Less Than Zilch from Tizzy Canucci on Vimeo.
The video was filmed at Fuschia Nightfire’s Work of Zero Consequences, currently on LEA21 in Second Life.
Second Life is human.
Built by people, lived in by people.
This was one of the lines I put into my What Second Life Means to Me video. The words arrived on the page without much apparent thought, but I believe that was because it was born out of a deep rooted feeling. I’m averse to direct linear story lines and I certainly avoid the compulsion to be busy and hunt for (and acquire) stuff, as I referred to in the trailer for the Less Than Zilch. I do that by looking at Second Life as full of human movement. Second Life is not an abstracted, indifferent place; it is created deliberately and with intent.
It is of no consequence is a commonly used phrase, but it is contradictory, in that it need only be said if you think that someone else thinks it might have some consequence. It’s an opinion to set against another opinion, and not a fact or truth. I don’t believe that this installation literally has no consequences – that would be like throwing a rock in a pond and not seeing ripples. Kurt Vonnegut once commented that “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow”. Growing one’s soul is not of zero consequence.
How I see it is that this work rejects pretentiousness, a word that, like consequence, is trapped in a circular argument of it’s own making; to state unpretentiousness explicitly is to be pretentious. But someone outside the loop can say it. This is a place that simply is, and so lays itself open to reinterpretation by those who see it. It speaks for itself, and is not presented as being significant, game-changing, radical, or any of those hyped-up, over-used and inflationary phrases of the arts world. It doesn’t feel the need to explain itself or be explained, or to direct the audience. Find in it what you will. I found a way to grow my soul, and it is now on Vimeo. But don’t take it too seriously, for goodness sake.
Fuschia Nightfire’s Work of Zero Consequences is installed on LEA21 in Second Life. If I say go there, that would be a consequence of having gone there. So I’m not saying anything.
Music credit in the video: Sally Is A Girl (50 Foot Wave) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. And don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.