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Okay, so infrastructure in the grid seems to be returning to a normal status again, finally, which means that I'm quickly getting caught up on all the cool new artistic projects that readers have been urging me to check out. One happened just tonight, in fact, the opening reception for Ben Heine's new show "erotico fantastico burlesque," over at 'lowbrow' gallery The Art Loft [Owlet 212/43/0].
Erotico fantastico burlesque! Good Lord, people, how can you go wrong with a show named like that?! It sounded so exotic, in fact, that I wasn't quite sure what to wear; so I went with what's always safe for erotic fantastic burlesque situations, a basic black dress with basic black devil wings. Hey, even in Second Life a girl's gotta have standards.
So then here I am at the gallery itself, where you can see that the show is a delightful collection of whimsical lowbrow illustrations, and the gallery mostly filled with the friends of the artist and gallery owner. These are the two things that consistently blow me away about Second Life these days, and seem to never have an exception to: that almost everyone you meet is involved with some sort of creative project; and that no matter how many new ones you hear of, each of them already have an existing crowd of fans centered around it. There seems to be an unlimited supply of both artists and fans of the arts in the grid right now; and as novelist Scott Sigler said in an interview this week here, with the most diehard fans actually now taking up some of the creative responsibilities of the project in general.
And then here I am gabbing it up with Ishtvan Pippen, owner of The Art Loft. This is another great thing about Second Life, frankly, is that it's turned the hobbyist dreams of a million fans of the arts into a viable "roleplaying game;" that instead of slaying dragons and joining guilds, gameplay for these people is to build a gallery, exhibit portfolios, and build a mailing list of collectors. If you push most of these pro/am gallery and club owners in Second Life, I bet most will admit that they have no dreams at all of it someday even nearly paying the bills; but that it's fun to exhibit and support artists, to build an audience, to "play" at being a curator or producer, certainly a lot more fun for a ton of older people than playing Grand Theft Auto and shooting hookers in the face.
And then here is Ben Heine himself, the man of the hour. Why do so many artists' avatars look like the scary bald British villain of a typical low-budget fantasy movie? Inquisitive readers (and smartass reporters) want to know!
And then here you can see something I refer to a lot, but that you don't always get to see when I visit a gallery; that unlike a simple website or Flickr account to view such work, in Second Life it's like adding a 3D real-time chat environment to the whole thing as well. I really can't describe enough about what a trip it is, getting to "walk" through an artist's portfolio at the same time as others, and to naturally get into conversations with the people who naturally hang back at the same pieces you naturally do. In this age where everyone and his mother wants to build the next killer social-networking system, it's such a deceptively simple and powerful tool to provide; a way to make new friends based on just the most intuitive process imaginable, by who's loitering around the things that make you stop and loiter too. It is so much easier to find and target people with similar tastes as you this way, versus the "friending" process at a place like Flickr.
So anyway, that's it for now, and of course I highly encourage you to stop by The Art Loft yourself if you want to see a pretty cool show. Keep those invitations coming, dear readers, to the things in Second Life you yourself enjoy and/or are putting together; as you hopefully agree, it's a freakishly good way to find out about the specific things that other readers tend to dig themselves.