Jeremy Owen Turner is new media artist and curator based in Vancouver, Canada. He has been an online performance artist since 1996 and has performed in virtual worlds since 2001. Known as “Wirxli Flimflam” in Second Life, Turner has co-founded the group Second Front (est. 2006). He interviewed me for his MA thesis on avatar design.

Jeremy Owen Turner Interviews Domenico Quaranta about Medium Specificity and Avatar Design in Second Life. 2010

TURNER: How is Second Life a medium of its own and how is it a mix of media?

QUARANTA: I prefer to think about Second Life as an environment than as a medium. I know that, saying this, I’m making a choice – and quite a radical choice. Of course, Second Life is a medium as well, and being part of the computer environment, it is intrinsically multimedia. But I think that all the artists who understood Second Life as “just a medium” usually made really bad art. Actually, this happens every time somebody uses a corporate software platform in order to exploit its potential as a medium: web browsers, Flash, Photoshop, Second Life. None of them was created as an artistic medium. You are acting within the framework set up for you by programmers and software designers – which means that you are less free than a painter. In 1997, the English collective I/O/D wrote: “Software is mind control – take some”. You can do it either by designing your own tools or subverting the existing tools.

Formalist artists in Second Life are just making advanced 3D design on a community platform. It is bad as art because it is just exploiting the potential of a software tool; and it is bad as 3D design because Second Life is a bad 3D software platform, with many limitations and a defined aesthetics.

Something better came up when artists understood the potential of Second Life as a place and as a social platform. When weird people with little in common with those Second Life was meant for – net artists, activists, Fluxus-style performers – started gathering in communities such as Odyssey. When they started designing their avatars not in order to make a beautiful or impressive avatar, but to construct a social persona. When they started designing objects and environments, activating scripts etc. not in order to explore the aesthetic potential of their medium, but to challenge their audience, subvert their expectations, make things happen.

Of course, when you are using Second Life as a performative platform, you are still using it as a medium. Making performances still means designing objects, writing and activating scripts, etc. But the perspective is completely different.

TURNER: Have you seen evidence of avatars that were created strictly with visual/optical relationships in mind or with some other aesthetic consideration that seemed independent of a community/social discourse? If yes, please describe any one of these projects.

QUARANTA: If it happened, it’s completely uninteresting to me. If there is something in Second Life you can’t fight against, it is it’s visual side. You can play with its kitschy aesthetics, but you cannot be set free from them.

TURNER: If you were role-playing the art critic Clement Greenberg, how would you critique an avatar’s design in Second Life? For example, would Greenberg insist that an avatar’s form be distributed in order to mirror the 3-dimensionality of virtual worlds or be flattened in order to privilege the 2-dimensional characteristics of the computer screen?

QUARANTA: If I had to play a parody of Clement Greenberg in Second Life, I’d either choose one of the options you suggest. If I had to role-play him seriously, this is a different story. I think Greenberg’s formalism was widely misunderstood, mainly thanks to the way it was used by his followers. Greenberg wrote: «Each art, it turned out, had to perform this demonstration on its own account. What had to be exhibited was not only that which was unique and irreducible in art in general, but also that which was unique and irreducible in each particular art. Each art had to determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself. By doing so it would, to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but at the same time it would make its possession of that area all the more certain. It quickly emerged that the unique and proper area of competence of each art coincided with all that was unique in the nature of its medium».[1] Since Greenberg was a clever guy, I’m sure he would identify “what’s unique in the nature of Second Life” in code and theater, and he would set his rules according to it. Or, at least, this is how I understand formalism as applied to virtual worlds. A virtual world is not as simple as a canvas. At a first level, it is a piece of software. At a second level, it is a community platform, where everything that happens appears to be on stage. Thus, it seems that to be “formalist” in Second Life means to operate at both the levels of code and of staged performances.

But this is, of course, an interpretation like many others. Greenberg was also one of the harsher enemies of kitsch and pop culture. For him, kitsch was the opposite of the avant-garde, and was part of the cultural strategy of a totalitarian regime [2]. He never understood that the avant-garde may use kitsch in order to tell something relevant about it; thus, he never understood Pop Art. So, it’s even more likely that he would never enter a virtual world.

TURNER: To what degree does anthropomorphism have a direct and lasting influence on avatar design in Second Life?

QUARANTA: To a high degree. An avatar is a persona. You – as its puppeteer – have to identify with it; and the other people, as both the audience of the story you are telling and as the other characters in the story, have to identify with you and recognize you as part of their community.

TURNER: What kind of avatars have you seen “artists” rather than “designers” create, in Second Life? How are the outcomes different?

QUARANTA: Designers create interesting avatars. Artists create interesting characters.

TURNER: How essential is “narrative” when critiquing Second Life as a discrete medium?

QUARANTA: Fundamental. In a virtual world, there is no art without narrative.

TURNER: Have you critiqued virtual art in other worlds outside of Second Life? If not, why did you choose SL over others. If you have explored other worlds, please explain what the art was like within them.

QUARANTA: I’ve never been in other virtual worlds. I joined Second Life because, from the outside, I understood that a really interesting community was developing there. I’m not interested in virtual worlds per se, and I’m definitely not interested in “virtual art” – I’m interested in art, wherever it may happen. Art made in virtual worlds – actually, any art made out of the main art world – is interesting when people who have never been there get interested in them. African sculpture became interesting as art when the cubist started stealing African sculptures from anthropology museums. And art in Second Life became interesting when many people interested in art downloaded the client to see what was happening there. According to what I know, nothing comparable happened in other virtual worlds. There are, of course, many isolated examples; some of them – Lawrence Wiener’s Palace chatroom (1997), Joseph Delappe’s performances, Isbiter and Straus Sim Gallery (2004) – anticipated the Second Life burst; many others were a consequence of the development of the Second Life art community. Also, I’ve seen a lot of good art about World of Warcraft, or about The Sims Online; but no consistent art community seems to have developed into World of Warcraft, or into The Sims Online. Do you know any?

[1] Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”, in Forum Lectures, Voice of America, Washington, D. C. 1960. <<http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/modernism.html>>

[2] Cfr. Clement Greenberg, “Avant-garde and kitsch”, in Partisan Review, 1939. <<http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html>>

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza, 2009. Synthetic Performance (extract). More performances’ documentation on Eva and Franco Mattes’ Youtube account.

Eddo Stern: Flamewar

First published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Eddo Stern: Flamewar“, curated by Ilana Tenenbaum at the Israeli Haifa Museum of Art (January 24 – June 20, 2009). With texts by Ilana Tenenbaum, Ed Halter and Domenico Quaranta.

MACHINE ANIMATION & ANIMATED MACHINES
Domenico Quaranta

In the beginning, there is life. Or, better, another level of life. It’s the kind of life you can live on a screen, where your face and body change from time to time, according to the adventure you are playing at the moment. It’s a kind of life that implies gestures such as pressing furiously the buttons of a keyboard, speaking into a microphone, teaching all your muscles how they have to behave in order to make the movement of a joystick more fluent and responsive; and in which these gestures are translated into shots, curses, jumps, fights, runs. It’s a kind of life that usually has a soundtrack. It’s a kind of life that can be very similar to our daily life, or slightly different; but that, in both cases, mixes with the latter in a way that our brain, programmed for one life at a time, has some difficulties in making a clear distinction between the two. For example, if you are a soldier, it may be difficult for you to distinguish between your last mission in Afghanistan or Iraq and your last session of America’s Army.

Mixing two levels of life does not mean that, as an avid player of GTA, you would feel a irrepressible need to take a bat and walk down 5th Avenue smashing everything you find on your way; nor that you are going to experience performance anxiety because your Second Life avatar has a bigger penis, or your virtual partner seems more excited than your real one. It just means that probably, talking with a friend, you will sum up your last adventure in World of Warcraft with the same words, and the same enthusiasm, you would use for a real event; and that probably feelings, anxieties, fears and passions related with your real life experience will change the way you live your life on the screen.

I don’t know what Eddo Stern, who served in the Israeli army before moving to the States, feels when he plays a war game. What I know is that Sheik Attack (1999), Eddo Stern’s first machinima film, is probably the best take on Israel’s bloody history I have ever seen. One of the very first art videos using game footage to build up a narrative, Sheik Attack shows up an extraordinary maturity if compared with the novelty of its genre. The narrative of the Zionist utopia, from the dream of rebuilding the state of Israel up to the current tragic situation, is told through a soundtrack of traditional Israeli songs and the editing of a series of scenes shot in games such as Sim City, Delta Force, and Command & Conquer. The low-resolution footage is in stark contrast to the strong emotional impact of the soundtrack. Stern manages to transform the expressive limitations of the tool – the repetitive nature of the gestures, the lack of dialogue – into a powerful medium in itself. This transformation can be understood if we look at the way Stern uses the cinematics of the first person shooter: the main character’s point of view, used with some caution in traditional filmmaking, here is chosen to make the spectator identify simultaneously with the player and the narrative’s main character, making him co-responsible of their atrocious actions. So, when the tragically polygonal sheik’s wife, resting on her knees, is assassinated without a blink of an eye, we hold the gun in our hands.

Machine animation

Machinima is just a medium, neutral as any other medium. Yet, as any other “remix” practice, it has an enormous potential that emerges when the existing material is used to convey a meaning that conflicts with its own source. The video becomes a kind of prosthetic narrative, which extends the game’s narrative in an unpredictable direction. And that, sometimes, rejects the body it was designed for. From cut-up theory to culture jamming to Nicholas Bourriaud’s “postproduction” model, many great theorists have discussed this potential: what is interesting to me is that, when it comes to games, your appropriation is not only dealing with “existing cultural material”, or with a medium, but with your own life, the life you lived inside the game. In other words, making Sheik Attack is different from, let’s say, shooting October or a masterpiece of plagiarism such as Negativland’s Gimme the Mermaid (2002). The main difference is that Eddo Stern is, in the same time, the soldier who shot the helpless sheik’s wife and the documentarian who reports the crime.

Both Vietnam Romance (2003) and Deathstar (2004) display this kind of potential. In Vietnam Romance Stern forces us to take part in a war that we know very well, but just from one single point of view: the one adopted by Hollywood in a steady stream of movies, from Apocalypse Now to Platoon, from The Thin Red Line to Full Metal Jacket, from The Deer Hunter to Forrest Gump. American movies that, even when critical towards the war and the way the US conducted it, share a similar atmosphere and articulate a common imaginary, that has become, through these movies the imaginary we all have come to share. Videogames remediate this kind of imaginary; but at the same time, force us to see the war through the eyes of the American military, and remove the critical filter that cinematic narrative provides. In videogames, the Vietnam War becomes, in Stern’s words, “as clear cut as World War II”. The story is simple: you are the good (American) guy who has to kill all those dirty (Vietnamese) rats. With the complicity of a soundtrack that resamples the famous hits of the Sixties and Seventies into electronic MIDI tracks, Stern re-appropriates this material and uses it to create a melancholic “romance”, full of nostalgia for an age and a cinematographic genre that seems irremediably lost. The opening scene is phenomenal, with a prostitute parading through desolated outskirts on the notes of Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walking.

Deathstar (2004) is a video in which the violence enacted against a single body, Osama Bin Laden’s, is so up and close as to seem abstract. The work edits a series of sequences shot in different games devoted to the assassination of the public enemy number one, together with Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ soundtrack, as if trying to compare two different – yet strangely similar – versions of the iconography of violence and pain.

If appropriating game footage can be subversive, appropriating the game engine in order to force it to tell other stories can be even stronger (though it usually isn’t). Again, a feature of more recent videogames is turned into a powerful instrument of criticism by the very way it is used. Landlord Vigilante (2006) is a video that uses the engine of such games as GTA San Andreas and The Sims in order to do what games seem completely unfit for: design a character, give her a credible psychology and tell her story. The story of Leslie Shirley, is inspired by the artist’s former landlady, translated into a script in collaboration with the artist and writer Jessica Z. Hutchins. Ms. Shirley is a cynical and strong woman who, driving a cab in Los Angeles, has been saving a good sum of money in order to buy some real estate to rent. Persuaded that tenants are “defective human beings”, Leslie Shirley – the name chosen for her reassuring landlady’s mask – capitalizes on their “dirty habits”, trying to get the most from her investment. Stern and Hutchins use different games in order to exploit their peculiar aesthetics for the construction of the character and her environment: The Sims is used to design Leslie’s “kind old lady” mask and her comfortable, traditional, tidy “country cottage”; while GTA San Andreas puts the “real” Leslie – an old witch hardened by life – in her natural environment – Los Angeles’ slums. In the chapter “Mirrors”, Leslie describes her complex relationship with her own body – that is, her interface with the world – in front of a mirror, while holding a camera as if it was a gun and shooting a picture of herself. Referencing the iconography of first person shooters, Stern and Hutchins illustrate the psychological process of identity deconstruction and construction, using the game to talk about real life.

The same strategy is adopted in Stern’s more recent “machine animations”, Best…Flamewar…Ever: Leegattenby King of Bards v. Squire Rex (2007) and Level sounds like Devil: Baby in Christ vs. His Father (2007). The first of which is a two channel 3D computer animation diptych recreating an online flame war about degrees of expertise around the computer fantasy game Everquest. If in this case the contention focuses on the “shifting codes of masculinity”, in Level sounds like Devil… the discussion involves a teenager and his father, who believes that World of Warcraft is evil and tries to make him stop playing. Being himself a Christian, BabyInChrist contacts an online Christian forum for guidance in understanding if his father is right or not, and the community tries to help him, sometimes pointing to the differences between virtual and real, sometimes quoting the Holy Bible, and sometimes suggesting him to lie to his father. The faces of the characters are mapped with fan art and textures coming from online fantasy games such as Everquest and WoW, and become something in between an Arcimboldo allegory and a medieval standard. In this way, the characters become hybrid identities, summing up a way of life in which the two levels we described are no more separated – as, probably, they have never been.

Animated machines

I call these videos “machine animations” because this expression, more than its portmanteau “machinima”, makes clear what is at stake. If videogames, through photorealism and immersion, employ considerate effort to make the player forget the machine, Stern returns the machine to the forefront. This could be unpleasant for both gamers and non-gamers, but it’s the only way to escape the magic of so-called virtual worlds and start making works that are critical or self. As Eddo Stern, who spent 2,000 hours in World of Warcraft, knows quite well, the machine is the only frame between you and the game reality, and the only way to break the illusion is to make it more visible, in your face. So, if his videos can be described as prosthetic narratives, his installations can be described as prosthetic machines; both of them introduce a feeling of alienation, the first using the games in ways they a not meant for and inserting reality into them, the latter bring the games to reality, in a way that makes their fictional constructs apparent.

This alienating element can be seen in action even in Waco Resurrection (2004), a game designed by Eddo Stern together with the c-level team (Peter Brinson, Brody Condon, Michael Wilson, Mark Allen, Jessica Hutchins). Waco Resurrection is a “classical” first person shooter, at least in the way it is designed: immersive, violent, photorealistic. The main novelty lies in the narrative, evoking the Waco siege, and the point of view, that of the Branch Davidian’s leader David Koresh. While, in-game, a sense of alienation is created by the non player characters, which have the names and faces of the real individuals involved in the siege, it becomes stronger when the game is played in its installation version, wearing the voice activated, surround sound enabled, hard plastic 3D skin reproducing David Koresh. The player, through the Koresh skin, can hear Koresh’s voice singing or delivering a sermon. This device brings the player back to reality, and forces him to think back to the real event, with all its complex political implications.
In a similar way, works such as Runners (1999 – 2000), Tekken Torture Tournament (2001), Cockfight Arena (2001) and Dark Game (2006) provide the player with such “heavy” interfaces that one can not ignore and ever forget “reality”: head-gears, costumes, shocking arm straps, a triple mouse.

But it is in Stern’s self-standing installations that this alienating factor becomes more patent. In the God’s Eye series, Stern refers to a practice, quite common among avid gamers, of customizing their computer console, changing it into a unique piece of furniture – revealing something about their taste and personality. Here, computers are visible, yet integrated into huge sculptures that can be seen as monuments to the neo-medievalism so common in most fantasy games. Crusade (2002) transforms a computer ‘tower’ into a windmill. Alongside is a monitor on which we see, advancing towards us, five knights and a dragon (all to the accompaniment of a midi version of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir). The aggressive nature of western civilization is here cut down to size by the irony of these five strange avatars and a clear reference to Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This irony returns even more powerfully in Carnivore’s Cathedral: Whose Child Is This? (2003); “a neo-Christian Karaoke machine”, as Stern calls it. This time the customized PC becomes a cathedral, complete with gargoyle waterspouts which move to the rhythm of an imperial motif. USS Dragoon. One God to Rule them All … And in the Darkness Bind Them (2003) is an imposing installation of a modern warship guided by a computer that stands proudly at the helm. Along the bridge, crowded with knights in battle-dress, runs a text in Gothic Elven script, whilst the prow is adorned with two majestic dragons. Finally, Fort Paladin: America’s Army (2003) is a computer in the guise of a medieval castle complete with hexagonal towers, crenellation, banners and even openings from which to pour down boiling oil onto enemies. In the façade of the castle, the space that would normally be occupied by the drawbridge is taken by a computer monitor, which introduces us to the authorized violence of America’s Army, the videogame freely distributed on the American Army’s website for training cum propaganda purposes. The game is played by the machine itself, which sends a series of messages to a system of pistons that press down directly onto keys on the keyboard.

According to Stern, neo-medievalism is the last incarnation of what he calls “An American pathology”: that unceasing search for a glorious past, which in the United States goes hand-in-hand with the nation’s increasingly imperialistic aims. And again, this criticism is developed by leaving the game, bringing its aesthetics and iconography to the real world and building up monumental, heavy, aggressive interfaces that can’t be forgotten. When you hear Fort Paladin’s pistons banging and watch them control the virtual soldiers of America’s Army, looking at a game’s reality as a separate “level of life” becomes more and more difficult.

Difficult, but not impossible. Eddo Stern is, and probably will always be, an avid gamer. His criticism doesn’t prevent him, nor us, from enjoying and playing the game, and is not articulated towards this end. Stern’s work is meant to explore the complex dynamics between reality and media, and to improve our understanding of both – not to explain to us why we should not play America’s Army or World of Warcraft. So, his last series of “animated machines”, as described in the press release written for their first public presentation, mine “the online gaming world at its paradoxical extremes: on one hand, an untenable perversion of everyday life spent slaying an endless stream of virtual monsters, on the other, an ultimate mirroring of the most familiar social dynamics. The struggles with masculinity, honor, aggression, faith, love and self worth are embroiled with the game world’s vernacular aesthetics.” In works such as Narnia, Again (2007), Lotusman (2007), Man, Woman, Dragon (After World of Warcraft) (2007) and Tsunami (2007), Stern updates a technique with a long tradition: the one adopted in Chinese shadow plays and other proto-cinematic forms of spectacle. His Plexiglas, computer-controlled kinetic shadow sculptures use lions, dragons, snakes, Chuck Norris, and kung-fu to talk about conflict, violence, masculinity, fantasy, and cultural stereotypes. But also play, play, play, with all its pleasures and contradictions.

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.

It’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?

My 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.

So: 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.

Not 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…

Second City – the show “curated” (reading on you will understand why I use the quotation marks) in Linz by the German artist Aram Bartholl – has been – no doubts – one of the cardinal points of Ars Electronica’s last edition, Goodbye Privacy. The show disseminated through the city was highly representative of the “nice side” of surveillance in the age of digital exhibitionism, an issue that was at the core of the Festival. “Showcasing ones customized persona, staging ones own image is the order of the day. Feature yourself or its GAME OVER, dude!”, wrote the curators Christine Schöpf and Gerfried Stocker.
As one of the first big shows raising the issue of art and virtual worlds, Second City has been an important show, and a point of departure for further research. In the same time (and for the same reason), it has been an highly problematic show, too. People liked the idea to bring the exhibition to the city and the streets, but there was a lot of mumbling and discussion about an approach that, for many, was superficial and looked like promotion. As you may guess from the previous post, I agree with this criticism, but what Bartholl is saying below made the show more clear to me – and made me more indulgent to the show. Hopefully, it will be the same for you…

DQ. How is the project born?
AB. Ars Electronica asked me this spring if I was interested in doing a concept and design for Second City – Marienstrasse. The idea of going into public space and Second Life as a topic of Marienstrasse existed already then. I was quite excited about the idea and developed several workshops and projects. In the beginning I was not sure which role I should play: curator or artist. I decided to put emphasis on being artist showing several projects at Marienstrasse related to Second Life. Which means I didn’t curate Marienstrasse although I brought in some artists in cooperation and had some influence. In the end my name was on top for whole Marienstrasse, which is an honor but also a great responsibility, as I realize now. My interest has been more into developing and showing, rather than “curating”.

DQ. Did you encounter any difficulties in organizing it?
AB. Of course there have been many difficulties in organizing. Very basic elements like electricity infrastructure in Marienstrasse took a lot of time. So in the end when the festival started Marienstrasse was as buggy as Second Life. But also the process of choosing and decisions in developing projects took quite some time. It has been the first time that I worked on a project of this size and I think I learned a lot.

DQ. Are you satisfied of the results?
AB. Good question. First of all I was happy that in the end more or less all the parts were put together and things worked. But with some distance after the exhausting week of Ars I questioned this myself. I think you made a good point in your article on Second City, which I already also noticed. I do work in a very simple way of transferring elements or situations from virtual world to physical space. Every single of these projects has its own quality and is contrasted by public space. But adding too many of these transformations up in one spot takes away the effect. I tried not to rebuild a complete scenario. But in the end, yes, maybe we had too many of these virtual elements in Real Life.

DQ. What did you like more in the project?
AB. The moment when a new project comes alive is always most exciting. Does it work? Do people react to it? Testing Chat for the first time on the market place was really fun. To see how four trees are build and set up is very exiting. The Synthetic Performances of Eva and Franco I did like a lot. Despite the rain I think the concept of putting an exhibition in a street worked out very well. The chinese restaurant / blumenberg food cooking in the yard was my favorite place.

DQ. What would you change in the project if you could put together a follow-up?
AB. There is a lot which could be done different, sure. Yes right, the in-world part involving Second Life inhabitants and artists was missing. There have been some attempts but not serious enough to set up a parallel program in SL. I concentrated mostly on Real Life interventions developing installations and workshops. I am aware that one general Second Life panel is not enough to discuss all aspects of the development. All my projects involve a critic view on digital worlds including Second Life. But they do it in a silent and ironic way. This is probably not enough in a context like Second City. More criticism and discussion is needed. Next time I’ll make sure what position I am in.

DQ. How can we organize a show about virtual worlds without making it seem corporate advertisement?
AB. Difficult. In general this question fits to many of my projects. A giant Google pin is perfect advertisement. Sure, this kind of topic should also involve other virtual worlds than just Second Life. We had the plan for an overview on Metaverses and history for the exhibition but unfortunately it hasn’t been realized. On the other hand Second Life polarized a lot this year. People love it or hate it. For me it is just a tool and a new development. I am curious about when Google will enter the market…

DQ.Can you say something about your new project, Sandbox Berlin?
AB. I developed the sandbox concept for Second City, where the beach at Pfarrplatz was realized instead. I think the possibility of creating and collaboration are the most important parts of Second Life. I love the bizarre Sandboxes. These and some very view other places are totally different to what we know or are used to. Quoting from the introduction of the project: “The Sandbox in Second Life is a place where all conventions are abandoned. It is the real wild west of the already untamed Second Life. The Sandbox is like a three-dimensional sketchbook. Every day, thousands of users leave their tracks here: abstract forms, digital building sites and house-car-plane clichés form a collective surrealistic dream scenario. In a world without rules, inventive users programme swarms of screaming Sponge Bobs which other users pursue. Anti-gravitational bubbles or whole fields of alarm sirens impede concentrated work. The Sandbox is a kind of black market emporium of digital objects and their programs.
The formal chaos and absurd situations generate a particular atmosphere of digital roughness and originality that can only be found here.”

Sandbox Berlin translates this field of experimentation into public space in Real Life. In a three-day workshop, production of custom objects in a spontaneous and collaborative process will be tested in Real Life. Everyone is invited to join us on a deserted area, formerly part of the Berlin Wall, in the Mitte district, to build whatever they want. Tools, wood and other materials will be provided by Sandbox Berlin, so that flexible groups can quickly design and materialize objects.” Everyone can take part in the project, simply registering by e-mail. Spontaneous participation and visits to the workshops are welcome, completely in the spirit of Second Life.

Rinascimento Virtuale. L’avatar è un’opera d’arte?
Domenico Quaranta. L’avatar può essere un’opera d’arte, come qualsiasi altra cosa del resto. Nella maggior parte dei casi, ovviamente, non lo è. Il mio avatar in SL, ad esempio, non è un’opera d’arte: è solo la maschera che io mi sono disegnato per interagire in un mondo sintetico. È un autoritratto, un dispositivo di socializzazione, un sistema di navigazione. Certo, ci ho messo della creatività per farlo, come del resto ne ho messa nel realizzare il mio biglietto da visita. Nessuno dei due è arte, anche se entrambi potrebbero diventarlo, in certe condizioni.

RV. Si metterebbe nel salotto un quadro realizzato in Second Life?
DQ. Lei si metterebbe in casa un quadro realizzato in Photoshop? Si e no, dipende dal quadro, non certo dal mezzo. In SL non si realizzano quadri: si importano realizzazioni esterne, si scattano fotografie, si realizzano installazioni che possono avere una valenza iconica.

RV. Quanto può valere un’opera realizzata in Second Life?
DQ. Ancora: 0, 1.000 o 1.000.000: dipende dall’opera, dall’interesse che suscita, dal desiderio che riesce ad attivare.

RV. E’ scoccata l’ora del Rinascimento virtuale?
DQ. Non credo. Su questo vorrei essere molto chiaro, a costo di sembrare un vecchio censore. Non esiste alcun movimento artistico nei mondi virtuali: esiste qualche buon artista che ha deciso di sperimentare con questo medium e una schiera di individui che hanno confuso con l’arte quello che fanno. È una cosa che succede spesso, e che può avere anche una sua funzione positiva, contribuendo ad allargare la nostra idea dell’arte. Quasi sempre nasce dalla confusione tra due termini: creatività e arte. La creatività viene usata in tante cose: allestire presepi, disegnare un libro o una rivista, progettare un marchio, gestire un’azienda, cucire un vestito. Nessuna di queste cose è “arte”, anche se l’arte si può verificare in ciascuna di esse.

RV. Conviene investire nell’arte sviluppata nei social network?
DQ. Conviene investire nei buoni artisti. Compresi quelli che emergono dai social network.

RV. Quanto durerà la moda dell’arte di Second Life?
DQ. Non esiste una “moda dell’arte di Second Life”. Esiste una nicchia operativa che si è costruita su uno strumento, e che ha scarsi riscontri fuori da questo contesto. La sua durata dipenderà dalla capacità dello strumento di innovarsi e stimolare la creatività delle persone, di estendere il proprio modello ad altri mondi virtuali; dalla capacità di questa nicchia di strutturarsi, di dotarsi di gerarchie e criteri di valutazione; dall’esistenza dei mondi virtuali, del tempo libero e della disoccupazione.

RV. Meglio i writers (i graffitari) o gli artisti dei social network?
DQ. Entrambi i termini sono fuori luogo. Keith Haring non è un writer né Gazira Babeli è un’artista dei social network, ma entrambi sono artisti di ottimo livello. Se devo scegliere tra le due cose intese come fenomeni culturali nel senso più ampio del termine, scelgo senza dubbio il writing come fenomeno di appropriazione illegale dello spazio pubblico: è spontaneo, illegale, ha una lunga tradizione, incide sulla realtà e non si ammanta della parola arte, anche se qualcuno cerca di applicargliela forzatamente.

RV. L’arte di Second Life è quella degli artisti affermati che si cimentano anche con questo strumento oppure è un’arte che nasce dal basso, un’arte da autodidatti?
DQ. La distinzione è artificiosa: l’arte può emergere ovunque, e anche se è più facile che un artista che si è già guadagnato credito altrove faccia un buon lavoro, non è affatto scontato. Ma è l’espressione “arte di SL” che mi lascia forti dubbi. Se devo per forza definire una nicchia operativa, preferisco ficcarci dentro i creativi naife piuttosto che i veri artisti, quale che sia il loro curriculum. Questi fanno arte senza aggettivi.

RV. Lei ha un’avatar in Second Life?
DQ. Si. Si chiama Domenico Quaranta, ha barba e capelli bianchi e porta un cappello a cilindro.

RV. Come definirebbe Second Life?
DQ. Una discarica dell’immaginario.

RV. Meglio mondo vero o mondo virtuale?
DQ. Preferisco il mondo vero per il clima, i mondi sintetici per la compagnia.

RV. Second Life è una bolla mediatica?
DQ. SL è il prodotto sofisticato di diverse linee evolutive delle tecnologie digitali. Ed è, sicuramente, un modello per il futuro. In essa vi è molto di interessante, ma raramente ha attratto i media. Diciamo che alcune aziende e individui, per un certo periodo, hanno cercato di sfruttare in chiave pubblicitaria l’interesse morboso che sembrava suscitare chi investiva denaro reale in un mondo sintetico. Oggi questo interesse si è spento, e gli spazi aperti da queste aziende sono tutti vuoti.

RV. Sa che sono stati girati dei film in Second Life? Gli avatar prenderanno il posto degli attori?
DQ. Solo quando riusciranno a rifare la scena dello specchio di Taxi Driver come e meglio di Robert de Niro.

RV. Matrix è il futuro o il presente?
DQ. Matrix è il passato. Ogni futuro immaginato somiglia al presente che l’ha generato, e Matrix è stato girato nel 1999 rielaborando un immaginario che risale agli anni Ottanta.

RV. Cosa pensa del virtuale?
DQ. Da cultore della Patafisica, preferisco il potenziale.

RV. Ci si può innamorare di un avatar?
DQ. Ci si può innamorare di qualsiasi cosa.

RV. Qual è l’espressione più avanzata dell’arte di questi anni?
DQ. Come sempre, è l’arte che parla di noi e del nostro presente con un linguaggio che sarà comprensibile anche agli uomini che ci seguiranno, nonostante i loro innesti tecnologici e i loro avatar.

RV. Cosa pensa della net art?
DQ. Penso che sia stata un grande momento dell’arte dell’ultimo decennio, e che non c’entri nulla con ciò di cui stiamo parlando.

RV. L’arte del futuro sarà quella dei grandi maestri o quella dei naif del web?
DQ. L’arte del futuro sarà quella degli artisti, dei critici e del pubblico del futuro. Potremmo fare tante previsioni, e sarebbero tutte sbagliate, perché il tutto dipende da come evolverà l’idea di arte. Ma francamente credo che i “naif del web”, come li chiama lei, abbiano poche chance. Ma nulla esclude che il Warhol del XXI secolo ora stia scattando ritratti su SL. Dopotutto, quello del XX secolo disegnava pubblicità per le scarpe. Ma non è certo con quelle che è entrato nella storia.

RV. Fumetti, cinema di serie B, ritratti realizzati in Second Life: è vera arte?
DQ. L’arte è un fatto così magico e misterioso che a migliaia di anni dalla sua nascita siamo ancora qui a chiederci cosa sia arte e cosa non lo sia. Francamente, non credo che la mia sia la risposta definitiva al problema. Quello che posso fare è richiamare la sua attenzione su alcune convenzioni relative al termine arte: questo viene utilizzato di solito per designare le arti visive, ma anche (al plurale) per le altre arti (musica, architettura, cinema, etc.) e anche numerose tecniche. Tutto ciò conferisce al termine una grande complessità, che ne rende molto complicato l’utilizzo. Le faccio un esempio. Il cinema è un’arte (qualcuno l’ha definito la settima arte), ma non tutto il cinema è Arte (con la A maiuscola). Inoltre, quando diciamo, ad esempio, che Taxi Driver è Arte, non intendiamo dire che esso meriti un posto di rispetto nel mondo delle arti visive, ma nella storia del cinema come arte. Tuttavia, qualche film (ad esempio, Drawing Restraint 9 di Matthew Barney) è arte in entrambi i sensi, avendo cercato (e ottenuto) il riscontro di entrambe queste storie. Allo stesso modo, il fumetto è un’arte, ma pochi fumetti sono Arte, e solo alcuni di essi sono stati realizzati come opere d’arte nel senso conferito a questo termine dal mondo dell’arte contemporanea. Ma non le dirò mai che il Fumetto è Arte, e che un gallerista deve vendere i ritratti di SL perché sono Arte, anche se alcuni di essi lo sono.

Domenico Quaranta

D. QUARANTA, “Rinascimento virtuale?”, in M. Gerosa (ed), Rinascimento virtuale, exhibition catalogue, Firenze, Museo di Storia Naturale, November 2008.

Nel 1927, un signore tedesco di nome Erwin¹ ha riconosciuto nella prospettiva, il frutto più succoso del nostro Rinascimento, una nuova visione del mondo, che viene ricostruito e organizzato attraverso lo sguardo dell’uomo, piazzatosi beatamente al centro. Qualche anno fa, un altro signore (questa volta, un russo di nome Lev²) ha sostenuto che la prospettiva è stata soppiantata da una nuova forma simbolica, quella del database. Se oggi il mondo ci appare come una collezione infinita e destrutturata di immagini, testi e altri dati, ha scritto Lev, l’unico modo per dargli ordine è organizzarli in un database, un archivio strutturato di dati. La logica del database, dice Lev, si oppone a quella della narrazione – una successione lineare di dati – e, dico io, a quella della prospettiva – un insieme di dati organizzati da un determinato punto di vista.

I mondi virtuali sembrano conciliare queste due prospettive, pardon, queste due forme simboliche. Si affidano a un database, un insieme strutturato – e infinitamente ampliabile – di dati, e organizzano questi dati secondo le regole della prospettiva, attorno a un punto di vista unico. L’uomo, presuntuosamente rinominato avatar³, torna ad occupare il centro, e a riorganizzare con il suo sguardo il mondo che lo circonda. L’universo, nella, sua versione “virtuale”, torna ad essere antropocentrico, pardon avatarcentrico. Questo mondo non è “rappresentato”, come nei quadri rinascimentali, ma “simulato”, come nel teatro. Il corridoio di Thalia del Palladio, già riconosciuto da Salvador Dalì come luogo emblematico dell’inconscio, diventa simbolo della nuova vita sintetica, che con l’inconscio ci azzecca parecchio.

In questo senso, Rinascimento virtuale è un titolo perfetto per una mostra sull’arte dei mondi virtuali. Tuttavia quest’ultima, in un contesto interamente “artefatto”, si colloca un po’ a tutti i livelli, e un uso particolarmente esteso del termine non aiuta quindi a fare chiarezza. In Second Life, tutti sono artisti di qualcosa. Diciamo subito, quindi, che quando io parlo di arte non parlo dell’arte dell’architetto, dell’arte del progettista, dell’arte del designer, dell’arte dell’illustratore etc. Tutte “arti” assolutamente legittime, e che hanno un ruolo importante nella costruzione dei mondi virtuali. Non faccio riferimento a una concezione relativa di arte, né a un concetto esteso di arte come “techne”. Quella di cui parlo è l’arte senza aggettivi, l’arte di Roberto Longhi o, se vogliamo, di Francesco Bonami. L’arte che studiamo a scuola quando studiamo “storia dell’arte”. È questa arte che voglio riconoscere. Mi rendo conto che questo riduce di molto il campo d’indagine, e che forse in questo modo non rispetto il concetto di arte adottato in questa mostra. Ma credo che sia una distinzione che va fatta, se vogliamo capire qualcosa dell’arte legata ai mondi virtuali. E, come vedremo, anche se l’obiettivo si restringe, rimane ancora molto da dire. Ad esempio, che non basta fare un ritratto di avatar, o un’installazione, per fare arte. O che esiste un’arte nei mondi virtuali e un’arte sui mondi virtuali. Certo, spesso un progetto può essere l’una e l’altra cosa. Ma questa distinzione merita di essere fatta comunque, perché se è facile riconoscere come arte il progetto di Cao Fei per la Biennale di Venezia, il riconoscimento è più difficile all’interno dei mondi virtuali, in un contesto in cui la definizione di arte si fa più sfumata. Ma andiamo con ordine.

Contro il postkitsch

Con quale diritto, e con che presunzione, posso arrogarmi il diritto di dire cosa è arte e cosa non lo è? Che, ad esempio, i Portraits (2007) dei Mattes sono arte e un qualsiasi ritratto di avatar reperibile su Flickr non lo è? Che le foto di Marco Cadioli sono arte e le innumerevoli cartoline di Second Life caricate su Deviantart no? Il discorso è complesso, in primo luogo perché spesso ciò che fa l’arte è poca cosa, e in secondo luogo perché non è mai la stessa. In questi due casi specifici, lo statuto artistico sembrerebbe derivare dalla combinazione di tre fattori: estetica, progetto e contesto. Quasi mai uno dei tre basta da solo. I ritratti dei Mattes rivelano un’estetica matura, che sa prendere le distanze dal soggetto e riflettere in questo modo il suo significato più profondo. Fanno parte di un progetto più ampio che riflette su un nuovo concetto di identità, un nuovo ideale di bellezza, e che replica l’atto warholiano di creazione dell’icona a partire dal blob confuso della cultura popolare. Infine, circolano e vengono apprezzati in un contesto che è, appunto, quello dell’arte. Tutti questi fattori si ritrovano anche nei progetti fotografici di Marco Cadioli: spostando l’accento dal soggetto all’atto stesso di fotografare un mondo virtuale, ponendolo sullo stesso piano del mondo reale, quest’ultimo compie un’operazione genuinamente artistica, che “riscatta” scatti altrimenti poco significativi. E tuttavia tutto ciò si potrebbe riconoscere anche, che so, nel ritratto di Raegan caricato da Raphael Masala su Flickr. Che cosa li differenzia allora?

Si racconta che Andy Warhol, quando, nel 1964, iniziò la serie dei Flowers, ebbe dei problemi con Patricia Caufield, autrice della fotografia da lui utilizzata. È interessante, innanzitutto, notare che non ebbe gli stessi problemi con il grafico che disegnò le scatole Brillo, o il fotografo che immortalò Jackie Kennedy durante il funerale del marito. Questi due oggetti, per riconoscimento unanime, non sono “arte”. La foto di Caufield vorrebbe esserlo, ma non lo è, perché fa parte dello stesso armamentario pop da cui provengono gli altri due artefatti. La Pop Art non rende arte il pop (o, se preferiamo, il kitsch), ma costruisce su di esso un discorso di secondo livello. È questo discorso che distingue l’avanguardia dal kitsch. Mutuo questi due termini, ovviamente, da Clement Greenberg⁴, che pur non riconoscerà mai lo statuto artistico della Pop Art. Eppure il suo discorso supporta a meraviglia il nostro. Secondo Greenberg, il kitsch è la risposta del mercato alle nuove esigenze estetiche aperte dall’estrema rarefazione dell’avanguardia: “Per far fronte alla domanda del nuovo mercato, venne inventato un nuovo prodotto, la cultura ersatz, il kitsch, destinato a coloro che, insensibili ai valori della vera cultura, sono tuttavia avidi di quelle distrazioni che soltanto la cultura, di qualsiasi genere essa sia, è in grado di fornire.”⁵ Una delle prerogative più interessanti del kitsch, individuata genialmente da Greenberg, è la sua capacità di assorbire l’avanguardia: “da essa il kitsch ricava dispositivi, artifici, stratagemmi, pratiche, temi, li converte in sistema e scarta il resto… quando è trascorso abbastanza tempo, il nuovo viene saccheggiato per delle nuove bevande miste, dei ‘cocktails’ che vengono poi annacquati e serviti come kitsch.”⁶

Questo meccanismo è valido ancora oggi. Quello che è venuto meno, complicando di gran lunga le cose, è il fattore tempo. Oggi l’avanguardia viene assorbita immediatamente dal kitsch. Accade sempre più spesso che la pubblicità assomigli all’arte dell’anno prima. Ma il fatto che la cosiddetta arte dei social network abbia assorbito la Pop Art e persino il Postmoderno non basta a farne “arte”. Il fatto che i ritratti di avatar abbiano preso a somigliare un po’ tutti ai ritratti dei Mattes non li pone sul loro stesso livello. Questo non accade perché è questa stessa produzione a posizionarsi su un altro livello: quello del kitsch, appunto. Lo nota lo stesso Mario Gerosa, quando parla di “arte souvenir”, di “arte fatta per stimolare un commento”, e della funzione sociale e aggregativa della produzione dei social network.⁷ L’arte non ha funzione. Il kitsch si, il postkitsch anche.

È per questo che non credo, a differenza di Gerosa, che il postkitsch possa essere promosso ad arte di primo livello. Perché ciò accada, questi “artisti” devono cambiare gioco: come Warhol, che ha smesso di fare il pubblicitario e ha cominciato a fare l’artista. Per lo stesso motivo, non credo che l’arte possa insegnare qualcosa al postkitsch: quello che può accadere, al massimo, è che il postkitsch metabolizzi l’arte e la trasformi in kitsch. Infine, è per questo stesso motivo che ritengo l’operazione Rinascimento virtuale insieme pericolosa e interessante: pericolosa, perché pone tutto sullo stesso livello; interessante, perché non tutto è sullo stesso livello, e credo che la mostra lo dimostrerà, in un modo o nell’altro.

Contro l’iperformalismo

Un discorso simile, ovviamente, può essere fatto per i numerosi video e machinima girati all’interno dei mondi virtuali. Molti di essi, peraltro, non ambiscono nemmeno a porsi come arte, essendo decisamente più conveniente, e più remunerativo, posizionarsi al livello della cultura di massa: serial televisivi, videoclip, video pubblicitari, etc.

Più complesso, come notavamo, è entrare nel merito dell’arte prodotta all’interno dei mondi virtuali: un fenomeno che, a parte il caso isolato della performance, che ha spesso luogo anche in altri ambienti sintetici, da The Sims a World of Warcraft, interessa soprattutto Second Life, che più di altri mondi risulta impostato sulla creatività degli utenti. Qui, l’unica possibilità di fornire un’analisi convincente si radica nella capacità di rispondere a una semplice domanda: in quali termini è possibile l’arte in un mondo virtuale – premesso, ancora una volta, che arte e creatività sono due cose diverse, e che escludiamo da questa analisi architettura, design e tutte le altre “arti”?

Nel primo paragrafo abbiamo introdotto brevemente il concetto di “teatro”. Un mondo sintetico come Second Life è tante cose insieme: come Photoshop, è un tool dotato di un ricchissimo menù di opzioni; come Habbo Hotel, è una piattaforma di comunicazione. Ma se lo guardiamo dal punto di vista dell’avatar, che come abbiamo detto ne costituisce il centro ideale, un mondo virtuale è, essenzialmente, teatro. Dico “teatro”, e non palcoscenico, perché il mondo riunisce palcoscenico, attori, sceneggiatura, pubblico e gli strumenti per sviluppare tutte queste cose.

Teatro, dunque. Si comincia disegnando la propria maschera, e attribuendo una personalità, e una vita, al proprio personaggio. Poi si passa allo scenario. Molto spesso, si entra in una sceneggiatura già scritta: è quanto accade in tutti i giochi di ruolo online. In Second Life, questo non succede, se non parzialmente. Alcune scelte iniziali sono decisive: se si decide di essere per sempre. Per il resto, si tratta semplicemente di entrare a far parte di un sistema sociale complesso, con alcune regole di base e ampio spazio d’invenzione. È questo, per inciso, che rende Second Life tanto noioso, e a tratti angosciante: la maggior parte dei suoi abitanti sono personaggi in cerca di autore, maschere senza sceneggiatura. Storie scritte male.

La forza della sceneggiatura diventa la forza del personaggio. Aimee Weber è stata abilissima a costruirsi il personaggio della designer di successo, Lanai Jarrico è perfetta nel ruolo di giornalista, Anshe Chung un’ottima milionaria. Aprire una galleria è, prima che un’avventura economica, teatro. Fare l’artista è, prima che una carriera, teatro. Le opere d’arte realizzate dagli avatar ed esposte nelle gallerie di Second Life non sono arte in quanto tali. La loro funzione è, unicamente, quella di conferire solidità al personaggio. È solamente a livello del personaggio, della sceneggiatura a cui riesce a dare vita, delle storie che riesce ad attivare, che l’arte è possibile. In questo senso, parlare di arte in Second Life è un equivoco: in Second Life non c’è arte, ci sono artisti. Artisti che sono a loro volta progetti artistici, opere d’arte. Quella che chiamano arte è, in realtà, scenografia, o, al massimo, elemento drammaturgico. Credere – come fanno molti – nella possibilità di un’arte in Second Life vuol dire soccombere alla finzione, ritenersi persone invece di attori. Un’architettura visionaria, un’installazione audiovisiva, un’immagine, un avatar bizzarro non hanno, come nella realtà, valore in sé. Se la narrazione non funziona, l’arte perde qualsiasi tipo di interesse. L’artista deve essere consapevole di essere il fulcro di una storia, e deve essere in grado di scriversi un buon soggetto. Un artista senza un buon soggetto non è un artista. Non lì. In un mondo virtuale, senza narrazione non c’è arte.

Per lo stesso motivo, una qualsiasi delle identità appena citate, se rivendicate come arte, potrebbero esserlo a tutti gli effetti. È uno dei paradossi di questo mondo: in un contesto in cui tutto vuole essere arte, spesso operazioni squisitamente imprenditoriali, o gesti privi d’ogni logica (come attraversare a piedi l’intera

Tornando a quest’ultima, ritengo fortemente emblematico il caso dell’iperformalismo, il presunto “movimento artistico” lanciato da Dancoyote Antonelli. Non mi interessa entrare nel merito dell’estetica del movimento, che ricicla, con l’estetica imposta dal motore grafico di Second Life, le premesse poste dall’op art e dalla “cyberart” dei primi anni Novanta, essa stessa ben poco degna di interesse. Non mi interessa perché, come ho detto, le opere di Dancoyote Antonelli sono interessanti come arte solo nei termini in cui contribuiscono alla storia di Dancoyote Antonelli, lui stesso opera dell’artista americano DC Spensley, e a quella della comunità intera dei residenti. La storia di Dancoyote è quella di un artista giovane e intraprendente, con una pettinatura punk e il sesto dito della creatività, che in pochi mesi di vita si è costruito un museo che svetta nei cieli della sua sim e ha dato vita a un movimento a cui ha aderito un ampio numero di artisti. Il canovaccio, non c’è che dire, non è male. Rimpolpato con qualche dettaglio, potrebbe somigliare alla biografia di Marinetti o di Tzara. Il problema è che la storia finisce qui. Le sue opere non aggiungono nulla al personaggio, sono pure esplorazioni formali di un mezzo. Né, d’altra parte, danno vita a delle storie: superato il primo momento di stupore “estetico”, chi visita il suo museo cade invariabilmente preda della noia.

Purtroppo, gli altri artisti che hanno aderito al movimento non si distaccano da questo modello. L’iperformalismo è, dal mio punto di vista, scenografia senza narrazione. Una raccolta di racconti mediocri. O, se vogliamo cavarcela con un gioco di parole, senza sceneggiatura. Si può salvare, ma solo a patto di scendere dal piedistallo dell’arte per competere onestamente con quell’oceano di creativi che operano in Second Life.

Ma, vi chiederete: ci sarà pur qualcosa che ti piace, no? Si. C’è Gazira Babeli. Anche Gazira Babeli fa installazioni e performance, ma è molto lontana sia dall’optical che dalla cyberart. La sua estetica è pop e aggressiva, e somiglia poco a Second Life. Ma non è questo che ne fa un’artista. È, in primo luogo, il suo essere una storia avvincente, di quelle che non ci si annoia mai di sentire. È, in secondo luogo, la sua capacità di dare vita ad “opere” che aggiungono dettagli al suo ritratto, e che contribuiscono alla storia di chiunque abbia l’occasione di imbattersi in esse.

Gazira Babeli è l’opera di qualcuno, ma siccome non sappiamo chi sia questo qualcuno, diventa personaggio a tutto tondo, l’unico volto di se stessa. È alta, veste di nero, indossa occhiali scuri e un buffo cappello. È bella, ma legnosa nei movimenti e acida nel comportamento. All’inizio della sua storia, suonava la chitarra, nuda, agli angoli delle strade. Poi ha cominciato a costruire strane armi (lattine di Zuppa Campbell’s che imprigionano i passanti, terremoti, tornado, grey-goo) e a piazzare pizze in luoghi pubblici. Il collettivo di performer Second Front l’ha riconosciuta come artista, e è diventata una di loro. Fra i primi frutti di questa collaborazione si ricorda la performance Spawn of the Surreal, in cui ignari avatar vengono deformati da uno script nascosto negli scranni di un teatro. Il suo mediometraggio Gaz of the Desert ha offerto una versione agiografica della sua storia. È stata la prima artista ad avere una retrospettiva in Second Life, e la prima avatar artist ad avere una personale fuori da Second Life. In omaggio a Raymond Roussel, ha chiamato la sua isola Locusolus, e l’ha popolata di strane creature: pizze che cantano O sole mio, environment surreali in cui una chitarra gioca a tennis con una paletta da pizzaiolo, un enorme rubinetto che raschia il fondo del suo inventario, due torri di marmo che crollano e si rialzano come un gioco a molla e, più di recente, un tempio greco che gioca a Pong col passante di turno. Diamine, questa si che è una storia!

Conclusione

Pontificare sull’arte può essere una pratica snervante. Nel crogiolo di creatività esplosa attorno ai mondi virtuali, abbiamo cercato di separare, come si dice, la pula dal grano, e abbiamo trovato molta pula e poco grano. Nella pula, come abbiamo cercato di chiarire, c’è molto che potrebbe diventare grano, in altri contesti e con altre chiavi di lettura: ma non si parli di arte, per favore!

Detto questo, ad alcuni potrebbe sembrare che la morale di questa storia sia la seguente: attorno ai mondi virtuali c’è molto hype, tanta confusione e poca arte. Al contrario, di arte ce n’è molta, e molta di buona qualità. L’elenco che segue non vuole essere esaustivo, ma solo suggerire la complessità del fenomeno.

Abbiamo già citato i ritratti dei Mattes, i progetti fotografici di Marco Cadioli e Gazira Babeli. Aggiungiamo le performance di Second Front, che ha risuscitato Fluxus e il punk in quel mortorio che è Second Life; le performance dei Mattes, che rimettono in scena attraverso i loro avatar alcune celebri performance degli anni Settanta, esplorando il senso di concetti come corpo, spazio, violenza e sessualità in un mondo virtuale; quelle di Joseph Delappe, che si muove da The Sims a Second Life, da America’s Army a Battlefield Vietnam nel tentativo di imporate il dibattito politico in questi contesti sociali; i lavori recenti di Eddo Stern, che recuperano i miti, l’iconografia e la produzione vernacolare dei fan di World of Worcraft nei suoi video e nelle sue installazioni cinetiche, e che con il suo monumentale Portal ha dimostrato lo statuto di realtà di questo mondo parallelo in modo spettacolare; i video e le installazioni di Cao Fei, che rivelano la personalissima visione dei mondi virtuali che può avere chi, come lei, vive la sua prima vita in una realtà altrettanto confusa e contraddittoria qual’è quella cinese; le sculture e i modelli di Goldin+Senneby e di Scott Kildall e Victoria Scott, che esplorano la cultura del gadget e il legame affettivo che può legarci a questi oggetti virtuali.

Insomma, c’è arte su Marte: basta saperla riconoscere.

Footnotes:

I

Gazira Babeli è un’artista nata in Second Life il 31 marzo 2006. Alta e sinuosa nel lungo abito nero che scende leggero sulle sue anche poligonali, lo sguardo spento nascosto da un paio di occhiali scuri, Gazira trasuda uno strano fascino che la colloca a metà strada tra la strega woodoo e un’eroina alla X-men. Una descrizione che non le rende giustizia, perché il suo alto copricapo a tronco di cono fa pensare anche al Cappellaio Matto, o all’acconciatura elaborata di una dama del Settecento; e il suo magnetismo rievoca quello del Pifferaio Magico, tanto che non ci stupiremmo di veder comparire, dietro di lei, un corteo di roditori. Insomma, un bel guazzabuglio culturale, che si muove a suo agio sull’orizzonte postmoderno di Second Life.

Non avremmo dedicato tanto spazio all’aspetto di Gazira se non avessimo letto tante pagine sull’abito grigio di Joseph Beuys, il suo cappello di feltro e il suo fascino da sciamano. Come per Beuys, e per molti altri artisti prima e dopo di lui, la costruzione del proprio personaggio non è un elemento accessorio, ma un tassello indispensabile nello sviluppo dell’opera. Nessun dettaglio va trascurato. L’identificazione tra arte e vita è totale. Vita, non seconda vita: perché se gli altri residenti di Second Life sono semplici avatar, proiezioni virtuali di un io reale, Gazira Babeli è forse il primo vero indigeno del regno inventato dal Linden Lab. Ma andiamo con ordine…

Second Life è un mondo virtuale in 3D costruito e posseduto dai suoi residenti. Costoro trascorrono la maggior parte del loro tempo ad arredare la propria casa, vestire il proprio avatar, comprare gadget e oggetti di ogni tipo, fare vita sociale, lavorare. C’è chi si sposa e chi preferisce farsi un giro per le strade di Amsterdam in cerca di prostitute. C’è una economia interna, un’ora interna, regole, pesi e misure. Si può trascorrere la propria seconda vita senza quasi rendersi conto che ci si trova in una interfaccia fatta di dati, in un mondo tenuto in pieno da codici e script.
Gazira questo lo sa bene. E infatti le sue performance non consistono nell’agire – come un qualsiasi avatar – sulla piattaforma di Second Life, ma nel manipolare e nell’attivare del codice. Non è una performer, ma una “code performer”. Non agisce fingendo, come tutti, di trovarsi in un mondo fatto di oggetti e di atomi, ma consapevole di trovarsi in un mondo fatto di codici, e di essere codice lei stessa. La performance è sempre un agire critico nei confronti delle norme su cui si fonda il mondo che ci circonda. Gazira agisce nella consapevolezza che le convenzioni sociali che regolano il mondo virtuale di Second Life agiscono solo sulla superficie, e che in realtà il suo mondo si regge su altre leggi: quelle scritte nel codice di programmazione. Sono queste le regole che sfida con le sue “code performance”. Per questo appare, agli occhi di chi la vede in azione, come un bizzarro sciamano. Gazira lancia script come fossero formule magiche, scatena terremoti, calamità naturali, invasioni di icone pop fitte come cavallette. Lo scorso ottobre, ad esempio, ha destato una certa preoccupazione una piccola apocalisse, che ha visto una spiaggia di Second Life riempirsi di immagini di Super Mario saltellanti. In gergo tecnico si tratta di un “grey goo”, espressione usata nell’ambito delle nanotecnologie e della fantascienza per descrivere un ipotetico scenario apocalittico in cui dei robot autoreplicanti consumano tutta la materia vivente sulla terra [1]. Anche se il cataclisma ha generato una certa preoccupazione, Gazira sembra più interessata a causare un corto circuito mentale che un vero collasso del sistema. Per questo popola l’universo tridimensionale e barocco di Second Life con l’icona per eccellenza dell’epoca 8bit. Questo processo è evidente nell’operazione Kaspar Goo (novembre 2006), in cui chiede a un attore di interpretare la parte del vagabondo di Caspar David Friedrich, estasiato di fronte agli spettacoli della natura. È l’alba, e il nostro viaggiatore, col suo copricapo a tesa larga, osserva il sole sorgere su uno scenario da favola. La mimesi sembra perfetta, ma a un certo punto i suoi interrogativi si concretizzano in una pioggia di punti di domanda che scendono a sporcare l’orizzonte. Un paio di giorni dopo, Gazira si presenta all’inaugurazione, in Ars Virtua (uno spazio espositivo fondato nel 2005 dagli studenti del Cadre)[2], della mostra di ritratti di avatar di Eva e Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org)[3]. A un certo punto, l’ambiente si riempie di banane: non banane qualsiasi, ma una replica di quella realizzata da Andy Warhol per la copertina del primo disco dei Velvet Underground. Difficile capire se si tratti di un commento all’operazione sviluppata dai Mattes (that’s all pop!) o piuttosto di una gara a chi è più pop. Ciò che è certo è che l’amore/odio per la pop art emerge in molte delle operazioni di Gazira Babeli. Come quando, sulla colonna sonora di O’ sole mio, si è divertita a infestare – senza autorizzazione – la stessa Ars Virtua con pizze e spruzzi di salsa di pomodoro (Singing Pizza, aprile 2006). Gazira gioca con la sua (presunta? reale?) italianità trasformando questo attributo di simpatia in una coloratissima installazione ambientale. In Second Soup (maggio 2006), invece, Gazira è alle prese con una lattina gigante di zuppa Campbell, altra icona della pop art. La sta osservando su un manifesto quando la lattina abbandona la sua cornice di carta e la imprigiona. Da quel momento, non c’è più verso di liberarsene. Gazira salta, vola, corre, ma la lattina la raggiunge sempre. Il pop come divinità fastidiosa, eredità ingombrante che non riusciamo a mettere da parte? La penetrabilità dei corpi in Second Life rende alcune scene esilaranti, ma Gazira non sembra divertirsi molto. “Ami la pop art, ma la pop art ti odia”, è l’ironico commento che fa da sottotitolo alla performance.
Un gioco che invece sembra piacerle molto consiste nel lanciare oggetti e persone a centinaia di metri di altezza. In Second Life esistono dei limiti precisi alla libertà individuale, a quello che un residente può fare alla proprietà altrui o agli altri avatar. Gazira si disfa di questi limiti con la forza del codice, e scatena piccoli terremoti e tornado. Gioca con la gravità. Nell’operazione COME.TO.HEAVEN (luglio 2006), che ha come riferimento ideale il salto nel vuoto di Yves Klein, scaglia se stessa a milioni di metri di altezza, ad altissima velocità. Il risultato cambia a seconda delle caratteristiche della scheda grafica installata sul computer utilizzato. In certi casi, i poligoni si sfracellano, e il risultato non ha più nulla di umano; in altri, il corpo è come immesso in una turbina, gli arti si moltiplicano e si scompongono, il corpo diventa un confuso ammasso di carne e capelli. Gazira sembra passare in rassegna, sfruttando le caratteristiche fisiche del suo ambiente, diverse possibilità dell’arte del Novecento: non a caso, descrive la sua azione come un atto di pittura sulla scheda grafica del computer.

Potremmo chiederci, a questo punto, in cosa consista l’arte di Gazira. Dire che è performance risolve molte cose, ma non basta. Gazira scrive dei codici, li esegue in prima persona, documenta le proprie performance con scatti fotografici e video. Esattamente come Marina Abramovic o Vanessa Beecroft. Il che impone prima considerazione: Gazira non è il progetto di un artista che, attraverso un avatar, lavora su Second Life, ma È un artista, con un nome e un corpo, che vive e opera in Second Life. Non importa chi ci stia dietro, se sia un individuo o un collettivo, se sia un uomo o una donna. L’identità virtuale prende il sopravvento sull’identità reale.
In secondo luogo, le performance di Gazira sono codice informatico, che l’artista mette a disposizione sul suo sito sotto licenza Creative Commons affinché chiunque possa utilizzarlo. Opera in un ambiente di rete (net art?). Scrive codici (software art?). Si serve di miti e icone della cultura pop (pop art?). In realtà, il lavoro di Gazira si pone al di là di queste categorie, o meglio vive in un contesto che le dà per superate. Il confronto con la software art appare, in questo caso, decisivo. In un testo del 2004, la critica tedesca Inke Arns introduce, a proposito della software art, il concetto di “performatività del codice” mutuandolo dalla teoria dell’atto linguistico di John L. Austin. [4] Scrive Arns:

“… questa performatività non deve essere intesa come una performatività puramente tecnica [...] ma influenza i regni dell’estetico, del politico e del sociale. Il codice di programmazione è caratterizzato dal fatto che in esso dire e fare coincidono… Il codice diventa Legge.”

Arns conclude notando che la “software art ci mostra che il nostro ambiente (mediatico) si affida sempre di più a strutture programmate.” Gazira Babeli non si limita a operare all’interno del nostro ambiente mediatico. Ci vive. Vive in un mondo fatto di strutture programmate. Il codice che scrive trasforma il suo ambiente, perché il suo ambiente è fatto di codice. In altre parole, dal codice performativo qui passiamo alla performance. Un software artist, scrivendo codice, manipola l’ambiente dei media. Gazira Babeli, scrivendo codice, manipola il mondo in cui vive, e in questo modo mina l’illusione su cui il suo mondo si basa, quell’illusione che tutti i residenti (artisti compresi) si sforzano di mantenere in vita. Svela il segreto delle bambole Perky Pat [5], e ci induce a riflettere sul perché questa casa di bambole ci sembri così attraente.

II

Se Gazira Babeli rivela, operando dal suo interno, il particolare statuto di realtà del mondo in cui vive, l’italiano Damiano Colacito lavora sullo stesso tema in modo radicalmente diverso, trasportando nel mondo reale oggetti pescati nei mondi virtuali che frequenta. Secondo Colacito, la Seconda guerra mondiale non è mai finita. Lo dimostra il fatto che lui, nato ad Atri nel 1973, l’abbia vissuta. Certo, l’ha fatto giocando a Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001), ma che differenza fa? I reduci di guerra che vedono gli oggetti da lui esportati dagli ambienti di gioco, e riprodotti nei minimi particolari, li riconoscono e ne hanno paura. Colacito condivide con loro le stesse ansie, la stessa paura di non farcela, le stesse scariche di adrenalina.
Al telefono, Colacito mi racconta emozionato il ritrovamento, durante un’immersione nel lago di Garda, di un pezzo d’artiglieria della seconda guerra mondiale: “Il mio primo pensiero è stato lo stesso che faccio quando sono soddisfatto del mio lavoro: allora è successo davvero – ne ho la prova.” Mi torna in mente una storiella di Coleridge letta tanto tempo fa. Diceva più o meno: “Se un uomo in sogno attraversasse il paradiso e gli dessero un fiore come prova di esserci stato, e al ritorno si trovasse con quel fiore in mano… e allora?” Allora non importa che una storia sia reale, simulata o sognata: quella storia è successa, quando c’è un oggetto a dimostrarcelo.

Ma le sculture di Colacito non hanno solo la funzione di testimoniare la realtà di una esperienza vissuta dentro le pareti virtuali di un videogame. Servono anche per generare uno scarto semiotico che spiazza tanto il videogiocatore quanto chi di videogiochi non ha una esperienza diretta. Il primo, che nei videogiochi trascorre buona parte della sua vita, ha un soprassalto quando si trova di fronte a una riproduzione assolutamente fedele di un’arma, un power up o un med kit. Spiega Colacito in una recente intervista:

“Hanno reazioni estetiche improvvise e infatuazioni impulsive quando riconoscono quello che espongo, perché l’opera fa parte del loro – privato – palco degli oggetti mentali. È come se avvenisse in loro un corto circuito percettivo… Alcune volte sono irruenti, come quando ricollocai nel reale per la prima volta un power-up all’interno di una esposizione collettiva: un’artista che non conoscevo in quel periodo stava giocando allo stesso game dal quale il medicamento era stato desunto. Io non ero presente ma, dopo avermi trovato, egli mi raccontò entusiasticamente che quando lo vide vi si avvicinò con veemenza per afferrarlo come se fosse nel gioco, e che ci si fermò davanti alcuni secondi – quelli che gli servirono per capire dove si trovasse – e che infine si sentì quasi preso in giro: come ti dicevo prima, una parte del suo intimo mondo era esposta in pubblico senza che lui ne sapesse nulla…” [6]

Potrebbe sembrare una variazione sul tema della celebre storiella del cavallo dipinto da Apelle, che ricevette l’omaggio di un nitrito da un vero cavallo. Tuttavia, Colacito non la usa per esaltare la propria capacità mimetica, ma per sottolineare la virulenza dell’esperienza di gioco, che lascia tracce profonde nella nostra vita quotidiana. “Di alcuni game – spiega ancora l’artista – ricordo anche l’odore.” [7]

Quanto ai non videogiocatori, l’esperienza delle opere di Colacito risulta per loro ugualmente straniante. L’impressione è quella di trovarsi di fronte a oggetti provenienti da un altro mondo, agli artefatti prodotti da una civiltà scomparsa ma con molte tangenze con la nostra. Prendiamo ad esempio Health Bag (2005), l’opera che ha indotto il nostro amico artista a comportarsi in un modo che poco si addice al contesto di una mostra. Si tratta di una scultura in polistirolo rivestita di una pellicola di Scotchprint su cui è stata fedelmente riprodotta la texture dell’oggetto virtuale originario. Per il giocatore, le caratteristiche stilistiche di questo oggetto non sono elementi su cui soffermarsi, servono solo a collocarlo in un contesto (una determinata situazione di Return to Castle Wolfenstein) e ad attribuirgli una funzione (se lo afferro, acquisto dei punti vita). Chi non condivide quest’esperienza si trova invece di fronte a un bizzarro oggetto poligonale, con una superficie stranamente sfocata, stirata e vagamente pixellosa. Questi elementi di estraneità avviluppano però un oggetto che ha già trovato uno spazio negli archivi della nostra memoria, o per esperienza diretta (i reduci di guerra) o per esperienza mediata (cinema e documentari): la seconda guerra mondiale, cui rimandano il verde mimetico, la croce rossa e la scritta in tedesco. È come se un frammento della nostra storia tragica ritornasse a noi attraverso la mediazione di un filtro culturale e linguistico che non comprendiamo. In modo diverso, anche noi ci sentiamo presi in giro…

III

Nel corso dell’ultimo decennio, i mondi virtuali in 3D hanno aperto nuovi, avvincenti spazi di vita e di azione. Ci hanno offerto la possibilità di teletrasportarci un un altro luogo e in un altro tempo, sia esso passato o futuro; e di costruirci una seconda vita, più o meno simile alla nostra vita reale. Chi sostiene che questa esperienza di traslazione sia solo parziale perché passa ancora attraverso lo schermo di un computer, perché il realismo è solo parziale e i poligoni sono ancora evidenti, non ha capito molto del mondo in cui viviamo. Non ha capito, per esempio, che la bottiglia di Coca Cola o di birra appoggiata vicino al portatile, per un videogiocatore, non è per nulla diversa dal power-up che consuma velocemente tra un livello e l’altro: serve per farlo arrivare fino alla fine, per mantenerlo in vita. Poco importa che la prima sia fatta di atomi e il secondo di bit.
I lavori di Gazira Babeli e di Damiano Colacito dimostrano, adottando strategie artistiche agli antipodi, lo statuto di realtà di questa esperienza. Ci mostrano come, oggi, concetti come quelli di vita e di morte, di reale e virtuale, di passato e futuro debbano essere totalmente ripensati. A noi il compito di prenderne atto, prima che sia troppo tardi.

—

ARTISTI

GAZIRA BABELI – http://www.gazirababeli.com/

DAMIANO COLACITO – http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?news=434

—

NOTE

[1] Cfr. la definizione di “Grey Goo” in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
[2] http://arsvirtua.com/
[3] 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, a cura di Marisa Olson. Cfr. http://www.0100101110101101.org/
[4] Inke Arns, “Read_me, run_me, execute_me: Software and its discontents, or: It’s the performativity of code, stupid!” In: Olga Goriunova / Alexei Shulgin (eds.), Read_me. Software Art and Cultures Conference, Aarhus: University of Århus (DK) 2004, pp. 176-193. Reperibile online qui (pdf).
[5] Cfr. Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, 1964. Ed. It. Le tre stimmate di Palmer Eldritch, Fanucci 2006. Nel romanzo, le bambole Perky Pat sono dei simulacri che – se associati all’assunzione di una droga allucinogena, il Can-D – offrono ai terrestri deportati su Marte una esperienza temporanea di traslazione in un mondo immaginario in cui vivere una vita molto simile a quella che conducevano sulla terra.
[6] Matteo Bittanti, “Intervista: Damiano Colacito”, in Videoludica.gameculture, 16 novembre 2006, reperibile online qui

SECOND LIFE / REAL LIFE

Curated by Domenico Quaranta

Featuring: Gazira Babeli, Damiano Colacito

Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting – The Diamond

6 – 10 December 2006

An exhibition about making real things in virtual worlds and bringing game reality into the so-called “real world”.

Official Website: http://www.artificialia.com/peam2006/english.html

Critical Text (Italian only)

Press:

- Claudio Gervasoni, “La realtà virtuale diventa materiale, al Peam 2006“, in Mytech, December 7, 2006

- Regine Debatty,“The Second Life code performer” , in We-make-money-not-art, November 27, 2006

- Claudio Gervasoni, “La realtà virtuale diventa materiale, al Peam 2006″ , in Mytech, December 7, 2006

Exhibition images (on Picasa)

Second Life / Real Life (2006)

Press Release:

Second Life / Real Life @ Peam 2K6 – The Diamond

*The Diamond*

Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting 2k6

6 – 10 December 2006

Pescara, Ecoteca, Via Caboto 19

The fourth edition of the Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting, amongst the most important events concerning contemporary electronic/digital based arts, will take place from the 6th to the 10th of December. Organized by the Artificialia network, the P.E.A.M. is conceived to be an international meeting and confrontation point for those artists, intellectuals, experts, and others who work in an electronic context or make use of electronics as a basic means of expression. This edition will showcase a large and refined selection of visual artists, performers, musicians amongst the most innovative of the field. The leit-motiv of the whole event will be “the Diamond”, an attempt to gather artists and experts coming from as many disciplines as possible (sculpture, dance, theater, literature, music, visual arts, etc.), all with a marked high-tech approach, and to extraordinarily have them converge to the stimulating location of Ecoteca, in Pescara.

Therefore, the idea is to let many intellectuals (critics and curators) converge and present one (inimitable) or two (dichotomy) artists in a single place (the diamond), and, as a consequence, the whole Peam2006 edition will be centered onto unicity and dichotomy – such as war and peace, big and small, good and bad, love and hate, cleverness and stupidity, beauty and ugliness, close and far away, fear and comfort, real and virtual, and so on – and onto their sense of existence. In other words, the meaning itself of the concept of opposites, defining different representations of an unique symbolic system, will be put to a test, artistically.

Info: www.artificialia.com/peam2006/english.html

Press Conference: Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 11.30 AM, Sala dei Marmi,

Provincia di Pescara, Piazza Italia 30 – Pescara

In this context, curator and critic Domenico Quaranta will introduce the work of Gazira Babeli and Damiano Colacito, two artists who, in pretty different ways, declare the reality of our experience of virtual worlds.

Born in Second Life on 31st March 2006, Gazira Babeli (http://www.gazirababeli.com/) is an artist who turns the performativity of the code into performance itself. Weedy and flexuous in her long black dress which covers fashionably her polygonal haunches, Gazira radiates a strange charm that makes her somebody in between a Voodoo witch and an X-men heroine. Her charm that becomes even more evident during her masterful performances, in which she activates scripts as if they were spells, makes earthquakes happens, provokes natural fatalities and invasions of pop icons (in the place of the biblical locusts). Gazira Babeli is NOT the project of an artist who works in Second Life. She IS an artist, who makes, records and signs performances based on code. She is real, like you and me, even if her action platform is a world of bits.

Born in Atri (TE) in 1973, Damiano Colacito (http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?news=434) focuses his work on the basic elements of the contemporary media landscape and the complex relationship between the virtual and the real. In the last few years he devoted himself to the creation of wooden sculptures that portray objects coming from the FPS, such as med-kits, power-ups, weapons, and etc. The Scotchprint skins he puts on the sculptures allows the author to work on details so to obtain a pretty refined reproduction of the texture of those virtual objects, and the use of sound effects, every now and then, makes the realism of the reproduction even finer. As a Pino Pascali of the Doom generation, Colacito creates conceptual sculptures that result to be amazing for both the gamer and the people who don’t play videogames: the former comes across familiar objects in the wrong context,while the second has to deal with unfamiliar objects seemingly coming from another world and culture. Somehow, Colacito orchestrates a kind of mental teletransport, and materializes the insubstantial nature of the electric energy.

[Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition "EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL", Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

Your previous projects attracted attention for their radical nature. Portraits has attracted some criticism due to its apparent banality. What is at the heart of the project?

Out of all our previous works Portraits is obviously the most radical one. The most radical action you can do is to subvert yourself.

What is the meaning of making a portrait of an avatar?

We see Avatars as “self-portraits”. Unlike most portraits, though, they are not based on the way you “are”, but rather on the way you “want to be”. Actually, our works are not portraits, but rather “pictures of self-portraits”.

I mentioned the term banality, a defect claimed as a feature by the only artist you explicitly refer to, Andy Warhol. What is it that links you to Pop Art?

The borrowing of characters and imagery from popular culture, comics for example, is a classic technique of Pop Art that was widely used by the likes of Lichtenstein and Warhol. Video games are part of today’s pop culture. If Warhol were still around I’m sure he would use printers the way we’re doing. After all, it’s ink on canvas – what difference does it make whether it is a machine or a hand putting the ink?

So in what way is your work more than just a reproduction of something done with so much emphasis fifty years ago?

Fifty years ago? Portraits have been around for thousands of years! Art is always about rearranging previous ideas and genres. Culture is plagiarism. It is when somebody is claiming originality that one should start doubting.

In virtual worlds, the extraordinary is the norm. You could have played on the oddities, the weird or trashier aspects, but instead you have focused on beauty. Why is that?

We didn’t choose beauty, it was elected by people creating their own alter-egos. They built their characters matching the Western canon of beauty, when they could be whoever and whatever they wanted. Some people find our portraits “cool” and “sexy”, others find them “creepy” and “tragic”. Not unlike Tamara de Lempicka’s portraits, with their robotic beauty, I guess they’re a bit of both.

Second Life raises issues about identity, but also about social life, architecture and economics. Why did you choose to work with portraits?

In Second Life you are forced not to be yourself, to wear an ultra-modern 3D mask. But masks are not there to hide your real identity, on the contrary they are there to show who you really are, since you can ignore social restrictions. Since we’ve been living fake identities all of our lives, it’s obvious that we are attracted by a world of Avatars.

Like the Internet, a virtual world is a social space which allows community experiments, the adoption of fictitious identities, experiments with the concepts of property and plagiarism. Do you think it would make sense to work on projects like your previous ones?

Generally speaking yes, for us, as we have already done so, no. Our contribution to Net.art in the ‘90s was exactly that, raising topics such as plagiarism, originality, reproducibility, authenticity, identity theft. It doesn’t mean that we should stick to this. It’s way more difficult to change than repeat yourself forever.
And besides, synthetic worlds are radically different from the Internet: if the Internet is Protestant, synthetic worlds are Catholic.

Portraits heralds an interesting turning point in your work. Where do you think it will lead?

The career of an artist is usually about finding a “personal” style and endlessly repeating versions of it. On the contrary, we’ve been trying to avoid creating a recognizable style by any means. There is no continuity in our work, so I can say with absolute certainty that this work will lead us to do something totally different.

One thing I find very interesting is what could be termed the gradual humanization of 0100101110101101.ORG into Eva and Franco Mattes. It would be easy to view this as a concession to the art world, and its need for an artist figure to venerate, but what springs to my mind is the evolution of the digital identity highlighted by Portraits: from a series of numbers to an avatar, from the construction of an identity to the care of a body. What is your view?

Eva and Franco Mattes are as much a construction as 0100101110101101.ORG is, maybe even more.

Why?

We’ve been keeping changing identity for ten years now: we’ve been Luther Blissett, Darko Maver, Renato Posapiani and Tania Copechi, 0100101110101101.ORG. In our works we have embodied the Vatican, Nike, the European Union. Eva and Franco Mattes are the last evolution of our long-standing identity dérive, probably the most complex one. The last identity you pick is always the most complex because it also contains the previous ones.

Freud says that to become adults we need to kill our fathers. Which of your many fathers have you killed off with Portraits?

We’re trying to get rid of Duchamp, and all artists should. He has had too much influence on contemporary art.

[Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition "EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL", Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

“If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”
Tyler Durden, Fight Club [1]

At the beginning of 2006 Eva and Franco Mattes made their first incursion into Second Life, an online virtual world created in 2003 by the American company Linden Lab. The duo, known as 0100101110101101.ORG, had just spent a busy year working on the project United We Stand (2005 – 2006), a massive advertising campaign for a non-existent movie: a European-produced war blockbuster in which Europe saves the world from an imminent conflict between China and the United States. With a consummate manipulation of advertising conventions and mass marketing codes Eva and Franco Mattes created a kind of mental short circuit, staking all on a legend that no-one wants to believe in, and communicating it using the codes of another, dominant legend, that of American supremacy.

Second Life, on the other hand, is a legend that works. With more than two million participants to date, it is, in the words of William Gibson, a “consensual hallucination” based on solid foundations, primarily of an economic nature. Unlike other successful virtual worlds, such as the famed World of Warcraft, Second Life is characterized by the almost complete absence of the game metaphor. Its participants, known as residents, are engaged in constructing exactly that, a second life, which means taking care of the appearance of their virtual persona, or avatar, giving it a house, possessions, a social life, making it work and above all buy. Second Life offers a new model of cyberspace; as the Mattes duo note, if the Internet is Protestant (strict, structured, mostly textual and iconoclastic), synthetic worlds are Catholic (icon-loving, lavish and elaborate). And while it is by no means a given that as a product Second Life will stand the test of time, the model of Second Life is set to change our lives on the Internet, and probably life in general.

But there is another aspect of this model that could not but interest the Mattes duo at this time. As a whole, the virtual world created by Linden Lab could be described as an “identity factory”, a concept that has been something of an obsession for the duo since they took part in the Luther Blissett project (1994 – 1999), a collective that has claimed responsibility for a number of works involving manipulations of the mass media [2]. By presenting themselves as 0100101110101101.ORG and circulating legends about their real identities, the Mattes are openly taking a stand against the personality cult surrounding the figure of the artist. Their creation of the tormented artist Darko Maver (1998 – 1999) reveals how much of this personality cult is based on fiction and stereotype. Their hijacking of the Vatican website (1998 – 1999) to manipulate its contents showed how a strong identity can put out any message it wants to without being challenged; by acting in the name of Nike (Nike Ground, 2003 – 2004) they proved that it was possible to appropriate a public identity; and by working with an identity that has been imposed on us (that of citizens of Europe) they publicly exposed its substantial inconsistencies.
It was during the work United We Stand that 0100101110101101.ORG decided to bring to the fore two of the many names they had used up till then to identify their projects, namely Eva and Franco Mattes. Once again these are pseudonyms, but in 2006 these names seemed to be a more appropriate way of representing their public identity than a series of numbers (which is also a domain name). It is as if 0100101110101101.ORG are acknowledging the ongoing process of personalization of our digital identities: in 1998 we were data in a network of information, whereas now we are people inhabiting a virtual universe.

This is where the encounter with synthetic worlds comes in, and Eva and Franco Mattes realized that the most radical way of tackling this evolution of the concept of identity was to work on portraits. The series Portraits was exhibited for the first time in a show staged in Ars Virtua, an exhibition venue inside Second Life [3]. As a tribute to Warhol the show was entitled 13 Most Beautiful Avatars. It opened on November 15 2006, in a gallery space that is the exact reconstruction of the physical space about to host the same portraits 15 days later, on November 30 2006: the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York. On the upper floor was a huge video screen linked up to the virtual show being staged in Second Life. This game of mirrors between the real and the virtual, first and second lives, is the norm when we are dealing with virtual worlds. But Eva and Franco Mattes have chosen to maintain the sense of ambiguity, without offering any banal solutions. The exhibition space constructed in Ars Virtua is a copy of the physical gallery space, but the virtual event opens two weeks earlier (which means that the real-world show is a reproduction of the virtual one); in Second Life the portraits are of the same substance as their subjects, and adorn the same setting as these subjects inhabit, while at the Italian Academy they are presented in another context, in the overtly physical form of large format prints on canvas. The virtual exhibition was visited by the subjects of the portraits, while the real-world exhibition saw some of their creators put in an unexpected appearance.

Surfaces

“It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way. And so you start to copy the photograph.”
Andy Warhol [4]

As we have seen, this hall of mirrors is typical of virtual worlds. Expressions like “in world” and “out of world”, used by residents to refer to Second Life and the outside world respectively, are like a kind of inverted anthropocentrism. The most famous avatars in Second Life, those who have made a name for themselves “in world”, are rarely well known in the real world. After much insistence, Aimee Weber [5], the famed fashion and content designer who Eva and Franco Mattes dedicated a triptych to, came along to the opening of the show at the Italian Academy in New York. The photograph that captures her in front of the portrait of her avatar bears witness to a singular paradox: that of a real person completely outdone by her virtual self-representation. The image prevails over the person, as is always the case in the star system. But on a closer look, there is an element of novelty: what we are calling ‘image’ is in actual fact the immaterial projection of the self within a virtual space, within a world and community that does not exist outside the computer screen. The avatar has taken the upper hand.
In other words Portraits bears witness to the gradual humanization of our digital identities. To get a measure of this it is worth having a closer look at another project by Eva and Franco Mattes, which immortalizes the previous status of the digital identity. The project in question is Life Sharing, commissioned in July 2000 by the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis [6]. Starting from the statement that “a computer, with the passing of time, ends up looking like its owner’s brain” [7], 0100101110101101.ORG decided to enact a gesture of extreme transparency (glasnost), sharing the entire contents of their computer, transforming it into a web server: the ultimate digital self portrait. The critics talked about “abstract pornography” (Hito Steyerl), “open-source living in the digital age” (Steve Dietz), “a complete form of self-exposure” (Tilman Baumgärtel), based on a kind of voyeurism stimulated not by images, but by data and information. Yvonne Volkart noted: “The project… exaggerates the assumption that our life and our identities are based on purely determined and determining accumulations of information”; and Marina Griznic insisted: “The identity of 0100101110101101.ORG is represented, not through the psychology of an individual, but through the formation of a new visual and cultural space, via the recycling of stereotypes.”. A concept that Franco Mattes summed up in a one-liner: “We don’t have emotions; we have a Hewlett-Packard.” [8]
Life_Sharing bears witness to a particular stage in the evolution of our digital identity. Although it was already possible to mediate this identity through a webcam or an avatar in a virtual world or chat system, it did not yet have a face, being composed of different types of data in a constant flow on the Internet. But our faces and bodies reproduced by a webcam are not the face and body of our identity on the Net, merely part of the data comprising it. This was why, according to 0100101110101101.ORG, the best way of representing ourselves on the web was essentially abstract, and involved putting the viewer in touch with the intimacy of data.

Virtual worlds heralded the advent of a new phase. The cloud of raw data has finally solidified into a body and a face. To show our identities we no longer need to expose the kernels of our computers, but just work on the bodies of our avatars, their skin, hair and hairstyles, clothes and accessories. The dedication we put into this alone shows that our public image, our avatar, contains a lot of ourselves. There is nothing under the surface. The striking thing about this new phase in the evolution of our online identities is the fact that all our characteristics (personal details, psychological and sociological attributes) are represented by the avatar, its features and possessions. Data is gathered in a face, and can be offered up in the form of a portrait. Indeed the fact that we can now portray this identity, in the most traditional sense, is the best demonstration of the concreteness now attained by our virtual identities. The simplification of the medium, in this case, is inversely proportionate to the sophistication of the subject.
This reveals the importance – and the radical nature – of something as apparently banal as photographing avatars. By taking these photographs, and then printing them onto large canvases and exhibiting them in an art space, Eva and Franco Mattes are performing two crucial operations. On the one hand they are saying loud and clear that the subjects they have chosen are neither simulacra or characters in a game: they are people, complete, complex identities with defined social roles in a society comprising two million inhabitants, and they are an effective representation of the canons of beauty of that society. On the other hand the duo reiterate this statement by including their pictures in the great tradition of portraiture.

Altering egos

“I is another”
Arthur Rimbaud [9]

This operation is rooted in the profound continuity that exists between the current concept of avatar and the role played by the classic genre of portrait painting throughout history. The Indian word “avatar”, which in Hindu religion indicates any physical incarnation of the divine, came into use in the eighties and nineties to indicate the symbolic projection of the videogame player in the game setting [10]. In other words, a kind of puppet that does everything I tell it to by means of a series of input tools (mouse, keyboard, joystick, gamepad). It is my on-screen alter ego. Often it has nothing to do with me, but is assigned by the game, and merely carries out the conventional actions possible in that particular setting (fighting, shooting, etc). But what happens if we are given the option of customizing that avatar, and my mission becomes that of constructing a second life in the virtual space I have access to? What happens when the videogame becomes a public arena? What happens is that the avatar becomes something more than a puppet following my orders: it becomes the projection of my identity in a public space, the appearance that I wish to have when I emerge from my private space. It becomes the mask I have constructed to interface with the environment (be it real or virtual) that I inhabit. Since its outset, the aim of the portrait genre has been to immortalize this mask, or in other words, to construct avatars. More often than not it was a case of making the subject conform to a certain type (the beggar, the philosopher) or role (the emperor, the courtier). Psychological introspection, which in some contexts assumed great importance, has always been seen as a kind of “extra”, though obviously the best portraits are the ones that reveal something of the person through the avatar, like Baldassarre Castiglione (1514 – 1515) by Raffaello, or Diego Velázquez’s various versions of Felipe IV. Even in the nineteenth century, when the portrait cut loose from its official role and became more of a private genre, the avatar – the cultural construct that a person creates to interface with the world – did not diminish in importance. On the contrary: just consider Monsieur Bertin (1832) by Ingres, the icon of the bourgeois world and attitude, or Van Gogh’s self portraits, which filter his malaise through the (stereotyped) image of the disturbed, down-at-heel artist, in conflict with the real world and himself.

But it was with the advent of pop culture, a star system that set out to become the new Olympus, and a series of media (photography, film and video) capable of capturing its aura, that the avatar became so powerful that in a certain sense it began to live its own life, and to condition the subject it was the image of.
Andy Warhol, the “self-made” artist who thought of himself as a mask, best interpreted the situation. In his Philosophy he wrote: “Photographs usually bring in another half-dimension. Movies bring in another whole dimension. That screen magnetism is something secret… you can’t even tell if someone has it until you actually see them up there on the screen.” [11]. This was how he came up with his “screen tests”, brief videos where he invited his models to be themselves in front of the camera, with the aim of assessing their magnetism. And this was what led to 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964) and 13 Most Beautiful Boys (1964), the works that provided the inspiration for the Mattes’ series of portraits exhibited in New York. In both Warhol’s videos and the Mattes’ prints, beauty is not a facile concession to the aesthetic demands of the viewer; it is the proof that we are dealing with cultural constructs, with the products of an established industry of beauty. In his portraits, Warhol went one further: he started by reproducing well constructed avatars, and studying the factors that make a face into a pop icon (the Marilyns and Jackies of the sixties), then in the seventies and eighties he transformed faces “without an aura” into icons. Warhol got skilful with make-up, both on the face being portrayed and on the reproduction itself: he took a person and gave back an avatar.

In synthetic worlds, this work is carried out assiduously and constantly by the residents themselves. Unlike Warhol, Eva and Franco Mattes do not have to construct avatars; what they have to do is to make them real, get the person to emerge, capture the appeal of an aesthetic that mixes the limits of polygonal graphics with the postcubism of Tamara de Lempicka, and find an angle that enables them to extrapolate the cultural strata that have given rise to a face, breasts, lips.
Talking about United We Stand, Ben Davis interprets the work of Eva and Franco Mattes as the result of “an equivocal fascination with the power of mass cultural codes… when the mass media has penetrated firmly into the everyday” [12] Portraits bears witness to another stage, one in which these media give us the opportunity to construct a second life, a second identity. And we can all do it, manipulating the codes of tradition and subculture, adapting aesthetic and behavioural models imposed by the media to construct another “self”. Pop life 2.0.

Like tears in rain

And so we come to the event that provides the occasion for this essay: the exhibition “LOL” at the Fabio Paris Art Gallery in Brescia. LOL is such a widely-used acronym that its precise origins are not known. It is used by online communities to express humour and amusement (standing for “Laugh Out Loud” or “Lots Of Laughs”) or as a sign-off (short for “Lots Of Love”). Like the street, virtual communities are seed-beds for new expressions and slang, which a variety of different subcultures contribute to. By using this linguistic ready-made as a title for their show, Eva and Franco Mattes apparently intend to draw attention to the various cultural codes that contribute to the lives and mysteries of their avatars, and that bubble away under the apparent surface glamour. Nothing new there: the culture clash between high-brow and popular culture, kitsch and good taste was played out and resolved in the sixties. What’s new is that now there are other forces at work: the contraposition between physical reality and a virtual sphere that is increasingly concrete and real, bursting with impulses, feelings and increasingly profound desires; and the evolution of tools originally designed for communication purposes, but which have now become the means for creating new planes of reality and identity. This is where the tragedy of these portraits lies, the profound malaise that is concealed behind their sophisticated make-up: like the replicant in Blade Runner, they are alive, yet they are, and will always be, artificial products destined to disappear, avatars. Like him, “they’ve seen things us people wouldn’t believe”. And “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” [13]

NOTES

[1] Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996.
[2] http://www.LutherBlissett.net/
[3] http://www.arsvirtua.com. The show, curated by Marisa Olson, was presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Rhizome.org.
[4] Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), 1975.
[5] Cfr. http://www.aimeeweber.com/
[6] Cfr. http://collections.walkerart.org/
[7] In 0100101110101101.ORG, “Life Sharing concept”, November 2001. Online at http://0100101110101101.org/home/life_sharing/concept.html
[8] For all of these quotes, see http://0100101110101101.org/home/life_sharing/index.html
[9] Arthur Rimbaud, “Lettre du Voyant (à Paul Demeny)”, 15 May 1871.
[10] According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in this sense in Ultima IV (1985), and was made popular by the writer Neal Stephenson in the novel Snowcrash (1992), where it indicates the virtual simulation of the human body in the Metaverse. See http://en.wikipedia.org/
[11] In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. (From A to B and Back Again), 1975.
[12] Ben Davis, “Pop Life”, in Artnet, 16 December 2005, online at http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis12-16-05.asp
[13] Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, 1982.

EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG): LOL

Show curated and catalogue edited by Domenico Quaranta

DATES: January 20 – March 3, 2007
OPENING: Saturday, January 20, 6 pm
LOCATION: fabioparisartgallery
Via Alessandro Monti, 13 – 25121 Brescia – Italy
www.fabioparisartgallery.com

For over a year Eva and Franco Mattes lived in the virtual world of Second Life, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of this videogame flânerie is a series of portraits characterized by the bright colors, artificial lighting, polygonal shapes and surreal perspectives typical of virtual worlds. Overall, the series draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of alternate identities within simulated worlds.

Pictures from the exhibition (on Picasa)

LOL (2007)

Project page on Eva & Franco Mattes’ website

Catalogue texts:

- Life and Its Double

- “The most radical action you can do is to subvert yourself”. Interview with Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)

Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition “EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL”, Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

THE GATE (or Hole in Space, Reloaded)

The Gate is an installation connecting real life and Second Life, a junction point, a door between two worlds and two representation spaces. Basically, it is a simple window between both worlds where real users and SL users see each other and can meet. A view of the SL Gate is permanently projected in the real life venue; when an avatar comes in front of The Gate, it is visible in the public space; when one arrives physically in front of the door in the public space, he/she can interact with the SL user currently in front.

Installation connecting real life and Second Life

Authors: Yannick Antoine, Yves Bernard (BE)

Curatorial Assistance: Domenico Quaranta (IT), Sugar Seville (SL)

Opening Performance: Second Front

iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Brussels; Odyssey Contemporary Art and Performance, Second Life (Odyssey 122/45/25)

04/10/07 – 07/10/07

Original press release

Official Website – http://www.imal.org/iMAL_opening/mac/index_en.html

Images:

- My Flickr set (with photos by me, Gazira Babeli and Sascha Pohflepp)

- Yhancik Hax’s Flickr Set

-  Alexia Cournoyer’s Flickr Set

- Photos by Emika Insoo

- Photos by Yannick Antoine

Videos:

- Video by Second Front (on Google Video)

Reviews:

Osprey, “Second Front at The Gate“, in Second Life Art News, October 5, 2007.

Marshall Sponder, “The Gate – merging Second Life with Real Life“, in WebMetricsGuru, September 30, 2007.

Sascha Pohflepp, “iMAL opening“, in we-make-money-not-art, October 8, 2007.

Astrid Girardeau, “iMAL, du numérique au coeur de Bruxelles“, in écrans, October 4, 2007.

Domenico Quaranta, “Open considerations on The Gate. Part 1“, in Digimag 29, November 07.

Domenico Quaranta, “Open considerations on The Gate. Part 2“, in Digimag 30, December 07.

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, MMMM, 2008. Resin, metal, plastic, colors, pigments, 90 x 60 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artists.

HYPERLUCID
Training to live in a new reality

Curated by: Domenico Quaranta

For: Prague Biennale 4
Karlin Hall, Thamova 8 – Praga 8
May 14 – July 26, 2009
Directors and General Curators: Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi
General Editor / Curatorial Advisor: Nicola Trezzi
Official website: http://www.praguebiennale.org/

ARTISTS: Alterazioni Video; Gazira Babeli; Shane Hope; Miltos Manetas; Gerhard Mantz; Eva and Franco Mattes; UBERMORGEN.COM; Damon Zucconi.

Reality is not the one we were used to anymore. Media infiltrate it more and more, and fill up our dreams, which usually come when our eyes are open. Wide open. In the frame of “Expanded Painting”, H Y P E R L U C I D is an exhibition collecting works born on the invisible edge between two different levels of reality (apparent reality and media reality), and documenting the continuous trespassing from one level to the other. The walls in between are more and more porous, and sometimes even the more lucid gaze can’t help but wonder which level of reality it is looking at in a particular moment. All of us had this feeling, in front of 9/11 pictures. Media don’t produce simulacra anymore: they produce events, history, life. They overwhelm us with icons, brands, pixellated images of tortures, wars, outrages. The hardest fight happens there. They help us to construct new levels of reality, both abstract and hyperreal, and to get used to them. Finally, videogames are the places of our training: there, through more and more complex social and narrative dynamics, and through a photorealism which even overcomes our playing needs, we forget how to recognize simulation, and we exercise our brain for the next step: the one in which, between tangible reality, simulated reality and media reality there are no barriers anymore, but only the sheets, translucent and easy to pass through, of a chinese shadows theater. We took the last train to the world of Perky Pat, and there is no way to come back. H Y P E R L U C I D doesn’t collects paintings. Here, painting is not a medium, but a cultural frame, a context of reference for the new generation of the image makers. Alterazioni Video, Gazira Babeli, Shane Hope, Miltos Manetas, Gerhard Mantz, Eva and Franco Mattes, UBERMORGEN.COM and Damon Zucconi, no longer paint: they shoot, they manipulate, they code, they make scripts, sometimes they fight with other virtual characters. Yet, in the end, they produce images.

PRAGUE BIENNALE:

Official press release (pdf)

List of Artists & Exhibitions (pdf)

Website

HYPERLUCID

Artists’ bios (pdf)

Catalogue text (pdf)

EXHIBITION IMAGES:

Prague Biennale – Hyperlucid