Surfing around Youtube tonight in the wee hours of the morning and I came across two very strange machinimas from SL that I thought were quite unusual compared to the stuff I normally see posted on Koinup and Youtube. This first video by Asmodea Damianois is just plain strange. In a good way (except for the green text at the end which I am not a fan of). The music is by Corrientes which I had never heard before I saw this. The sound fits the build and particles very well.
The second video below does not have the users in world name anywhere that I can find but I liked the way they blended the RL photographs with the SL footage. In his profile he shares:
"I am interested in challenging the relationship between analogue and digital systems, questioning the notions of materiality and exploring new possibilities of virtual reality media. My practice is engaged with the themes of digital and global systems and the glitches created when these systems meet with the analogue or the everyday.
Extracted film of my self portrait avatar from the virtual reality software Second Life is reinjected into the physical. Questioning materiality and the digital analogue relationship, the work exists on several planes in world where the glitches and performances take place, within a body of physical sculptures and as projections within a real world space which can then recreated by a live performer in real time."
Anyhow! Feel free to leave feedback and tell me about your favorite weird/unusual SL videos. I'd love to see what everyone else is watching. x.X
Hi there and thanks for posting my work! This work is part of my MFA exploring Second Life in contemporary art and centered around Second Life and death - in this instance my dead father who I rebuilt in SL for this piece...here's the blurb (!) You can check out how it was installed at georgieroxbysmith.ning.com
Best,
Georgie (AKA Diogenes Wylder)
Second Life machinima, rephotographed images, plinth, projector
av•a•tar/ˈavəˌtär/
Noun:
A manifestation of a deity in bodily form on earth
An incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user
In exploring digital identity and desire, I began thinking about Second Life and the people who utilise the technology as being in some kind of perpetual movement away from death: a denial as such. In Second Life, there is no ageing, no rotting of the flesh. Secondarily there exists an eternal life in these new technologies – from forever live Facebook memorials frozen in time, the gravesites and dead celebrity avatars that still walk this virtual land and the pun of the program name itself. Despite this, every time I log out of Second Life my avatar dies – dissolution of pixels disappearing into the black – only to be reborn, unchanged, at the click of a button. When I die, or kill my Second Life, she will remain a cyber-ghost, forever condemned to the black. Thirdly, when using digital identities we are somehow detached, separated by the false sense of security the safety of the screen gives us.
After working with a number of deceased doppelganger avatars roaming Second Life, dead daddy brings the idea of resurrecting the dead into a more personal space. Commencing with an intimate 3D rebuild of my own dead father, I used my self-portrait avatar to recreate lived or dreamed experiences from my childhood alongside him. Like the avatars themselves though, these experiences were hollow – it was always me operating my father’s avatar, making him speak and move like some sad puppet. Humorous and horrific at once.
Merging rephotographed real life images and Second Life footage of my father’s avatar in a 21st Century ‘exquisite corpse’, this work plays on death, desire, memory, loss and the materiality of the body.