The MoM (Month of Machinima) and… where is DaD?
LEA Theater (Outside view)
The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) organized a big event about machinima, some like a festival, that will run starting today May 4th to December, the Month of Machinima (MoM).
Today in the LEA Theater (SLurl), in the opening of the event the screens were showing the entrants for May competition, a variety of films from the artistic to the humoristic and even the musical. MoM has its own YouTube channel so you can see some of the movies in it, but in order to see all the entrants is better you go to the LEA Theater and enjoy a bunch of really cool movies filmed by some of your fellow residents.
LEA Theater (Inside)
The LEA was created in 2010, actually for some event in SL7B (Second Life 7th Birthday) but for some reason it was sleeping since then. Probably that was caused for all the changes in Linden Lab, but it was a really good initiative and i’m happy it is back.
The LEA Committee are a group of really good and really well known artist who work in SL and it’s really good Linden Lab decides to support Art in Second Life with this, specially after they decided to not support Burning Life anymore. In the last times the Lab seemed to be more worried about Merchants than about Artists and, under my point of view, both are REALLY important for what Second Life is and will be. Will speak about this last topic in my next show on Soup Radio and probably will also blog about it some time soon, so lets left the topic until i do it. 
Now go to the LEA Theater and enjoy the awesome work of a lot of filmmakers of Second Life:
Also, if you want to know some more about the opening event itself (i was late, hehehe) you should read Inara Pey’s post about it, really interesting. Also Courtney Linden blogged about the event in the Linden Blogs.
And also i wonder… will the LEA organize and event called DaD, that would be pretty cool! 
Merda d'artista (artist's shit)
Merda d’artista (or Piero Manzoni uncanned), originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.
Some days ago I had an idea coming home from work in the “Metro” for a picture (for some reason I don’t know I have good ideas while traveling by Metro or Bus or in the toilet). I remembered an artwort by Piero Manzoni called “Merda d’artista” and wanted to do a small homage to the work and its concept.
Posted this picture in Flickr with the following text:
“In May 1961, the italian artist Piero Manzoni collected his own feces in 90 numbered cans, which contain 30 grams of feces each.
He labelled them as “100% pure artist’s shit” in Italian, English, French, and German, and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.
Their current estimated value stands at approximately € 30,500 (around US$47,000). On May 23 2007, an exemplar has been sold for € 124,000 at Sotheby’s.
Like Duchamp’s readymades, “Merda d’artista” questions the meaning of art as both cultural and consumer objects by inviting the viewer to confront a system that venerates cans of shit as works of art.”
(from Wikipedia).
Even the initial idea was to post the picture as an homage to Manzoni and as a thought about art as concept (SLart included) some really interesting comments by Suzanne Graves made me thought a lot about SLart, so I think is a good moment to expose some of my thoughts about it
-
Do you think art exist in Second Life? Totally yes! Of course, it depends on your own concept of art, for me art means to express your thoughts or feelings through some technique.
-
There are artists in SL? Yes, of course, but this answer needs a comment. Second Life, as a platform-tool based in creation, has a biggest proportion of artists in his “population” than RL. The definition of art I was talking about in the question before is really opened, everybody can be an artist, but some have the technical and/or esthetic skills to be outstanding and that’s who I call “Artist”. Personally I think in Second Life there are a few artists and a lot of “divas” (and “divos”).
As I said in one in the comments about the picture in Flickr “… in Second Life there is a lot of art, but there is a lot of shit too…”.
Of course that was just my opinion… and I would love to know yours…
SLArt, SL art, just art…or whatever…
Lately the word “art”is being a protagonist in Second Life and some related blogs and web-pages (as Flickr).
My friend Ganymedes Costagravas told me someone has contacted him because he was using the tag SLart in his pictures in Flickr. That person has registered the word “SLart” and he was asking him to take off all the tags!!!
Vint Falken wrote a really interested post about this stuff. I’m still surprised someone “trademarked” a work like that, first, I think SL is a trademark of Linden Labs, second, is a word of common use in Second Life.
Talking about the common use… I used the image above (with permission of the creator, Nebulosus Severine) to illustrate a bit that question. Is SLphotography Art? , the big question…
Art is a really open concept (SLart is maybe even more open) so the only think I can do (as everybody) is to give my opinion. Just some SLphotography is art, as just some RLphotography is, exactly the same as any kind of creation, some buildings in SL are art, most are not. What makes something art is not the tool or the technique, is the intention, the talent and the meaning, the expression of beauty (of any kind, not always the “mainstream” beauty), of fears, loves, hates, feelings and thoughts.
I’m not pretending to be an artist, I just enjoy using some tools to create things (images, objects, …) and, sometimes, even express myself. Sometimes I enjoy trying to create images that may push people’s mind, sometimes I’m just having fun. And I don’t need to be an artist to do all that.
About the use and abuse of the word Art. I don’t consider, personally, Art something beautiful, well done, but totally empty. Maybe is here where i find the abuse of the word, some people call themselves “artist” just because they have good (even great) skills using a tool to create something beautiful, but what is behind? some meaning? some feeling apart of the sense of beauty? For me this people are craftsmen (or craftswomen), but artists?
As always I’d like to say this is my opinion and I can be wrong, everyone is free to call oneself whatever one wants in the same way I’m free to express what i think. (I know this is a boring “disclaimer” but i don’t want nobody to misunderstand me)
Recent Comments