For my project I decided to create avatars in Second Life. It took me a while to get used to Second Life but once I did it was easier to change the appearance of my avatar. For my first avatar I attempted to make it look like me. It was really difficult to make the features of my avatar look similar to mine.
For my second avatar I attempted to make it look like one of my friends.
I decided to make my third avatar look silly. I made him small and gave him elf ears.
I made my fourth avatar similar to someone you would see in a magazine. I gave her exotic eyes, a slim figure, nice hair and etc.
Before this project I didn’t even know that Second Life existed and that so many people use it. I like how Second Life is so detailed to the point that it is possible to create avatars that look similar to the user. I probably won’t be using Second Life after this project, however it was a good experience.
Jeffrey Shaw was born in Australia in 1944. His work consists of new media, performance, sculpture, video and interactive installations. He is known for his creative “use of digital media in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization, navigable cinematic systems and interactive narrative.” One of Shaw’s famous works is “The Legible City.” In this piece the visitor is able to ride a stationary bicycle through a simulated city. The simulation uses the actual cities of Manhattan, Amsterdam and Karlsruhe. The architecture of the cities is replaced by texts.
I really like the idea of this piece because the visitor is basically traveling through words. The visitor is also able to control direction and speed so he/she actually feels as if he/she is traveling through the cities. The visitor is able to make decisions on where to go and what paths to choose. The Manhattan version also consists of eight separate fictional story lines. The visitor is able to choose which path to follow for a narration. I would really enjoy seeing this piece because I would be able to interact with the art hands-on.
Scott Blake was born in Tampa, Florida in 1976. Blake is known for his series of artworks in which he uses barcodes to create images. Blake used usual everyday images to create his art. He uses barcodes as a tool as well as an image. One of his works is “Every Barcode.” This is an ongoing piece, which shows every barcode possible. This animation would take 300 years to complete.
He created portraits only from barcodes and nothing else. He created more than thirty large-scale portraits of cultural icons. For cultural icons Blake used barcodes, which were connected to some aspect of their lives. For example, in his “Barcode Elvis” portrait, Blake used the barcodes from his music CD’s. His “Barcode Bruce Lee” and “Barcode Marilyn Monroe” are made from the barcodes form their movie DVDs. I think it is really clever how Blake used barcodes, which were tied to the cultural icon.
Kristine Schomaker is a performance artist, new media artist and painter. Her current works are “The Gracie Kendal Project” and “1000 Avatars.” Both of these projects are in the virtual world of Second Life. Schomaker first started “The Gracie Kendal Project” as a way to express herself about body image. She has weight issues and is struggling with an eating disorder. She created an avatar, Gracie Kendal, and made the avatar to be what Schomaker desires to be. Second Life has let her become more comfortable with her self-image. Her work is focused towards accepting one’s self as opposed to changing one’s self. In her other project, “1000 Avatars”, Schomaker is creating portraits of actual avatars in second life.
I think Schomaker’s “The Gracie Kendal Project” is a positive outlet for her emotions towards her weight. She is able to use virtual art to gain self-acceptance. However, I think that Schomaker should also try to gain self-acceptance in the real world and not just through her avatar in Second Life. She lives vicariously through her avatar and has created her avatar to be what Schomaker wishes she were. I think Schomaker would benefit more from accepting herself outside of the virtual world.
Toni Dove is an artist whose work consists of electronic and interactive media. She is considered to be one of the creators of interactive cinema. One of Dove’s works is “The Blessed Abyss - A Tale of Unmanageable Ecstasies.” The piece uses fifteen computer programmed slide projectors, video projection and eight tracks of prerecorded sound.
The message of this work is that society governs us. Since society governs us, society also contains our drives and passions. The installation shows that desire is laid out neatly and contained. However desire bursts out and creates excess past its containers. This piece is meant to show the excess and how humans want to break out from containment. I think the message of this work is really meaningful. Humans are contained and are not able to express themselves, as they would like to. We greatly desire to break out from the confinements of society and publicly act out on our desires and I think this piece really exemplifies that.
John Whitney was born on April 8, 1917 in Pasadena, California. He was an animator, composer and inventor. He is considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation. Computer animation is the process of creating images through using computer graphics. Out of the 55 years of Whitney’s filmmaking career, 40 of them were dedicated to computer work.
One of Whitney’s works is “Arabesque.” This film runs for seven minutes and is accompanied by the music of Manoochelher Sadeghi. This work is comprised of “psychedelic” and blooming color-forms. Whitney also experimented with Islamic architecture in this film. I really liked this work because Whitney was able to create colored images and animate them to flow perfectly with the music. He also demonstrated harmonic progressions, which are the chord changes in the harmony of music, and he was able to tie it to the colorful images.
Tony Oursler was born in New York in 1957 and he completed his BA in fine arts at the California Institute for the Arts in 1979. He currently lives and works in New York City. Tony Oursler’s work is comprised of video, sculpture, installation, performance and painting.
One of Ourlser’s works is “Valley.” This installation is virtual and presents the Internet as a flowchart. The flowchart has a guide who appears unexpectedly and comments on the meanings and possibilities of the Internet. In this installation the Internet mirrors human consciousness. The more the machine comes closer to copying human form, the more disturbing the machine becomes to humans. I really like this installation because it correctly depicts human’s relation to technology. The Internet does in a way mirror the communication between humans in the real world.
Matthew Barney was born on March 25, 1967 and is an American artist. His works are comprised of sculpture, photography, drawing and film. Barney’s early works were sculptural installations combined with performance and video.
Barney is best known for his “CREMASTER” films. This is a series of five works, which were created out of sequence. These films feature Barney in diverse roles such as a satyr, magician, ram, Harry Houdini, Gary Gilmore and etc. These films are a combination of history, autobiography and mythology. “CREMASTER” represents “an intensely private universe in which symbols and images are densely layered and interconnected.” I think it’s clever how Barney not only used film as a medium for this work however he also used photographs, drawings, sculptures, and installations. His use of all these various mediums made this piece even stronger for his audience.
Mariko Mori is a Japanese video and photographic artist who works and lives in New York. In 2007 Mori created an exhibition called “Tom Na H-iu.” In this exhibition there was a 4.5-meter sculpture called “Tom Na H-iu” along with two other large sculptures, “Flatstone” and “Roundstone.” These works expressed the fusion of art and technology, Buddhism, and the idea of universal spiritual consciousness. In this exhibition Mori used technology and material as well as ancient rituals and symbols to create a vision of the 21st century.
I really like how Mariko Mori’s artwork represented contrasting ideas. She combined art and technology along with Buddhism. She created a beautiful vision of the 21st century by combining modern technology and ancient rituals. This exemplifies that even though modern times are filled with technology, everything is still based on ancient traditions and rituals.
Nam June Paik was a Korean-born American artist. He worked with different styles of media. He was a composer, performer and was the very first video artist. Paik’s work showed how performance, music, video images, and the sculptural form of objects could be used in different combinations. Most of Paik’s performances were as much visual as a musical experience. For example, in his work “Hommage a John Cage”, Paik combined a pre-recorded collage of music and sounds with “on stage” sounds created by people, a hen, a motorcycle and other objects.
In 1963 Paik made his first video sculptures, “Exposition of Music- Electronic Television.” In this work, Paik scattered twelve television sets throughout an exhibit space. He modified the electronic components of these television sets in order to create unexpected affects. Another one of Paik’s installations is “TV Buddha.” In this work a statue of Buddha is sitting and facing its own image on a closed-circuit television.
Bruce Nauman was born in 1941. He is considered one of the most innovative contemporary artists in America. He finds inspiration for his work in the activities, speech and materials of everyday life. Nauman works with numerous diverse mediums such as sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, neon and installation. He focuses on the way a process can transform or become a work of art.
One of Nauman’s works is the “One Hundred Fish Fountain.” The “One Hundred Fish Fountain is made up of ninety-seven bronze fish which spurt water through punctured holes. The water drops to a large basin below and is pumped back through tubes. This piece of artwork is very noisy. The water fills the fish noisily and it sprays out loudly until the pumps are turned off. Then the remaining water drips out. This sculpture is displayed at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago.
Bill Viola is one of today’s leading artists. He established video as a form of contemporary art. Viola has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. His work focuses on universal human experiences such as birth, death and the unfolding of consciousness. His art represents Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. His art is shown in museums and galleries worldwide.
One of Bill Viola’s works is “Silent Mountain.” “Silent Mountain” is a 45 second clip of two actors in states of anguish. One of the themes of this artwork is force of change. Viola stated that in nature there are two extremes of change. One is the slow process of when material is transformed such as the wearing away of a mountain by wind and weather. The other is a sudden change caused by an event such as a volcanic explosion. The energy from this work focuses on the violent type of change. In “Silent Mountain” the performers are in pain in isolation. The two actors are parallel to one another in silent companionship. When they are no longer able to withstand the suffering, they burst out with a violent scream.
Joseph DeLappe has been working with electronic and new media since 1983. His work includes online gaming performance, electromechanical installation and real-time web-based video transmission, which have been shown across the United States and abroad. He is an artist and also an educator at the Department of Art at the University of Nevada.
In 1997 DeLappe started his “Mouse Series.” In this series DeLappe started working with Apple mice. The “Heart Mouse” was one of the first pieces made in the “Mouse Series.” During the times in which this piece was made, Apple equipment was made with a surface which was similar to human skin. It had a texture that was similar to pores. “Heart Mouse” as well as “Vagina Mouse” were pieces meant to show the hidden industrial design and show how companies design products to fit the human body.
In 2001 DeLappe began a series of protests through computer games and online communities. One of his projects was “Dead-In-Iraq.” He created this to intervene in a game, “America’s Army”, created by the Defense Department as a recruiting and marketing tool which is taxpayer funded. DeLappe enters the game with the name “dead-in-iraq”. He then drops his weapon as opposed to participating in the “mayhem” and he is eventually killed. He then hovers over his dead avatar and types the name, age, service branch and date of death of each American military casualty from the war in Iraq. In 2009 he was recorded to have inputted 4042 names and he intended to keep doing so until the end of the war.
Another one of Joseph DeLappe’s projects was his reenactment of Mahatma Ghandi’s famous 1930 Salt March. Over the course of twenty-six days, March 12 to April 6, 2008, DeLappe was able to reenact Ghandhi’s march through Second Life. The original walk was 240 miles and was made in protest of the British salt tax. DeLappe’s march took place at Eyebeam in Second Life. He walked the entire 240 miles on a treadmill, which was customized for cyberspace. His steps on the treadmill controlled the forward movement of his avatar, which was MGhandi Chakrabarti.
