NO LAB, New Hope: Artists' Rendition of Post-Katrina New Orleans Added To Second Life's RMB City

In the far Northeastern corner of a fantasia Beijing is an even more fanciful version of New Orleans, and if you are standing in the right place at the right time, Barack Obama and Spike Lee's avatar will come out and greet you, as another flood sweeps over the city. 

That's the experience of “NO LAB in RMB City” a new multi-reality collaboration between my friend China Tracy (IRL, the artist Cao Fei) and MAP OFFICE, a duo of artists who recreate urban landscapes as essentialized line drawings.  Gutierrez and Portefaix drew their first-hand impressions of post-Katrina New Orleans, and then the metaverse developers Sinewave Company rendered these into interactive 3D objects in Second Life which still retain their flat character.  The result is an abtract, 2D rendering of New Orleans situated at the edge of RMB City, which is itself a fanciful, metaverse version of Beijing.  More layers of reality:  NO LAB features drawings of Obama, Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, and other real life individuals who were closely involved in helping the city recover from the Katrina disaster-- and they're depicted as Second Life avatars wandering on streets that continually flood.  That's why I call this "multi-reality": the aggregate effect is an environment comprised of the virtual and the real in several variations synthesized together. 

Here's a machinima of the installation, and there's some more images after the break.  Better yet, explore in person:  Direct SLURL teleport at this link.  Disclosure: I'm currently an unpaid advisor for the RMB City project, though I had no involvement on this tangential addition.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Will they make one of these in Openlife to memorialize Secondlife's demise?

[Hamlet Au]

Ooof.

[Libbotard]

The topic is quite curious, i must say