Second Life Project

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

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

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. 

Gracie Kendal

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

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

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

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.