I wouldn’t call myself controversial. I don’t go out of my way to offend people, though in my typically British way, I’ll have a quiet dig at what I don’t like. And keep my thoughts to myself a lot of the time. You see, what I don’t really like is predictability and the anodyne. It’s […]
At the current installation on the Delicatessen art sim, Meilo Minotaur asks visitors to Tell Me a Story. All the characters on the island have corresponding avatars one can pick up by the entry point. They do not have names. The scenes are separate. So how are they linked? This is the starting point. In my […]
Two of my works will be showing as part of the neo: artists’ ‘Interface’ exhibition in their amazingly good exhibition space in Market Place Shopping Centre in Bolton. The opening preview (all welcome) is on Saturday 31st March, 2 – 4pm, then it runs to 20th May, open Thursday-Sunday from 11am-5pm. Admission is free and […]
It was such a busy autumn, and so many things slipped by. I got to the opening of Non-Perishable, an exhibition of artworks in containers by Marina Münter, at Berg at Nordan Art in Second Life, and made a mental note to go back to look inside all the containers. With fewer avatars, it should […]
This term I have been teaching for the first time, and there were two things that I wanted to get across. One is the immense power of the behemoths of the internet (including Google and its right arm, YouTube), and the historically contested nature of the internet. It was never quite the place of harmony […]
Mixed realism in a future city. Archive footage and virtual world meet across time in urban space. In this machinima, I recorded some of Cica Ghost’s latest installation in Second Life, Future, and overlaid it with The City, a film from the FDR Presidential Archive on the future of the American city made in 1939. […]
Retelling a popular story is never a waste of time. It is in the rereading and retelling that stories are kept alive, and the reinterpretations revitalise the original. In The Digital Pilgrims, I set out to portray Chaucer’s Canterbury travellers in another, very different, setting. The type on the pages of a book may be […]
Linden Lab has long granted licenses to Second Life residents for the taking of snapshots and machinima, reflecting how Second Life was established as a user created space that encouraged creativity and content reuse. In many other games, where they were created by teams of developers, the making of machinima was contested as a breach […]
Making the video Artistic ideas always have inspiration from somewhere, but sometimes the inspiration is more simple and direct than others. In this case, it was a visit to an exhibition put together by a friend, Indigo Claire. I arrived thinking I was too late for the opening, but I’d misread and I was a […]
‘Be yourself in VR’: but you’re never alone in the new Facebook Spaces Facebook clearly would not want you to be anything else, as their real name policy well demonstrates. A singular identity means they can easily track you and collect your data, and sell advertising on the back of it. I remember friends ranting […]
