Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lying Cat is an artist after my own heart. She combines the high-tech/low-life aesthetic of cyberpunk with the simplicity and visual appeal of pop art. Think Philip K. Dick goes to The Factory. Her pictures have the disciplined simplicity of Andy Warhol, but Warhol’s cultural critique focused on the dangerous ennui of mass consumption. Dick’s cultural critique was more systemic and dystopic. There was no time for ennui. Warhol is the early warning bell and Dick is the evacuation siren. We’re in their transhumanist world now.
She describes her artistic process with Second Life screenshots in her Flickr bio this way: “I edit them for fun, typically with a cyberpunk theme. I use the pre-PBR Alchemy viewer for shots. The only post-processing my photos undergo is my own editing with Pixelmator.”
For more from Lying Cat, click here:
“Soft” exemplifies one of the magic tricks of cyberpunk, taking the neon bright colors we associate with arcades and midways, the innocent fun of childhood, and imbuing them with unease, a low-grade sense of menace. How can pink make one uneasy? It just does. The picture is so simple. A woman with her eyes closed, her face at rest. But then the simple act of blurring the top half and the use of that bright pink and now there is this feeling of menace that is so much a part of cyberpunk.
“Noise” gives us the cyberpunk aesthetic coupled with its cultural critique of late-stage capitalism. We have the executive type walking obliviously past the woman on the sidewalk. We see her framed by indifference, those fast-paced black suit pants kicking ass and taking names. She is crouched on the sidewalk, taking up the least possible space, in every way the opposite.
In the image description, she quotes Inspector Lakhani from the Netrunner game: “They cloak themselves in our shared heritage, in the wisdom of our religions, but make no mistake; they are terrorists and criminals." And of course, the executive and the woman might be saying the exact same thing about each other.
Lying Cat’s photostream is fun and thought-provoking. The majority of her pics have a quote or observation to make you think. She also has some stunning urban futurescapes from in-world. She also has a few fun videos with her cat.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.
All images copyright Lying Cat
Suggest images and Flickr feeds to Cajsa: Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.) To recommend the best in virtual world imagery, tag the picture with #CasjaNWN or tag Cajsa Lilliehook by adding her to the photo.
Cajsa Lilliehook is a sixteen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.
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