On April 24th, the Boston Cyberarts Festival opens and runs through May 10th. The festival features both visual and performing arts and boasts of being the only one in the world to feature “all art forms, including both visual and performing arts, film, video, electronic literature, public art, and web art”. The festival began in 1999 and is held every other year. This year will be the sixth occurrence and it will feature more than sixty exhibitions, from visual and performing artists who use computer technology as an integral part of their work. Exhibits are hosted at multiple locations in and around the Boston area. This year, festival organizers have included the virtual world of Second Life and will feature the work of several well known SL artists. An opening reception of the Second Life exhibition and an artist talk will be held on April 26th at 2 PM PDT/SLT on the Artropolis SIM.
Artropolis is home to Filthy Fluno (aka Jeffrey Lipsky) where he has established an artist colony and nurtured it to become one of SL’s leading art communities. Having interviewed Filthy for an article earlier this year, I’d become familiar with the SIM, so I TP’ed over a few days before the opening to find that preparations were well underway. I found an information box for the event and received a note card when clicking on it, the first line read, “Thanks for logging in and joining us for Boston Cyberarts Festival's ‘Traversing Sweet Illusions’. “ The note went on to provide information about the exhibits at this and other locations for visitors whether new to SL or seasoned residents. It also explained that the exhibit has “Organized the artists into 2 categories, ‘Immersive’ on the left side and ‘More Traditional’ on the right.” As visitors walk around they can to click on the virtual sculptures and be given note cards with the artists' information and description of their BCAF exhibit.
Featured works include "In the Sweet Bye & Bye" by Philip Jones; "Land of Illusions" by Lily & Honglei; "Adventures of Filthy Fluno" by Jeffrey Lipsky; "I'm Not Here" by Lance Shields; "Hostile Space" by D.C Spensley; and "Artropolis" by Todd Tevlin. These works will also be available for viewing in the non-virtual world. CounterpART Gallery in Lowell hosts the entire Festival Second Life exhibition from April 24th through May 2nd. Lily & Honglei's Second Life artwork will be on view at Design Gallery 154 at UMass Dartmouth.
SL Resident Osea Zapatero (aka Carmin Karasic), has been responsible for the second life exhibit along with Melita Podesta. She has been busily working in preparation for the festival opening, in both her first and second life. Ms Karasic, a web site designer and multimedia artist is exhibiting a piece along with co-creator Rolf van Gelder titled, "Human^n" which will be featured at the Boston Museum of Science during the festival. A resident of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, she is an assistant director of the BCAF and a faculty member at Lesley University. She graciously took some time away from her busy schedule and we met briefly to discuss the exhibit in SL.
“How long have you been involved with the BACF.” I asked
“I’ve been involved since the start, the first one in 1999 … well really since 1998 when we began planning for the first one.” She replied.
“What bought you into second life?”
“I really don’t know for sure what led me here. I’ve been here for a little while but I hadn’t really done much in SL until now. This has all been very exciting for me.” She said and then added, “I’m an educator as well as an artist and I’m hearing and learning so much about the educational community here. I want to learn more.”
“What were the selection criteria for the SL Art included in the exhibit?” I asked.
“The idea of including art from second life was George’s (BACF Director George Fifield). He became interested in it and we began working on it. We really didn’t have selection criteria, we found some things we really liked and were interested in presenting. We are already anticipating a stronger SL presence at the next festival in 2011.” She replied.
Complete information, including a searchable database of the more than 60 events and exhibitions, is available at www.bostoncyberarts.org.
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