Explore "Construct", the Latest Second Life Installation by Duchamp-Influenced Conceptual Artist Selavy Oh [SLANE]

Oberon Onmura of Second Life Arts and Entertainment [SLANE] has a smart essay in praise of "Construct", the latest work from Duchamp-influenced metaverse artist Selavy Oh. "In terms of creating art in Second Life," he writes, "there is Selavy Oh and then there is everyone else. Selavy is among the very few artists working with this "new medium" who fully explores its conceptual space." Click to read more! - Hamlet

Selavy Oh's "Construct" in Second Life (HUMLab sim) is a skybox made of 75 cubicles, each one a virtual artwork realized during the artist's 75-day Yoshikaze/Up in the Air Residency "performance" which began in February, 2011 and was completed May 1. The result is a collection of ideas about making art in 3D virtual environments by one of the most important innovators in the field.  

The cubicles (or "days" as the artist calls them) are more than simple display boxes. Most of them are interactive with visiting avatars, and many of them switch places and otherwise confound their visitors in mysterious ways.

As I write this, I should say up front that, in my mind, in terms of creating art in Second Life, there is Selavy Oh and then there is everyone else. Selavy is among the very few artists working with this "new medium" who fully explores its conceptual space. Her resulting artworks, over the past few years, have consistently shown the rest of us how to expand the boundaries, exploit the resources, examine expectations - in short, she shows us what it means to make art in a 3D virtual environment that is very definitely not "real life." Also, just so everyone is clear, her work has been an important influence on me as I struggle to figure out how to make art in SL.

The artist refers to "Construct" not so much as an installation or a piece of art, but rather as a "dialog" or "spatial diary" of the conceptual ideas she experienced each day during the performance. Each cubicle "day" is an expression of the artist's mood, ideas, inspiration, questions of that day. Since the rooms occasionally swap places, your arrival point in the skybox can be a bit ... unpredictable. So I suggest that after you land, cam out and pan around to get oriented. Then, to go from room to room, use your viewer's TP-to-cam function. Even then, you may end up falling through the floor, or getting squeezed between moving walls, or finding yourself, as I did, walled up in a windowless space. It's also recommended that you use Viewer 2 to experience the full effect of the piece.

Selavy Oh, as you might suspect from the name she chose, is strongly influenced by Marcel Duchamp, the early 20th century French Dadaist who (not incidentally) shattered the accepted notions of "art" in his day, and whose influence the art world continues to feel even today. Much of her work directly or indirectly reflects this influence, such as the "Nude Descending a Staircase" reference, except that the nude is one of Eadweard Muybridge's human motion subjects brought alive in an animated texture. Other influences apparent in her work are Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, and in large part, Walter Demaria.

I'd like to describe each of the cubicles. But (1) there are too many of them for this brief blog post, and (2) many of them are changeable, so a complete description would be very ... complicated. To summarize a bit, anyone familiar with Selavy's work will see a lot of familiar elements - chairs that take the sitter to different places or present different views, physical cubes that explode or move around, words and phrases that float around or otherwise make themselves known, mysterious audio, spaces that reorient themselves and walls that move about unpredictably, gently glowing pastels that shine off stark white walls. It's all there, and much of it is purely magical. All of it is important for every artist working in SL to explore. You will be disoriented for a while, but that's OK. When you visit, you'll probably see me there, wandering about. Visit with a friend so you have someone to toss your reactions around with. If you pay attention, it could change your (second) life.

Click to TP directly to Selavy Oh: "Construct" at HUMLab

 Oberon Onmura is an artist in the virtual world, Second Life and a member of SLANE, a group of dedicated writers and everyday SL users here to provide you with interesting and informative articles on the people, places and things in Second Life that we love most.

Comments

[Pathfinder]

Very cool.

I felt it was appropriate to visit this place while wearing my "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" avatar. http://bit.ly/iQ3Rgh

[Cole Marie]

Very well written mister Oberon.

[Mab MacMoragh]

Great writeup Oberon and Hamlet!

If you haven't seen it, I had a dream dialogue about construct not too long ago, written down here

Though now that I think of it, it's more like Plato's caves in a labyrinth that moves like Rubik's cube inside Selavy's head

Arahan Claveau will have an interview with Selavy Oh on the new May schedule of Soup Radio that begins this Saturday

[selavy oh]

thanks a lot Oberon!
the material part is opening today at HUMLab, Umea, Sweden. see http://ohselavy.blogspot.com/2011/05/construct-humlab.html.