The Aran Cravey gallery in Los Angeles is currently running an exhibition entitled Raster Raster, which features art apparently known as “Postinternet“. The press release informs us that the group exhibition curated by Marisa Olson features work from Conor Backman, Petra Cortright, Alexandra Gorczynski, Marc Horowitz, Christine Sun Kim, Mehreen Murtaza, Jayson Musson, Bunny Rogers, Travess Smalley, Jasper Spicero, Artie Vierkant.
Bunny Rogers is not a name familiar to me but the press release identifies her work as being based on images from Second Life, with rather strong themes:
Raster Raster includes variant work from painting, sculpture, and textiles to videoembedded digital prints, lenticular images of SecondLife self portraits, and a sitespecific installation by Jasper Spicero featuring the artist’s music and 3Dprinted sculpture. Subject matter ranges from Christine Sun Kim’s autobiographical images about the deaf experience, and Conor Backman’s visual puns of art world semiotics to sexual taboo and feminism in Bunny Rogers’ Second Life portraits.
Now I became aware of this because of another article, this one on Flavorwire entitled : The Provocative and Disturbing World of ‘Second Life’ Photography. Now I have seen a lot of Second Life photography, especially on sites like Flickr. Some of it is touched up, some of it is not. There are a lot of themes there and yes some are adult but in the main they are not.
The Flavorwire article says of Bunny’s work :
Bunny Rogers is one of the artists featured in Raster Raster, whose Second Life photography series reveals her provocative and often creepy exploration of digital selfhood, sexual taboo, feminism, and longing using the virtual world’s avatars.
Creepy and sexual taboo are long time terms used in conjunction with Second Life and in many ways it’s disappointing that this is the subject matter getting attention and yet in other ways, this is positive news.
Art has long been seen as an area where taboos should be challenged, there are many many examples of provocative, creepy and sexual taboo art work around. The good news from a Second Life perspective is that this highlights another use case of Second Life, one where artists can see the opportunities of utilising Second Life to express themselves.
Mark Kingdon spotted this opportunity for artistic use of Second Life and was much pilloried for it, but in reality he was on to something and he was around when the Linden Endowment For The Arts (LEA) was created. The LEA about page provides a lot more information, including :
The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) was established to help create a center of arts activity in Second Life. It is a collaborative venture between Linden Lab and the arts community. Guided by a dedicated board of renowned Second Life artists, the LEA is committed to providing access to engaging experiences in the arts for the Second Life community. Through its exhibitions, programs, and events, the LEA fosters awareness of artists’ contributions to our virtual world and encourages others to get involved and be inspired.
The LEA hasn’t had an easy ride and has attracted criticism and I was most definitely concerned that the rise of the LEA would be at the expense of those already promoting the arts in Second Life. I still have those concerns but the good work the LEA has done and continues to do, should not be overlooked. The LEA have allowed artists whom in some cases would probably not have made many inroads within Second Life, to promote their work and produce art work.
However exhibitions such as Raster Raster most definitely play their part, even if many of us would rather see other subject matter and other stories being raised via Second Life photography, it certainly enhances reach.
Raster Raster runs until April 12th 2014.
I saw those articles as well, and was also concerned by the headline and general tone of the Flavourwire article. I didn’t come away feeling anything positive could be read into it, however.
Not only was the article pandering to a representation of Second Life that most of us would describe as limited at best, but the examples of Ms. Rogers’ work were poor examples of the work going on in Second Life.
I gave up being an art critic in RL a few years back, and I really don’t like to come down on how anyone chooses to express themselves, but it worries me that many people will attend the show or read the article and think that is the best the SL art community has to offer.
Retaining new users and improving the user interface are important tasks, but I think the top priority for Ebbe Altberg and the Lab is to establish an intensive PR and marketing campaign to counteract the poor image that SL has acquired over the years, which is spread by way too many sloppy journalists.
It certainly makes me question the ethics of my journalist peers when I read articles like that.
I was torn between despairing at the subject matter and feeling that the silver lining was a Second Life artist having their work displayed at an exhibition in RL. There are many examples of artistic work in Second Life, it’s a shame that more aren’t making this leap,
I agree on the image issue, it needs polishing and updating.