New World Newsfeed: Dancoyote's Hyperformalism Gets High Brow Appraisal

Recent dispatches from the outside world...

Fibreculture Journal Issue - Art and (Second) Life: Over the hills and far away?

ARTnews' recent cover profile of Second Life's emerging arts scene failed to cover many, well, emerging SL artists, focusing instead on already-established artists who were now experimenting with the metaverse as a medium.  Expanding on this under-covered subject is this comprehensive profile in Fibreculture, a peer-reviewed journal from Australia, mostly devoted to the works of DanCoyote Antonelli, founder and leading exponent of hyperformalist art.  As an academic paper, the profile is written with full postmodern jargon kung fu unleashed, but is still worth a read.  One interesting nugget: as it turns out, there's actually a decent commercial market in Second Life for high (virtual) art:

The artist achieved over half a million Linden dollars worth of sales (the Second Life online currency, convertible to US dollars) in his first three months of exhibiting in Second Life... [I.E., about $1855. Says Antonelli:] "I am cultivating an 1980’s style art boom in SL and attempting to define value of fine artworks in a virtual medium."  

Image credit:  journal.fibreculture.org. Hat tip: NPIRL via Turbulence.org.

Comments

[Dorje Kawabata]

He SHOULD be getting this praise. DanCoyote is a great artist. Whether it's in SL or out is irrelevant. He's also very approachable and interesting to talk to.

[John Branch]

I hope I don't end up sounding like one of those people who say, "Why do we have to label everything?" but I'm intrigued by a few words in this post, namely, "high (virtual) art." The distinction between high and low art is sometimes useful, but it can get tricky. One RL example: when the painter John Currin employs gestures from pornography, plus nude bodies that are often reminiscent of kitsch, and combines these with techniques and compositions that recall traditional "high-art" painters, it can be difficult to characterize the result. You can call it high art because it's sold in a gallery (and bought by people who fancy the high-mindedness of their own taste), but the label is a little harder to justify than it used to be.

Regardless, I'm glad to learn about DanCoyote, and I plan to look up his stuff in SL.