Casja's column on the great SL photographers on Flickr is being moved to tomorrow, so it's a perfect time to feature some creative accounts on Primfeed, the new Second Life-centric social network. After we put out a call in search of Primfeed talent last week, Graeme Fairelander gave us a glorious list. Here's four of my favorites from that group of twenty-one.
To start, I can't resist a subversive send-up of the famous motorcycle skid from Akira, and Lying Cat (aka @blarn.boo) does one marvelously above. Much more on her feed in this vein, teeming with badass ladies of cyberpunk though she notes, images contain "No AI". (An increasingly frequent artists' note we're seeing on social media images and also machinima video.)
"Using Runway ML is actually straightforward," he tells me, explaining the platform/technical process and artistic approach. "You start by uploading an image and describing what you want to see happen in the video. Then you wait to see how the output aligns with your vision. Personally, I’d estimate my success rate is about 25%. I define success as the output effectively conveying the emotion or sensation I’m trying to communicate.
"To make the process more efficient, I take notes on the wording and syntax that lead to favorable results for my specific goals. I’m mindful of the carbon footprint of this technology, so I prioritize producing meaningful, impactful results. If the outputs don’t show promise quickly, I end the session and reconsider the prompts or the source image. It’s easy to approach the tool like a hammer and just keep hitting anything and everything, relying on it to generate something interesting without much progress towards the original vision.
"With my paintings, for example, I was inspired by one of the more thrilling sensations in Second Life: the feeling of hopping just off the ground, hovering, and zooming closely over the landscape. I wanted to capture that same energy in my real-life paintings, so I tailored my prompts in that direction.
"Once the painting is adjusted in Photoshop, I upload it to Runway, add a text prompt I think will work, and wait for the render. It’s a bit like baking a soufflé—you hope it rises but prepare for the possibility of collapse."
"The resulting output was exciting enough to explore further. It sparked a realization about AI’s potential in art. The experience reminded me of when I first started building with prims in Second Life: the thrill of exploring a new medium of expression with an incredibly low barrier to entry.
"For me it’s a precision thing. Creating felt more precise in Second Life than painting on a canvas. Creating with AI feels more vague than painting, blurry in a way that’s difficult to focus. But this is temporary. We’re in the Daguerreotype era of AI."
All of this, of course, brings up numerous thorny topics about the clash between traditional art and gen AI. Berg is one of the few people highly qualified in both fields to discuss it with nuance. (Along with his SL art, he's an academically trained painter; on the tech side, he was a designer at IBM and more recently, worked on a visualization project for NASA, among other coolness.)
So Berg has some solid back to consider, for instance, the future of traditional art in the AI era, especially as it evolves:
"Although we might view the introduction of AI media through the lens of anti-AI sentiment as many do, that very sentiment could instead be viewed as a renewed appreciation of handcrafted works," he argues. "Regardless of one’s opinion of AI art, it has people talking about art and human agency in ways we haven’t in a very long time.
"The shaman who told stories by the community fire as the shadows dances on the cave walls may have taken exception to written glyphs, wondering how the human experience would be retained on cold stones. Despite the spectacle of AI, these themes and concerns are ancient. I’d be more worried if we looked at AI and rejected it wholesale than having the courage to see what it means to be human in a world in constant tension with the technology we invent."
Does that imply he plans to use gen AI in his own "official" works of art? In other words, works he'd show to the general public in a gallery setting, or even a platform like SL?
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
SL On Camera is working on a project that has me completely intrigued. It’s all in her photo album “Life Is Like a Book.” This picture is #28, or more officially, “Life Is Like a Book (28).” It’s a lovely example of the Rule of Thirds, the tower of books bisected by an imaginary line one-third of the way from the left side of the picture. I don’t know why this is #28 because there are eleven pictures in the album, but that just makes it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice said in Wonderland
Speaking of Alice, check out this next pic, click here:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Duraya creates such intriguing pictures, I had to ask her how she does it. It’s clear she combines Second Life screenshots with her own sketches, but I was curious if she also used AI and other methods. She was kind enough to pick three of her pictures that illustrate her three main approaches to creating an image.
“I joined SL out of curiosity and for socializing and stayed mainly for the wide field of creativity it offers,” Duraya tells me. She started making screenshots in 2021 and over time, learned how to use all of SL’s tools. “So from playing with WindLights and shadows I gradually added various ways of post processing until finally taking up using AI too.”
Her first approach is pure Second Life with minor post-processing touch ups.
She starts by “taking pictures in SL and using WindLights that help me approach my idea of the result I seek, refining with different graphic programs – I usually use more than one. Either it stops here or I add some small gif, like a few strands of moving grass or a bird blinking its eyes and so on. It enlivens the image and as this is a virtual world we are less limited here in the way we express ourselves. I simply loved the forest and the dark and mysterious mood the WindLight added to it.”
For two more Duraya images and methods, click here:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
ℕadej Dae creates extraordinary images focusing on landscapes and avatar portraits. Her landscapes are close and intimate, a single tree, a few flowers or grasses, often in silhouette or in striking colors. “Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year” is a striking picture and perfectly captures the quote with all the leaves on one side turned to their autumn colors and then the bare branches of winter. The leaves are blowing all about swirling in the wind and fog.
For more of her extraordinary landscapes, click here:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
My first glance at Celestial Demon’s untitled picture of a man laying on the ground, I thought he was a boulder. But of course, a closer, slower look revealed a far more interesting picture. I love how he uses the body as landscape. It is his lighting that makes the body look so much more a part of the landscape, making the body more abstract. It’s reminiscent of Carl Warner’sBodyscapes, an amazing exploration of the geography of the human body and Celestial Demon’s is as well.
For more of Celestial Demon’s conceptual art, click here.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Flo’s“catch up” is a good exemplar of her work - modern, minimalist, and oh-so-graphic. She creates half-tones that seem fresh off the printing press, negative images, duotones, and so much more. With layers and filters, she takes a screenshot and turns it into neo-pop art.
As death approached, the artist’s son did an extraordinary thing: He began to build a place that would live on after his father, made with particles of light. That is to say, Sander Vos logged into Second Life, and made a gallery of his father’s work in digital 3D.
“I started building a 3D version of one of his drawings, ‘Villa Insight’ in Second Life, while he was ill, because building makes me calm in a way,” Sander tells me. “I had to think practical all the time, like: How on earth am I going to make this little ink bottle with prims? And I was busy with him at the same time, ‘cause it was all about him of course."
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Claire Vuissent’s depiction of Wuthering Heights character Catherine Linton is so magnificent, I didn’t have to glance at the title to know she was running “out on the wily, windy moors.” (Yes, I know this is the original but I prefer the cover.) Claire embodies the spirit of Cathy searching on the moors for Heathcliff. To be honest, I love the song, admired the book, but have always disliked Cathy and Heathcliff. They are not good people.
For more fantastic images from Claire Vuissent, click here:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Thus Yootz’ “Exodus to Air” is exquisite. There are multiple shots that have been layered to produce this otherworldly scene. It’s a distortion of reality that expresses emotion which suggests abstract expressionism. After all, it’s just some trees with clouds scudding in the distance. Add some screened flowers and some text in a different alphabet and all sorts of context becomes possible.
Is it a parallel multiverse or a dystopian future here with black chlorophyll and a red, red sun, or is it a mood? She chose “The Ballad of John Henry” by Joe Bonamassa to accompany the picture, a connection I don’t see, but I enjoy Bonamassa any day of the week. Unlike an ordinary landscape, this picture is not just beautiful, but also confounding. What does it mean?
