I confess to not understanding a word from the blog post over here …
Reblog> Zones, images & borders
I think that Fremont-Freeman’s installation is quite impressive 1) as an example of in-world art that is an absolute expression of a synthetic world, the media; and, 2) I think the artist invented an efficient representational infrastructure (the means through which the body/avatar discovers the show’s contents) that is a minimalist and intense expression of an intimidating social and political context But also, it is the fabrication of an elegant physical space that sucessfully vacillates between RL images and virtual world (im)materiality, to create a destabilizing perceptual, psychological environment.
I do however like the pretty pictures, and so should you …
Glib comments aside it does give me a chance to introduce a blog I’ve been meaning to link to for quite a while.
Metaverse Territories (http://metaverseterritories.com/)
Which is kind of mapping but with a virtual world art wonk to it. I have it in my RSS reading and it both entertains and amazes me. The line that keeps coming back to me and I repeat often to myself came from the above blog …
I don’t understand why you’d want to recreate the real world in a virtual world, when there are things you can do in a virtual world that aren’t possible in the real world. Why tie yourself to those constraints?
… now I’m pretty much 100% sure that I’m paraphrasing horribly and you’ll not find that phrase on the site anywhere, but there was something that makes me remember it that way. So therefore it’s my reality of the situation, no matter what their archives say :)
When applied to maps, this means that there’s a movement going on of improving maps so much, with layers of data, information, photos, audio and so on, to switch “The map is not the territory” to “The map is the territory” (which is near enough entirely true for virtual worlds). While all of this is very very clever (I’m thinking Google Earth here), it’s important not to forget to also be smart. We have the ability to do smart things with maps and ‘territory’ that we haven’t traditionally been able to do before.
I can’t say what those smart things are, because I’m just not smart enough! But that doesn’t stop me from trying anyway, which hopefully is all I need to be getting on with.
Getting back on track, links in and around the blog post that started it all off
SLATE – Border Art
John Craig Freeman
Imaging Place Second Life: The U.S./Mexico Border at Ars Virtua.
[Disclaimer: I'm not saying Google Earth isn't smart, because it is, I'm just saying that focusing on clever (data layers) isn't enough. We need 85% clever stuff and 15% smart, whatever the hell that means]
[Note to self: After reading an awful lot of 'cutting edge virtual art' stuff, writing style turns into scary non-sensical pseudo psychological rant ... that includes phrases such as 'pseudo psychological' ... normal service will be resumed soon]
Filed under: general
