BREAKING NEWS: IAN AH IS MOVING HIS SCREENING LOUNGE ON SUGAR MOUNTAIN!

Left-right: Wirxli Flimflam (me), Sugar Seville (CEO of Odyssey Island) and Chi5 Shenzhou (landscaping architect).

Hey performance art fans!

This past week has seen alot of turbulent change in SL. Just a couple of days ago, Man Michinaga sold his property in Han Loso where the BitFactory used to be.

It seems that this pattern is persisting towards that of an unfortunate trend because as of yesterday, Ian Ah has had to relocate his screening lounge on Sugar Mountain (Odyssey Island) due to some terraforming gentrification initiatives.

I am hoping he can just move his lounge around the other side of Sugar Mountain rather than having to move a long distance from my official PR Office which is located on top of this mountain.

Well, here is a sneak-preview of Chi5 Shenzhou's current terraforming project at Ian's former venue...

The new illusionistic "pool" with the mirrored texture on the deck-side is absolutely gorgeous!

From left-right: Ian Ah, Wirxli Flimflam (me), Chi5 Shenzhou and Sugar Seville.
Last night's discussion was very productive as Sugar offered Ian to re-locate his screening lounge to another side of Sugar Mountain. I think this will make for a reasonable compromise as Chi5 can focus on making this new opulent terraformed geological shelf :-)


Left-Right: Ian Ah, Wirxli Flimflam (me) and Sugar Seville.
Here is a dramatic angle shot!


Left-Right: Sugar Seville, Wirxli Flimflam (me), Chi5 Shenzhou, Fau Ferdinand and Ian Ah.
A little later in the evening, we were trying to determine if this deck could truly double as a hot-tub for wading in :-)

And here is what Ian's screening lounge used to look like...

From left-right: Maximillian Nakamura, Ian Ah, Wirxli Flimflam (me) and Nyko Nakamura.This is how the deck-area used to look prior to the terraforming.


Back-Front: Nyko, Nakamura, Wirxli Flimflam (me), Ian Ah and Maximillian Nakamura.
Here is an example of us watching a video. This video seems to be an archived performance by Alan Dojoji...

...this angle gives you a better sense of the kind of video we were watching.

Left-Right: Nyko Nakamura, Wirxli Flimflam (me), Ian Ah, Maximillian Nakamura and Gazira Babeli (in front of Max).
I think you can get the sense from these pictures that the lounge's atmosphere was very relazing and allowed for us to focus on casual chit-chat and video-viewing (no popcorn available though). Gazira had some of her own work installed on the lounge property. I am pleased to hear that she will be having a solo show soon on Odyssey Island :-)

BREAKING NEWS: MAN MICHINAGA SELLS THE BITFACTORY PROPERTY!

The remnants of the legendary BitFactory was concerted into Neo-Indiana hours before the land itself (located in the Han Loso region) was sold to the highest bidder!

From left-right: Ian Ah, Man Michinaga (Bitfactory owner and founder) and Wirxli Flimflam (me - floating near the top of Neo-Indiana)...

BREAKING NEWS: The Arts community in Second Life suddenly lost one of its most prized and established arts institutions late last night. The Bitfactory was the official rehearsal space for the performance art group, Second Front as well as serving as a location node for Intelligent Agent Magazine. The Bitfactory (formerly known as the Lichty-Michinaga Arts Center and Atelier Michinaga) had an equivalent reputation to the contemporary art museum, Ars Virtua. The Bitfactory's founder and owner Man Michinaga of Second Front will now devote his time and energy towards performance art and other creative endeavors...

Chi5 Shenzhou and yours truly surveying what is left of the Bitfactory to determine its re-sale value...

Dancoyote Antonelli's Zero-G Skydancers performed at NMConnect!

Here I am on the far left. I have no idea who most of the audience members are but they all seem to be fans of the Zero-G Skydancers...

Hey performance art fans!

Last night, I had the good fortune of attending a performance on NMConnect's "Learning" Campus by the Zero-G Skydancers. This is a performing arts troupe set up by the pioneering Second Life artist, Dancoyote Antonelli.

The dancers flew around the aestheticized sky so quickly, I was unable to take a picture of them... However, my intuition tells me that their performance resembled their official archived video from a previous performance at NMConnect in some way...

Here are some amateur snapshots that I had managed to produce...
This occured just as the skydancing performance had begun. Totally tubular indeed! I really enjoyed being bathed in this volumetric light show.


Here is an extreme aerial view of the Skydancing platform. I was not sure if the billboard with the numbers was meant to be a scoreboard or something. Which Skydancer won the most points? heheheheheheh! This looks like a more aesthetic and non-competitive sport so I am guessing they all got zeroes. It looks like some got more zeroes than others...heheheheh

Here is another audience pic. In the far right, you will see Second Front co-performer, Man Michinaga.

At first glance, this looks like an identical pic to the one above but then you will notice that our seats have changed colour! I guess it also true that I zoomed in a bit but I took this 2nd pic to illustrate (without having to set up my video camera) that there was alot of loco-motion going on at this event.

Ok, it was during this abstracted moment that I was positive that I saw one of the Skydancers fly by...maybe I was hallucinating? Looking at this astral pattern long enough, might cause a sensitive avatar like myself to see a stereo-grammatical dance routine after awhile... ;-)


This is my fave abstraction from the Skydancing event. I must say that I have always been a fan of vortex forms... it is my RL birthright.

ICARDI - Art Administration's Birthday!

FRIENDS OF ICARDI at REUTERS. Left-Right: Cyrus Huffhines, Ian Ah (front), Plurabelle Posthorn (behind Ian), BL Nevin, Into Mapp, Rubaiyat Shatner (front), Great Escape (behind Rubaiyat), Tran Spire and Wirxli Flimflam (me).

Hey performance art fans!

This week has been super busy and it looks like the social momentum will simply keep on scrolling onwards! I literally just finished blogging my artist talk with Ian Ah that took place on Sunday and in a matter of hours, I returned to the Metaverse to celebrate Art Administration's Birthday!

BL Nevin started this ICARDI (International Current Art Research & Development Institute) project in Real Life and has decided to import the concept into Second Life.

So to officially celebrate Art Admin's B-day, BL had us line up at Reuters for an official group shot - complete with the ICARDI (rhymes with BACARDI) placard sign.

The lobby at Reuters has been a regular haunt for Second Front.

Well, I am sure you will be hearing more about ICARDI very soon and I hope that you can attend 2008's celebration of Art Administration's Birthday on February 19 at midnight sharp.

Here is some photo-documentation...


Here is the same gaggle of ICARDI fans except this time, we are working our buns off to try and look more "administrative" for the group photo. Group photos in Second Life are much more difficult to coordinate than in real life. Both Rubaiyat and Tran feel more confident and heroic wearing capes when in bureaucratic mode... heh heh! By the way, Tran is planning to create his own fashion line based on Op-Art patterns.

In this pic, you can see Great Escape going a little "bananas" over the whole pressure to become formalized into an administrative infrastructure. My guess is that GE is still feeling nostalgic towards Art's actual Birthday.

After going completely bananas, we were able to assume a group formation. This is the official group portrait authenticated by BL Nevin. This is his dedication:

"for Emmett Williams:
'Little Fluxus People' Invade the Reuter's Building SL" - BL Nevin...

It probably goes without saying that we all needed to de-compress after that stressfull group photo so we retired for the evening to spend some quality time at Great Escape's Hot Tub in Stone Pike. I guess the self-portrait that Great Escape placed on the wall was to aid in some erotic stimulation? Yikes! ;-)

Either way, GE's fetishized portrait provided a perfect backdrop for a little bit of my own gratuitous display of virtual narcissism. I swore that I saw tie-dyed spirals cascading around me when I took this photo. Oh well, just goes to show that in Second Life, hallucinations are not always consensual... Ian Ah knows where to find the best drugs in SL! ;-)

UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Plurabelle Posthorn also blogged this ICARDI event.

My Dorkbot SL Artist Talk with Ian Ah...

Official media release in The Ava-Star Issue #9.

RELATED NEWS LINKS:

Maximillian Nakamura's Self-Report on Dorkbot's 1st meeting in Second Life

Plurabelle Posthorn from Oslo reporting for the Virtual Artists' Alliance

Bryan Dix from Toronto reporting for the Second Life Newspaper

Sascha Pohflepp from Berlin reporting for "We Make Money Not Art"

Additional event pictures by Sascha Pohflepp can be found here.

Hey performance art fans!

I just had my very first official artist talk in Second Life yesterday.
I shared the talk with Ian Ah...

This was Dorkbot SL's very first in-world meeting in Second Life and was organized by Maximillian Nakamura. Ian and I were able to completely pack the venue(s) with plenty more avatar performance art fans lining up to get in...

For my brief 20 minute talk, I discussed my earlier avatar performance projects prior to Second Life and then talked about the formation of Second Front.

Check out the photos below...


To begin the event, we assembled at Max's Rhizomatic headquarters which acts as the home base for all Dorkbot events in Second Life. It was here where Max gave his slideshow and introduction to the first official Dorkbot meeting...


After about 15 minutes, we eventually brought the audience over to Ian Ah's Sky Lounge on Odyssey Island for the official artist talks. Ian Ah's Sky Lounge is inspired by the Ava-Bar created exclusively for The Avastar sim by Aimee Weber.


Here is a general view of the event just minutes before my talk was about to begin. You can see Ian Ah on the left conversing with Alan Dojoji about the possible questions and comments Alan was going to bring up at the end of my lecture...

Here is a photographed moment from the beginning of my lecture where I am showing the audience some early archival video footage of The Gates (Gateskeeper and Gatescrasher) from 2002.


This pic was also taken during my lecture. On the screen, is a video clip from Second Front's Danger Room rehearsal.

Ok ok, so I took alot of crowd-shots that look nearly identical to one another ;-)


I guess I must have began my lecture at right at the cusp of dusk because it was just a few minutes into my talk before night descended upon Odyssey Island.

Here is a side angle...

...and another side angle...

...and still another side angle (obsessive, I know)...

During Ian's lecture, he decided to open up his thoughts about the functionality of art media and academic transmission venues to the general audience for interactive consideration. And sure enough, there was a fair bit of commentary from the audience. Here is a thought-provoking statement by one of the first Second Life performance artists, Dancoyote Antonelli.

After the event had formally finished, we retired for a brief after-party at Ian's additional viewing lounge....

Special thanks to Sugar Seville and Pacino Hercules for their kind philanthropy in allowing events like this to happen :-)

RELATED LECTURE LINKS:

Personal blogs:

Irwin Ziiz ZW (alien avatar performance artist in the Moove/Roomancer community)

Roland Quagmire III (avatar curatorial project in the Moove/Roomancer community)

Voice of Fire (performance artist in Digitalspace Traveler)

Onto Distro's Journal (performance artist in Digitalspace Traveler)

Other personal projects:

AVATARA - First in-world documentary of an avatar community.

The Gates - The First Avatar Band and Performance Group in Digitalspace Traveler.
Additional Gates links: Scratchbook (Frankfurt), Techworlds (Seattle) and Raketa (Chiang Mai).

THM (The Hotmails) - First VoIPunk band. THM was formed with Alberto Guedea in 2005.

Historical links from the lecture:

Second Front - Pioneering Avatar Performance Art Group in Second Life.

Western Front - Vancouver New Media collective that inspired Second Front.

Intermedia - Vancouver New Media collective that became the Western Front. An example of a member of Intermedia is Gregg Simpson.

N.E. Thing Company - Early Vancouver New Media group brought up by Alan Dojoji during question period.

Outerspace - Open Space's history of prehistoric Telematic Art.

Spawn of the Surreal

Hey there performance art fans,

Second Front's "Spawn of the Surreal" performance from February 11th, 2007 at the NMConnect campus has just been archived and blogged!

If you are feeling too lazy today to check out Second Front's official blog, then here is a very quick visual summary of what happened on this very surreal day:

Basically, we set up a whole babylonian cinema-plex with our Last Supper mural on the wall where a movie would normally be as a way to lure a whole bunch of avatars to take a seat...little did they know, these seats were rigged in order to mutate them into performance artists! It took hardly any time for us (acting as ushers) to get the audience to sit on enough seats for Gaz to pull the mutations script trigger for Great Escape to firebomb the place.

Procrastination is for painters ;-)

...after we were done watching our audience-spawn perform for us, we passed quickly through the Darfur sim on the NMConnect campus and then went to check out the ambient muzak concert by AldoManutio Abruzzo.

Here is another pic of the after-concert...I think I forgot to mention that we eventually mutated our own avatars once we left our own "Spawn of the Surreal" performance...ooops!

Stay tuned for more archived events, performances and happenings!

Announcement: Dorkbot Lecture in Second Life...

From Left-Right: Maximillian Nakamura, Ian Ah, Wirxli Flimflam (me) and Nyko Nakamura.

Hey performance art fans!

It has been publically confirmed! I will be officially giving an artist talk in Second Life to launch the first of many Dorkbot SL guest lectures. This semi-formal artist talk will take place on Sunday February 18th, 2007 - 2-3 PM PST.

The location for this event will primarily occur at Ian Ah's special movie screening lounge which is on Sugar Mountain (Odyssey Island) and directly below my PR office.

Maximillian Nakamura (Dorkbot SL founder) and Ian Ah will be the official hosts for the event.

I hope to see your avatar there :-)

Cheerios,
Wirxli Flimflam

0100101110101101.org's 3 classic performances at Ars Virtua!

Chi5 Shenzhou sent me a TP (TelePort) to Ars Virtua and the audience as well as the critics and artists were already milling about while gathering their energy and nerves waiting for the retro-performance-bonanza to begin...

Hey there performance art fans!

Today was a special day in that the reknowned con-ceptual artists, Franco and Eva Mattes aka. 0100101110101101.org were back at Second Life's Ars Virtua for another arousing round of exhibitions! This time their retro-performance trinity was being broadcast (possibly projected) into a contemporary art museum in Trento (Italy) known as the Galleria Civica d'Arte Contemporanea.


For this day (evening in Italian time), Franco and Eva focused on remediating the classics of performance art. If you scroll down the blog a bit, you will realize that they remediated a previous performance remediation by myself and Great Escape... How Postmodern is that! heheheheheh ;-)


...as you can see, I have a very historical screenshot here as this was taken at the exact moment in the chat-history where Franco and Evo announced the beginning of their first remediated performance... In fact, I had arrived there so promptly to take a screenshot of them announcing the performances, my pants barely had any time to render...sigh! While my pants were rendering, I read the notecard that they sent me very quickly and knew it was going to be one of the classic performances by Chris Burden but I was caught off guard as I was not expecting the specific performance to actually be...

... "Shoot" by Chris Burden (1972)! As I had mentioned above, Great Escape and myself did that exact re-enactment of this classic performance almost 3 months ago! I immediately told the Italian curator and critic Domenico Quaranta about this and politely asked him to relay this to the Mattes duo. Admittedly, their re-enactment of "Shoot" was probably closer to the original as I am guessing only the arm was wounded. In our version, Great Escape was shot dead (or at least played dead for awhile) ;-)

Anyway, once the shot-wound had sufficiently healed, we are all herded into this tiny makeshift white-cube trailer deeper inside Ars Virtua's main gallery lobby for their version of Vito Acconci's Seedbed. This was also a performance that Great Escape and myself had considered to re-perform in Second Life...I think for this one, we were simply grossed out to actually try this one on for size...even in pixellated version, Acconci's Seedbed piece is extremely creepy! It no longer surprises me that his middle name is "Hannibal" ;-) We did not even have the guts to ask the rest of our performance art group, Second Front about it! As far as we were concerned, it was going to be "Silence of the Seeds"...In retrospect, I wish we performed that one now... many of the audience members for our performers already consider us to be a bunch of art-wankers after all ;-) ;-)

Speaking of wanking, I have replaced the top-secret content of my screen-captured friends-list window with a little bit of foreshadowing for their 3rd performance that was guaranteed to get my rocks off! Being an "avant-garde" type myself, I must possess the quantum ability to visualize the future, as there was definitely some erotic vision in my mind that made me want to join Franco under the Seedbed ;-) ;-)

But, in the meantime....

...we were escorted out of the white-cube trailer for about 5 minutes and were eventually led outside of the gallery itself... You gotta love 1970s art - artists from that time always found ways to eventually bring out of that stuffy gallery and into some fresh air! ;-)

You will notice Second Front's co-member, Gazira Babeli sitting on the curator's desk. She was busy taking upskirt shots of some of the more vulnerable audience members of the "Seedbed" performance. In a sense then, Gazira was also remediating the remediation ;-) Speaking of "Seedbed", have you also noticed that both of the original performance are from 1972? Hmmm...Were all 3 of the performances from this year? I guess this year was the peak period for 1970s performance art? Hmmmmm, I had better ask Franklin Furnace about this.

So, now you want to know what was getting me all hot and bothered during "Seedbed", right? If you were paying attention to that tiny photoshopped modification in my Friends' window, you will recognize the next image...

...yes! Finally! I had now had a chance to get some action after getting all aroused from the virtual Seedbed! Wooooo Hooooooo! Of course, this was all done in the name of "art" so I had the full creative license to make a complete pervert out of myself ;-) ;-) This 3rd and final piece was a happening (probably ca. 1972) by Valerie Export and Peter Weibel. Franco even had Wiebel's loudspeaker remediated to a tee...

Eva Mattes herself had a partially rendered "cardboard" prim box and allowed people to peer through her "box" and fondle her perfectly crafted boobies! Since I knew that Linden Life requires blatant displays of capitalist exchange to get anything done in the world the way you want it done, I bribed Eva in L$5 installments to try and budge into the long line that was preventing me from getting direct access to her cyber-hooters.

I knew this was a time-limited offer and the last thing I wanted was to get only as much direct exposure as an art critic! Time is money, after all! So, I finally managed to get into her "test und tapp kino" just in time! I then refused to let go of her cinematic lucky-dip until she paid me back my L$5.... Sigh! My devious plan almost worked!!!