“You Be Thelma, I’ll Be Louise” by MangroveJane
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I love it when Second Life escapes the confines of the grid and finds itself out in the material world. One of my favorite things is when SL artists are recognized and exhibited at galleries. Bryn Oh, Sina Souza, and Bibbe Oh are a few SL artists who have made that leap. MangroveJane (IRL Alison James) is the latest to see her Second Life work exhibited in a real life gallery. Her work is being shown at the Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art in Southbank, Australia. The exhibition is called Perceptions of Reality and continues through the tenth of February:
Her SL image “You Be Thelma, I’ll Be Louise” is even used for the gallery’s official promotional flyer since she is the only one using virtual art. I interviewed her to find out more about her art and her exhibition.
How did you come to be invited to this exhibit?
This was a group submission for an exhibit. We are all postgraduate students and wanted to hold an exhibit. When we got together to do the submission we decided to take my topic of "reality" as it is the easiest prompt for everyone to make art to. We all have our different perceptions of reality.
Alison James (MangroveJane) in front of her SL work at the Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art
The other exhibitors practice in more conventional media; does your inclusion reflect a growing acceptance of virtual media or did your exhibit conform to some other organizing conceit for the exhibit?
My inclusion in the exhibit does not really reflect a growing acceptance of the media. But I think that the interest shown in my work over the time of the exhibit, combined with the encouragement of the university and my supervisor to continue to explore and experiment in the media, does. I am not the first person to bring SL into the RL art world, and indeed just recently while on a visit to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, I was astounded to come across a SL machinima as part of the Hyper Real exhibit. And I think THAT, both the SL part and the theme of the exhibit was a real indicator that times are changing for the art world as it reflects the issues and concepts of our changing society.
What is the theme of the exhibit?
The overall theme of the exhibit was "Perceptions of reality”. That reality is not this or that… but the way we perceive it. And all of us have very different ideas and perceptions of what reality is based on our current mental frameworks and issues most pressing to us at this time.
The other artists work in a variety of media… There is an installation artist, two photographers, a painter and a printmaker working in lino and woodblock printing. All very traditional mediums. At this point they have no links to a website or Flickr. Which I think is something else that SL has made me more aware of over time. I am more active on social media…Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, etc. because I have to be to promote my work within SL. Whereas the more traditional artists often shy away from social media and self promotion of that sort as they are less familiar with it.
“Sometimes Our Sanctuaries Will Also Be Our Battlefields” by MangroveJane. She wrote a blog post using this photo as an example of how to prepare a photo in Second Life that can be printed with high enough resolution for exhibition after she had to reshoot an older photo to meet printing requirements. You might want to bookmark the blog post for future reference.
How did you come to join SL? What has it been like for you and what has kept you in SL?
I was looking for ways to investigate our shifting realities with particular regards to the world of art. At the time I was writing my project proposal for postgraduate entrance and I had found some academic papers written on SL. I thought it would be an interesting twist on the way I was thinking and my research to investigate it further. So I started an account and hopped in world. The first 5 days were pretty traumatic at times. I chronicled that journey… here.
Over time the place I used to visit has become the place in which I live. I didn't think I would become so fond of the place in which I work. For the longest time I didn't talk to anyone or engage with the community, but once I did it changed my outlook and viewpoint on the world in ways I didn't at first envision. Buying land and making a home and finding friendship with Alicia Chenaux have all been huge turning points in the way I think about the place. Everyday in the world I have learnt something new about people, about myself and about my art practise and the things I am struggling to express about our shifting realities.
I was always committed to staying in SL for the length of my degree. It forms the basis for all my art over the course of my project. However, the time is flying by and I start to look at the end of the project and where to from there… and I can no longer imagine not being there and not being a part of the community.
“It Takes Patience to Be a Tree” by MangroveJane
Being in SL has been an incredible learning curve. The journey has been more personal than I ever thought it would be. In order to express what I need to through my art, it has forced me to learn 14 programs to varying levels of competence. That is not something I thought I would have to do when I started down this road. In combination with my studies, it has forced me to redefine my concept of art, both of my own and others.
My original project proposal did not include any digital art at all. It was only through a long and quite often painful process of critique and re-evaluation that I moved away from the traditional mediums of sculpture, painting and printmaking that I was comfortable in to digital photography and video installation. It is quite a large leap to make and some days my brain still struggles to make sense of a 3D world, that is not a physical world.
What is your favorite artwork? What was your process, your plan and how you executed?
My favorite artwork is the one I am currently working on that will form my dissertation. Everything I have done up to this point and for the next year will lead to that. It will form an inworld (SL) installation as well as a physical video installation. It is an obsession and something I am thinking about constantly. Over the course of three years, the project has been planned over a variety of stages.
Year 1 - Familiarization, Experimentation and Defining the question and project.
Year 2 - Refining skills and implementation
Year 3 - Video editing and technical workthrough, Installation, media and marketing, Exigesis
The work I have been doing up until this point has been experimentation… the photos, the videos, the marquet of the in-world installation that I have presented for critique. They are all artworks on their own, but have been leading to a much larger vision.
My favorite photos are the ones that tell a story. I work with the idea of narrative and allegory in art and so when I go to do a photo, I try to think of the story in which it is involved or what it is trying to tell on its own. Half of the photos presented at the exhibit are to do with an ongoing narrative that will be made into a video. The other half are individual photos of my day to day doings… snapshots if you will. None of them are technically as perfect as I would like them to be. All of them bear the marks of my artistic journey over time to get to the technical point I am at.
Alison James and MangroveJane
What do you want people to know about you?
Umm…oh…this is a hard question. I think I want people to know more about themselves than me. I want to reflect a positivity into the worlds and a joyfulness because that is what I see. It is perhaps a naïve outlook, but I want people to be able to see the worlds in a different way…a more positive and joyful way.
I want people to know that I am still learning. That never stops. I make mistakes and stumble and question the artistic merit of what I am doing but I try to live by this amazing quote by Andy Warhol, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide whether it is good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make more art."
What do you want people to know about your art? I read your mission statement, but I am thinking of something more personal
Hmmm…My art is a journey. I have a varied background in music, art and science. I now study art and philosophy. But these are all ways of questioning the world and interpreting it. I want other people to look at my art and question too. Question the status quo, question reality, question what you had for lunch today and why…and then be interested in the questions of other people too and start a conversation of questions with them. I want people to see my art and it for it to be the catalyst for conversations and questions, but also for it to be a recognition of the humanity and joy and beauty within us all.
Who is your biggest artistic influence and why?
I think I would name my biggest influence over my art as a group of Russian artists called AES+F. They do the most incredibly dramatic video installations and stills that are soaked in allegory and narrative. It is the sort of work that makes you think, changes your perspective on the world and leaves you changed as a person.
Links for more on MangroveJane:
- Perceptions of Reality Exhibit at Project Gallery at Queensland College of Art
- Alison James Website
- MangroveJane on Flickr
- MangroveJane’s Flickr album of exhibit photos
- Mangrove Jane on YouTube
Cajsa Lilliehook joined Second Life in 2007 and has been enjoying the art of SL ever since. Disliking the common practice of critiquing poor photos, she decided to highlight good ones and explain why they work in hopes of inspiring with praise instead of criticism. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.
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