virtual worlds Archives

Intertwined

CYlent Blackout Poem: On Being and Nothingness

On Being and Nothingness

– A CYlent Blackout Poem –

She will apprehend transcendence.

It is a certain art form

an idea and

a negation of that idea;

the double property of human reality.

What I really am

is my transcendence.

I escape myself,

I can feel that I escape myself.

Transcendence changed

into infinity of excuses.

“On Being and Nothingness” CYlent I & II are a remediation of Jean-Paul Sarte’s Being and Nothingness, p. 98,99.

The term “CYlent” refers to a creative effect using lenticular motion images specifically designed to be viewed within virtual spaces by avatars (Cyber + Lenticular = CYlent).

Cyberspace

Indie Music Machinima – I Found You

Indie Music by Luluc inspires at Netherwood.

Created by Lauren Bentham, Netherwood is a beautiful virtual retreat based on the real English Lake District.

“The Lake District (or Lakeland, as it’s often known) is by far and away the UK’s most popular national park. Every year, some 15 million people pitch up to explore the region’s fells and countryside, and it’s not hard to see why. Ever since the Romantic poets arrived in the 19th century, its postcard panorama of craggy hilltops, mountain tarns and glittering lakes has been stirring the imaginations of visitors.” – Lauren Bentham (Info card on Netherwood sim)

The song in this Machinima film is Luluc – I Found You, from the album Dear Hamlyn (2008).

Luluc – I Found You from Cybertwigs on Vimeo.

Cyberspace

The Escher Experience: Entropy III

The Escher Experience at Entropy III

Entropy III Quantum Satis by NaTaS Janus is now open to visitors at LEA16. The Escher Experience places you into a dramatically etched city of prims, a playful interpretation of Escher’s graphic works. The center courtyard features an impressive rendition of Escher’s Relativity, and the free anti-gravity walker completes the labyrinthine effect.

There’s also a gift shop filled with fun souvenir giveaways, and a very quirky café, monochrome donuts fresh daily.

Then again, if you’re looking for something a little more Dali-meets-Lady Gaga, you’ll want to explore the rest of Entropy III, the Grotto will give you a surprisingly contrasting adventure.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see? -Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Cyberspace

Fading Masks: Poetry and Virtual Art Collide

Fading Masks, Where Poetry and Virtual Art Collide

The latest virtual installation by Haveit Neox, Fading Masks, is open until March 31st at Berg by Nordan Art. Haveit Neox’s style is unique in that it often blends poetry/narratives with visual creativity and sound, a thoughtful process that results in a captivating experience. Fading Masks is a work complete with its own poetry and soundtrack, both also by the artist. See Million Happy Endings for an enjoyable review of this installation.

Although the installation was accompanied by its own gripping narrative, my personal impression of the work leaned towards this quote, by Haruki Murakami:

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.

Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you.

“So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

“. . . And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over.

But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” – Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.

Cyberspace

Beginners (A Virtual Art Installation)

Beginners, a new installation by Cica Ghost, plays with perspectives visually and symbolically. Grab a spot on the train and take in the scenery, as everyone looks towards distant horizons.

Open now at Night Atoll.

At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.”
— Lemony Snicket

Cyberspace

Strings (Exploring Creative Virtual Spaces)

Strings by Cica Ghost. A creative new installation that merges whimsical charm with a thoughtful musical backdrop, highlighting Vitamin String Quartet. Cica’s lovely scenes are a joy to explore especially with the accompanying music.

Cica Ghost at Strings.

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.
― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Cica Ghost always has new projects on the horizon, so it’s a good idea to experience them before they are replaced with her latest work.

Cyberspace

Reduced Territory

In City Inside Out, Haveit Neox presented an emotional contortion of space, stripping the city of indoor refuge.

Reduced Territory

Now, the distortion continues, and nature is gasping for space.. Reduced Territory, a thought provoking installation by Haveit Neox, open through August at Wolves Land. Haveit’s own vivid words at the installation add a crucial layer of insight to the work. See for yourself, while you can make it.

Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind.
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Cyberspace

Dreamers – A new virtual art installation

Cica ghost captures poetic moments of her whimsical creativity at Dreamers.

I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

Cyberspace

DistritoDistinto (A Musical Installation)

Music inspires a creative team of virtual artists at DistritoDistinto (Anniversary of Different District)

..Featuring work by Bryn Oh, Cica Ghost, Maya Paris, Giovanna Cerise, Betty Tureaud, Eupalinos Ugajin, Rebeca Bashly, JadeYu Fhang, Alpha Auer, and Romy Nayar. An imaginative journey of musical ekphrasis, open now through August 13 at MetaLES.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
― Maya Angelou

DistritoDistinto Gallery

Paper

The Sky Was Surrounded

The sky

was surrounded by

a square. Life in a jar.

It is extraordinary.

But she was her own

secret hideout,

and these surroundings were,

between the two of us,

a tiny glimpse

into the magic.

Originally published at TheVirtualReview.

Cyberspace

Roleplaying as King Authors

Marie-Laure Ryan’s work discusses how online Role-Play allows users the authority to become participating story-tellers, influencing existing narratives and inventing new ones as they play and direct different roles, within a collaborative space of stories.

Holding the strings of the characters, from a position external to both the time and space of the fictional world, the user specifies their properties, makes decisions for them, throws obstacles in their way, and creates different destinies by altering their environment. -Marie-Laure Ryan, Beyond Myth and Metaphor

The fate of these fictional worlds, created out of the dance between users and machines, is shared among users, as complexities emerge from collaborating across multiple authors, multiple realities, and multiple roles. The nature of the metaverse inherently provokes multistable characteristics, drawing users into a recursive loop of self-reflexivity like never before.

A state of continuous construction and reconstruction . . . where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality. The center fails to hold. –Sherry Turkle, Life On The Screen.

“The Drax Files: World Makers” by Bernhard Drax is a mixed reality series of narratives that highlights creative users who take advantage of their avatar as productive extensions of their identity in cyberspace.
This episode features Insilico, a cyberpunk city inhabited by the people who reinvent it through their stories. A city where the author is king.

Cyberspace

What is Cyberart?

A question that inspires an entire immersive project at LEA12. Asmita Duranjaya and Sable Snakeappletree explore the term “Cyberart” through thoughtful debate and complex layers of text, images, sounds, and space. Their “Paradise of CyberPolis” not only contains examples of multiple artists work, but are at the same time contained by artwork as the sim itself is a creative installation, and immersive narrative game in itself. Together these elements provoke a curiosity towards how cyberart is understood and experienced.

I think of “Cyberart” as a creative process, or event, that happens when man meets machine, that creative dance that emerges as the two collide, online, intertwining in an intermedial space that is experienced uniquely for each of us. Cyberart is open to our feedback and reflection, and to our collective collaboration, manifesting into the most subtle discrepancies or into a significantly alternative experience.

Cyberart, as a term and a creative practice, is perceived and expressed differently through the imagination of these artists, who are currently exhibiting their answers to Asmita Duranjaya’s question at LEA12:

Solkide Auer “InterStellar Overdrive”

Elle Thorkveld “TimeFrames”

Sheba Blitz “Cyber Mama”

Feels Empty “Zeno”

Ranadeep “Cyberspace Zen”

Carabella Babii

Ginger Lorakeet “Cyber Rain”