cubes, which formed the walls. the whole installation was laid out like a labyrinthine cave, with many enclosures and hidden elements. it was covered by many bloggers, just to mention a few: don hosho, soror nishi, comet morigi, hamlet au, and a video by opensource obscure.
for comet's blog, i gave some additional comments:

just a few additional comments about the environment for the "poetik party". i transferred some of the conceptual ideas that i'm using in my work to this installation. of course, first of all, i'm playing with the notion of "virtual space", when i make the visitors dance on the walls or even upside down, or when i put sofas at the wall where you can sit. the orientation of the avatar while walking or running is defined by the rules of second life, but there's no reason why avatars shouldn't, for example, walk on walls. a virtual world is not about recreating reality.
another point is interactivity (see also, for example, my nested cubes): the interactive nature of the space makes you a participant in defining how the space looks like. you as visitor can change the light effects, click on the cubes which make up the wall, some of them will start changing color, or start flickering, or even explode into smaller cubes. click again, and it'll revert back. i just give the structure, you can change the details.
finally, a note about the way in which it is built: it started off as a solid structure without any space inside, a block of regular solid cubes, and then i carved it, i removed cubes instead of adding them, just like a sculptor would do when she makes a sculpture out of marble, and quite the opposite of how an architect would work. when building in a virtual world, there's no need to follow any of the rules that hold in reality.

spiral reloaded

2009-05-29T14:31:00.008+02:00

the spiral was shown at the ARENA event for one week. it was an interactive installation with 1001 cubes in a spiral pattern (see spiral at BiW) slightly above ground. when an avatar walked into a cube, this cube would gently fly away. every 15 minutes, all remaining cubes started to fly away, forming a spiral pattern in space. after that, the spiral was reconstructed automatically, and the lifecycle of the installation restarted. helfe ihnen videotaped the spontaneous opening performance by Gumnosophistai Nurmi and Humming Pera from the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse.
the spiral was shown again as part of the OPEN GARDEN interAction curated by arco rosca, which is currently part of the Museo del Metaverso.

portraits

2009-05-28T17:57:00.003+02:00

portraits was shown at Brooklyn Is Watching for about one week. each avatar, who accepted the offer, received an object, the portrait. upon rezzing, this object assumed the size of the avatar and called itself "portrait of ..." with ... being the avatars name. a notecard accompanied the portrait:

Dear Owner,

Congratulations! You are now the owner of an original artwork by Selavy Oh.
This object is a unique portrait of yourself, an accurate rendering of your “bounding box”, your physical appearance in Second Life.
You may give it to others, but it will remain your portrait.
But be aware that this is an original, uniquely created for you by Selavy Oh.
You will not receive a second version of this artwork.

Sincerely,

Selavy Oh, October 2008

each avatar received only one offer. for a list of avatars that accepted the offer and actually rezzed the portrait, see here. for further explanation see my comment to jay's blog on BiW.

sketch book

2009-05-27T12:15:00.003+02:00

a sketchbook for the exhibition rinascimento virtuale at florence, italy. my first work as selavy oh, which did not use second life as medium. see also fabio fornasi's blog post featuring my sketchbook for a poster.

chain

2009-05-23T22:22:00.005+02:00

the chain was an installation for brooklyn is watching, and it had a big, yet unintended effect: because of this work, i was banned for one day from second life. more about this incident on my flickr page and at the BiW blog post, where lots of people commented on it. the picture above was featured by beth harris in her blogpost About BiW.

attractive art

2009-05-23T20:06:00.006+02:00

temporary installation at the corner of the "Brooklyn Is Watching" sim, see the blog post by jay newt, where i left some comments to explain this work, and the video podcast at smARThistory by beth harris and steven zucker. the list of attracted visitors can be found here. attractive art is certainly among my most important works so far. it has been chosen among the 30 best works shown at Brooklyn Is Watching during the first year.

systems of reference

2009-05-23T17:19:00.009+02:00

systems of reference was shown at arthole gallery, which is run by arahan claveau and nebulosus severine. orginally, the show was supposed to be a collaborative work by ichibot nishi and me. but, due to several cirumstances, the collaboration did not work out, so that it ended up as a solo show. listen to the podcast accompanying this blog post by amy freelunch, watch the video by arahan claveau, or look at my own documentation video.

video by arahan claveau

during the last week of the show, i gave a lecture on some of the references associated with my installation. here's the list of slides:

Man Ray: Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp), 1921
Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)
Gerhard Richter: Ema (Akt auf einer Treppe) (1966)
Eadweard Muybridge: Woman walking downstairs (late 19th century)
Sol LeWitt: Schematic Drawing for Muybridge II (1964)
Sol LeWitt: Corner piece #4 (1976)
Sol LeWitt: sketch in a letter to Thomas Dreher (1986)
Sol Lewitt: Incomplete Open Cube (1974)
Dan Flavin: "monument" 1 for V. Tatlin (1964)
Vladimir Tatlin: Monument to the Third International (1920)
Dan Flavin: untitled (to Janie Lee) two (1971)
Bruce Nauman: Corridor with Mirror and White Lights (1971)
Bruce Nauman: from Studies for Holograms (a-e) c (1970)
Bruce Nauman: from Studies for Holograms (a-e) e (1970)
Marcel Duchamp: Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy? (1921/64)
Marcel Duchamp: Exterior view of Etant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall /2. The Illuminating Gas) (1946-1966)
Marcel Duchamp: Interior view of Etant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall /2. The Illuminating Gas) (1946-1966)
Gustave Courbet: L'Origine du monde (1866)
Albrecht Dürer: Der Zeichner des liegenden Weibes (1538)
Hans Holbein the Younger: Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassadors") (1533)
Hans Holbein the Younger: Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassadors") (1533) (anamorphic skull)
Marcel Duchamp: book cover for Andre Breton (1946)
Marcel Duchamp: Rotorelief, Spirale Blanche (1935)
Marcel Duchamp: Anémic Cinéma (1925/26, Filmstill)

nested cubes

2009-05-20T16:17:00.009+02:00

helfe ihnen invited me for an exhibition at DESign Island, and after some considerations i came up with the nested cubes. here's a text about it, written by nusch ray, for a subsequent show of the nested cubes at angelgate:

There is a huge white cube, floating in mid-air, featureless, without any texture, like a forgotten artefact of an unknown civilization. Or is it the leftover of an oblivious builder? A skybox that has not been moved to its destination? And what about the geometric shapes in the water below, almost like holes in the sea?

These might be some of the thoughts rushing through your head when you arrive at Selavy Oh's "nested cubes". But you might as well encounter something different: an arrangement of walls and holes, gaps, breakthroughs and perforations, slightly glowing from inside in subdued coloured light. You might see white bricks gently falling down; sometimes one of the geometric holes would flash in glaring white glow, and below, under the water surface, a pile of white bricks, chaotic debris of disintegration.

What happened?

Selavy Oh has created an installation which is shaped by the intervention of the visitor, which only makes sense if you engage. You are invited to fly up to the white cube, straight into the featureless wall; your movement creates the holes and perforations, you fly through self-drilled corridors shining in rainbow colours. Selavy provided the material, you have to shape it, leaving your trace, trying to unveil the underlying structure, the light inside. But your intervention is destruction; you are subject to an observer effect. While you are intruding to view the work, enjoying the playful interaction, watching the bricks slowly sink like cubic snowflakes, you destroy the perfect arrangement.

The "nested cubes" never become visible. Only their shadow, the inaccessible negative space that is cutting holes in the water below, provides an idea about the interior structure of the white cube.

Nusch Ray, October 2008

the nested cubes have been shown at

DEsign Island (curator Helfe Ihnen), July-August 2008
Angelgate (curator Nepherses Amat), October-November 2008
Magoo (soup project by Mab Macmoragh), June 2009

frozen moment

2009-05-08T19:53:00.003+02:00

the first work of a series on time. well, not really, since time was the topic already in cube descending. again, i used physics to generate the movement, but instead of only turning the structure physical, as in the cubic fragments, i stopped the movement in mid-flight by changing the properties of the prims back to normal. i first had serious doubts whether it is possible to program such a three-dimensional snapshot, but it worked perfectly.

playground.space

2009-05-08T19:46:00.002+02:00

my first collaboration with ichibot nishi, and i have to admit that it was much more his work than mine. it was based on constructing identity, and my part mainly consisted of the image, a couple of cubes to play with, some scripting, and a structure below the playground in ichibot's blue.plane.

cubic fragments

2009-05-07T19:16:00.003+02:00

physics again. as mentioned before, in several of my works i'm using the inbuilt physics engine of second life to create dynamic systems and exploit the complexity of the environment for unpredictable configurations. here, about june 2008 at BiW, it is a very simple effect: when you touch the white cube, composed of 8x8x8=512 small white cubes, it is set to physical, and due to the minimum required distance between physical bodies, it starts almost instantly to explode. the small cubes are scripted to return to their original location after a certain time, so that the work essentially becomes self-regenerating.

the conditions of discourse

2009-05-03T19:30:00.006+02:00

you here now. the conditions of discourse.
inspired by an article about the work of sol lewitt.
implemented by an invisible moving object, which leaves traces, so-called particles, in mid-air.
on display at the museo del metaverso, together with cube descending.

15 seconds

2009-05-01T23:12:00.004+02:00

a small work on privacy and public fame, only shown at BiW. it shows the avatar's profile picture for 15 seconds, and shouts the profile text. i integrated it in a scene set up by ford heberle, and ichibot nishi was the model for the image above. discussed in BiW podcast 15.
a modified version, integrated in a projector designed by dekka raymaker, was shown at arahan claveau's show Empire at season 3 of the Arthole Gallery 2009.

facial distortion

2009-05-01T22:52:00.006+02:00

my first micro-performance done at BiW was a temporary distortion of the avatar's face, effectively disrupting the attribution of embodiment. one of the first viewers was jay newt (jay van buren), and he wrote an excellent blog post about it. since then, i used this work in slightly different form for my chairs, for example, in systems of reference, where the face of the viewer's avatar becomes distorted after sitting down.

self portrait

2009-04-24T21:38:00.004+02:00

the self portrait was created in response to a call by oberon onmura for the show the real me at his man-a-hatta gallery (see this blog post for info). it had exactly the size of the bounding box, the physical presence, of my avatar, rotated in synchrony with the avatar, floated slightly above ground when the avatar was flying, and changed its transparency when the avatar was off-line. in a sense, it is a realistic portrait of the avatar, since the only effect on virtual physics is created by the bounding box. the bounding box, in turn, could be viewed as the representation of the avatar, and the avatar is a representation of the user.

spiral

2009-04-24T21:28:00.005+02:00

spiral, presented at BiW, was intended as horizontal work, covering and structuring the whole plane of the exhibition area, in contrast to the many artworks that used height as preferred dimension. see two blog posts at BiW, one by shirley marquez, the other one by amy freelunch. a later version of the spiral was shown at the ARENA event curated by roxelo babenco.

physics primitives

2009-04-24T08:44:00.003+02:00

the physics engine in second life provides a valuable instrument for creating work, and i have used it from early on in my work. the example above, cubic hail shown at BiW, was, after cube descending, one of my next works working with temporary prims, physics, and continuous creation of objects. here, ichibot nishi added some color and additional dynamics.

decomposing

2009-04-18T15:30:00.007+02:00

several works using so-called invisiprims, a visual effect first considered to be a bug, but soon used by many developers in sl. invisiprims cause the avatar body, the water surface, or other textures using the alpha channel to become invisible and have several other interesting visual effects.

the picture above was taken in my contribution for angelgate's radiance exhibition in 2008 curated by bau ur.

see several blog posts, for example about spatial decomposition by amy freelunch, and loose your head by jay van buren.

cube descending

2009-04-15T09:28:00.006+02:00

my first work shown at a permanent exhibition in the virtual world of second life, an homage to marcel duchamp's famous painting nude descending a staircase. cube descending translates a method for depicting time, the use of consecutive snapshots first used in photography, e.g., by étienne-jules marey or eadweard muybridge, to the three-dimensional domain, using the illusionistic nature of a virtual environment. the specific technique used here, slowly fading 3D-snapshots of the falling cube, also relates to the one used in comic-book illustrations of dynamic scenes.

soft structures

2009-04-11T13:35:00.012+02:00

during the following months, i created a couple of versions of the soft structure, all based on the same principle, exploiting the virtual wind and the virtual cloud density. some of them were shown at BiW. the soft structure was also shown at the 5th birthday event of second life (sl5b) as soft double structure, and, in an interactive version, at dc spensley's show kiss the sky (see this report about the show).

leaving traces

2009-04-03T21:48:00.005+02:00

leaving traces, another work shown at BiW and discussed in the first podcast, had several layers of meaning. it used the scripting from the black cube to circumvent BiW's auto-return, and instead of just one week, it remained there for many weeks. it was scripted to become transparent over time, so that it would become an invisible trace after about two or three weeks. the texture was a scan of one sheet of a series of works on paper, which i did some years ago: ants first walked through a dish of black ink and then onto a white sheet of paper, leaving their footprints as traces. leaving traces was also a comment to all the self-declared artists leaving their work at the green lawn of BiW. random traces, which sometimes seemed to make sense.

constructing identity

2009-04-03T21:38:00.005+02:00

a figurative work as an attempt to construct an identity for selavy. we continuously reshape our biographical memory, and pictures from family albums serve as some kind of fixed points, burning themselves into memory. as other memories, they need not be real to become part of what we call our identity. this unfinished work was only posted on flickr. later, i used the first image of the series for a cooperation with ichibot nishi, and reused it again in my installation systems of reference at arthole gallery.

architectural intervention II

2009-04-01T09:24:00.004+02:00

brooklyn is watching (BiW) became a very important site for showcasing my work. architectural intervention II was the first work that i showed during the first week, jay discovered it right away, and mentioned it on the blog. for this intervention, i created a copy of the original stage (left yellow ridge) and placed it as a mirror image.

tectonics

2009-03-31T00:01:00.012+02:00

in a virtual world, several of the usual features of nature do not exist. even though there is wind and sun and even moon in second life, there usually are no earthquakes. tectonics, a kinetic installation at water level, is a reflection on what the creators of the medium chose to implement (such as water), and what was regarded as unimportant or even disturbing the experience. tectonics, created in february 2008, consists of a variable number of hexagons, reminding of crystalline basalt structures, which move up and down randomly. it can still be seen at the museo del metaverso. a site-specific version called tectonics II was created later for brooklyn is watching.

architectural intervention

2009-03-26T23:22:00.005+01:00

my second contribution to open odyssey was the architectural intervention, a very simple piece, which is about the question of whether creations in a digital realm are originals, and whether reusing existing elements in a different way can be regarded as work on its own. since the stairs of the museum were copyable, it was possible to make an exact mirror-copy. interestingly, sugar seville, the organizer of the show, first sent the work back not realizing that it was meant as contribution to the show. it was placed directly in front of the original stairs, thereby creating a new space that played with another missing element in sl, the mirror. later, was used by juria yoshikawa and others to place their contributions.

soft structure

2009-03-24T10:31:00.005+01:00

in october 2007, sugar seville initiated an uncurated show at the odyssey sim, and i installed two pieces, one of them being the blue curtain. this first version of what i called later soft structure was made out of flexi-prims to move with the virtual wind, and scripted to change color in response to the cloud density. it was my first piece making use of an inbuilt feature of second life, the virtual weather.

the black cube

2009-03-23T22:03:00.004+01:00

the black cube was the first project i did in second life apart from giving selavy a face and an appearance. the black cube was a reaction to the disturbing discovery that it is almost impossible to leave traces in a virtual world. traces such as footsteps in mud, fingerprints on a clear window pane.
the black cube was scripted to circumvent the auto-return feature which is installed on almost every sim, and which prevents you to litter the virtual world, but also to leave traces. the cube did not just stay at the location, but very slowly rose upward, with a speed impossible to notice.
the black cube was installed on various sims (the picture shows it at 30 different locations), i took a picture at each location together with a landmark, and then noted when the cube was sent back by the parcel owner. in most cases, i wrote a instant message to the sim owner afterwards to explain why i left the cube. see this set on flickr for more images.

a blog as an archive

2009-03-23T18:30:00.001+01:00

it occurred to me on several occasions now that i need a website, which is more than just an entry in one of the social networks. for those sites, see my account at the odyssey ning, or my flickr stream. none of these has a decent possibility to present a list of works together with some comments, descriptions, references to other websites, blog entries, etc. last week, in a conversation with dekka raymaker, i realized that a blog would do the job. and, after all, what could be more appropriate for a net-based artist then choosing the format of a blog as archive?