Leit motif

Fiona's art is like  puzzle 

where you find the picture 

in each brick you put on the table

Betty Tureaud

Ask Fiona Leitner what her pictures 'are', and she'll probably say something cryptic, like 'it's a square'. She's not being funny; unlike those dullards who paste a five-paragraph 'explanatory' notecard to their oeuvres, she realizes that the  true experience of art is a lot like the experience of a good meal. You need to be left to sample and digest it on your own, without the cook hanging over you, describing what he was thinking about while he diced the chives.  It's your meal now, and a yummy one at that. 

She's a graphic artist in RL, and also an excellent cook. Fiona saw other people making art and selling it in shows, and thought it would be a fun way to make a little cash by making something people can enjoy.  This one makes me think of Michelangelo through a blender: a sort of Sistine Chapel Smoothie.

A week ago today

'tricks of the light

Time to dance and be delighted, at Betty Tureaud's new build at Danish Visions. OMG how gorgeous does she look.

The theme this time is The Matrix, and as you can see it's inspired by those little boxy QR Codes that you see everywhere these days.
These particular ones were captured,

Betty's Boxes

Sitting in front of a computer is a sin, on days like these. Everything non-virtual presses its case, urging one to think outside the box, to get out of the room. The Great Outside, where my experimental pineapple bed has nothing to do with furniture, or prim count. Further outside, where mockingbirds mob a burly crow, the timid hydrangea opens one flower at a time, and the evenings are made for long, honeysuckle-scented walks to the pub amid fireflies in the sweet heat that will soon melt into oppression.

But then there's Betty Tureaud. Her build, The Box at Danish Visions, is like a fruit salad for the eyes. I went to see it with Karllos Decosta, who has recently fixed and updated the links in the ArtsParks sidebar. If you have some suggestions of unsung and interesting places that should be in the list, let him or me know and we'll see what we can do. (But no shops, vampire related crap, or obvious places like Bryn Oh installations.) Meanwhile, back in the box...
Karllos Decosta: There are many aspects of Betty’s art that you can explore: the political side, like her Arab Spring work at Kelly Yap Artist Gallery, her little robots, the use of search engines to structure our experience of ourselves and the world, following the ideas of the theorist Lev Manovich about the database as a new symbolic form. Other artists explore topics like identity issues or interactivity. I think Betty wants to explore the immersive possibilities of virtual worlds. So the big size suits that. The cube work is the best I have seen this year. As you walk, light goes through the cubes. I always liked huge spots of color, and I like how the colors change as you walk. I keeping coming back here, it's a beautiful work, it reminds me of Paul Klee, with his controlled and subtle chamber music style that you can see in a painting like Flora on the Sand. Both Klee and Kandinsky were accomplished musicians. Maybe Betty will surprise us by taking an electric guitar out of her sleeve and entertaining us, setting everybody in a mood of luxury, calm and pleasure.

  I'm all for that. And of course, Betty's famous for her Facebook collection of Danish Girl vocalists, including The Asteroids, Louise, and many more.

  Just then, Betty tp'd over to the sim to chat. She looked chic in her asian maiden outfit. We asked how long it took her to construct this huge, bewildering place.

When it sizzles

You know you were never really 'in' SL when an excitable Costa Rica resident launches into a chant of 'who told you that?' punctuated by a laundry list of alleged VIPs you've never met, with names like Harpic and Toxer, and it takes a good 15 minutes to remember that Mute has been renamed Block in 2.0.
In other more useful news, Mab MacMoragh has arranged for Oberon Onmura's meteorological instal Storm Cells to go on display again over at ::Soup:: it's really worth seeing.

Anyway, B2 opens tomorrow, as you  have already heard seen and smelt from everyone else.
It's the Pepsi to Burning Life's Coca Cola; smaller, essentially the same, but with more bacon taste.Traditions have been respected - sims have names such as Rabbit Hole and 12 Mile, big names rub shoulders with less well-crafted efforts, and there's plenty of lag to go around.
Plenty.

Art about town

Wow one mimosa too many at brunch today, better walk off the calories with a bit of art about town. Oberon Onmura reccommended Solkide Auer's new two part immersive install at Aeonia, Oberon liked the lower, pyramid part best, I was intrigued by Sol's take on Escher, up above. Solkide's work is alway exquisitely precise, and the central mouselook on both builds really draws you into the geometrical magic.

At the garden of Arte Libera on sim Nonsense I peeped over the 'work in progress' barrier at the new install by Pol Jarvinen and Noke Yuiza. It's just one chapter in a fascinating build that takes its inspiration from The Sandman, Hoffmann's short story of fear, fiends and physics made famous by Sigmund Freud.

Arte Libera is a very special place, always welcoming thoughtful and imaginative artists and this build is no exception, can't wait to see it in all its glory.
Speaking of glory, shellina Winkler has just opened The Knot, her personal gallery where she will be rotating works from over the past three years. It's something of a unique opportunity to be able to see how her style and technique has developed over time, her favourite is a bug in a script that creates the ethereal visual effect in her sculpture Second Star to the Right.

shellina Winkler: I like to think of my art as a portal, something like StarGate - it should take you from Second Life and project you even further.

If it's space you want, what better than birthday girl Betty Tureaud's new build 9 Steps to Heaven Betty's an Arthur C Clark fan, and this amazing set of environments features glorious pictures of nebulas and the music of UltraViolet Alter Why nine? No special reason, but each level offers a different experience and you go up by sitting down. Love those chairs.

A delicate allegory of change, love, and identity, Love and Creation offers a path up through what might be fingerprints or DNA strands. The build comes together in stark lines that question both inner and outer space in what I hope is the first of many collaborative builds between Daco Monday and Aloisio Congrejo now on show at Tanalois. 

Finally at noon, the big event of the day! The opening of soror Nishi's Tree of Trees in its full glory. Another mimosa just to celebrate? oh go on then....

Contesting Science, Artfully

    The next time she has a big idea like this, Marjorie Fargis has asked that she be shot - it's been a mammoth project, but looking on from outside SCIEN & ART CONTEST is a journey well worth taking. The idea (and I should throw the name of Talete Flanagan  in at this point, he's a RL physicist and SL Italy's answer to Bill Nye) came from a Science on the Road show they put on some time back called The Year of the Cosmic Rays. From that starting point, they came up with the idea of six interconnected aspects of physics research: they called them Big Bang, Atom, Cosmic Rays, String Theory, Electricity,  and Nano-technologies. Artists were invited to submit pieces that illustrated these fascinating fields, now on show in six different locations across SL.

My first stop was  UWA Winthrop where the Nano-technologies bit is on show.  Kolor Fall  has built a meditation on the rust of mortality - or is that the (im)mortality of rust? - and if you click on the glass top you can pose among the particles, lying down inside the coffin while drinking in his short, deep poem. Click on the pic to enlarge.  "We're all pools of light," Kolor commented. It's just that he's the only one that looks like a pool of light. Filthy has executed a neat bit of nano-vation by texturing a cube with one of his paintings and calling it Embracing sixfold and Betty Tureaud (may her hens never cease pecking!) gave me the lowdown on her lovely entry.

Betty Tureaud: I am interested in the danger of nanoparticles.
Thirza Ember: But your piece looks like floating toys, or Fruit Loops. kinda. It's very pretty.
Betty Tureaud: Nano is pretty - it's cool structures, complicated nature builds the micro cosmos. The nanoworld is beautiful. Take pollen for example.

She handed me a picture of pollen. It was undeniably beautiful.

Thirza Ember: So that's why you chose it for this competition instead of, say, string theory? For the beauty behind the danger?

Betty Tureaud: Yes! yes you got it right :)

There is, of course, a much better and longer notecard that explains in more depth, but you can get that for yourself. Also in the top picture Freewee Ling's piece that looks like a lab. It said Touch but I didn't want to unleash any particles so I refrained, but you touch it and tell me about it, when you visit UWA .

Don't stop there - five other galleries host the rest of the competing works, and they are all delightful in their own different ways. At the Spanish-language Biosfera 3 the Open Science Project, you'll find interpretations of the Big Bang.

 I really liked Loki Glas' piece, and look forward to going back to see artwork by Igor Ballyhoo and Selavy Oh which hadn't yet been put down. At CWS Isand there's a sort of Stonehenge where you'll find the Cosmic Rays entries. Maryva's is the prettiest (seen in the foreground, with Merlino Mayo and shellina Winkler in the background) but all are thoughtful and highly individual and well worth the time it takes to rez.

There are over fifty artists on show, I can't possibly do them all justice, but here are a few more standouts. Among the String Theory at the USMP which is a Peruvian University - howzat for exotic - there is Gleman Jun's Einstein-inspired cello player (it looks like Kolor gone green to me), and Wizzy's string thing, shown here.

Then these two gorgeous and amazingly different takes on the idea, first, this one by Abstract Baroque

... and an unnamed piece all in white by Mila Tatham, I think it should win, it elegantly portrays string theory 'explaining everything' from love to the planets. Wonderful - look in the Italian bit for the photo of it. 

No pictures of mine are going to do any of this justice, so make sure you TP to all the destinations, you can find notecards, LMs and all that jazz if you go to Second Physics HQ . Oh, and the Electric section of the show is here too. I could go on, about the Atomic Art, at the Alpine Executive Center (pol Jarvinen is a standout over there) and all the rest, there's masses to delight and inform in this exhibition - but your own adventure will be more fun.

 The show is on for about two weeks, then there'll be the prizewinning and jury-bating, and notecard passing, all the usual fun. Hats off to the organizers and galleristas, including JJ Zifanwy, Mark Helendale, Maximo Eames, Noke Yazuka, Sunset Quinell and Mexi Lane, but especially toTalete and Marjorie for giving us so much art for thought.

Inaugurata oggi, Scien & Art è un concorso dedicata alla Fisica di Talete Flanagan  e Marjorie Fargis.  Cincuanta artisti hanno partecipato a questa prima edizione, che vuole unire due grandi discipline, arte e scienza. Il concorso si divide in sei categorie, Atomo, Big Bang, Raggi Cosmici, Elettricità, Nanotecnologie e Stringhe.
Marjorie Fargis: E' nato tutto da un evento, l'anno dei raggi cosmici. Volevamo festeggiarlo in qualche modo, e da quel tema si sono sviluppati tutti gli altri - infatti le 6 categorie si collegano.

Si parte dalla sede principale di  Second Physics  e il percorso ci porta in cinque land diverse, dalla peruviana USMP dove troverai le opere ispirata alla teorie delle stringhe. C'è l'opera di Wizard Gynoid - sotto c'è un prim con alcune foto-ricordi - una dice 'I wish I could speak Italian'... davvero carina. Questa scultura nella foto invece è opera di Mila Tatham, stupenda, come quella di Abstract Baroque visibile nella parte inglese.

Alla land di MarkWD Helendale, CWS Isand, gli artisti si esprimono attraverso la loro creatività dando vita alla loro visione dei raggi cosmici, il luogo si addice all'argomento, è Stonehenge. Dalla pianura di Salisbury, alle montagne: quelle del Alpine Executive Center. La materia qui è l'Atomo, e poi si passa al stupendo sim spagnolo di Biosfera 3 dove sono esposte molte belle opere come quella di Loki Glas, e gli avatar-statue di  MosMax Hax -all'inizio della parte italiana.

L'ultima tappa, l'UWA dove sono in gara le nanologie fantasticate da alcuni artisti di rielievo quale Filthy Fluno, e Kolor Fall. Kolor ha scritto anche una poesia che accompagna la sua 'nano bara'... cliccare per entrarci, se hai il coraggio.. essendo un po' malinconica e amante della poesia, ecco una foto. Ma non è affatto tutta ruggine e mortalità, i nano sono belli, importanti, forti e essenziali alla vita e l'evoluzione del cosmo: e infine la stupenda opera di Betty Tureaud, una delle artiste più talentuose di tutta Second Life.

Non mancare a questo divertente appuntamento con l'arte e la scienza, un'avventura attraverso la conoscenza e l'estro artistico dei nostri cari amici!