Minotaure Haledol Dreams...Behind The Scenes...

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This video of edited raw "rehearsal" and "performance" footage is by the Curator of the Museo del Metaverso, Roxelo Babenco. This video is fascinating in that it shows the blOOpers, glitches and sim crashes. What is the point of a live performance without these special features? ;-)

Hey there Minotauring Marble-dumpers, Padded Cellmates and Hipster Haledolts!

Finally, we have had enough time to reflect at "length" about our most recent performance that took place at Dorkbot Paris called "Haledol Dreams of The Minotaure".

We were successful with our attempts to blur the once-rigid events known as "rehearsal" and "official performance" into one epic and overblown theatrical Gesamtkunstwerk escapade - an insane one, at that!

Here is a basic list of the movements for this performance....This was originally drafted by Fau Ferdinand and Bibbe Oh and revised by the rest of Second Front...

I - "Rehearsal"
This was intended to confuse the audience and question the borderlines where formal theater and "just playing around" blur. Since all of Second Life is BOTH a "rehearsal" and a "performance" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we thought we would have a movement that would reflect this.

II - "Part 1"

As the audience arrives and takes their seats in the padded room, the Nurses are already in place in yellow plastic chairs and the patients roam around the space playing their (dancing and wailing) animations. In addition to a selection of anims, each Patient has a wall they may attach as a proximity reaction when another avatar is perceived to be too close. When the Nurses spy a behavior they do not like, they react by shooting a hypodermic (enema sized needle) at the offending patient(s).

III - "Part 2"

Fau/Minotaure freaks out at a Nurse and is shot with a hypodermic and is rendered semi-conscious. Great Escape as Theseus approaches and offers Fau/Mino a tango. They dance.
The patients continue to improvise--but without the use of walls.

NO SMOKING

YOU WILL BE TIED TODAY

Fau/Minotaure is furious!

IV - "Part 3"

Fau counter-attacks by charging with a goring animation.

Liz (one of the nurses) shoots many syringes into Fau/Mino as she is charging--Fau falls. The inmates go out of control...

THE END

This event was curated by Evo Szuyuan and hosted at La Cantine Numerique in Paris in RL. If you do not believe this actually happened, just put on a beret to look like an Artiste and head down to:
151 rue Montmartre, dans le Passage des Panoramas, Paris
Métro Grands Boulevards
...and knock 536 times and ask for documentation from whomever is still watching re-runs of this momentous and historic event.

Speaking of re-runs, here are some photos from this performance...

Photo by Great Escape. This is the official entrance to the building. As you can see, this was a well postered event...

Photo by Great Escape. Here is a pic of Fau Ferdinand getting ready to perform as the Minotaure.

Here is Wirxli (yes, the blogger of this post) in the foreground with the audience and other Second Fronters including: Aliseiborg Zhaoying, Great Escape and Fau Ferdinand..Osprey Therian is one of the audience avatars who recorded a very classy video...

Here is Wirxli posing with the sexxxy nurses Lizsolo Mathilde and Chi5 Shenzhou.

Photo by Great Escape. Here is a pic of Tran Spire with his competing Jesus robe as well as further appearances by Alise, Liz, Chi5, Wirxli (sitting down) and Theseus aka. Great Escape...

Here is a kinky pic of Liz and Chi5 sitting by themselves with enema-sized needles.

Photo by Great Escape. Here is a close-up pic of Chi5 with a syringe...

Photo by Great Escape. Here is another action shot of Liz, Great Escape/Theseus and Chi5.

Here we can see the direct Jesus Idol competition between the equally delusional Wirxli and Tran as competing Jesus-freaks. The brand new Second Fronter Bibbe Oh is also seen in this pic. She was involved in many awesome pose-actions!

Here is Theseus (GE) chasing after the minotaur with Gog Mannonen also doing an impromptu intervention...In this instance, we have text that is calling out the performance "goo" that we were able to control in realtime...Quite honestly, this kind of text looks like Jim Morrison's poetry though...heheheheheh! ;-)

Here is a pic of Fau the Minotaure hiding behind the seats, Alise with her Nestorian tablet, GE/Theseus and Wirxli...

Once again, here is a great action shot of Bibbe flying through the air... In addition, we have Fau, Wirxli, Alise, Bibbe, Liz, Tran, and Chi5 ensuring that the spirit the "rehearsal" is still in effect...

Here is Wirxli (me) officially announcing the rehearsal, at last..sigh! What was funny is that we had a rehearsal for our official rehearsal...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! O, The Agony! ;-)

What is a good performance without some pyrotechnics and other rock'n'roll atmospherics? We managed to rez some virtual dry ice that hovered mere pixels above the padded cell's floor...

Here we have Rep Zabaleta from Dorkbot Paris having a puff of some leftover virtual dry ice pixels while we rez the crosses...

In order to guarantee multiple readings of our performance, we had ensured that there would be enough white noise on the video screen for spontaneous ITCs... On another note, Odyssey Island's curator Sugar Seville was also in the audience...

Photo by Tran Spire. Here is another angle of the white noise. The ensuing asylum cacophony still haunts both the space and the audience.

It looks like Tran has taken full messianic control of the white noise on the screen...well.... at least he believes he is channeling the 10 Commandments there, anyway... Alise is also in this photo as is an Easter rabbit (it was Easter Friday after all) and the official Dorkbot poster managed to make a special cameo appearance. Ok ok, posters do not have a choice like avatars do...they are forced to make an appearance since they are (usually) inanimate objects...unless they are goo-jects ;-)

This photo depicts an epic battle between GE and Fau... This battle is quite epic since many additional Second Fronters are involved in the action (if you can call it that). For example, Tran is on the floor writhing in messianic ecstacy while Nick Rhodes (Orange Island Curator) and assorted VIPs from the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse including the Evo Szuyuan the event's curator can also be seen in the audience...

Theseus takes a swipe at the Minotaure while Tran reaches his Christian climax when he passionately exclaims "I HAVE FALLEN...AND I CAN'T GET UP"...

This picture is very compositionally classical in that we see more action on the ground and a bigger audience for the colesseum slaying...

"WHEN I AM SEDATED, I HAVE DELUSIONS THAT THIS IS A THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE..." - Wirxli FLimflam. Great Escape looks wounded but this might just be for...er... theatrical effect. People are not meant to be wounded during the "rehearsal", right? ;-) .. Maybe some of the audience members were beginning to clue in that the official performance was about to begin as Paco Mariani found his own nosebleed seat... Also, one of the Dorkbots was doing a pole dance in anticipation of the grand finale to come... I mentioned VIPs earlier and one prominent one in the audience was Finally Outlander who lectured about his new film VolaVola earlier in the day....

Photo by Tran Spire. Here is a rather gratuitous angle showing the wounded Great Escape plus the gang looking insane as usual.

Photo by Tran Spire. Here is a decent pic of Wirxli (me) grabbing one of the audience member's body by her head like a marionette...Is this what the Second Fronter Gazira Babeli meant when she thought Second Life reminder her of some kind of twisted puppet show?

Photo by Tran Spire. Once again, here is another zany shot of Second Front.

This photo was taken due to the nice ambient lighting of the padded cell. One audience member looks like Gaz...is this Osprey?

Here is an amusing audience shot that also shows Great Escape with Fau about 2 tango.... Second Fronter VIP, Blued Food is also out of rehab and back in the audience...

Photo by Great Escape. It took awhile before the crowd realized that we were still "rehearsing"....hee hee! The assembled crowd began to grow which was all we needed to prolong the theatrical chaos. In this photo Tran, Alise, Fau/GE (tango-ing), Wirxli (me) and Bibbe are visible...

Photo by Great Escape. Here are some speech balloons that we rezzed when we said the magic word, "rise". Liz and Tran are also moonlighting in this pic.

Photo by Great Escape. GIMME SHOCK AND AWE TREATMENT! Here are some swarming Purpleized Iraqi flags and a speech balloon that says "Gimme Shock Treatment!" We can see more cameos from Alise, Wirxli and even Fau's bum is in this pic! Are you looking for an exit strategy at this point? ;-)

Photo by Great Escape. SHOCK AND AWWWWWWWWEEEE! Here is another tender tango pic....

Photo by Great Escape. This pic is so extremely tender, you can even see Great Escape's facial details...talk about a close shave, eh?

Photo by Great Escape. Fau looks fay in this very touching tango.

Photo by Great Escape. AWWWWW(EEEE), they must be like, in love or something! ;-)

Photo by Great Escape. Are you sick of the sentimental tango pix yet? LOL!

Photo by Great Escape.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just when you thought you had seen the last tango pic... ;-)


Photo by Great Escape (naturally). Here is a solo pic of Great Escape as Theseus..Check out those rippling pex!

Here is a close up of Wirxli (me) with my token cross (I always fall back on a crutch such as a cross when I have nothing else to do in the performance). This pic can also be seen as an action shot of Great Escape... This is definitely a climax moment and not a blOOper as Fau is most certainly getting enema from Chi5 at this time... On a un-related note, I think everyone was in agreement that day that Samara Cioc had an AMAZING fire-extinguisher on her leg.

This one last archive pic from our behind-the-scenes footage includes a close up of Alise and Wirxli (me) as well as Liz, Fau, Tran and Bibbe...

Thanks for being patient and waiting for this posted equivalent of a "bonus feature" to arrive onto this blog! Please stay tuned for our up and coming performance premiering on April 14th, 2008 titled "Grand Theft Avatar 3, Heist City"...

Economie 0 - Upgrade! Paris....

This pic was taken at the beginning of the artist talk for Upgrade Paris. The official website for the streaming live video of the event is listed right on the picture itself.

Hey there Parisian Upgraders, Senegalese Ultra-Nationalists, and bribed critics!

The intro pic above gives you the impression that our artist talk at Upgrade Paris went smoothly and on time but actually for the first part of the day, we were unsure if we had schedule at the correct time! There was alot of confusion between AM and PM and SLT (Second Life Time/Pacific) time zones. Were we supposed to meet at 5 PM or 5AM and was it in France's local time zone or in SLT? One of the curators, Toto Donat had troubles signing on apparenty, so we could not find her online...we figured that maybe we had already missed our talk like 12 hours ago...sigh! There was no sign of any curator nor any other speaker (including a bunch of curators and artists from Senegal who were scheduled before us).

It was a good thing that we killed some time at Club Neptune just in case one of the curators would sign on and tell us what was happening. Fortunately, co-curator Karolwojtyla Sobocinski signed into SL in the nick of time and apologized for being late.

Here is a pic of us dancing at Club Neptune while waiting for the curator to show up...

What better way to wait for a curator and discuss future shows than to dance your ass off?

Waiting for the curator(s) to arrive was a good idea because we managed to talk alot about our earlier performances and they even publically acknowledged that we are now an "established institution"...wow! I guess it has been awhile since we formed in late 2006!

During the talk, it was slightly confusing as to exactly what was happening in Paris. There were two people in RL controlling Karol's SL avatar (Marika and Karol, one guesses) and they were also fiddling with the video camera in Paris which we could not see...in fact, our SL audience only consisted of one avatar but that one avatar was a camera from which an indeterminate number of RL audience members were checking us out. Karol tried to keep us on topic with regards to the ways in which SL's economy influences our performance. We bribed Karol behind the scenes until he/she was content with our answer ;-) But basically, we talked about squatting abandoned corporate headquarters, delivering pizza for free, unintentionally interrupting stock market transactions, bribing critics and hiring bodyguards for disproportionate prices. No one in their right mind would actually think we were really inspired by something as banal as the economy, right? Heheheheheh...Speaking of sponsorship to stimulate the economy, it was great to see Ars Virtua's logo represented at the venue.

Wow! Look at that detailed Google Map! What is that doing on the floor? It does not look like Wall Street at all! ;-) Ok ok, actually it is a map of Beijing...The artist talk was held on the site of JC Fremont's installation, Imaging Beijing. As for the event itself, it was around this time that we were begging Karol (or perhaps Toto/Marika Dermineur if she happened to be behind the avvie) to get the audience to ask us some questions because we were running out of anything relevant to say...usually, it only takes us a total of 2 minutes before we give up on talking about anything and feel the compulsion to launch some rockets and/or explode over and over again! We were unusually patient and self-disciplined today...we even kept our clothes on...phew!

Bibbe Oh was finally able to join us to wrap up the Q&A session with Upgrade Paris...She left the Club Neptune earlier at a time when we all felt that we were too late for our own talk but then Bibbe heeded a desperate IM from us to rejoin the fray and answer a concluding question about the new European taxation system in Second Life...it did not seem to matter though since only one of us in attendence was living in Europe.

Second Wall-ker Art Center....

"Second Wall-ker Art Center or Dancing About Architecture" (ZKM Island and Director's Lounge, Berlin 2008). Ok, this snapshot was taken just when co-performer Man Michinaga was announcing the concept and context behind our dancing architecture performance. Because we announced all this, it comes as quite a surprise that some bloggers felt "upset" by our performance because they felt griefed by our dancing walls but it was not as if we did not tell people in advance what we were up to and it was OUR performance so there was nothing to grief. People were there to be a part of that performance so we did nothing out of context. When things are live, nothing can be predictable though...even after the context has been announced so when someone is invited to a Second Front performance, they need a little disclaimer typed out for them in order for them to understand what they are getting into. Anyway on another note, to prove that this event happened in realtime, you will notice that there was a tiny typo that says "mueum" rather than "museum"..If this was just a machinima film, you would see everything typo-corrected to look SLick so there you are...that was a screenshot live as it happened.

Hey there Blue Maomarines, Blue Berliners, ZKM-heads and wispy wallflowers!

Yes, the rumour is true! Second Front has managed to escape from rehab and have returned to creating new performance art classics in Second Life!

Second Front's performance last week called "Second Wall-ker Art Center - Dancing about Architecture" was a smash hit (hopefully the attendees did not get too sore from the smash hit...sigh)! This performance was actually a sequel to the original "Second Wall-ker Art Center" performance at the MART Museum.

Second Front with the curatorial help of Olga Wunderlich at the Director's Lounge and the ZKM Staff ensured that the topography of virtual space has been restored to its most pure and natural state - that of a completely segregated ghetto of walled land-plots....heheheheheheheheh! This event was part of the Berlinale in...yes! In Berlin!

We performed as an intermission of sorts for some other performance that had something to do with boxing philosophers or something somewhat profound like that...

Well, there will be a video all about it very soon so for now, this is just a preliminary summary of what happened... In the meantime, here are some more photos for you...

Speaking of realtime typos, this may have been a typo and/or an example of clever wit but it is quite interesting to hear Bobzilla Carnell say "hell all" when the walls began to dance at a frenzied pace. This picture was taken to show the title-text clearly and also to focus on the fine detail of one of the walls (bricks, mortal and all).

Here is a pic of co-performer Bibbe Oh getting "floored" by pressing the "h" key (h = horizontal)... Maybe people thought we were griefing them because some people felt as if they were trapped in the walls... This claustrophobic sensation should have only been temporary though unless they also had their eyes glued to that groovy disco Op Art floor...WHOA!


Bibbe was not the only person hooked on "h". Co-performer Great Escape enjoyed assuming the horizontal position many times over... Walled floors like this look really great when acting as a counter-balance to the Blue Mao ceiling tiles...time for a cultural revolution, comrades!

Here is AliseIborg Zhaoying showing off her new Post-Rehab look, that of an elliptical (or is it ecliptical?) doll-face....heheheheh...

Here is an aerial view of Alise showing the viewer how it is easy to peel back the veil of SLebrity rehabilitation. We can also see Tran Spire's supersized burger in the background...Was it a Quarter Waller? Heheheheheh.

This captured quote from SaveMe Oh is worth keeping on our blog-wall..."I will not hang my Rembrandt in this museum"....heheheheheheh. What about a kinetic Rembrandt? On a more formalistic note, this pic is a good illustration of how the speech bubbles were occasionally cropped into pieces by the imposing walls...

This pic was taken to show off the hamburger one of the many props used to show our pre-occupation with the aesthetics of prop-art...heheheheheheh.

This pic was taken to show aspects of the interface. For example, one of the dance moves is there for you in plain view... The fastdance2 move was one designed by Odyssey's Curator, Sugar Seville for the purpose of turning the entire audience into a bunch of puritan wallflowers, relatively speaking. This pic was also taken to once again brag about the amazing decor on Locusolus... How often do you get to see a palm tree juxtaposed next to an action carpet (Pollock style) close up outside of Las Vegas? I wonder if Gumnosophistai Nurmi was feeling somewhat Californian when he declared this architectural opus as "Radical Architecture!"?

How about this for a jazzy wall configuration? Maybe inspired by the sexiness of this wonderwall ensemble, Ze Moo felt compelled to say: "where are the orgy pose walls?"

If you look closely, you can see one of the ZKM Island Curators, Aristide Zabelin. Once again, Second Front have made a very aesthetically pleasing configuration. That faceball on the right is reminiscent of Tony Oursler's RL work, wouldn't you agree? I think you can see why we like to divide the seemingly open-ended virtual space using walls, right? The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse's instrument builder, Bingo Onomatopoeia had the zeitgeist all figured out when he said, "walls are prototypical in virtual environments".

Here is a sneak preview of Gazira Babeli's wall canvas and Wirxli's (me, the blogger) photograph of his/her RL clone, Phil Spector.

"No windows? (They) must be Mac lovers" - Chantal Harvey... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! GOOD ONE, CHANTAL! AWESOME! More great puns, more Great Walls and more orgiastic floor detail...Even the crowd looks great! So, what were all the griefing complaints all about? It was a perfect consensual moment shared by all, wasn't it?

Griefing even at its more artistic would never look as aesthetically pleasing as this...gaze at the interplay between angled walls and shadow spectors...er...Spectres... Doesn't the crowd appear overshadowed by the walls while posturing like wallflowers... All and all, there is another brick in the ART!


This is yet another shot of the spectre....er...Spector, Curator and token palm tree.



One of the best walls on display had a portruding pile of shopping carts being rammed through the pestle of the brick-laid pelvis...Was this Tran Spire's wall? If the pink flamingoes from the past are any indication, this was likely Tran's wall.

This pic was taken towards the end of the performance. The Blue Maos gave us the visual signal that it was about time to wrap up our performance. We did not get the hint though until the Director's Lounge curator, Olga Wunderlich in Berlin said, "the DJs are ready to go"...

This pic was taken right at the climax of our performance...There is nothing more sublime than a floral firework explosion of Blue Maos. Even the Cultural Revolution never reached this pinnacle of pixellated perfection.