When is Second Life-Based Music Art? (For That Matter, What's Second Life *Art*?)

This week Linden Lab announced an NEA-style Linden Endowment for the Arts program, which is a great initiative in itself, and it's also kicked up some larger questions worth asking. One immediate controversy: Does live music performed in Second Life qualify as art? In that regard, Crap Mariner has a rant on his blog, expressing a tension in the arts community between performers like her and some 3D builders who disregard live performance in-world. Or as he calls them, "Prim Supremacists", who "[dismiss] music as just one guy with a guitar playing on a stage, or saying that music should be separated out into its own area." If you follow a real world criterion, performing arts are usually considered a related but distinct form from other mediums -- painting, sculpture, and so on. (Maybe a possible solution is to create a sub-category of the LEA called Linden Endowment for the Performing Arts.) And to be sure, it's definitely true that most SL musicians don't really integrate the medium into their show, offering only a simulation of a real world show. (Performers like Grace McDunnough and Chouchou are exceptions.) Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. Then again, a lot of 3D sculptures don't strike me as any more artistic in a Second Life sense -- only simulations of a real world sculpture. (And nothing wrong with that either.)

All of which raises the even larger question: What is art in Second Life? That's far from being a resolved question, though some have taken early stabs. (DC Spensley's "Hyperformalism" is a pioneering approach.) For the most part, with Second Life art, we're still in the "I can't define it, but I know it when I'm immersed in it" stage. To start things out, here's a rough-and-ready definition to build on:

Second Life art is art that attempts to essentialize an important aspect of the human experience in a way that's only feasible in SL, leveraging most or all of Second Life's unique affordances.

What an awkward mouthful. Got a better definition? Doubtless you do. Discuss over the weekend!

Image via Crap Mariner.

Comments

[Komuso Tokugawaomuso]

"And to be sure, it's definitely true that most SL musicians don't really integrate the medium into their show, offering only a simulation of a real world show. (Performers like Grace McDunnough and Chouchou are exceptions.)"

*cough* http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/02/bettinas-choi-1.html

[Crap Mariner]

Um... er... it's actually my rant, but I'm refering to JueL's music and art as an example...

-ls/cm

[Hamlet Au]

Oh, that top line of the post, "This is by JueL Resistance", sorta threw me off. Corrected now!

[Ciaran Laval]

I have two art galleries and a very small live music venue where the likes of Tauri Tigerpaw have performed, all the politics of what equals art, I'm concerned that those of us who already support the arts will be trampled.

[Sioban McMahon]

Ciaran beat me to the punch. We have two active art galleries (exhibitions that change each month), a vibrant storytelling and poetry program, and have been presenting live music for going on three years. I'm thrilled that LL wants to support the arts in SL and join those of us who are already doing it...but they need to show respect to existing efforts. We've been paying them each month to be able to do this.

[Sasun Steinbeck]

I like your definition. It's thought-provoking. However I think it's just too limiting. The reality is that the vast majority of art in SL is your basic 2D texture on a prim hanging on a wall. And I think that's great, scanning and uploading all your 2D art is a great way to get your feet wet in SL as an artist, expose your work to a new audience and get engaged in the community and see what is going on with art in SL.

But to me what happens after that is where things get interesting. The future of art in SL is going to be (or continue to be!) a mashed-up synthesis of building, texturing, design, scripting, audio, storytelling, and collaboration with others. Once an artist has their art uploaded and hanging in a gallery somewhere, my hope is that that's just a beginning. What does SL offer you as an artist to inspire you and cause those creative juices to flow to motivate you to express yourself in new directions with all these new tools you have available that are unique to SL? This is where art emerges that's interesting, cutting edge, innovative, and unique to SL.

So I would say your definition is more about what types of art are the most exciting and important, but really you simply must include more of the "mundane" forms of art that are very similar to their RL counterparts, and all the various types of performance art as part of your definition of what Art is in SL. There is just no way the Linden Endowment can exclude all that art in SL.

I think the issue of whether there should be a separate endowment for performance art vs. visual art is a good question. My take on the endowment post is that LL does not have a detailed definition of what the program will entail, nor what the more detailed goals are beyond the broad ones given. I believe they are looking to the residents on the committee to help define that with them. I am concerned that including the performance arts together with the visual arts in a single cohesive simple program may be tricky - the needs of the two groups are probably fairly different when it gets down to the nuts 'n bolts (ignoring the relatively small intersection of truly hybrid performance/visual art activities going on). Maybe it's doable, if we have the proper representation by people with expertise in visual arts and performance arts to collaborate on a single cohesive, well-defined program with clear goals and success metrics. On the other hand, does it make more sense to have two separate programs, just to make things easier? Hm. Maybe.

One statement in the announcement I found interesting: "What is Art? Does defining it really matter? Perhaps the key to understanding art is not in trying to decide what it is, but rather in supporting it and helping it thrive."

Well in order to support "it" you simply have to know what "it" is! If "it" is undefined, then can anyone just get resources for anything they want by calling it art? Of course not. The resources supplied by LL are obviously limited. Someone has to make a judgement call on what "it" is for this program not to descend into chaos. So like it or not someone needs to define what "SL art" is, for the purposes of this program, to help give the committee some direction. I pity the people with that task, you just can't make everyone happy no matter what you do, I can guarantee that! :)

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I have studied instrumental music, vocal music, theatre, costuming, dance, drawing, painting, design, digital art, photography, video production, poetry, fiction and screenwriting, among other forms. I'm drawn to art the way a moth is drawn to a candle flame.

Define art? I can't. No definition I've ever seen covers it. I've seen art done in spray paint in dirty alleyways, I've seen garbage hung in galleries and praised by con-men calling themselves critics.

I do know this: if somebody doesn't understand how a woman with nothing but a guitar and a stream can be considered art, I haven't the time or energy to educate them.

[christo]

For definitions and insights, you could start with Dr Justin Clemens excellent essay on contemporary art in virtual environments: http://www.babelswarm.com/essay.html

Or have quick flick through our Manifesto of Virtual Art. SL plays an important role in spreading the idea of real-time 3D spaces as legitimate cultural and artistic platforms. http://www.acva.net.au/blog/detail/acva_manifesto_of_virtual_art

[Ada Radius]

There's also significant theater in Second Live - Avatar Repertory Theater, for one, who combine a high level of building, scripting, graphics arts, music, acting, avatar design and costuming to do Shakespeare and other classics as well as original pieces. A separate "Performing Arts" area wouldn't even begin to cover what is possible in Second Live, and I don't think anyone should try to parse it out.

[Chris Dodds]

ACVA's Manifesto of Virtual Art attempts to outline the form:

1. Virtual art is the contemporary art form. It is post-convergent, and contains all previous media as subsets.

2. A generation and a half have grown up with computer games, the Internet and mobile phones. They see virtual media as a place for art.

3. Virtual environments are not abstract innovations in relation to books or film or radio or television. They are not distractions from reality.

4. They are reality.

5. Virtual networks have forged a hybrid culture that displaces the monumental truths projected by older media cultures.

6. The virtual generation see themselves as ‘users’ not ‘audiences’.

7. Virtual generations are participants and creators, not receivers.

8. Virtual environments make interaction, affect and collaboration fundamental conditions and fundamental expectations.

9. Conventional art cannot comprehend or commodify the powers of virtual environments.

10. Virtual art must locate and present new points of potential, and force new openings into actuality. The time of the contemporary is virtual time; only virtual art can meet the challenges of our virtual times.

11. Contemporary art will be virtual, or it will not be.

http://www.acva.net.au/blog/detail/acva_manifesto_of_virtual_art

And some more info on the term "post-convergent":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-convergent