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 […]
Category: Second Life
Articles about Second Life, many including the photography of Tizzy Canucci.
Showing or Telling?
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 […]
Interface at neogallery23, Bolton
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 […]
Process and Property
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 the Future City
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. […]
The Digital Pilgrims: Rediscovery and Reinvention
Retelling a popular story is never a waste of time. It is in the rereading and retelling of stories that they are kept alive, and the reinterpretations revitalise the original. In The Digital Pilgrims, I set out to portray the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in another, very different, setting. And we do not retell […]
Are the limits on machinima relevant today?
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 […]
White, grey and indigo
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 […]
VR spaces and ‘being yourself’
‘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 […]