Endowment Envy: Second Life's Latest Round of Artists-in-Residence Are Exactly Who They Should Be

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

I had a conversation with someone recently that was, at first, downright irritating. We were discussing the latest round of Artist-in-Residence grants provided by the Linden Endowment for the Arts in Second Life. In case you're unfamiliar, this program grants twenty artists a free sim for a period of six months to be used as a venue for their metaverse-based art. The latest round of artists selected includes Whiskey Monday, a favorite of ours here at NWN.

What was irritating about this conversation was my friend's insistence that this project wasn't fair. That the more practical artists of SL (namely designers) should be entitled to a similar program. The idea was of course that the work of these artists makes Second Life look good so they deserve to be supported, but that the same is true of the content creators outfitting avatars and environments across the grid.

But they aren't the same at all. While you'll never hear me say that designers aren't artists, there is a very big difference between what they do and what the virtual artist-in-residence program is designed to support.

We can take it as a given that both groups are spending a lot of time creating, and a lot of money of the resources required to do so. For the designers this means software are well as virtual real estate to host their stores. For the other artists, this can mean a lot more. It can be software and real estate, but it's also often items purchased from the designers. They are selling their products, after all, and plenty of people use them for staging, environment design, photography and so on.

The artists building the spaces and taking the photos, however, typically don't have people doing the same. Sometimes you can buy works or commission them, but most of us don't. The level of commerce on the arts scene in Second Life is dramatically lower than that of the design scene.

Think about it like this: When you see a cool snapshot on Flickr, maybe you fave it. Maybe you comment. Maybe you give it a silly weird little 'award'. If you really like it, you show your friends. When you see a cool new SL dress or skin or hat on Flickr, maybe you fave it. Maybe you comment. Maybe you give it a silly weird little 'award'. If you really like it, you go out and buy it. You know, with money.

Not every Second Life designer is raking in the bucks. Most aren't, and never will. Most are lucky if they're doing a bit better than breaking even. But compared to the majority of SL artists whose work is an expensive hobby, who will almost always come out in the negative for what they do... Their incentive to keep creating is much more nebulous, and they need all the help they can get to keep making Second Life look as good as they do.

For more information on the LEA and the latest round of artists-in-residence, check out Ziki Questi's informative blog post on the subject.

Tweet

Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Have we become so hyper-capitalist that there is no ability to even perceive things that are not market based?

Art and Design are worlds apart.

Art is self expression done for one's own purpose.
Design is done to communicate a message or sell a product.

Designers... don't need the support - their work is for hire / for sale.

[Connie Arida]

My takeaway then would be that you think the endowment is to support those who make a conscious effort to not make money from their "Art"?
To take it further on from your first commentator.
They must not have anything for sale in a gallery, or promote any of the items they use in the construction of their pic, statue,whatever.
Personally, I thought the most succinct description of Art was by John Cage. It's what you can get away with.

[A.J.]

Whether it's in RL or SL, the righteous indignation of those who are against endowments for the arts always sounds the same. It's like nails scratching across a chalk board.

It requires some deep thinking, vision, and a certain generosity of spirit to see why it's a good idea to support art even when you don't necessarily understand it right now.

History has given us millions of examples of why supporting art is necessary, but some people are intent on being dumb.

After awhile, this argument is like " Yeah, yeah, whatever ".

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The fine arts have been underwritten, supported and protected by patronage since prehistory. To be honest, from the artist's perspective the primary difference between whoring your work to a few rich snobs and to the stupid, ignorant, unwashed masses is that the snobs pretend to understand art even when they're more ignorant than the peasants, and you need fewer of them to eke out a living.

So yeah, totally not fair. Cope.