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About Spine: While this is an exercise in finding alternative ways to sell my work and having a bit of a lark in the process, it is also about my latest photographic series Spine. This series started over a year ago when much loved and respected Australian author and poet Chris Mansell asked if she could use one of my photographs for her latest publication 'Spine Lingo'. It was such a great title it inspired and whole series of these Spine images. Method of spine: The series was kicked off with a late evening, some fire hazzardous lighting , an entry level DSLR, an old school over head projector, a collections of xrays, MRI's, transparencies, the ever fantastic model Poppy, and a bottle of cheap red wine. Over the next few months we experimented with different MRI's and Xrays that kind and helpful friends had sent along. One wonderful friend in the U.S sent over an xray of a squirrel. For the image that ended up on the cover of Spine Lingo, an xray of the authors lungs were beamed across the models back. Spinal Extensions: Spine was exhibited for approximately 3 hours at the book launch for Spine Lingo in Februaury 2011. It was then put away while I started work on a new series 'Hair'. While working on Hair I discovered the Virtual World of galleries and artists. Being an anti social type, the idea of exhibiting to a whole new market from the comfort of my own bed with a laptop, was just too appealing and so I have opened an Virtual Gallery which links to my website where fine art prints can be bought directly by people enjoying the comfort of browsing galleries from their laptop in bed (bed not required, couch, sofa, desk, or just a lap will suffice). People make a lot of Virtual Art in the Virtual World, and in a moment of goofyness I created some virtual versions of Spine. To do this required replacing the overhead projections with 'tattoo's' I created in photoshop that are then worn by my virtual world avatar. I made the avatar look, sort of, close to the original model Poppy. I then hunted the virtual world for 'model poses' that resembled the original(sort of). It was a bit of a lark and very fun. What I wasn't expecting was that I would find these Virtual World versions inspired further ideas for shots in the series. Spine has metamorphed into a few versions of itself, the original transparencies, the MRI's, the male version, the Lea's New Victorian Chair version, and now the virtual version. After coming across some wild and wonderful spine attachments , decorations, other inworld tattoo's, I have created a few new photographic additions that are basically real life copies of Virtual World originals. So to put it complicatedly, the real world photography inspired virtual world photography and the virtual world photography then in turn, inspired real world photography. Spinal conclusions: I would have liked to have shot this series with my new and improved knowledge and equipment and have considered reshooting. I feel that way about every series, but if I kept going back to perfect, I would never move forward, and I suspect would become very tired of reworking. At the moment it is all incredibly fun, and well, if it stops being fun , then it's probably time to stop doing it. Thank you from the bottom of my spine: Huge thanks to Poppy Richardson for her brilliant modelling and all manner of other help! Just could not do any of this without her. To Chris for everything from inspiring the whole thing & great fun chattting about it all, Shari for the generous gift that I couldn't have done this without. Simon for grinning and baring it all, quite literally. Adam, Rebecca, Kathy, Treska and Mick for lending me revealing images of your insides, and in one case(you know who you are!) the insides of a squirrel. Jen for generosity and golden tunes and Jode for everything that only Jode can truly do, and it's a LOT. Sora for love, support and red wine incidents. Eric, my number one fan who has no idea how helpful he has been! |
So Lea, what is this virtual exhibition
carryon? I saw a documentary on TV a year or so ago,
about the virtual world. It mentioned a lady who worked a well paid full time job
owning and running a real estate agency that employed 12 people and sold
only virtual real estate, 'land' that doesn't even exist except on a
computer screen and a server somewhere. It also mentioned a self made
millionaire who made his money opening a very popular virtual world
nightclub. This particular virtual world is called Second Life, it's free
so I took a look. At first it seemed to be all about shopping
and nightclubbing, to be little more than an heavy on the bandwidth 3D
chat. But on further investigation I found a whole world of wonderful art,
film, writers groups, I even did a Dr Sketchy's Anti Art School ( http://www.drsketchy.com/ ) life drawing session
'In World' where I went to a virtual art gallery (The Tart Gallery), and
positioned my little Second Life character, called an avatar, among the
other avatars of people from all around the world. Some even had little
virtual easels and a drawing animation so it looked like their avatar was
sketching, and then we all sketched a model avatar, from our screen.
People chatted via text chat, the model spoke to us about Second Life
modelling, at the end we scanned in any sketches we liked, uploaded to
secondlife and handed them across to the gallery owner who put them up in
her virtual gallery so we could all take a look. My little avatar, Lea Voix (you can't make
up your own surname, have to select one from a list) has travelled around
'the grid' of Second Life on and off for a while now. She has parachuted
off the Eiffel Tower, gondola'd through a virtual replica of Venice, gone
on treasure hunts, killed zombies, drank in an irish pub, attended 'live'
performances by real life musicians, poetry readings, art talks, watched
roller derby(you can join a team), travelled through the male reproductive
system in a sperm cart, and many many other activities. The list of what
you can do in Second Life is virtually endless. Everything in Second
Life is made by the people in the world, not the
creators of Second Life itself, everything is made from Prims the virtual building
blocks, and anyone can build anything they can think of using the
building tools that are already installed on the client you download to join.
People have created amazing things, whole futuristic(or ancient, current)
cities to a single chocolate dipped strawberry. Some folk build sets to
shoot machinima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima )
3d virtual world
movie making. Some build extravagant stores to sell hideous or amazing
clothing, jewellery, breedable pets, furniture for Second Life houses amongst
every other variety of weirdness and wonderousness. Musicians can play virtual gigs all over the
grid, live streaming their cd or live streaming themselves playing..live!
And then sell the real life cd through the virtual world. You can make
virtual books (although you may need a virtual printing press!) although
there are many ways to promote your novel etc without printing it inworld.
Large companies like Microsoft and IBM get
involved sponsoring major artistic works, our own ABCtv has an ABC island.
The University of Western Australia has a great presence( http://uwainsl.blogspot.com/ ) sponsoring a lot
of inworld art and running a huge 3D sculpture competition that pays a
large amount of lindens the currency in Second Life . It should be
mentioned here that Second life has it's own economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Second_Life
)and linden dollars can be converted to real life dollars on the Linden
Exchange. To own or rent land/ gallery/ shops etc, does require money,
which involves purchasing linden dollars, but you can go into the virtual
world for free and stay playing around there for years without needing a
single Linden dollar. I started touring the virtual world
galleries, finding some amazing work and coming to like the idea of a non
physical exhibition. One that was considerably cheaper, would reach a new
market of people, those with at least enough dough to afford a decent
computer and internet connection, and they can be anywhere in the world,
at any time of night or day. I coughed up some real dollars to aquire some
Linden dollars, which I have used to rent a Gallery, at the cost of
approximately $1.21 a week. I am able to create the inworld pieces,
so that when people in Second Life click on a photograph exhibited in
my virtual gallery their browser immediately opens to a page on this website
where they can purchase a real life high quality art print via Paypal. They can also by some virtual world
versions for their virtual world house!(you can rent apartments, houses, or buy
them or buy an entire island, and many people do). I don't think I'll be
becoming a virtual millionaire anytime soon, but it seems to be a
fun way to promote your art, writing, poetry, even music.
Of course you don't need to DO anything, you can just
go in and goof around, meet people from all over the world, have a bit
of a laugh. And of course attend my gallery opening party from the comfort
of your own home! If you don't already have a Second Life
account, see below for instructions on how to get there.
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So, how do I get to the virtual world and your fabulous gallery Lea?
Secondly, you should be warned that ANYTHING people can think of can be created in there. That includes all the vile and nasty, as well as all the fluffy bunnies. It is not reccomended by me for teens or children although I believe there is an under 18 version. You can also once, you are in there, select to view only pg rated areas if you are that way inclined and for the love of virtual gods, don't click on any balls unless you know what they will do, or you could end up quite surprised to find what your avatar might suddenly get up to. The simple answer is go here: www.secondlife.com and follow the instructions to get an avatar and download a secondlife viewer. Your first entry into Second life will be with a beginner version of the Viewer, have a fiddle about then log out and back in to get a viewer that actually works properly. Then click here http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lappet/163/215/118 and enjoy the virtual wine, and hopefully some real life beverge you have brought over to your computer. If things are running a bit slow, log out
and back in (this gives you the full veiwer as opposed to a bginners
version) select edit>preferences>graphics and set the slider to the
lowest setting. This will improve things dramatically. To make it a bit simpler, here are some more complicated instructions
Congrats! you have a virtual world self!
You are now ready to enter the virtual world.
You can search and 'friend' my Second Life avatar Lea Voix in world in you have any trouble (NOT LEA COIX as it read in the paper)
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