Let's say it: Second City, German artist's Aram Bartholl curatorial project for Ars Electronica 2007, was far from being a success. OK, it was raining, and the rain changed the sandbox/beach (called Lido) installed in Pfarrplatz into a morass, and dropped merciless onto the heads – and the mood – of the “residents”. But is that the only one reason? Second City failed – at least, partially - notwithstanding the strength of some of the projects shown, in spite of the fact that it was the first important show organized in real world and devoted to art propagated from the Metaverse, and under the umbrella of a credible institution such as Ars Electronica.
The Lido in Pfarrplatz. Image courtesy Ars ElectronicaIt's clear that the concerns that most of the hacktivism-open-source-new-media-art world feels for Second Life didn't played in favor of Bartholl's project; but, in the same time, it's clear that Second City made no effort in order to dissipate these concerns. The most common claim you could hear stretching your legs in Marienstrasse was: “Good advertisement. Did Linden Labs pay for it?”Lindens didn't layed out a cent for it. At least, they were not among the sponsors of Goodbye Privacy (even if there was, among them, an Austrian company called Second Promotion, specialized in “promoting brands and products in Second Life in such a way that it will enhance the experience the users have with the products and brands”); and Bartholl seems all but an hype-victim, at least according to what he said (or wrote on the keyboard of his Chat installation) during the conference
Everything you ever wanted to know about Second Life (Kunstuniversität Linz, September 8, 2007). Maybe, Ars Electronica is an hype-victim: but even this point could be highly debatable. So, what went wrong with Second City?
Aram Bartholl during the conferenceMy opinion is that Bartholl failed in attempting to apply the concept of his own work to the whole show. Educated as an architect, Bartholl works (through workshops, installations and performances) on the impact of the habits and the metaphors of the digital world on our daily life. On his website, he raises questions such as: “In which form does the network data world manifest itself in our everyday life? What comes back from cyberspace into physical space? How do digital innovations influence our everyday actions?” In his projects, Bartholl wrongfoots us adapting objects, icons and other elements of our life on the screen to the real world. For example, Map (2006) relocates in the real streets the Google Maps' red marker, exactly where Google's highly realistic satellite visualizations show it; DIY (2004) reproduces the green rhombus which hovers as a three-dimensional marking over the head of the active figures in The Sims Online; De_Dust (2004) makes some strange crates covered with the wood texture used in the computer game Counter-Strike appear in real public spaces; WoW (2006) invites the passers-by to walk along the streets with their own nickname hovering above their heads, as in WoW and in Second Life; Missing Image (2007) is a playful transformation of a texture graphic error from Second Life into a t-shirt; Speech Bubble and Chat (2007) invite you to communicate through a comic-strip-like dialogue balloon projected above the speaker’s head, as in many virtual worlds. Bartholl's work discusses the one-way relationship between our real and virtual lives, and in doing that puts us in a third dimension in which these two worlds are mixed together.
From left to right: Map, Chat and DIYSo: if there is any “spawn of the surreal”, Bartholl must be accounted among its best children. BUT – try to apply this concept to a whole block; take a street (let's call it Marienstrasse) and a square (namely, Pfarrplatz) and fill them up with notecards, advertisements and freebie boxes; put nicknames over the heads of the visitors and make them talk through speech bubbles; take all this imaginary from a single virtual world (let's call it Second Life): and, all of a sudden, all the magic and the surreal quality of this operation fades, and you find yourself into a gigantic advertisement. A frame that makes difficult for you to experience in the right way projects such as Terminal Air (by the Institute of Applied Autonomy), which deals with the “extraordinary transfers” organized by CIA in the US for the arrested terror suspects; a frame which even betrays the spirit of things happening in Second Life, such as the Synthetic Performances by Eva and Franco Mattes, which deal in a critical way which the issues of body, sex and violence in virtual worlds.
That said, one might argue that another problem of Second City is that in the show you don't find any of the artists animating the art scene in Second Life. Where is Gazira? Where are Adam Ramona, Juria Yoshikawa, Second Front, The Port, Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and so on? Where are Odyssey and Ars Virtua? I can understand these questions, but I don't agree with them. Even if the curatorial concept was quite open, these things didn't fit in it. Bartholl is most interested in the consequences of virtual lives in the real world, and chose the works featured in the show according to this concern. And some of them were really interesting: Havidol, by Justine Cooper, is a fictitious marketing campaign to launch a new wonder drug designed to treat “dysphoric anxiety attacks due to a deficiency of social esteem and retail spending”; Übermensch / Become Your Avatar, by Joachim Stein, through modern training methods, pharmaceutical supplements and plastic surgery helps you become as good-looking as your avatar, dealing with the issue of self-representation in virtual worlds; In Your Hands, by the British artist Dash Macdonald, lets installation visitors remote-control the roller skates strapped to the artist's feet; while another project dealing with the “avatarization” of the human (Intrigue_E by SILVER and Hanne Rivrud) is a public performance in which a person, not immediately identifiable, is literally “played” via cellphone by the artists, acting as an unpredictable virus in a social context.
Übermensch / Become Your Avatar, by Joachim SteinNot a complete success, but not a failure: Second City has been a problematic show that, for the first time, raised some question that we – curators and artists dealing with virtual worlds – have to take into serious account: what's the meaning of making art into a private virtual world? How can we bring this – in my opinion, highly valuable – experiences in the real world without making it seem corporate advertisement? If you have an answer, please make me a call...
