DOMENICO QUARANTA

Sugar Seville

Domenico Quaranta, “Being an avatar, the virtual is my focus”. Interview with Sugar Seville. First published in Spawn of the Surreal in two parts, November 27, 2007.

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…
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