“The transition from real space to cyberspace, from prose to poetry, from fact to fiction, from static to dynamic, from passive to active, from the fixed in all its forms to the fluid in its everchanging countenance, is best understood by examining that human effort that combines science and art, the worldly and the spiritual, the contingent and the permanent…..“
Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace (Marcus Novak.1991)
Some of the most interesting work being done in the art/design RL world blurs all previously defined lines of/between disciplines. This is true of SL as well. I was reflecting on this during a recent conversation with January Lightfoot. He is currently showing work in New Berlin at the White Cube Gallery. Dan Cundry, Elynn Finney and Frank Dryburgh have done an impressive job of expanding their White Cubes – with locations now in Stadtrand, Carlovitz and the one that houses Lightfoots’ ‘headquarters’ in New Berlin.
Lightfoot (aka Jan Northhoff) currently has on view a cybermedia installation from dailydigital.org, GallaryBerlin.com and the team of BERLINin SL.com.
Recently we had a voice conversation – Northoff sat in the RL Headquarters for the SL projects he is involved in: New Berlin and YOUseeMEin3D.com – and I stood in SL at the same location. We talked about how he had been “forced” into SL by a friend and has never turned back… working on his projects “24/7.”
We spoke on a Wednesday – a day that he and his colleagues have an open office event – drinking beer and talking - and I could hear the party going on in the background. This is not particularly amazing until you go into the SL installation – which is built to scale –and imagine yourself in the back room sitting on a bench - in a space also containing a bed and three people – surrounded by sixteen screens. How do they fit a bench in here – let along the other stuff! Two of the avatars I have visited the space with – and this writer – have felt claustrophobic inside and needed to step out for a breather!
The building has a long and checkered past in RL … only worth mentioning because its current incarnation in SL seems a fitting culmination. It has housed a series of galleries, undergoing multiple transformations and levels of abuse. Most recently it housed the rooms of galleryberlin.com before becoming the Headquarters of YOUseeMEin3D.com.
It is interesting to view the work Lightfoot/ Northup is involved with on SL. His RL work – particularly in exhibitions such as Documenta 12 – has consisted in part of HUGE installations, involving rivers, houseboats and outdoor sculptures. Lightfoot referred to SL as the soul of the internet – growing up. Yes. This place where new art forms are being envisioned and created and the emotional responses to them are real.
The evolution of the artist – and of the building - brings Novak to mind again, who writes, “A work of liquid architecture is no longer a single edifice, but a continuum of edifices, smoothly or rhythmically evolving in both space and time.”
Certainly this is the evolution we see taking place here. Well worth your consideration.
RL Location:
Galerie
Hannoversche Str.3
10115 Berlin
www.GalleryBerlin.com
SL Location:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Berlin%20newBERLIN/47/88/31
SL Gallery:
White Cube Gallery
www.whitecubegallery.org
The event is hosted by:
Januay Lightfoot
www.BERLINinSL.com
(All images are Lanne Wise and Sagesse Sautereau visiting Headquarters in SL)
submitted by Lanne Wise
