Second Life is a great place for self expression and a pretty good place to create virtual galleries for paintings, music, sculpture even architecture. If it can be manifested in the physical world it can be built in Second Life and the absurdity can be turned up to 12. Do you want your central piece to look like the inverted pyramid which was the centerpiece of the game Control? That’s no problem. I’ll teach you how to do it in a few minutes. Do you want the inside of your room to look like you’re walking through a kaleidoscope of multicolored shape-shifting spirits? Now, you’re talking something more of a challenge but totally doable. In other worlds, if you want to make a gallery to show off art, Second Life is a great way to do it without having to acquire access to a gallery. So, there are a lot of artists in Second Life and lot of galleries.
Several months ago I had been talking to an art student who has some spaces in SL and then another friend who has her physical world paintings digitized for display and sale in SL. I then received a message about the Virtual Ability art gallery changing the display there soon. Since I had not seen the show that had been up, I had to go and look.
If you’re not familiar, Virtual Ability is a real nonprofit organization that is run completely within Second Life by volunteers, most of whom have their own disabilities. I myself am a fairly new member but the Virtual Ability community is nearly as old as Second Life itself. There is a library of disabled arts and one of the galleries there shows the work of disabled artists. General it is a sanctuary for people with disabilities as well as a space for educating other about disabilities.
When I arrived at the gallery it was packed, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, with coffee. More precisely, latte art. Even if I had taken a photo, I would not share it here because it’s not my art. It was impressive. Some of the art was very basic, some very cartoonish, some highly detailed and all of it was made and consumed over several months ever since the artist’s wife had bought him a cappuccino machine. Impressive is too small of a word to encompass the display of skill and determination, and sheer lack of restraint when it came to puns.
This was all real world art that was photographed and the uploaded into Second Life, hundreds of images.
I started thinking about the work we have done in Second Life and how a lot of it is highly transient. Someone buys a dress or a building, it gets used for a few days, weeks or years if you’re lucky and then they move on and do something different, they delete their account or get banned. You never know. I had seen a few of my builds around and Stealth and I had helped with a few regions.
Time moves on and all that is gone now, most likely.
All art is transient. That’s the nature of it. Sure, a stone sculpture is going to last a lot longer than a mesh model imported into Second Life but eventually that stone will crumble. That’s why we should appreciate it while it is here.
I used to hear people say, “That is too beautiful to eat.” No, no, it is not. Now, if it tastes too horrible to eat, that is something else. More for you I guess.
Sorry, I’m too tangential. So, getting back to the art show.
Having an art show in the physical world or in Second Life was never on my radar. Will had been a photographer since about age 8, sitting on the roof of their house with a Polaroid camera. Later being voted “Most Artistic” in 7th or 8th grade, later going on to do pixel art and then 3D models. That’s what brought me into Second Life in 2005.
I’ll step aside for a moment and apologize if the perspective shift is confusing. Just remember that Itico is Will’s avatar in Second Life and since the art show was in SL, we’re talking about it from my perspective.
If that doesn’t help you out, just put Will where ever you see my name.
I think for no reason other than the fact that no one has seen anything from me in a while, I decided to upload a ton of pictures, 3D images which most people have never seen and then the paintings I had just started creating in October 2024.
120 images we filled up that Virtual Ability Art Gallery.
The images covered about 31 years, two physical world states, two virtual worlds, 3 games, and then these virtual oil paintings made in Vermillion, a virtual reality oil painting simulator. It was the first time I had put out so much all at once even though I had inconsistently displayed some of this on Facebook, Trumblr, Flickr and likely other locations. To put it all in one location was a little surreal and startling.
If you are a visitor to Second Life you can visit the art gallery, everything is still up at the time of this writing. However, you will learn more when we put up the paintings here on this blog, you will just need to wait a little longer.
When we had the show opening, we had about 30 people show up and I received a lot of good compliments. That was very nice of everyone. I really appreciate the support.
