Cristina García-Lasuén, the Spanish art scholar who brought Second Life machinima to Shanghai's World Expo
One day a Spanish art scholar was hurrying down the stairs (as she often does), when she took a tumble, and broke her leg. That painful mishap more or less led to Second Life machinima being featured at the Madrid pavilion of the World Expo going on in Shanghai now. (See the full introductory program of SL machinima on the official site here.) That's because the curator, Cristina García-Lasuén, is a highly-regarded figure in Spain's art community, and while she was recovering from her injury, she wound up assisting a fellow academic who was using Second Life as an education tool. So Ms. García-Lasuén created an SL avatar of her own, dubbed Aino Baar, and began exploring the metaverse.
At first she mainly kept to education sites in Second Life (even teaching an art class in-world), but eventually discovered art native to Second Life, such as the works of Bryn Oh. "And fell in love," she says. "And I thought, how can it be possible?" She also wondered why the real life art world didn't know much about it.
As Aino Baar in Second Life
"And when I talked to my companions, other international curators, they said to me, 'Ohhh please, that is not art, it is a social game.'" She pressed, but they resisted. "So I felt I was alone admiring all those wonders." Aino Baar contacted several Spanish museums she was collaborating with, to see if they'd feature Second Life art; none did. "I was furious, and decided to do it by my own."
After sending a barrage of letters to the curators of the Madrid World Expo pavilion, she finally got a chance to submit machinima for screening in the Madrid pavilion's Air Tree" theater, under the auspices of OPEN THIS END, a non-profit organization she formed in part to advocate virtual art. She thinks the World Expo showing will be the thing that shifts perceptions in the wider art world, to see the art made in Second Life as part of the accepted continuum. "Because reality and virtuality are the other faces of the same coin," as she puts it. "Both are trying to show and capture a concept of reality. One uses oil painting, and the other one computer tools. But both are searching the same road to represent our perception of reality, or our simulacra, as Baudrillard said."
Image and photo courtesy Ms. Baar
This is great :-) Congrats Aino Baar !!!
Posted by: Ozzy Wozniak @slurl | Thursday, June 03, 2010 at 09:37 AM
No, no it won't. Its too...video gamey and not pretty. It will never be recognized, mark my words!
Posted by: Uceda English School | Friday, July 20, 2012 at 02:08 PM
Bonjour, nouveau concept d'exposition sur le web www.icidexpos.com bonne visite amicalement Eddie.
Posted by: Eddie | Wednesday, July 24, 2013 at 12:21 AM