BREAKING NEWS: GAZIRA BABELI JOINS SECOND FRONT!

The official word is in: Gazira Babeli (perhaps the very first performance artist in Second Life) has joined Second Front as its 8th active member and as a formal replacement for Loveless Finsbury who has since disappeared in recent days!

Second Front is overjoyed with this new development as Gazira is a remarkable asset to our group's collective aim of achieving nothing short of pure excellence with regards to the conceptual and technical quality of our performances.

Here are some pictures from last night:

Here is a picture of Gazira offering Wirxli Flimflam and Great Escape a trademark pan of her fresh and delicious singing pizza!


After eating the pizza, Gazira escorts Wirxli Flimflam and Great Escape to her exclusive mobile studio in the sky where she spends many hours refining her classic codes and sensational scripts.

Here is Gazira displaying one of her "Stop Racism" protest signs. We might perform an Anti-Racism protest at some not-yet-disclosed venue. It is good to see that avatars of all colours can finally have a voice and resist the absurd forms of racism in Second Life.

Here is a picture of Gazira holding a protest sign that addresses a much more complicated politcal issue in Second Life - that of the massive influx if nOObie immigrants. Hmmm...if we protest in order to halt immigration of nOObie avatars, would that mean that we would not be able to recruit new and dynamic performance artists for Second Front? Is this the time to now cap our active membership at 8 avatars? ;-)

And here is a pic of the three of us taken by Great Escape. This picture was taken as proof to the other Second Front members that Gazira is truly an official member from this point onwards...

Second Front Promotional Photos

This evening we posed for our first ever group promotional photo. It took a really long time to get a good shot. Each of us kept knocking each other out of the frame - moving avatars around in 3D space is a lot less intuitive than moving your own body. Blinking in a conventional photograph translates to the avatar suddenly looking the other direction. After several tries, I got this one which is perfect.

In order from left to right: Wirxli Flimflam, Alice lborg, Man Michinaga, Tea Chenille, Great Escape, LizSolo, Tran Spire

The headshots were a lot easier and came out beautifully.

Lizsolo Mathilde

Great Escape

Second Front visits the zoo!

If you cannot see the above video embedded into this blog, click here.

Hey there Second Lifers and Second Front fans!

How about this for a spontaneous performance: 3 of us SF members meet up with Rain Coalcliff and invite her to Great Escape's place. We then tell her about the zoo next door so we show her this neighboring property.

Next thing you know, we are riding the animals! We just had to record some video before the world crashed on us! Almost immediately after we recorded this, the world did indeed crash and I think we can blame the 2D green vectorized inchworms for this ;-) The inchworms were so powerful (not many of them pictured in this video) they literally lagged the audio ;-)

Well, this video was taken from a pink-flamingo's eye view... Lizsolo quickly passes by in a black llama before passing out. Tran Spire is seen in the distance hallucinating a pink elephant that juggles exploding balls and Rain is also seen in the distance playing with the animals.

This was not an official Second Front performance I guess but....

I think this qualifies as a Second Front performance, don't you? ;-)
I think Rain qualifies as a performer, don't you? ;-)

The performers for this session were: Wirxli Flimflam (myself), Lizsolo Mathilde and Tran Spire.

This was such a spontaneous last-minute performance idea that we had no time to alert the other members for advance warning: Great Escape, Man Michinaga, Tea Chenille, Alise Iborg and Loveles Finsbury.

Anyways, we have an official group photo-shoot scheduled for Sunday so sooner or later, all of us will be documented at the same time :-)

BREAKING NEWS: SECOND FRONT's REHEARSAL "DANGER ROOM SESSION #1" HAS BEEN UPLOADED!

If you cannot see the above embedded video, click here.

Here is a video clip from Second Front's Danger Room Session at the Lichty-Michinaga Arts Center in Second Life. This session is a simultaneous rehearsal for two upcoming performances in 2007. One on the 5th at Ars Virtua and the other for Art's Birthday at the Western Front.

Those members in attendence for this rehearsal was:

Wirxli Flimflam
Tran Spire
Lizsolo Mathilde
Tea Chenille
Man Michinaga

Those members who will join us next time are:

Great Escape
Loveless Finsbury
Alise Iborg

Audience members in attendence during the rehearsal but not in this video clip are:

JC Fremont
Rain Coalcliff
Athena Meaterlinck

Stay tuned for more details!

BREAKING NEWS: Second Front goes shopping for performance props...

From left to right: 2 anonymous shoppers, Wirxli FlimFlam (myself) and Tran Spire
Tran Spire invited me to the Gnubie store in order to locate some props and other such objects for our upcoming Second Front performances...

...after scoring some freebie loot (and some Linden-Dollar store items), another Second Front member Lizsolo Mathilde met up with us upstairs to help clean up the inventory in this section... This is the first time we have seen Lizsolo in non-furry form... :-)


As we headed back downstairs to see if any new inventory had been uploaded to the shelves, another Second Front member Great Escape then appeared and between the 4 of us, we scavenged enough stuff to pass on to the other members of Second Front.

A note to our members, to get the free stuff from us, just make an appointment to meet any one of us in-world and we will provide you with copies of the bounty :-D
We will not disclose the contents of our looted bounty on this blog as we want to make the appearance of these objects and vehicles a surprise for our audience but all Second Front members will be briefed as to exactly what we have acquired...Second Front as a whole will be debriefed of our freeloaded contents via an encrypted bulk-mail transmission ;-)

Info Session with JC Fremont and Smokie Mountain in "Kamloops"

Hello Second Front members and fans!

Today, 3 of us (myself, Tran Spire and Man Michinaga) were invited by JC Fremont and Smokie Mountain to their shared studio space high up in the upper atmosphere where we could learn more about JC's installation plans for Ars Virtua on January 05, 2007 that we are also taking part in.

Here are some pix below with some brief captions...

From Left to Right: Smokie Mountain, JC Fremont, Wirxli Flimflam (myself) and Tran Spire.

So, after much difficulty figuring out how to land smoothly, we detached our wings in order to land on this otherworldly pad. I guess flying is hard in near-zero gravity ;-) Anyways, you can see that JC has been working on quite a few image-orbs...it seems to be his trademark as an avatar artist. In one of the orbs here we can see what looks like a Minuteman-style border guard.

As mentioned in the posting below, JC's theme is "borders" or "imaging Place" but I am glad to see that his concept at least visually, seems quite open to performative and collaborative interpretation..I am glad we as a group have a few weeks to prepare :-)

So, after a few minutes, Man Michinaga joined us in the Kamloops section of JC's world for a movie-infomercial for JC's border project, "Imaging Place". The seats were all ready for us and all we needed to do was sit down and render the movie-screen itself! How about "Imaging Cinema"? Heh heh... ;-) Those hovering icon symbols with the "i" represent clickable information about the various psychogeographical nodes being referenced within the confines of JC's world...In this way, we can imagine also the content and context behind the space and not just having to "image" it visually. See those thin red lines? Those are tightropes where one can walk up and down them (for all you non-pedestrians in Second Life, note the traffic signs that have the "Walk" pictogram....hint hint).

Ok, the movie is about to start! Have we all scored ourselves a seat? It certainly appears that we are ready (for the movie to render and...) to roll!


Here is what a segment of the movie looks like...I should have recorded a video-clip of it, oh well! Besides, JC offered to bring me in here again to check it all out...I was in a bit of a rush as my 1st life was catching up with me today...sigh! I initially thought that the guy in this movie was in fact JC's RL self but it turns out that this guy is someone else who has an avvie in Second Life.

Here is another segment of this movie...I think the whole thing ran for about 5 minutes(?) It looks like JC likes to use images from Google Earth for reference. Hmmmm...is it me or is that a frozen water faucet?

You can see that Man Michinaga was the first to figure out how to climb the red-tightropes up to a higher plane of existence...I guess this must have been the magnetic North Pole as there are plenty of reindeers on this higher altitude! I was probably the slowest to figure out how to walk up these ropes..I did not notice the walk sign and tried clicking on them with my mouse....duh! Well, we managed to join him up there for a better view...

..and here we are getting a better sense of the variety of image content that JC embodies in his floating orbs.

So, stay tuned for more info-session postings and I highly suggest that the Second Front members who were not able to attend to have a closer look at some of the hyperlinks in this posting..especially, the one that links to JC's Imaging Place musings...I think we are on the right-track in terms of what we have been discussing with our collaborative and top-secret bulk-mail transmissions.

For all you Second Front fans out there...there are more postings to read!

Formal Performance Request from Ars Virtua!

Rubaiyat Shatner (the guy with no hair) is the curator of Ars Virtua and has just offered Second Front an opportunity to formally perform at JC Fremont's opening (the guy with really tall hair or is it a magic hat?) on Janurary 05, 2007. At this time, we are currently considering Shatner's offer but it certainly sounds promising and exciting! JC's opening is all about the border between the U.S. and Mexico (what about Canada? heh heh) and so if we decide to perform formally, we were encouraged to consider this theme. JC himself and Rain Coalcliff (the gal without the turqoise hair - that is Tran Spire's new look...heh heh) seemed to be totally into the idea...let me show you visually what JC is contributing...

So, JC is rezzing landscape orbs - the scenery is from border-regions such as Tijuana and places like that. The other avatar you see with the raven-dark hair is Xox Voyager who is setting up some Aboriginal territories in Cyberspace! I wonder what she thinks of this whole border-nation concept?

As you can see, JC is going to be rezzing at least two orbs if not many more...
Well, stay tuned for the possibility of Second Front agreeing to formally perform in collaboration with JC and Ars Virtua! Also, Shatner offered Second Front to visit his aesthetic development training compound where he can show us some classified performance techniques...you will see what I mean in our up and coming performances ;-)

Welcome from Great Escape

My Introduction

I'm really happy to be accepted as the 7th official member of Second Front this week. I'm Great Escape and feel like I've found 'my people' after 6 months of twiddling around the Second Life world in solo mode. I'm not sure what performances are next in the works, but stay tuned as we explore the various ways to play with the social rules in this new frontier.


Conceptual Art Reenactments in Second Life

For the last couple of months, I've been doing various reenactments of famous conceptual art performances in Second Life and generating large-scale prints from these. This is an extract from "Leap Into The Void", based on a photograph by notorious conceptual artist Yves Klein. These images are all part of my Paradise Ahead series.

Stoked About Second Front

The Animal In Me

Greetings! I am Liz Solo and am totally stoked at becoming a new member of the Second Front. May I introduce my avatar - Lizsolo Mathilde. When creating her I was interested and intrigued by the animal identity offered to me by the free Wolf's outfit, being generally interested in themes involving the interaction and relationship between technology and nature. When choosing this identity I was blissfully unaware that I would then be identified by others in Second Life as a "Furry". I have been curious about how people respond to my "Furry" identity and am also working with a non "Furry" avatar named Lill Loll to compare notes on how people perceive and interact with each of us. I will introduce Lill Loll a little later..

In the above pic I am wearing a new set of wings given to me and all Second Front members by the very generous and stylish SF Member Great Escape. We had a fine time visiting his land at Stone Pike. I was super excited to find that there were many animals there, Great Escape being right next door to a zoo keeper. I took some time to get to know them. Here I am getting a ride from a friendly Killer Whale:



After our daring performance piece at the SL Reuters Building (see posts below) I took some time to try out my new wings. They make me fly super fast. Here I am pondering the face of the Moon:



Can't wait for the next performance with Second Front.

BREAKING NEWS: 2nd OFFICIAL SECOND FRONT PERFORMANCE A SUCCESS!

BREAKING NEWS: SECOND FRONT HAS JUST COMPLETED THEIR SECOND BREAKING NEWS PERFORMANCE AT THE REUTERS HQ IN SECOND LIFE!

HERE IS THE FIRST VIDEO ARCHIVE OF THE EVENT:


Note: if you do not see this video embedded into this blog, click here.

...AND FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF ONE OF THE OTHER PERFORMANCE ARTISTS, HERE IS A VIDEO (NO AUDIO) FROM GREAT ESCAPE:

Note: If you cannot see any video embedded into this blog, click here.


RELIABLE WITNESSES HAVE CONFIRMED AT LEAST THESE PARTICIPANTS IN THE PERFORMANCE: WIRXLI FLIMFLAM, TEA CHENILLE, GREAT ESCAPE, MAN MICHINAGA, LIZSOLO MATHILDE, TRAN SPIRE AND LOVELESS FINSBURY. AN ADDITIONAL VIDEO CLIP AND OTHER EXCLUSIVE SNAPSHOTS WILL BE POSTED IN THE COMING DAYS...STAY TUNED FOR THE DEVELOPING STORY AND VISIT THE VERY FIRST SNAPSHOT ARCHIVES BLOGGED SO FAR...

BREAKING NEWS: SECOND FRONT HAD ONE DEDICATED AUDIENCE MEMBER FOR THIS PERFORMANCE AT REUTERS - MORGAINE CORONET...STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS....

MY GRANDE ENTRANCE

ME SITTING OUTSIDE OF THE REUTERS BUILDING

Hello Everyone,

YAY! I finally got my look together, although I'm still trying to find a decent pair of boots. I guess I'll be fashionably barefoot until that happens. I imagine I’ll be changing the details my image a few times before I’m satisfied. Can anyone recommend a good place to buy hardcore footwear?

I'm very excited to be a part of this performance group and I'm ready to get the ball rolling. Rumour has it that we'll be creating momentary sculptures for one of our future performances (after a few more guerilla appearances at Reuters). Who knows? Anything could happen.

Love and Kisses
T-


ME AND WIRXLI

Tran Spire

hi bloggers,

Tran Spire here checking in with the group to touch down and clock some bytes. The peformance the other day was pretty trippy. Documentation trials aside, some weird stuff was ghosting different members of the group. I have added a Vision Portrait over on my blog, one of the many clickity-glitches to occur.

As we were waiting to begin our first performance as Second Front we could sense something was in the code. Here are a couple of images that captured Wirxli FlimFlam caught between forms.





Strange.


Tran Spire

Man Michinaga here, man.

Amazing that things are off the ground. Well when you're an artist, it is always amazing. For anyone who might be interested, as a virtual artist, It's interesting to consider the relationship between my Real Life and my Flesh-Avatar in my Second Physical Life. He (unfortunate that it has to have a fixed gender, unlike me) has flesh-points in Chicago, New York and New Orleans, and he is sometimes an artist, too!

Interesting.

I love to watch the day to day functioning of my Flesh-Avatar when I'm not Rezzed in the world, and quite grateful that there has been a world in the Material for us here in Second Front to play with.

My best to all of you, polygonal or material, and may you enjoy our work at Second Front.

BREAKING NEWS: 1st SECOND FRONT PERFORMANCE HAS JUST OCCURRED!

* BREAKING NEWS: 3 MEMBERS OF THE AVATAR PERFORMANCE ART GROUP "SECOND FRONT" SPOTTED OUTSIDE OF THE REUTERS BUILDING IN SECOND LIFE! DETAILS TO FOLLOW...

Seated from left to right: Man Michinaga, Wirxli Flimflam and Tran Spire.

* BREAKING NEWS: OTHER MEMBERS OF THE AVATAR PERFORMANCE ART GROUP, TEA CHENILLE AND ALISE-IBORG ARE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN WITHIN THE VICINITY OF THE REUTERS COMPLEX. MORE DETAILS AS THEY ARRIVE...

* EXCLUSIVE REPORT: ANOTHER PHOTO HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED SHOWING THE 3 MEMBERS OF SECOND FRONT LOOKING SUSPICIOUS OUTSIDE OF THE REUTERS OFFICE. PURPOSE OF VISIT IS UNKNOWN BUT RELIABLE WITNESSES CLAIM THAT THEY HAVE BEEN SITTING ON A PARK BENCH NEAR THE FOUNTAIN OUTSIDE THE REUTERS OFFICE FOR SOME TIME . DETAILS COMING SOON...

*DEVELOPING STORY: THE AVATAR PERFORMANCE ART GROUP CALLED "SECOND FRONT" APPEAR TO HAVE CHOSEN REUTERS AS THEIR VERY FIRST PERFORMANCE VENUE! DETAILS WILL FOLLOW...

* DEVELOPING STORY: RELIABLE SOURCES HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THE AVATAR PERFORMANCE ART GROUP "SECOND FRONT" HAVE ENTERED THE REUTERS BUREAU OFFICE IN SECOND LIFE AND HAVE OCCUPIED THE MAIN LOBBY!

* JUST IN: WIRXLI FLIMFLAM, A MEMBER OF THE PERFORMANCE ART GROUP "SECOND LIFE" HAS BEEN OVERHEARD SAYING THAT THEIR ATTEMPT TO VIDEO-DOCUMENT THIS LANDMARK PERFORMANCE HAS FAILED!

* BREAKING NEWS: TERRORIST GROUP AL-QAEDA BELIEVED TO BE BEHIND SECOND FRONT'S FOILED VIDEO-DOCUMENTATION ATTEMPT! DETAILS TO FOLLOW...

* BREAKING NEWS: MAN MICHINAGA, MEMBER OF PERFORMANCE ART GROUP "SECOND FRONT" MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARES IN MID-HEADLINE READING PERFORMANCE. NO DETAILS GIVEN YET ON HIS SO-CALLED "SECRET MISSION". DETAILS EXPECTED SOON...

* DEVELOPING STORY: ALLEGATIONS HAS JUST BEEN RAISED THAT SADDAM HUSSEIN WAS ALSO BEHIND FOILED VIDEO-DOCUMENTATION PLOT. NO RELIABLE SOURCE OUTSIDE OF SECOND FRONT HAS YET BEEN VERIFIED. STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS...

* BREAKING NEWS: SECOND FRONT OFFICIALLY ENDS THEIR VERY FIRST PERFORMANCE. TRAN SPIRE, MEMBER OF PERFORMANCE ART GROUP "SECOND FRONT" HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS SAYING THAT THEY WILL BE BACK SOON TO PERFORM AGAIN IN THE REUTERS OFFICE...DEVELOPING STORY ON ITS WAY...

Introducing Alise-Iborg!

Greetings Second Front members,
I am officially introducing myself as Alise-Iborg. I've spent the last two hours trying on different performance names and found one that I love. Alise is Czech for Alice which references Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (a treasured book of mine and I thought the Looking Glass metaphor is a perfect fit for entering new worlds, in this case, my new Second Life!) and Jeff Noon's Automated Alice (who has a cyborg twin named Celia but I like Alice better -). ALICE is also an acronym for 'Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity" a free natural langage artificial intelligence chat robot!

Anyway, I'm really excited about the creative possibilities of our new performance group and can't wait to join in on the performances. For now, I'm finishing up a semester at the Emily Carr Institute of Art, Design and Media where I am studying intermedia arts and installing a show in their Media Gallery. But I hope to have Alise-Iborg born and flying around in SL by the New Year.

As some of you already know, I have offered to curate the group's first performance series, 'Breaking News". I plan on submitting writings about the performances not only for our blog but also for SLATE and other online and offline publications.

Anyone have any ideas as to what publications/online mags would be a good fit, please let me know. I'm thinking that the writings can contextualize the work within post-humanist frameworks of materiality and embodiment especially in terms of improvisational acts. This will also give us promo to both in and out world audiences. Maybe this will help us secure a grant to buy our own island for that artist commune ;-)

I look forward to meeting all of you in SL but I guess for now, we can blog each other here.

Thanks Wirxli and Tran for setting up this blog and for scouting out our first location!

Alise-Iborg

Screenshots from the planning phase of our 1st Performance!

Here is a pic of Second Front members, Tran Spire (left) and Wirxli Flimflam (right) meeting in the main lobby of the Reuters building in Second Life to discuss plans for the first Second Front performance series. This provocative pic in the background evokes a known New Media project from the history of interactive digital art (Douglas Davis' Terror and beauty project from 2002).

Douglas Davis, "Kill Not Anyone" (2002).


Other Second Front members will be taking part in this performance series at Reuters.

Alise Iborg has agreed to curate and write about this performance series.

Other participants will include Man Michinaga and Tea Chenille.


...and here is another angle of the same lobby. This is where we formulated most of our classified performance ideas in the more private IM chat mode.

Here we are exploring one of the stairwells for inspiration. We wanted to know what the space looked like in its entirety so we can ensure that our research allows all Second Front performances to be truly site-specific.

Hmmm... "Tecology" might make a great title for a future Second Front performance series...maybe "T-ecology"? I know that Tran Spire took some postcard shots of us using different angles of our seat position here...maybe new words will form...

Here is another angle that I took but no profound new word combos emerged here. I just wanted to get a close-up of Tran Spire's enigmatic face! Do I see a vacant expression on his face there or is it just his eyes? ;-)

...and here we are exploring the courtyard of the Reuters complex. Perhaps one of the performances in the 1st series will take place outside?

...here we are eavesdropping on a conversation between what appears to be two business executives. One is named Alan Atlanta and is an editor for the In-World News. He claims he has worked for Ted Turner at CNN.

Well bloggers, we (Second Front) will be performing our first event in the series very soon..maybe as early as tomorrow afternoon. Please refresh this blog on a regular basis for more updates, breaking news and developing stories.

Cheerios,

Wirxli Flimflam