Borders, Boundaries & Liminal Spaces
| The Ars Virtua Conference: "Borders, Boundaries & Liminal Spaces" was originally conceived to be an extension of our concept of the new media center. It also seemed logical to have a conference about liminal spaces inside of one. Truly, the conference afforded us an opportunity to interrogate the space more thoroughly. Aside from the specifics of the topics covered (remains, the body from within and without, present and future, and the manipulation of the system) the conference was particularly enlightening with respect to the engine of Second Life and communication within that medium. |
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Looks Very Tidy
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John and James have created a piece entitled "looks very tidy." The work originates in the 3D virtual engine of Second Life. Vacuum cleaners were created in the environment and rendered into real space with a 3D printer, and a movie of the pair vacuuming the Ars Virtua gallery. Vacuuming is a fundamentally mundane process that relies on the nature of terrestrial reality (dirt & dust). When transposed into a game world it takes on an absurd quality and the drudgery becomes purely performative. Furthermore since the vacuum cleaner if functionally useless it becomes an object of pure fetish or "sculpture." |
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Tribute to Jean Baudrillard
| On March 17, 2007 at 4 pm SLT Ars Virtua held a small wake for the passing of Jean Baudrillard. The event was held in World of Warcraft and telecast into Second Life in our first trans-instance event. As a tribute to Jean Baudrillard's life and work I felt that it was appropriate to use the world of simulation to deliver my message through the highly popular simulation gaming environment found in World of Warcraft. As part of the continued simulation which we call artmaking this tribute can be seen as an initial foray into a synthetic world for a purpose in which it was not necessarily built. |
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