Steve’s Art & Virtual Reality FAQ No. 1
Associate Director/Senior Curator, Prints & Drawings
What is the medium in Second Life? What tools are used? Who are the builders?
When the Spencer Museum was awarded an IMLS grant to investigate the possible use of Second Life (SL) in 2008 for educational purposes, I decided to attend some introductory SL tutorials to be better informed. While our inaugural SL project concerning the museum’s Climate Change at the Poles exhibition was winding down, I began to search for interesting work that made good use of the medium of SL itself. I found two fascinating projects and managed to locate the persons who created them. Ultimately these were the builders (scriptwriters and designers) who have shared their work as the second and third projects hosted on the Spencer’s SL sim, The Edge of Life and a Petrovsky flux (currently on view). Now seems like a good point to reflect on the general notion of creative activity in SL and to suggest its relevance for a university art museum.
Although they can take time to find, there are some remarkable regions in SL that host the creative work of talented builders. In my view the most interesting are those that realize the potential of the Second Life tools and features, as opposed to those that use the medium to fashion clones of “real life” galleries and museums that are filled with surrogates of traditional artwork, such as framed images on walls. The really interesting work in SL often involves the construction of immersive environments that cannot be realized with traditional media; to do what is “not possible in Real Life,” to paraphrase an important but now defunct blog.
The Medium
An avatar explores a Petrvosky Flux.
SL is a virtual environment governed by complex physics engines that emulate the mechanics of the real world. Forces such as gravity, momentum and air resistance are all part of the scripted environment of SL. Other malleable characteristics in this environment include object textures, hardness or softness, reflectivity and transparency; atmospheric effects; how avatars walk, run, fly or are animated in myriad other ways; and sounds, whether ambient or sounds made when avatars interact with the environment. While there are defaults for all of these variables, creative builders can modify them in interesting and provocative ways. Add to this the fact that the viewers have the ability to explore within the constructed space and you begin to get an idea of the virtual world as a medium.
The Tools
The tools that control these variables include scripts or computer code that affect the way objects or avatars move, change, and interact. Code can also govern sounds and when and how those sounds are triggered. A broad array of software programs facilitates the editing of sounds, images, and video (to be played in SL or to be recorded in SL). Advanced tools for working in SL include software for 3D modeling and digital sculpting. It is worth observing that these tools taken together have the potential to incorporate the look, sound and feel of the real world, or to create entirely novel worlds, or to mix the two.
The Builders
Since there is an emphasis on anonymity in SL we generally do not know much about the real life identity or activities of builders that we encounter in SL, but, in my experience, talented builders might be architects, engineers, computer programmers, gamers, students or individuals active in the arts (including tattoo artists, musicians, photographers, etc.). Significantly, they may be surprised to be called artists because their work is first and foremost an investigation of the possibilities of building and shaping experience in the SL metaverse. Some of them distance themselves from the arts to emphasize their creative autonomy, free of the baggage that may accompany the notion of “art.”
Technopunk trailer by djehan kidd,
featuring Hangars Liquides, 2012
a Petrovsky flux, the project currently hosted on the Spencer Museum of Art’s sim, incorporates many of the ideas above. It is one of the most complex and ambitious projects in SL, along with a few other immersive environments such as Hangars Liquides or the residential post-apocalyptic community known as The Wastelands. The Spencer is honored to work with blotto Epsilon and Cutea Benelli, the creators of a Petrovsky flux. A short introduction to the work is posted here.
Closing thoughts
In summary, here are a few of my thoughts on why creative work in the metaverse, specifically in SL, is important for a university art museum:
- It can be, and generally is, multi-disciplinary.
- Through anonymity, it can facilitate real contact between real people in a way that can remain blind to race, gender, sexual preference, age, and disability.
- As a form of new media, it is an open territory for the imagination.
- It offers a way to think about alternative realities, dystopias and utopias.
- It is an experiment with interactivity that allows visitors and builders alike — from just about anywhere on the planet — to collaborate with one another in real time.
- Creative work in SL spawns the creative work of others, just as New York City or the redwood forests have inspired the creative work of photographers, writers and others. For example, a Petrovsky flux has inspired numerous photographs, machinimas, and blogs that have been posted on the web, including these works by Bryn Oh, Eupalinos Ugajin, and Toxic Menges.