"Being an avatar, the virtual is my focus". Interview with Sugar Seville (part 2)

... Sugar Seville at her very best, talking about art and business, performance, mixed reality installations, curation, native and non native SL art. Enjoy!


Me and Sugar during Burning Life

DQ. What's the relationship between art and business in SL? Do you think that artistic experimentation - even the most radical, conceptual and self-referential - can be inspiring and useful for business?

SS. I don't think you should mix art and business any more than you should mix religion and politics - but they still have to coexist and provide the vital roles that they do. As soon as you have business interfering in the creative work of artists, art is being compromised, and that can not be allowed to happen.

Again, corporate sponsorship of the arts goes way back, and before there were corporations, there was the Medici family, and so on. I think if there are artists creating meaningful works in SL, they will be well served by patronage of some form, and those that support have much to gain in contributing to the opening of this new territory to art. If you think about it, commerce is easy - just set up a business selling whatever. Creating culture is something else. I don't think you could buy culture if you wanted to. So naturally the smart business people that have the means, support the arts. The benefits are more than monetary.

DQ. What kind of art are you most interested in? Multimedia installation? Performance? Aesthetic research or conceptual pieces?

SS. It's hard to say that I like one form of art over another, and while my human has a wide range of interests in real world arts; being an avatar, the virtual is my focus. SL at the moment is the networked environment that is presenting the most possibilities to artists. Not only does one have an open platform upon which to create, but most importantly, the work can be seen by potentially many more viewers than an artist might normally expect in the real world. The most recent show on Odyssey of Gazira Babeli drew over 1200 unique visitors and over 1800 total visits in 3 months. I am drawn to works that really use the SL medium in a new way, this early stage is ripe for explorations - so I look for artists that are really working in the medium of SL and making paths for future exploration.

From the perspective of an avatar, I find performance to be the most interesting art form in SL. SL is a lot of things, but everything comes back to the avatar and has to relate to the avatar in order to really be successful in SL.


A moment of the Mattes's Ars Electronica performance

The other area that I am interested in is what I term "mixed reality" works. The use of video streaming can be an effective device for mixing real life and second life - but it can also be disastrously ineffective. Presenting a projection of SL in a real life space is essentially just showing one face of a world that is inherently immersive; rendering it bland and dullish. When using streaming video to mix realities, it is important to take into consideration the interactive nature of SL and to build in to a project, ways to convey this experience. A good example of this would be the recent installation of The Gate. Until the real life audience saw a re-projection of themselves in the SL space, they did not make a connection. Over all I think The Gate was a successful integration of real and virtual space. Much still needs to be explored of course, but these early experiments are important as foundations for future works.

There are many galleries, perhaps the majority, that are importing works to SL from the real world. I think it's fine to use SL like a 3D web page, and it can be a great experience to walk through a virtual gallery and see images displayed in a certain way. This type of exhibition is more about the architecture and the context that it creates than it is about the content of the reproductions of paintings and photographs that are being displayed. I've seen many beautiful exhibits of this type in SL, but it's not the direction that I am most interested in.


Beavis Palowaski at the Gate

DQ. Are you interested in bringing art developed in SL out of this context? How? Do you think it could be interesting in other contexts, and for other communities?

SS. To bring SL native works out of SL at the moment is a lot more challenging than bringing real life works into SL. Part of it is that SL is a new medium that requires a certain amount of adaptation on the part of the viewer. Sure, you can just project SL in a gallery, but that's not SL, that's video. SL requires active participation. The other part is that SL is technologically in it's infancy, and still has a lot missing. What we want as curators and artists is a medium with the same kind of universality that a video tape or DVD or even a linen canvas and oil paint provides. From all indications, it is clear that Linden is taking SL on an open source path. That's great, because like html or other Internet protocols, SL has the potential to become a standard.


One of Adam Nash's installations on East Odyssey

Technological limits aside, there is the issue of context. Without experiencing SL firsthand, one can not readily understand the context, which is problematic at this early stage because not many people have had the chance to explore it. That will change with time as more people sign up and become involved. In the mean time I think it is interesting to see SL taken out of context. Here are some examples of what I mean: A French advertising agency made a Youtube video of it's real life office space with the real workers typing in the air, bumping into walls and nodding off in the standing position - emulating avatars. I have also seen a t-shirt with the "missing image" tag silkscreened onto it. Last spring, an artist created watercolor paintings of scenes from SL. These are amusing extractions from SL that comment well on the medium, but they are not exemplary of what I think might be achieved in a work of art that bridges for the viewer, the real and the virtual, thereby defining and putting into perspective that relationship. I want to, and have yet to see this work; one that shows how close and how disparate the real and virtual actually are. Alan Sondheim's work explores this area, and is amongst the most advanced I have seen to date. I think that as the technology comes into widespread usage, a lexicon will develop. People will not see virtual worlds so much as "video games" but as analogs to the physical world, much the way we regard film and photography today. The first photographic works were not initially received by the art community as valid works - at the same time some thought the technology would make painting obsolete. Obviously this hasn't happened, and photography has found it's place alongside the traditional mediums. I believe SL, or the technology that it evolves into, will become accepted as a valid new medium and one that will have a great impact on the course of contemporary art in the 21st century.

"Being an avatar, the virtual is my focus". Interview with Sugar Seville (Part 1)

Well... this blog was meant to be a "one post per week" business, but it's slightly turning into a "one post per month" one... But, this one is a big one. And that's why I decided to split it into two parts. This is the first one...


Sugar Seville. Image courtesy Gazira Babeli

When talking about art in Second Life, it's difficult not to talk about Odyssey. Almost everyone working in the art field seems to converge, before or later, on the Odyssey Simulator. In the beginning there were Gazira Babeli, Second Front and Ian Ah; then came Juria Yoshikawa, Aldomanuzio Abruzzo, Fau Ferdinand, the Ludic-Society crew (Superfem Beebe and MosMax Hax), Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and Adam Nash among others; and many more will come, be sure.

Not that Second Life is missing places for art, even bigger, more official and more respected than Odyssey. There is Ars Virtua, a well-reputed new media art center founded in 2005, with its two exhibition spaces and its AVAIR program for artists in residence, organized in conjunction with Turbulence. There is NMC Campus, an experimental effort of the New Media Consortium, a powerful association gathering nearly 250 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. And there is, above all, Burning Life, an annual festival set up by the Lindens from the beginnings of Second Life in homage to the legendary Burning Man festival, the official – and more visible - platform for art in Second Life.

But Odyssey is different, someway. Maybe because, as its co-founder Sugar Seville says in this interview, it's more a community than an exhibition space. Maybe because it's an open, free space, where almost everyone can propose a project, where there is no censorship, no limits (besides, obviously, technological limits and quality standards), and where the first guy was temporarily banned, with some regrets, just some days ago. Or maybe because of the approach of it's manager, who sees herself more as an affectionate gardener than as the chief of a burgeoning art venture...

DQ. What's, in your own vision, the Odyssey project? Why did you launch it?

SS. I started out with a bunch of land in Yanguella, a region on the mainland of Second Life, back in November of 2006. I opened it as a kind of artists sandbox for all my friends in SL. At that time I was really just having fun in SL, and it wasn't always art related. I was playing with the idea of opening a crazy space-age 1960's style bar modeled after Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" and "Barbarella", when I found that the people that I was spending the most time with were artists like Gazira [Babeli], Wirxli [Flimflam], Man [Michinaga], Chi5 [Shenzhou]. There was a high level of creative energy that was being concentrated around the Bitfactory which was next door and later became Man Michinaga's "I Am Columbia" sim. Gazira's scripted works and the initial performances by Second Front at Bitfactory were inspiring to me, and told me that SL had potential beyond the commercial wasteland that so much of it is. I knew I wanted to explore this potential.


Sugar playing with "Come Together" during Burning Life

Making art on mainland caused a bit of turmoil in the neighborhood, and I'll confess that my own antics played no small part. There is a line between art and griefing, and it's not really very well defined. Mainland SL is the wild frontier, and to this day pretty much anything goes, so it was kind of fun brushing up against people that had no understanding or for that matter tolerance for art. After a while it degenerated into an ugly battle ground, with walls of red type going up everywhere. The outcome was that the meanest people in the area won, and the artists all left; not unlike the real world where real estate agents take over artists neighborhoods. After this experience, I wanted to provide a kind of sanctuary for all my friends that I felt were doing important explorations into art and performance. Somehow I convinced Pacino [Hercules] to buy an island and let us all play there, actually this was something that he really wanted to do. My reasoning was that if we all created interesting content people would come, we would be able to set up some rentals and shops to help pay the bills, and there would be a place where artists could present thoughtful meaningful work with the support of a community of like minded individuals. At the time Linden was offering a great deal on private islands, so it wasn't that much money, and if it didn't work out the island could be sold for a profit, so we did it. I didn't really know exactly what would become of Odyssey, but I felt that if I nurtured it, there would be growth, and that's in fact what has happened! We still don't have any retail operations on Odyssey outside of sales of art work, but there is a plan to do so. The idea is to sell editions, books, interesting clothing and furniture etc. to help cover the costs of renting the servers.


ExhibitA Gallery opening (with a work by Man Michinaga)

DQ. How did the project evolve in time? What are your future projects and your ambitions?

SS. The one thing I have always said about Odyssey is that it is foremost a community, and that everything that the simulator is used for must play a part in the community. There are no private areas on Odyssey, and the only person that has a house is Pacino, and he let's everyone use it. When I give someone land to use or set them up for a rental, we agree first on this principal of openness and sharing that is so critical to any SL community.

My role has really just been as an orchestrator, or as Ian [Ah] likes to call me, an arts administrator (sounds official, I like that one). When someone approaches me with an idea, I try to make it happen. Early on I was just inviting artists to come and do whatever, this produced a lot and is embodied in the Ian Ah squat - a sort of homeless camp set up under the observation deck on Sugar Mountain. Ian never really asked me if he could build something. I just gave him perms to do so, and in a few weeks he had built out almost a third of the sim! Then I had to start being an administrator and manager, which is not always easy.

What has evolved is the result of many contributors, among them Ian, Wirxli, Gazira, Beavis [Palowakski], Chi5, Man Michinaga, DeThomas [Dibou], Esther [DeCuir], the Mattes, Miulew [Takahe], Max [Maximillian Nakamura], Evo [Szuyuan]... the list goes on. I really don't see the project as mine alone, it's kind of an organism that has a life of it's own, all I have to do is water it and tend to the details.

There have been some projects on Odyssey that I instigated. Commissioning the build of the ExhibitA gallery was one, and co-curating the first two shows there, were big projects. I was really happy about how Beavis's build and Gazira's show, [collateral damage], turned out. I'm working on a follow up to [collateral damage] at the moment, I think it will be a group show with Second Front and the Mattes amongst others. The hard part about collaboration is relying on other people to do what they say they're going to do, so not all plans work out, especially when people are donating their time. There are a few new projects in the works, Adam Nash [Ramona] has created a site specific installation on our new sim to the east, and I am collaborating on a show about virtual architecture in SL with Malcolm Smith and Object gallery in Sydney that is being hosted on East of Odyssey as well. I hope more projects will come up through the network as we get in to winter, preferably ones with funding. I look forward to Art Metropole picking up again in the fall and opening their space on the north east corner of the island.


Gazira Babeli's Collateral Damage

I am also working on getting funds established for artist residency grants on Odyssey. This would allow artists to cover real life expenses while they devote time to a work created on Odyssey, or to hire builders to work under an artists direction - thus freeing them from the burden of learning the SL toolset. We have already done this to some extent with a few artists, by giving them land to use. I would like to be able to draw the attention of established artists from the real world to explore the possibilities in SL, so a monetary grant would be a nice incentive.

DQ. I find very interesting that, in Second Life, the most open, free and various art community gathered around a place (such as Odyssey) opened not by a new media art institution or something like that, but by a web publishing corp which conceived it - I guess - to reinforce its own image in SL. How do you explain that?

SS. Dynamis is a company in London that resells businesses and provides online services for business. It is headed up by Pacino Hercules (Marcus Markou), whom I met in SL in late 2006. We each had our own ambitions of creating a place for artists to play, but I was the one with the time to put it together, so Pacino offered to fund the server costs. He has from the start, generously given me complete control, and I think there is wisdom in that decision on his part. It was his idea to start the Odyssey website, and to use Ning, which is an excellent service, but he doesn't want to tell us what to do. I have in turn been able to extend his generosity to artists by delegating resources and contributing hundreds of hours of my own time to manage and build.


Jean Baudrillard resurrected on Odyssey

Dynamis is keen on being an early adopter of the technology that SL provides, and own another island that is devoted solely to their business ventures. For all intents and purposes, Odyssey is funded out of a philanthropic interest in supporting works of high artistic merit in SL, but that's not to say that our supporters don't see an investment potential. In the end what is being created is a concentration of rich content that draws visitors, and where there are people there is potential for commerce.

That said, Odyssey is not about making money, and there will never be huge rotating billboards advertising products or any form of overt commercialism. The way the world is though, artists need money, just as museums and galleries do. Odyssey is no different and I see us finding ways to cover costs and fund more projects by using the same kind of methods that real world arts institutions do. I think Dynamis is getting a fantastic opportunity to play the role of patron for such a thriving creative community, and will benefit in much the same ways that arts patrons have traditionally in the real world.

So, yes it may seem odd that an internet company is co-founder and supporter of a place like Odyssey, until you understand that they are fulfilling the same role that is a critical component to the function of any real world arts organization. Corporate sponsorship of the arts is nothing new.

[to be continued...]

Games, New Media and other bla bla bla

Oh my God! I stumble upon my blog just to see that my last post dates back to October 10. My dear 4 readers should be angry with me... Well, just to make you know that I was not taking a sunbath on the other side of the world: I just published a long article (about 3 pages) about art and Second Life on the Italian version of Flash Art. The article is called Remediations. Art in Second Life and can be downloaded here (pdf, 11.2 MB). Hope to be able to provide an English translation soon. The Italian readers can also find a longer, unpublished version here.

In the while GameScenes, the book about art and videogames I co-edited with Matteo Bittanti, has been selected as "book of the month" by the famous Resource Center For Cyberculture Studies, a "not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture" located at the University of San Francisco. We shared this honour with authors such as Ted Friedman and Manuel Castells, which makes our satisfaction even greater. The review, written by Claudia Costa Pederson, can be read here. Upon request of the editors, I posted my author's response. You can find it below. It's mostly about the book, but in the end I added some thoughts about Second Life. Enjoy!

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It's quite difficult for me – as one of the editors of GameScenes -- to add some comments to this beautiful review, since I think that Claudia Costa Pederson completely got the point when she described our intention as an effort "to define the 'new aesthetic paradigm' of art in the age of videogames." What I can try to do is to clarify the "identity" of the book which could be quite ambiguous for those who don't know how it was put together.

First of all, GameScenes is not a catalogue, but a "visual essay." Its relationship with the GameScapes exhibition is not at all a relationship of dependence -- quite the contrary. The GameScapes show was a little show (with just four artists) which was organized in conjunction with the publication of the book as a launch event. From its very beginning, the GameScenes project was a book project.

By saying that it is a visual essay, I mean that the visual elements are -- for our purposes -- as important as the textual contribution, that they try to develop a discourse of their own, and that the possibility to fully understand a work of art from its printed reproduction was one of the main criteria we followed in order to make our choice. That was quite a crucial decision, because it would mean to omit some very interesting works of art -- works that sometimes played an important role in the history of game-related art. We included game mods (such as Jodi's JSWV) and game installations (such as Nullpointer's CCTEX) only when they were mainly visual-based, and could be fully understood from a picture or a screenshot printed on paper. And we completely left out machinimas, narrative works, and art games (which are all important contributions to the world of game art) just because they didn't fit in the purpose of the book.

In other worlds, GameScenes is not our "top ten selection" out of the Game Art scene -- and if you read the book as such, you may think it is an incomplete project. Indeed, it IS an incomplete project: and we have been thinking about a possible follow-up from the day we completed the proof reading on GameScenes. GameScenes 2.0 should be a multimedia project, featuring -- besides the essays -- a selection of machinimas, the video-documentation of interactive installations, and performances -- and a lot of software -- art games, game mods, and all kinds of stuff like this. Or, maybe, an exhibition ...

Another feature of the book that may seem problematic for some is the fact that it makes no distinction between digital and non-digital artworks. Personally, as a contemporary art critic and curator who focuses on the creative consequences of the digital media, I am fully convinced that this distinction is completely affected and out-of-date, and should be overcome as soon as possible. Brody Condon is not a new media artist when he modifies a game but a contemporary artist when he makes a sculpture: he is always an artist. And Miltos Manetas is not compelling and avant-garde when he makes a website, but a traditional artist trying to charm the art market when he paints: he is always doing the same compelling work in different media.

The distinction between New Media Art and contemporary art, nurtured by the development of two different "art worlds," is contradicted by the way artists move between media, by net artists making paintings, and painters making networked installations; and by the fact that the consequences of the digital revolution are more and more visible in traditional media, too. But it is in the field of game-related art that this practice to work on the borders between different fields of cultural production appears more often. The reasons of this shift could be found -- as Claudia writes -- in the influence that commercial games are exerting on pop culture and popular aesthetics, but also in the relationship between games and visual culture, between the game industry and the film industry, and in the ability of videogames and virtual worlds to build up simulated yet believable realities.

This contradiction becomes clear when coming to art made for virtual worlds, which is the subject of my critical work of the last few months. In virtual worlds such as Second Life, the rhetoric of New Media Art is definitely out of place. In a synthetic world, everything is new media, because everything is code, polygons, scripts. Artists are working with software, but everything they do can be reduced to a traditional art form: 3D modeling is sculpture, installation, or architecture; avatar design is body art; scripted actions are performance and theatre. Everything is interactive: no surprise if some artworks interact with the viewer ...