Virtual New Year and Second Front

Hello, Second Front Fans!

Man Michinaga here - They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, "No, no, no..."
Let's see if I last as long as Any Winehouse.

I: Update -
Last Fall was really amazing, Second Front was in tremendous demand, we were globetrotting like mad. That's the source of the Chinese curse, I think "May you get what you wish for." By the end of December, the major performance twice a month had us mirroring great acts like Blondie and Metallica. Whew. Virtual rock stars are not unlike the tangible ones. No use in talking about who, what or how it happened, we took a break over the holidays.

It's funny, in the virtual, taking a normal holiday seems like taking this big hiatus. Strange how virtual worlds have a different sense of time than the physical world. But now that the holidays are over, there is a ton of things going on with SF, although many of them are not necessarily under the SF banner. Nothing top secret here.

Next week, Great Escape (Scott Kildall) and his partner Victoria Scott are showing their Imaginary Objects as part of the Mixed Realities show in Boston, Lizsolo just got a grant for some machinima, and I'm working on some small pieces and the backlog of machinima pieces from last fall, including Wrath of Kong, Russian Roulette, and more.

We are doing a piece on ZKM island for Director's Lounge in Berlin in February, and also another piece in Paris... More on that as they happen. In addition, there will be a small piece in Kansas City in March.

II: The Premature Reports of SF's Death, & SL Art as a whole.
Yes, there were rumors of our demise after Miami. Not so, but our focus and ways will be 'different' than last year. Imagine performances with 2-3 artists, unannounced interventions, traditional SF performances, as well as possibly fully "re-formed" forms of SF. It was just that it's hard to have a full-time first and second life...

Marco Manray and I were talking about the nature of SL art, and we seem to agree that the first era of SL art passed late last year. This is because most of us (Gaz, Marco, the Twangs, myself) have upcoming RL shows of SL work, signalling the bleed-over of SL work as contemporary art. The first Generation, who we called Virtualists, set the foundation for contemporary art in virtual worlds. We are in the second generation now, and it's a real challenge.

I believe there will be three main groups - the SLart crowd, who will focus on the SL community as a primary audience, the RL/SL artist who is the contemporary artist using SL as a tool, and the ones who try both. I tend to be inthe first category, but SF as a whole might be between 1 & 2...

3: SF in Europe
"I Want to Eat Fish & Chips", Tate Modern, January 15, 2008
Fau and Man got together in London (the REAL one) and went off to the Tate Modern to answer MTAA's sponsored piece in NYC "I Want to Make Tamales" by Elaine Tin Nyo. (http://www.tinjail.com/over_the_opening/2008/01) We invited friends involved with Furtherfield.org, and went up to the 7th floor, where we commenced to get tamales, and through the Wi-Fi, Gaz Babeli was on Losoculous in SL with many fish on sticks. The good-old-fashioned cod was amazing, as was the Dandelion and Burdock Soda...

"Hacking the Cage" with Ze Moo
When Man went to Amsterdam to speak (in part) on Second Front at the Video Vortex conference at the Institute for Networked Cultures, he suddenly wound up at Ze Moo's "Couple in the Cage" installation in the Amsterdam district which was also in the Video Vortex gallery installation in Amsterdam. Immediately, Patrick/Man grabbed a keyboard and invaded Columbia College's sim with the Male of the two, Ad Breda, The administrators were confused at Columbia, but witht he understanding this was a Second Front intervention, the alert was cancelled...

However, for the next two weeks, Man, Fau, GE, and Gaz visited the cage and even hacked their way inside to question the safety of the cage itself with anime figures, fire lizards, and robots.   Today, though, the cage was sold, and the two inhabitants were set free, now all we have to do is find them.

However, afterwards, Gaz and Fau interrogated Man from within a block of solid carbonite... Why this was done is still up to debate, but it seemed good at the moment.

Second Wall-ker Art Center at MART Museum

During the interrogation, an invite came from Pei Twang to come to an italian opening at the MART museum of art in SL. Since we have been working on a piece called the "Second Wall-ker Art Center", everyone donned 20 meter square walls and engaged in some "Dancing About Architecture".  Unfortunately, I don't know much Italian, but Gaz tells me that "bannato" is a very nice word...  Marco Manray liked the piece very much, and sent me some great images.

So, that's about it for now.  No mysteries, a few surprises, but some very human avatar-artists are going into the next generation of virtual performance art... 

I'll try to get more images up soon.