77 Million Mildly Interesting Images
Brian Eno, a personal hero of mine, brought a project into SL a couple of weeks ago entitled 77 Million Paintings By Brian Eno: An Art Installation. I'm all for people pushing the aesthetic boundaries of Second Life and so was excited that legendary innovator Eno was bringing an installation to SL.
The project was described as follows:
Below are a couple of images from the exhibit. Note that the exhibit is only one screen, which visually morphs over time, so the following two images are just snapshots of different moments of time, these two obviously close together.
My reaction is in many ways anticipated by the description of the exhibit quoted above: "77 Million Paintings is a constantly evolving sound and imagescape." Certainly the abstract images were compelling, well textured compositions that occasionally threw in bits of recognizable photographs. The sound was actually a little bland for my taste, but it was a mellow techno groove that accompanied the image progression appropriately, if not compellingly.
But beyond the image screen, the exhibit was more or less an SL theatre, with seats arranged in rows facing a screen in a darkened room. I'm not crazy about watching video in SL, because there doesn't seem to be much point. I was mostly alone in the theatre (shocking, I know), though for about 1 of the 10 minutes I was there, another avatar was in there with me. He never said a word to me--possibly due to the cultural habit of shutting up (a) in the presence of art and (b) in darkened movie theatres.
So SL's two best features--3D and its social capabilities--are both neglected. Instead, a 2D animation is the focus, and the experience of it is largely solitary. Why not just create the thing in Java and throw it on an HTML page with a black background?
I believe that SL arts have a future (and even the beginnings of a present), but unfortunately the great Brian Eno has not advanced the cause with this installation.
The project was described as follows:
Conceived by Brian Eno as "visual music," his latest artwork, 77 Million Paintings is a constantly evolving sound and imagescape which continues his exploration into light as an artist's medium and the aesthetic possibilities of "generative software."
Below are a couple of images from the exhibit. Note that the exhibit is only one screen, which visually morphs over time, so the following two images are just snapshots of different moments of time, these two obviously close together.
My reaction is in many ways anticipated by the description of the exhibit quoted above: "77 Million Paintings is a constantly evolving sound and imagescape." Certainly the abstract images were compelling, well textured compositions that occasionally threw in bits of recognizable photographs. The sound was actually a little bland for my taste, but it was a mellow techno groove that accompanied the image progression appropriately, if not compellingly.
But beyond the image screen, the exhibit was more or less an SL theatre, with seats arranged in rows facing a screen in a darkened room. I'm not crazy about watching video in SL, because there doesn't seem to be much point. I was mostly alone in the theatre (shocking, I know), though for about 1 of the 10 minutes I was there, another avatar was in there with me. He never said a word to me--possibly due to the cultural habit of shutting up (a) in the presence of art and (b) in darkened movie theatres.
So SL's two best features--3D and its social capabilities--are both neglected. Instead, a 2D animation is the focus, and the experience of it is largely solitary. Why not just create the thing in Java and throw it on an HTML page with a black background?
I believe that SL arts have a future (and even the beginnings of a present), but unfortunately the great Brian Eno has not advanced the cause with this installation.
posted by Allecto Brissot at 10:24 PM
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