No-one's Perfect: Sextan Shepherd

External objects produce decided effects upon the brain 

Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

It's the perfect cure for any midsummer melancholy: Sextan Shepherd's Nemo. If you haven't been lately, get out your best graphics card and prepare to spend a couple of hours in bliss. Forget about clown fish, Captain Nemo is the central character in Jules Verne's book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a brilliant and sometimes disquieting book well worth a (re-)read this summer. Even if you're not into Steampunk, this build will delight you and pull you in. Quiet, charming and self deprecating in the best Gallic style, Sextan has put together one of the most amazing adventures available inworld. Albatroz Hird, who was wearing his Indian avatar, introduced us on the dockside.
It was late at night. This is what happened, minus most of my inane questions and cooing.
 If you click on the pictures, they get bigger.

Albatroz Hird: Thirza, meet Sextan, Sextan, here is Thirza :) Voilà, comme ça, ça, c'est fait ^^
Sextan Shepherd: Thanks for the introduction Alba.
Albatroz Hird: Thirza a écrit un super article sur Avignon, très bien illustré.
Sextan Shepherd: Yes Alba, I have read it, it's really well done.
Woo hoo, vive la France, mental handshaking and compliments. You can't beat it. On the jetty, there's a dirigible that takes you on a tour of the island, it's one of those rare places where you get the delicious feeling of being a little lost, in an imagination vast enough to disappear over the horizon. Alba, Sextan and I walked into the great underwater elevator.

Albatroz Hird: Un indien dans tes installation, c'est compatible ?
Sextan Shepherd: LOL il est étanche l'indien?
Thirza Ember looks up  étanche = waterproof ... hehe je crois.
Albatroz Hird: Sûr, en tout cas, y prends pas l'eau! C'est vraiment étonnant de réalisme, je suis vraiment impressionné!

We walked out into the big underwater compartment, and looked at the model of the installation.
Sextan Shepherd: You never came here before Alba?
Albatroz Hird: Nope, it's my first time
Sextan Shepherd: OK, Thirza, so you already know the submarine city. I'm afraid all that I have built since that time is no more connected with  the J.Verne story. The flying city in the poster is called Alnitak. It is the ancient name for the biggest star of the orion constellation Zeta Orionis. Come on, follow me.
   I tried to follow them, but this horrible Snowglobe viewer, or the new mouse, or ...something. Anyway, I fell in a sort of trough and couldn't get out. There's no flying on Nemo, so I was pretty stuck, and did all kinds of jumps that this skirt was not built to withstand.
Thirza Ember: uff... don't laugh so hard.
Sextan Shepherd: ...... I said nothing!
Albatroz Hird: We don't, do you Sextan?
Sextan Shepherd: You are so thin.... you can hide between the walls.

See, I told you they were French. The giant shrimp is my favourite part of this build, it makes me hungry for a yummy fritto misto. Although this one might be a bit indigestible.
Sextan Shepherd: So how did I had the idea to build Nemo. Look over you, at the manta ray on the ceiling. This is the start of Nemo. I built that manta ray because I thought it was cool, don't ask me why! Then after that, maybe I was hungry too... I have built the shrimp. I was just having fun. Then I thought it could be nice to have a place where I can put this stuff in, and Nemo was born.

Albatroz Hird: c'est vraiment un travail, exceptionnel que tu as réalisé.
Sextan Shepherd: Before this, I was building small objects, like the object that you saw at Avignon. I got the sim to make this real. Ok, so now that you know how Nemo was born - lets go to see the rest! Fasten your seat belt!
With that, Sextan led us up another flight of stairs and down a tube. Once again, I got stuck in a gully. It was all pretty humiliating. I asked about textures. There are hundreds of sharp, beautiful, and surprisingly quickly loading textures in this build.

Sextan Shepherd: On this sim the textures represent 50% of the time involved in the building process, I create all my textures from scratch, or I start from a picture taken,  so I spend a lot of time on photoshop. You know, I love video games, and I wanted to find the same kind of atmosphere, something very immersive, that doesn't look like what we usually find in SL and yes, the details are important to get that immersion.
Albatroz Hird: Volta, Tesla, Faraday, Watt, Edison, et tous les autres précurseurs devaient vraiment tout inventer: c'est ça, le pur génie. Créer pour pouvoir créer plus loin. [That means Creating in order to create further - I looked it up]
Sextan Shepherd: Absolutely, Alba. They had all to discover things. J'adore l'electricité. I'm a big fan of Tesla's work; I don't think he would have liked SL, he was involved in reality, in matter, and he was already beyond our universe. This would all be too unreal, too abstract. William Crookes is another genius ...dans un autre genre. He discovered Neon. All the neon lights that we have today.. it's his invention, we owe him the TV screens too. Tesla, Verne, Eiffel, Guimard, Crookes... they all lived at the same period! They could have met each other.

Albatroz Hird: Au sommet de la tour pour un diner, ennuyeux pour les autres, mais certainement intéressant pour la science!
I tried to imagine them all at the top of the Eiffel tower, at the Verne restaurant of course, and wondered what they would order. Maybe the shrimp. Or lobster. I like lobster. In another room which, for once, I navigated without mishap, there were round platforms with a celestial clock and other mechanisms were on display, part of the continuing build.

Sextan wanted us to move on, down another long dark straight tunnel, but I hesitated, trying to take a picture, and apparently was waving my arms about, although not on my viewer.

Albatroz Hird: Thirza rame - you want some flippers, Thirza ? :))
Thirza Ember: you are too quick for me: remember I am only a blonde and it is all new.
Sextan Shepherd: It's because there are so many things to see.
Albatroz Hird: Take your time, no problem
Sextan Shepherd: Ok now lets walk straight..
Easier said than done. We came out into a cavernous space dominated by a giant drilling machine.
Sextan Shepherd: These are the orichalcum mines. It is a fantastic material, it's what gave to Atlantis its technological advance. Plato talked about that when he wrote about Atlantis.

We climbed an iron staircase and came to a transporteur.
Thirza Ember: This is beautiful too.With so much detail, you make the sim seem very big, it is an incredible imersive experience.
Sextan Shepherd: Well it's a sim size. I just can't have bigger.
Albatroz Hird: Je suis réellement impressionné.
Sextan Shepherd: Lol it's nothing but a few prims.
Albatroz Hird: Oui, mais quels prim!

When the transporteur stopped, we were at Nemo station. A path led off to the left, to the village, but we climbed up to take a look inside the Nautilus. I asked Sextan how he builds - from RL drawings, or gradually, prim by prim, within SL.

Sextan Shepherd: I have no organisation at all. One build calls another one, and another one, it's a kind of organic growth.
Thirza Ember: The central idea is very strong.
Sextan Shepherd: ho.. if you found the central idea .. send it to me! I wish I could knew it!
Thirza Ember: I think it is beauty in science, or elegance in exploration, like Tesla; he found elegance in electricity.
Albatroz Hird: Depuis combien de temps travailles-tu sur ce projet ?
Sextan Shepherd: I have started this in March.
Thirza Ember: Tell me, also, does being famous it make it harder for you to build?
Sextan Shepherd: I'm not famous LOL so I can build quietly lol

Thirza Ember: oh no, you're famous - the sim was full from the first day. Everyone is drawn to this build, it is
so beautiful and interesting, and even now there are always people here.
Sextan Shepherd: Yes, but 99% of the people that came here on the first day have forgot my name since. The sim is famous .. not me.
Thirza Ember: Well, I don't think so, but i think it is better to be quiet than to be famous.
Sextan Shepherd: yes me too!
Albatroz Hird: I agree.
Thirza Ember: you don't feel pressure to make something even better?
Sextan Shepherd: Ohh yes, all the time. Every build is a challenge, how to make it better than the
previous.
Albatroz Hird: This kind of pressure is coming from the inside of you. it's the worst one, and the best one too.

Sextan's version of Nautilus is a giant fish. propped up on the shore. It's a role-player's dream, and I should have thought it would make a great place for whose in the literary community, struggling with writer's block, to meet and get inspired.

You can see why Sextan's study is right here on board, in the heart of the build. It was late, very late in France, but Sextan kindly continued the tour. The men talked about building tips, something about metal textures, stuff I wouldn't have understood even in English, and I admired the helm. After a bit, we got back on the transporteur and rode to the village. Sextan really isn't at all Steampunky in the way one would expect, as I then discovered.

Albatroz Hird: Tu connais Syberia ?
Sextan Shepherd: Non Alba. What is siberia but a country?
Albatroz Hird: C'est un jeu d'enquête fait par Benoît Sokal dans cet esprit steampunk, un univers d'automates.
Sextan Shepherd: Oh no I don't know.

Ooo shops. I remembered the SLSyberia build that Clematilde Oyen and her friends put together a couple of years ago, and wished I'd better pictures of it. Sextan led us into to a giant orrery, complete with shadows that make the planets seem alive. Under the mechanism, a couple of lovers were saying a shy good night in open chat.

Sextan Shepherd: Thirza this part of the sim is not taken from a book, it's just my fantasy, je me suis amusé avec le planetarium.
Ever the perfectionist, Alba's next question was no surprise.
Albatroz Hird: Super! tu as calculé la correspondance des cycles, je suppose ?
Sextan Shepherd: Oui plus ou moins...
Albatroz Hird: je me régale [that means 'I'm loving it', isn't that nice?]
Sextan Shepherd: haha tant mieux!
Albatroz Hird: pas de parcelles à respecter, libre de faire comme tu le vois, c'est top!

We went up onto the roof. There was a giant cannon.I like giant cannons. Mouselook. We shot ourselves up into the sky and landed on the flying city above. What a trip.

Sextan Shepherd: Welcome on Alnitak the Flying City. It's still in progress... want to see something new in SL ? La maison aux miroirs.

The geostationary mechanically assisted flying city reminded me of an old fashioned funfair, the attractions linked by a sort of boardwalk. We walked into a lofty room, bright with stained glass and turning mirrors. The men started talking technical stuff, and I just zoned out, enchanted by all that spinning, sparkling glass.

After a while, we walked over to the Space-O-Rama. This beautiful metal sphere contains a theatre with giant lenses that turn to show aspects of space: a sun, a nebula, and the vortex of a black hole.

Albatroz Hird: super !
Thirza Ember: It's a wonderful build, and I have almost no lag, which makes it so much more fun.
Sextan Shepherd: I try to keep the scripts as low as I can: I still need to add something in one lens, it's empty for the moment.

Alba suggested a model version of the sim, similar to the one he is wokring on for his own marvellous build at Avignon, but with so manyy intricate and oddly shaped buildings that seems close to impossible; and yet, looking at Sextan, nothing seems quite beyond his ability.

It was late, so we took a brief look at the Museum of Flying Machines, containing some of Sextan's notable working creations, and this beautiful photograph. It was really very late, dawn had broken over the sim and it was time to say bonne nuit to both these fine builders... I knew I'd be back, again and again, for there is still so much more to see, from the underwater rooms to the tea set carousel, and the spider building...

 I hope you'll visit Nemo soon, and experience this truly liberating place for yourself. Nemo is the perfect antidote to all the imperfections of the summer sun. If you see a clumsy blonde in the corner, give a wave, it's probably me.

The Bridge and the Bird

On y danse, tous en rond.

Traditional

August is the cruelest month, scratchy and strange. The small talk at arty parties reaches its most miniscule, little misunderstandings balloon, and before you can say Qarl Linden, almost every able bodied and uninstitutionalized person mumbles stuff about pulling the plug on SL for good. And then there's the SLCC ... But wait! There are places like SL Avignon! Built by  Albatroz Hird, this fantastic sim is based on the magnificent medieval French town, most famous for its Papal Palace (voted Best Alternative Christian Venue, 1309-1378).

In RL, Avignon hosts two summer festivals - the 'In', a highbrow theater event, now in its 64th year, centred on the courtyard of the Papal Palace, and the 'Off', a much more populist event held at the same time in which performance artists of all types and all levels of ability put on shows in clubs, theatres, squares and even supermarkets, all over the city. The 'Off' festival, brainchild of  Andre de Benedetto, finally gained official status in 2006. Now 'Off' is moving into virtual worlds. Thanks to GP Ohl and his webZine Journal Transversal du Off we have our own Avignon here in Second Life. Just as with the RL festival, the process of growing the sim has been gradual,the original build involved multiple creators and a range of styles. Several months ago, Albatroz, whose RL job involves remodelling old houses, put together his version of the famous South Tower. Though far from a slavish copy in every detail of the RL stronghold, it's a very precise piece of work; Alb is a perfectionist, and visited the city several times as well as studying pictures closely. 

Albatroz Hird: I have a strong love for old stone, and I wanted to make a place that a tourist can recognize, but my idea is also a spiritual one. In RL I am also a musician, I play the bass, it's an instrument that keeps your feet on the ground, but lets your mind fly free. My totem has always been a bird: an albatros I think sums my way of thinking perfectly. The idea of a vertical union between the practical and the ethereal, the sea and the land, it very important for me. This is a mishmash of dreams and reality. People from Avignon have told me they feel very at home here - that's a huge compliment, and it's been included in a Portuguese RL/SL crossover festival, the Bienal de Cerveira.

 

It is a very masculine build. Like the city in RL, it is full of squares and right angles, continuity and cohesion in color and form; unlike the real thing, Albatroz has textured the palace facade with a painting by his favorite artist, French painter and sculptor Ieko Catnap, and raised the whole building to make room for another gallery. His original contribution, the South Tower, has an avie-friendly lift rather than central stairs. From the roof, you get a rich sense of place, and an idea of the 'bug' that inspires his building style - big panoramas in which textures and perspective come together to make a sort of 'sound' to his ears.

Below the South Tower is the  rue des Teinturiers, one of Avignon's most picturesque streets, complete with the medieval dyer's water wheels. A walk down the street will bring you to the virtual version of the  Theatre du Chene Noir, with its beautiful Rose window 'restored' by Alb. The sim is intended to foster the arts, and has at least 10 artists on exhibition at any one time.

When Alb got involved in the project, the sim was a mixture of different styles by different builders; now it's entirely his own creation in which he's attempted to respect the numerology of the period.

Albatroz Hird: The numbers that were considered the most powerful by the Templars, the patrons of the great cathedrals and palaces of the Middle Ages, were 3, 4, 7 and 8. Religious buildings were constructed with a deep symbolism and these numbers and proportions can be found in the city, and I have brought them into my version of Avignon.

The sim is just getting off the ground with entertainment in the Great Courtyard, where nuriah Laville, licio Follett and Mickeala Praga were performing the other evening - fantastic live Italian music. The plan is to have regular monthly concerts, so keep it in mind as a venue!

It's worth dropping by even if you're not in time for a concert - in the same space you can also see the machines of Leonardo da Vinci, by noted builder Sextan Shepherd, most famous for his Nemo sim.

Like the ancient city, virtual Avignon has its mysteries and treasures. On the broken bridge, Alb has recreated the chapel of St. Nicholas; inside it are some frescoes he 'borrowed' and digitally restored from the Templar chapel of Cressac. Keep looking, and you will find an allegory on Hamlet in the dungeon.
Despite the scratchiness of August, here is bliss. From Templars to Shakespeare to modern art, Avignon continues to build bridges across time and realities, and that's worth dancing about.

LA STUPENDA CITTA d' Avignone è ora visitabile anche in Second Life, grazie all'intervento di CG Ohl  (all'anagrafe Jean-Pascal Girou, direttore della webzine Journal Transversal du Off un sito dedicato al Festival  'Off', a sua volta il festival artistico di RL che coinvolge tutto il centro storico durante il mese di luglio, una sorta di risposta poplare al più raffinato Festival 'In' che occupa il palazzo dei Papi con spettacoli e concerti.

 La versione virtuale della città è stato realizzato da Albatroz Hird, svizzero, amante della pietra antica e l'architettura esoterica; perfezionista, Alb ha messo più di un anno  nella costruzione della land, cominciando con la famosa Torre Sud - eccoci sul tetto. 

Dentro la torre, da non perdere, le tele della brava Ieko Catnap. Le tele sono diventate parte delle strutture virtuali, creando un ponte artistico tra l'archittettura medievale e l'arte del ventunesimo secolo.

Scegliere le textures poco convenzionali non toglie assolutamente dal look  antico ed armonioso della land; a distanza tutto sembra fatta della stessa stoffa. Dalla torre sud, si vede lo splendido cortile reale,che in RL diventa teatro per spettacoli quale il Re Riccardo II di Shakespeare sotto la regia del grande Jean-Baptiste Sastre. In SL, invece, l'altra sera si sono esibiti nuriah Laville, licio Follett and Mickeala Praga e si spera di fare ogni mese un concerto diverso. 

La via dei tintori, con le sue ruote idrauliche, porta al Theatre du Chene Noir da ammirare il bellissimo rosone, reinventato in questa versione  dell'antico e famoso teatro, e anche allo strano fungo moderno che sovrasta la land. 

Da non perdere le macchine di Leonardo, nel cortile reale, e sul ponte, la cappella di san Nicola, con gli affreschi 'prestati' dalla capella templare di Cressac e digitalmente restaurati da Albatroz. Sotto la capella una sobria allegoria basato su Hamlet...e le pirahna. Non è facilissima trovarla ma ne vale la pena

Avignone virtuale crea un ponte tra passato e presente, tra la musica e il teatro, l'arte tradizionale e quella moderna. Come nella vecchia canzone, un ponte sulla quale tutti noi possiamo ... ballare, perché no, tutti insieme.

Between the light and me: Penumbra's Fly

I have no life but this

Emily Dickinson, Love, XX 

If she were alive today, 19th century American transcendentalist poet Emily Dickinson would be in Second Life. Oh, don't jump all over me for saying such a thing - unless you're handsome, single, and have nice accessories, in which case, let's talk - she so would, you know. Think about it. Comfortably well off, surrounded by opportunities and encouragement to take her poetry to a wider audience, Dickinson chose instead to write them in pencil and sew them together in little secret books she called fascicles. Far from 'shut up in prose', Emily was able to meet the likes of Emerson at her Harvard-educated brother's house. Another guest was Atlantic Monthly editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, with whom she struck up what today would be an online friendship. He tried to make her modify her verses, but she wouldn't;  eventually their fragile romance died. Kidney disease, eye problems, and disposition limited her mobility in wider social circles, but did not prevent her having a her rich inner life, and enhanced by the magic of books, nature, and imagination.

Obsessive, observant, somewhat slanted, she would own a sim called Amherst,  - or would she 'dwell in Possibility' ? - all overgrown with cunning moss, and daisies in the sun; in her cottage, an orderly parlour where she would have laid out a marble tea, she would remind guests that, 'Except the smaller size, no Life is round'. There would be a quote from Keats in her profile, and long silent days spent building or exploring, weighing the symptoms of affection and finding them equal in silence and speech.  She would not 'know a Linden'. You wouldn't find her elbowing her way onto the stage at a poetry event, all puffy and huffy with brittle ambition. But it wouldn't be that hard for the discerning heart to find her verse, safe in an alabaster chamber perhaps. She might give Steampunk a run for its money, for as long as her eyesight held out, or surprise everyone by going Neko. Maybe not, I think she was more of a dog person.

It's not a dog, but a fly that invades the transcendent moment of death, in I Heard a Fly Buzz, the Dickinson poem that inspired Penumbra Carter's latest build at Art'e. Small, random, fecund, unruly, the fly breaks into the still solemnity of the conventional rites of Death, the king, and makes quiver the poet's resignation to the stillness of the air. In the stillness of the air of Second Life, in a world where loneliness is the default setting, where windows frequently fail and self annihilation is always within grasp, often deeply desired, that inquisitive buzz is often all that stands between us and existential limbo. Or Blue Mars, which may amount to the same thing.

Carter's work seems often occupied by thoughts of rooms, from Dorothy's Kansas bedroom in her 2009 Wizard of Oz paintings, to her Premium Lindenites video. At Art'e you'll find boxes piled up like a makeshift doll's house, or wooden sets held together by a dreaming field of poppies. Lost living rooms animated by contraptions, muted with fragments of meditative still life, and worn textures, invite the viewer inside to weave a personal poem somewhere between death and our busy lives.

Lit: Robin Moore

Life is a circus: you go in, bow, run around, bow again, and leave."

Robert Storm Petersen

S is R and L is L, a wise man said. That is less of a joke than one might think. As we all get older in here, however much we intended to or imagine we keep the two existences separate, the line between lives blurs, sometimes in ways we're not prepared for, or prepared to admit. Whatever three ring show we may imagine we're putting on, however much we may clown about, our self is always already there, like an accent, undetectable to our inner ear, but perfectly distinguishable to those around us. Artists more than most. 

Danish builder Robin Moore's adventures exploring SL led to house building, and then art. He got a foot in the door at Rezzable, and commercial success in their marketplace gave him the confidence to keep creating and experimenting. Looking around his space in the Urban Arts complex, Robin's unique storytelling voice rings out clear and clean. 

 Robin Moore: When I found I could build here, it was like a new world opened up. I thought God! What a relief, now I can express myself! Before, I had a desire to make "art" but couldn't really do it.
The first piece of Robin's that I loved has the song Chasing Pavements attached to it. The song and the way he incorporated it into the lightbox really sums up his style for me. He is now in residence as an artist on on of the IBM sims, where this map of Europe is currently on show. Selected pieces have been shown in most of the leading SL galleries, but for his full catalogue, your best bet is a trip over his Mirage in my Mind home, also the name of his group, where you'll find the boxes neatly stacked in two trees. Watch out though, one of his neighbours is a sandwich short of a picnic. Meatball sub.

Robin Moore: My RL artwork is similar to my creations in SL - but inworld, you do not need glue! I collect old and rare things, that give you a relation to each other, a feeling, a memory and together with pictures and text I put it all together in a collage. At times it can be in a normal frame like a painting, or like a sculpture. Some of them move. If I could bring into SL someone from real life, I would choose Robert Storm Petersen, we call him Storm P - he lived in Denmark, København, and made drawings, mostly in magazine and newspapers.The thing I like about him most are his drawings of machines, where he uses all kinds of elements.
Perhaps he's more of a magpie than a robin. 'Used' objects in his RL assemblage art have inherent stories and shared references as well as personal significance. To create the same effect in SL requires thoughtful use of textures, and are lit in such a way as to tell poignant, often two-sided tales as you cam or walk around. This one, which was on show at ::Push:: and in the machinima by Solo Mornington, is a case in point.

Robin Moore: I build out from an idea, sometimes, but other times I just build and then get the idea, but I love when my work makes you think. This one is a reaction to the way the government in this country has cut down on serious television, and rather wanted to start something commercial with soaps and game shows. For me, TV has seen its time, because it's one-way communication.
A great deal of experimentation goes into his final product, and pressure of RL work makes building often a slow process. He stood in front of two versions of his current build, 'If walls could speak'.
Robin Moore: I love light, shaping it and using it. Some times I want people to participate in my artwork, as in this case. When it´s finished you will be able to sit in the build, and see what happens on the screen of the tv.
The images are like ghosts, or memories, of previous inhabitants, creating the uneasy sensation that we are far from the first on the scene.  Light sources are often referenced in his builds, often in theatrical form, and the boxes give the feeling of a proscenium or an old fashioned mahogany TV, articulating a series of boxes that ends with the box on the desk, so that we become participants in a layered observation, and are part of the symbolism being generated.

Next door, dominoes are scattered over a giant map of Europe, in a sort of WWII army green. A masonic eye dominates the scene, while in England, ants seem to be drilling for oil somewhere West of Cheshire.

Robin Moore: I want it to be about building bridges, crossing the world. I´m facinated with dominos, and ants. That's me on the raft on my own, carrying the land.
That's a lot of weight on his shoulders. With so many artists and galleristas freaking out about the insecure future of 'Art' in SL *Thanks for that, M'n'P* it occurred to me to ask: If he could only have one piece of rezzed art at a time' rule, which of his compositions would Robin pick?
Robin Moore: Oooh, that´s a tough one, but if I can only choose a finished piece, then it must be the Pictorama 'The Weight of ...'. I feel that it´s well made, and shows the drectin in which my art is going. It is inspired by Stracci di vita sottovuoto by Pranja Seetan. It is a story about the things you do for love and the tone in it is really neat, it is the one I have sold the most of - and it´s small! There's a picture of his love hanging on the wall, she is not his lover now, but he is much in love and he would like that she would love him too, and he by mistake think´s that she work weights , and likes muscles so he tries to gain muscles in the hope that she will finally fall in love with the frog and he runs out to find her. That's the story, "What you do for love ".

The future? More movement, in the real-life versions of his art.
Robin Moore: I have thought of how I could make my Pictoramas in RL, maybe with mechanics, but as you know, it takes time, and I have a family and a demanding, creative job in RL, but may be someday... I take it seriously, and think the Lindens should also, that SL is the only platform where anyone can build inworld. This is SL's great strength, and makes it a good laugh, and we have so much interaction with each other. It's not one-way. It can maybe inspire me to make something. I don't build and make "art" to get $Lindens, I do it because I think it is great fun and it's my hobby, and I can communicate.

Pixels in the City: Volume control

Oberon Onmura is a very patient man. I sipped my coffee and sulked.
"It's just they're so precious and aloof about it all," I said, trying to keep my voice down. "This whole hushed hallowed atmosphere is ludicrous - especially after coming from the Met, where you can take all the pictures you want of Van Goghs and Picassos, it seems absurdly overprotective of shapes and forms that you can see - well, anywhere. On the rail track, in the sky, or just staring for too long at a blank wall."
We were at a minimalist art gallery, a short train ride up the Hudson River valley from New York. The gallery is in a converted Nabisco factory, and frankly I would have preferred a nice packet of Triscuits over the stark and often rubbishy works I was looking at - fluorescent tubes in unappealing hues, bits of grubby white paper tacked up on the walls, and, worst of all, some Japanese dude who occasionally painted the date on a bit of old canvas, and collected them. The blurb for this installation teetered between the outrageously ironic and deadly awestruck. It even described how the 'chosen font' had changed over the years, and the 'amazing' two canvasses painted... whoa! in the same day! The best part was the revelation that they were pumping ionized air into the room - but whether we could tell or not, was part of the 'experiential aura'. Andy Warhol said art is anything you can get away with, but the feeling of the Emperor's New Clothes seemed to scream off every wall. Less daft by a long chalk, yet still slightly pointless to me, was Walter De Maria's Silver Meters, a stainless steel square with silver dots on it. There's a gold version too.

I hadn't got it yet.  I asked Oberon why he is such a fan of WDM, and how it relates to his own art.
Oberon Onmura:  Well I should say de Maria's my hero, but I realize much of his work is of its time. I love the  New York Earth Room, a friend of mine has been caretaking it for almost 30 years. To understand WDM, you have to think about "The Lightning Field". I'm going out there one day. What De Maria is doing is taking "nature" and focusing us on it as a product of human interaction. There is no "nature" except as humans define it. It's more than 'sticks in the desert' as you define it, and he's not trying to copyright nature - it's WDM's reaction to lightning.

We agreed to disagree about the fluorescent light guy. Oberon's own install, 'Transitions', currently at Two Fish, takes light sources and individual interaction to another level. He, too, is deeply interested in weight and form, not telling a story but presented to the senses directly. 'Transitions' elevates an ordinary shape into an absorbing notion of intersection and change. Plus the colours are beautiful. Perhaps the fluorescent light guy would have done the same, if he had had the technology. That's a lot of butcher's shop bulbs, though.

Oberon Onmura: I have a soft spot for compulsives - do you remember Fred Sandback's work? He's the guy that created space with long strands of yarn. Another hero.What I value about all of that work is that it's about something. It's not about "communication" - it's not about "human emotion": those can be falsified easily and often are. It's about space, color, emptiness, weight - mass, volume. In other words, reality brought into sharp focus, so we can see it too. I wish they had a way to show James Turrell, or Robert Smithson.

There is a Turrell at the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington, where Milk Run, a literally pitch black room, is part of the ColorForms exhibition. Eventually you 'rez' in real life - you become aware of the dimensions of the room and light beams in different colours - I only really saw the red and white, but there are supposed to be other shades - after being in the room for a good five minutes. As the volume control of your own senses makes its idiosyncratic ascent from confusion to some sort of meaning, you can't help but be charmed, opened by the sensation. Now that's immersive. At Oberon's install 'Plaza', currently at Imopca, he explained some more.

Oberon Onmura:  I like these pieces for the same reason I like Indian classical music. Indian classical music is about the reality of the harmonic series and how it connects us to the universe, if we get it right. So think about those white painting you hated, by Robert Ryman. They're not really white, by the way. They're "white" but they're also "used". Think about obsession.What does an artist do, in the end? An artist lives his/her  life and spits it out the other end -  digested. Realized. It's not about being 'good at drawing'. Matisse couldn't draw at all. Artists tend not to be deep or smart. Most artistic expression, especially about "issues", is pretty lame - simple minded, obvious. You might not like 'blank pieces of paper', yet here we are, talking about it. What I trust is reaction, artists live and react by spitting out artwork. I trust that reaction - that's where the "meat" is. Matisse spent over 30 years working and reworking a single bas relief - "Back". He wasn't expressing anything, he was trying to figure out how to model in plaster what he saw - he was reacting to shape, mass, form and spent decades trying to spit it out the other end. Ultimately, he didn't care what you or I saw in it, and if you look at the final 4 results, you see how an actual artist sees the world. I trust that. It makes me jealous.

Minimalism, like pretentious aloofness, is possible in Second Life, although you see a lot more of the latter than the former. In my conversation with Oberon, I continued to battle with it, mostly with the 'specialness' of the art. Can't many of the items on show at Beacon be found in - nature, I was going to say, but of course all art is that, from a Michelangelo  to a Cartier-Bresson; what irks is the lack of 'craft', no, because the men who lay down railway sleepers with such pleasing precision are craftsmen, artists - it's just that they don't present themselves as such. Is artistic identity that deeply rooted in self promotion? The old rats vs squirrels paradigm?
Then minimalism suddenly broke through, like the light of stars, an ancient illumination. At the Hirshhorn, this is Fred Sandback's '12 Part Vertical composition'. You can walk among the strings and as you do, your eyes - no, your peripheral vision - invents walls or mirrors, discrete spaces. A dialogue begins between sight and mind.

Not as elegantly lit as it would be in SL, of course, but until that 3D viewer comes out, RL wins on this one.

Oberon Onmura: I can tell you this. A long time ago when I worked for Dia, I had a life changing experience. I was working for the Lamonte Young project,  he's a composer: his "master" was an Indian singer named Pandit Pran Nath;one of the world's greatest artists. Anyway,I was the recording engineer. We were preparing for a concert. I was up in the booth, the mics were on at the stage, and Pran Nath was tuning the tambouras. I could hear everything, I was doing odd things, not really listening closely. He kept tuning the tamboura, adjusting the "buzziness" of the strings, It was taking forever. I said to myself "Come on - it's in tune already!" but he kept tuning and then, suddenly, the damn thing WAS IN TUNE! The air in the room changed. I had to sit down. Everything lined up somehow. That's magical. I even saw changes in the needles on the recorders and when he sang, being "in tune" was the whole thing, pretty much. The thing about minimalist art is that everything has to be perfect. It changed the way I looked at everything, and SL has done it again. Heh.