New World Notes

Cajsa's Choices: The Strange and Wonderful Avatar Art of Minotaur & Ragu

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Meilo Minotaur may be familiar to many SL residents as she and her collaborator CapCat Ragu have been experimental artists and avatar creators for years. Their Meta Body Project launched in 2011 and ended this year. They encouraged interactive creation, providing full avatars that people were encouraged to change and manipulate and create new ones.

Minotaur and Ragu founded an art sim called Delicatessen that has been a go-to site for many Second Life residents. They often exhibit work by other residents as well as their own. I checked in with Minotaur with a few questions:

Cajsa's Choices: The Breathtaking Cinematic Imagery of Ms. Paradox Ivory

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Paradox Ivory is one of those photographers that make me feel as though I am seeing stills from a movie. Her photos are deeply expressive. There is a sharp definition combined with brilliant lighting with deep shadows. Many of her photos are erotically charged, though always with the discretion of a carefully placed hand, shadow, or position. She plays with spots of color in ways that surprise and delight. I encourage you to dive deep into her photostream. It is rich in reward.

A Canadian woman in her early forties, she’s been in Second Life since 2007. I asked her about her work. Her answers (and many more pictures) are after the cut.

Cajsa's Choices: Bamboo Barnes Turns Second Life Screenshots Into Brilliant Abstract Art

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Bamboo Barnes is one of the few Second Life artists who posts her raw Second Life photos alongside the final picture she publishes to Flickr. It is a good thing, because otherwise, how could you believe it came from Second Life? Her art is visually and colorfully assertive, though when talking to her, she approaches her work with such humility that when I asked for her favorite piece of work, it never occurred to her I meant her own.

That kind of self-effacing humility may be a result of the bipolar disorder that has narrowed her world over the last several years. Other than a life-long friend of more than 25 years, most of her support and connection now comes through Second Life, mostly from her SL partner, whom she describes as endlessly patient. Art has become a lifeline for Barnes, one avenue in which she feels a part of a community.

Barnes also does digital art outside of Second Life, works such as this expressionist "Gondole". She is scrupulous about differentiating her work by the groups she shares them in so browsers of her stream will easily identify those works from Second Life and her other digital art.

My conversation with Barnes below!

WATCH: "The Force", Like Second Life from the 80s But Stranger Still

Here's the latest machinima from Splinter Smirnov and Chris Mumblewood, masters of weird, pop eye SL machinima, which plays like David Lynch's version of a Second Life commercial if Second Life was called Better Life and it was made in the 80s. So, yeah.

Unsurprisingly, Splinter tell me Lynch's Twin Peaks is an inspiration for their machinima, along with other odd-creepy gems like Tales of the Unexpected and a UK show called Jubilee Terrace. The bug-eyed avatars, however, are inspired by themselves:

Cajsa's Choices: The Black & White Virtual World Imagery of Imani Nayar

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Your eyes cannot drift past Imani Nayar’s photos while browsing Flickr. The stark black and white images with their spare simplicity draws your eye — a complete contrast to the multi-colored energy of most SL photos. Even her few color images are desaturated, reducing the distraction of color from her focus on their emotive quality. They are solitary photos that illustrate her reserve and independence that is evident after a minute checking out her profile where she sets her boundaries with firm politesse.

Imani does not say much about herself. She is from Germany and the picture above makes me think of Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich, and today’s Ute Lemper, the great women of Berlin Cabaret whose greatest songs were a melancholy mix of seduction and cynicism, the songs of people who are lonely, even in a crowd. When I interviewed her, she noted solitude inspires her work:  

SL Flickr of the Day: Freekency Banx's "The Devil's Right Hand"

Love the neo-noir shadows and the cel-shaded after effects, making this avatar evoke a character from Borderlands, but you know, more noir-ish than headshotty.

More from Freekency Banx on his Flickr. Banx, by the way, was just profiled by the great Cajsa Lilliehook, which you should probably read here.

Jo Yardley, Creator of Second Life's Virtual Berlin, Also Creates Viral Images Merging Photos of Modern Europe & World War II

Jo Yardley, avatar name for the owner and lead creator of the well-known recreation of 1920s Berlin in Second Life, has a fascinating first life project she's even more famous for: Merging archive photos from World War II with their modern day locations in Europe. (As above.) In real life she's Dutch historian Jo Teeuwisse, and her work is currently being featured on the Daily Mail in the UK, but you can see all the images from her "Ghosts of History" project on her Flickr here. You've probably seen some of them on various websites over the past few years, as they've enjoyed spikes of viral interest.

"It started as a tool to help me with research, but it didn't go big 'til after I'd started on [SL] Berlin," Jo tells me.  "Over the years I've done research for movies, TV, museums, authors, etc. But this I started after finding some negatives at a local flea market, and I just had to find out more about them."

By overlapping scenes of peaceful, modern day Europe with glimpses of Europe when it was wracked by war, these pictures have had a profound impact on many viewers:

Cajsa's Choices: The Dark & Fantastic Second Life Pop Art of Freekency Banx

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

In an earlier column, I noted that I am entranced by Freekency Banx’s photostream — a stream full of Second Life photos that suggest stories. His photostream is filled with pictures are that macabre, humorous, grotesque, frightening, and eerie. The only thing they are not is ordinary. I reached out to interview him about his photos.

Banx is from France and used an online translator for the interview as his English, as he remarked, “is not really perfect.” Perhaps he is naturally taciturn or the language barrier kept his answer short, but it really does not matter. His pictures speak for themselves.

How would you describe your photo style or aesthetic?

I'm a instinctive and an intuitive photographer. I love to listen to those two animal senses when I create pictures. My ideas do not come from calculation, but from emotion.

Often, I think there is a story behind your photos. There is a before and after we don't see. Would you share one of those stories?

Flickr of the Day: SL Action Movie Interlude from Eripom Moonwall

Summer movies have mostly been disappointing (I'm looking at you, Baby Driver*), so here's a jaw-dropping action shot on par with anything Hollywood has thrown at us. The photographer of course, is Eripom Moonwall (NSFW: Some pics impressively Adult-rated), who creates these images as a way of advertising her weapons and weapon poses. Read Cajsa's profile of Ms. Moonwall here.

Her collaborators in this pic are Eata Kitty and Artemis Fate, the latter of whom I've known from SL since 2004 or so -- great to say she's up to cool virtual hijinks.

Cajsa's Choices: The Incredible Comic Strip Second Life of RoxiRock

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I confess I am a fairly pedestrian SL Flickr photographer. Perhaps that explains why I admire so many other SL photographers and artists. I am drawn to those who do something different, whose work is far fresher than mine will ever be.

That is why I was drawn to RoxiRock’s photosteam. She is an SL photographer/blogger who presents her work as simple graphic story strips with a bit of story about her Second Life. I have to stop and enlarge her photos, eager to see what is new even though she is not telling a continuing story or trying to be comical. She is giving us slices of SL life and they are sometimes wry, sometimes a bit sentimental, but always they give me the sense of a generous soul sharing authentic experiences.

RoxiRock in real life is a forty-something Southern woman with four children and four grandchildren. While her life is joyful and full, she enjoys the aspirational fantasies of Second Life. She explains, “I am truly blessed in both worlds and love my life. I have met a lot of great people in Second Life and hold them dear also in my real life.”

More of the works and worlds of RoxiRock below: