Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Editor’s note: After a hiatus that lasted most of last year, acclaimed metaverse artist Whiskey Monday recently returned to Flickr by storm, creating and uploading dozens of amazing images.
“I usually work through creative stuff by writing,” she says of her relative absence. “When I hit a writer's block, I turn to photos in Second Life to kind of play around with some ideas and clear the junk from my head. So if you see that I take long periods of breaks between photos, it’s usually because my writing is going well. When you see me in SL taking pictures, you can be sure I have writer's block.”
Cajsa appraises Whiskey’s latest work, and speaks with the artist below. - Hamlet Au
I love Whiskey Monday’s “Calm and Sunny” (above) in part because it is such a shift in tone and color from her usual work. Change can be exciting. However, I perceived it as part of a theme of revealing the facade or piercing the fourth wall because there were other unmasking pictures such as “Present Tenses,” “Painted Deserts,” and “Touched in the Head.”
I asked Whiskey about the fourth wall. Well, what I saw and what she said were very different:
“Was there ever a fourth wall? My intent is now, and has always been, to express something I'm having trouble expressing in other ways. My work is selfish; it's less for the viewer and more for me. I get a phrase or a quote stuck in my head and sometimes it makes its way into my writing and other times I can only get it out in SL photos. Sometimes the subject is more universal than others, but always it's me me me.”
In literature, there is much debate about whose perspective matters when considering an author's work. Some look to the author’s biography and the historical context of their work. Semioticians look at the meaning and symbolism of the words, Marxists ask who benefits, Postmodernists ask us what the language really means and can we trust they mean what we think they mean. I was always with the Reader Response critics who recognized that everyone brings their own history to a text and that history influences their perception. I think that works in art criticism, too. We bring our Self to the task of appreciating a picture and our Self determines our reaction far more than the creator’s intent. That does not make our perception more accurate, but without readers, a book is forgotten, so it does make our perception important. I take that view when considering art as well.
For another example of artist saying and viewer seeing very differently, click here:
Perhaps because I have just read the preface to “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” when I saw “Seven More” (above) I thought of surveillance. The eyes are always watching us. Our small “net” of VPNs and pseudonymous social media seems a small weapon to protect us. Well, that has nothing to do with what Whiskey was thinking.
Instead, she was making a feminist commentary by taking a common phrase as literally as possible.
“Seven More came from the phrase ‘capture his eye,’ in an article I read,” Whiskey tells me. “I kept thinking about how the article made it sound so absurd, as if that's a woman's only desire, to capture his eye.
“And really, 90% of SL art is based on female form that appears to be playing to the male gaze -- capturing his eye (*snore*). Anyway, my brain turned it into Seven More, a different way of capturing his eye, I guess.”
I was struck by the eerie beauty of “Most Peculiar Way” and wondered if it was about COVID and how it feels like the ground falling out from under us. At last, I was on the same wavelength as she.
“'[It] is absolutely a COVID meditation,” says Whiskey. “The past year has left me feeling in some ways weightless, all of my anchor points have been pulled away. Most of the things that normally sustain me or recharge my batteries, either are inaccessible or no longer working. Trying to stay calm and ignore the fact that it's all falling away.
“I almost called the piece Unprecedented Times, but I just couldn't do it.”
Whiskey’s most recent favorite is one that I also thought fit into those I thought of being a peek “behind the curtain.”
Not that this was her intent:
“My favorite pieces usually get the least Flickr faves," she observes. "Ain't that just the way? My most recent fave is ‘Day Old Blues’... my SL work often explores themes of mental illness and depression (even if only I can see that). This piece is purely what I was feeling at the time. The fire is contained, but it's so close to the tinder grass. (Tinder Grass was the working title.) That's how mental illness feels when I'm stable.
“I can be happy and content and thriving, and I still have the urge to burn it all down. Or at least get hot enough to feel that rush of something.”
That is a perfect example of how the criticism that looks at the creator’s biography and historical context can be very different from Reader Response criticism. What I love about Whiskey’s work is that it is surreal, nonlinear, and open to interpretation. It is never just there. It demands we think about it.
Here is that earlier interview with Whiskey.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.
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