Possibly you know there is an “artshow” in Second Life® called Pornosophy (SLurl), well, i know about it in Flickr some time ago, also some friends told me about it. Once opened visited it with some friends, and, sincerely, had a bad impression as i’ll explain. Anyway, wanted to come back, take some pics and explore more the place.

Once you arrive there the first you find is this sign, what actually is good, also you can find around some “sperm splashes”, all together is clear what the show is about.

Really wanted to explore it deeper after my bad first impression, specially about the artistic side of the show. Yeah, we can consider this show has an artistic and a political sides. Let’s talk first about the political one. As you know in the last couple of years there was an increasing pressure against the “sexual life” inworld. And finally it arrived to a moment when Linden Lab decided to apply more content restrictions, or zoning restrictions actually. You can find more information about the ratings here. Also some in the Linden Lab Blogs you can find some posts about it like this one. I know one of the main reasons to start this show was this, what we can call the “Adult paranoia”. So politically i agree with the show, they are someway protesting against this new censor policy and that’s good, is a creative way to protest, is not violent and has sense of humour. 

Anyway, the bad part for me was the artistic one. Possibly i expected too much and then i felt deceived. Ok, i don’t expect porn to be art, of course it can be, but is not something usual, porn has its own codes and stereotypes so it can be difficult to make something really original or artistic. Although all this limitations of the theme it is still possible to make something different, playing with those codes and stereotypes. Sadly is not what i saw in the show.

With some few exceptions (under my point of view there are only 6 or 7 good works) the artworks,  SLphotography and installations, are lost in the stereotypes, are more or less what you can find in the Second Life [Mature] group in Flickr, basically images of avatars having sex. Most of the images don’t have some minimum care in composition, story, lighting. Some are roughly edited with Photoshop filters that don’t work good with the scene, even at least one of the images is made with Poser (that is not bad itself, is just the show is supposed to be an SL creation show). The vision of sexuality shown in most of the images is plain or bizarre, or both at the same time.

You know i don’t use to be critical, because i use to try to see the positive part of everything, but this time i felt even upset. Maybe because i think there were more possibilities than the ones shown there, maybe because i expected the team working on that project to show some more imagination, to go further being creative, to make a really good protest. Sadly what i found there was mostly what you can find in any sex club in SL, but with Photoshop filters, of course. Images of sex that take themselves too seriously. There is no critic, there’s no story, there’s no protest, there’s only virtual sex. I don’t think the concept of freedom is the right to show our virtual penises and clits around, i think freedom of expression is that and much more, but, sadly, that simple exhibitionism was mainly what i percieved in the show.

As i mentioned above i know porn has some limitations and i understand is not easy to make good one, and is even harder to make art with it. That’s why i’d like to point the few works that had that special something, that few works with a great work of composition, or story, or with some sweet touch of humour. I will mention 4 even there were a few more. The images of Silverdrake Sparrow, Zinc Karas and Mune Asano and the installation by four Yip. This four works are for me the best in the show.

All this post, as all my blog, is only my point of view. Of course you can agree or not, anyway, go there, take a look and make your own opinion.