I headed back to LEA29 to see the completed art exhibit by FreeWee Ling before it disappears. You should go quickly. Set your graphics to high with the shadows turned to Sun, Moon & Projectors – as most of the exhibit is an exploration of projectors and the light and shadows they cast.
While I focused on the black and white elements, there is a lot of color in the installation – particularly from light projectors.
I wonder if the artists of Second Life® are chagrined to see their creative impulses and efforts reduced to a background for a fashion blogger’s photos. I also wonder about the relative support for art in SL. For retail events like Collabor88, there usually is a horde of people waiting for the clock to tick over to midnight, a collective “Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open!” prayer offered up to Commerce, the god of Second Life. Has anyone been unable to teleport into an art exhibit because the sim is full?
But Second Life is no different than real life. For many people, their choices in fashion and home decor are their forms of artistic expression and appreciation. Art for art’s sake is often a luxury – one that is disappearing from our schools and our cities. So, I do wonder about art in SL and the artists and how they feel. Is it wrong to use a piece of art as a backdrop? I don’t know. It might get people to go see the art, to appreciate the effort, the imagination, the inventiveness. Or maybe it just gets more people to go pose in front of it. Who knows?
I frequently check out all the LEA sims – one after another – to see what is new. I was struck by the constructs at LEA29 and how the lighting makes the visitor part of the art. This is not the best example, but for some reason every time I tried to take a picture from the other angle, I crashed. After three crashes, I decided that you all just need to go see for yourselves.
These pictures are from the central gallery. Asked about her exhibit, the artist FreeWee Ling said, “The central part of the sim is more or less a gallery space, but the rest is for a sort of uneasy paranoid landscape with the occasional alien showing up here and there. Like the little mobile cafe is currently manned by an alien chef bot.” The exhibit is not completely finished. She has a couple more days of work before it’s done, but you should go and soon because she only has the sim for the month of January. Don’t delay and miss this wonderful interplay of light, shadow and form.