Recent Posts

Adobe Connect Second Front Interview

Val Lay

Monday, Oct 30, 2017 - 08:30:11 pm

@ ◢ ◤

The clock on my Mac showed 11pm and I was drained with an entire day of back to back events – but I actually felt the energy through the third space during the session on Adobe Connect with Second Front that kept me engaged. Perhaps, this was a form of virtual leakage (of energy)?

Some latency and some bits of sunshine Read more →

Categories: Micro-Project
Very good point about how the third space can make us bolder, and certainly Bibbe Hansen's relationship to the network is all about that idea. She even mentioned that she always wanted to grow up as a cartoon, indicating just how playful the third space can be. If you look back at her history with Andy Warhol, and also her father Al Hansen was a member of the Fluxus collective, you can see how her background in performance, Happenings and the avant-garde made her perfectly suited to the third space performance art in Second Life.

[Internet Art & Culture] Final Project - Technical Test I

Dina

Monday, Oct 30, 2017 - 01:49:42 pm

@ Putri Dina

Group Members Dina, Tiffany, Valerie, Siew Hwa

The Aesthetics Firstly, my group decided to build up the concept of being watched on TV screens and create a 2×2 grid on OBS.

Stage One – Static We made a mock up on photoshop to visualise how the TV arrangement and static should look like.

Then we transferred to OBS and implemented this idea first.

Stage Two – Read more →

Categories: Final Project
Tags: glitch
0 comments.

Final Project: Test broadcast

ʍıu zɐʍ

Friday, Oct 27, 2017 - 12:45:05 pm

@ CHEESE

Link to test.

There were a couple of tests which were made during Thursday’s broadcast. Firstly, I decided to test if I was able to set the Chroma Key. That worked, so I decided to test if I was able to do two Chroma Keys simultaneously. Surprisingly, It did. While this was happening, I also decided to change the Read more →

Categories: Final Project | Research
0 comments.

Second front technical critique

ʍıu zɐʍ

Friday, Oct 27, 2017 - 12:08:07 pm

@ CHEESE

  

Second life is basically a simulated reality web game in which players take the form of avatars and interact with one another online.

In my honest opinion, this game is more of a gimmick to me, and I do not understand for the life of me how this web application was able to survive, given Read more →

Categories: Research
Thanks Winzaw for your fascinating critique of Second Life. I am sure you have a much deeper perspective of some of the graphical and functionality issues. I am also interested though in your thoughts about the Second Front work.
Added.  

Research Critique – Second Front

Isaac Chu

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 05:27:47 pm

@ Chuwypotter

When I first saw Second Front‘s art pieces, I was immediately reminded of the similarities to two popular games, SIMS and Grand Theft Auto. They all had this openness and free world with physics that defy reality.

Second Front is a group of individual who made a series of art performances on an online platform called Second Life. (I know, it’s Read more →

Categories: Process | Research
Some very interesting ideas! You are right that Second Life allows people to act our their fantasies, running the risk of losing contact with reality. On the other hand, as you point out, it is an opportunities to test real world issues in a virtual world without consequences. Or we have to ask, are there consequences to our actions in a third space virtual environment. Glad to see you are connecting the artworks we are looking at to our critical study of the Internet. Well done.

Research Critique: Second Front

Mirei Shirai

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 04:25:42 pm

@ Mirei's Studio

Second Front is a performance art group that performs in the virtual space Second Life, consisting of 7 members; Gazira Babeli, Fau Ferdinand, Great Escape, Bibbe Oh, Lizsolo Mathilde, Man Michinaga, and Tran Spire. Each member is represented as an avatar in Second Life, an alter-ego per say.

While reading an interview with Domenico Quaranta and members of Second Front, it Read more →

Categories: Research
Good comment:
I think there is increasing attention to cultural value of artifacts within virtual space in recent days, and I am excited to see how far more it will develop especially with advancement of technologies such as VR.
Yes, it is very important that there are artists exploring virtual spaces, game spaces, adding a critical perspective to those spaces and they way they impact our view of the world. There are so many young people engaged in these environments, all the more reason that artists are plunging these spaces to consider their meaning. This was an excellent essay, the only thing missing was a specific reference to the essay, you mentioned it, but I would like to see you use a quote to support your argument. Particularly the excellent one you made about the artistic role in gaming and virtual environments.

Research Critique: Second Front

Anam Musta'ein

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 03:57:13 pm

@ Amazing Anam

“So for me, my avatar is embedded in my psyche, rather than an extension of myself.”

– Great Escape, Second Front

It is to no surprise that the open virtual world, Second Life, offers endless possibilities in its utility and how one may look at it as an outlet to create art as well as an avenue for the emergence of new Read more →

Categories: Research
Excellent essay. I found this comment you made intriguing:
In each performance and situation they were placed in, they were able to bring about a narrative that goes beyond uncanny representations of the real world.
That is certainly the allure of performing in Second Life. The ability go beyond the representations that are possible in real life. They certainly exploited these possibilities by using all the various mechanism of the virtual world to stage their various works. You were on the brink of saying something very interesting about how Second Front's work applies to that of your group:
How Second Front embraced the freedom and boundaries in their piece is essential to how we plan and execute our social broadcast approaching the end of the semester.
But you never specifically said how or why? I am very curious about this because I think it is critical that students are applying ideas from the works we study.

Final Project Test Run

Nicholas Makoto

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 02:40:10 pm

@ Grandma Joe

For our test run, we tried to perform the effect of us merging our faces on the grid. The Grid being a row of 4 columns.

1 2 3 4

The visual effect we intend is for Grid 1 and 4 to have half a face, that eventually meets to form one full face, made up of half a face on Grid 2 and Grid Read more →

Categories: Final Project | Process
0 comments.

Final Project Rehearsal

BAO

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 11:56:16 am

@ BAO

https://www.facebook.com/100008174537236/videos/1997232983892500/

We did a run for this project rehearsal. We focus on the technical aspect of handling our phones as well as the flow of our content.

During our meeting, we decided to use a few different concepts to broadcast. One of the most tricky parts was the passing of the phones and the passing of faces as shown above. We Read more →

Categories: Final Project
0 comments.

Second Front - Research Critique

Nicholas Makoto

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 - 11:31:12 am

@ Grandma Joe

In research I did recently for a presentation of Performance Art, I read that some performance artists consider re-performances of their work to be entirely different pieces apart from the original. In utilizing previous works by different artists and by bringing them into the virtual world of Second Life, I do believe that Second Front has indeed made the works their Read more →

Categories: Research
Excellent. And thanks for making the comparison to MMORPGs. I thought your comment about breaking the rules of Second LIfe was interesting, in a space where rules are not even imposed. But in fact, many of the rules, norms, experiences are self-imposed by people who approach Second Life with a certain degree of consistency. This is the nature of any world, real or virtual. The idea that Second Front is deconstructing the nature of Second Life, which in many ways as  you point out, becomes a replication of the real world. I think the Second Front approach is to find what you can do in the virtual space that you can't do in the real world, and then use this capability for narrative construction and live performance.  Excellent piece.