Going Virtual!
Our mission this week is to make a virtual gallery of virtual art!
- Visit some Virtual Worlds / surf the net
- Find 3 artists / environments
- Take some pix
- Do a blog post that presents your Virtual Art Gallery
ONE: Visit a Virtual World
Multiplayer
Worlds like Second Life and Minecraft are filled with artists who create objects, environments, and experiences. Other worlds, like World of Warcraft, don’t have “artists” per se, but advanced players often extensively mod their avatars to express identity. You can check out these worlds (and any other worlds you can think of) and look around to see who is doing interesting work. You could also think of Facebook as an MMORPG whether or not all the “players” on FB realize it. In this case, you’d look for FB players who are doing interesting/creative work at expressing identity or developing alternative (alt) identities.
MMOs & MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online games & Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) are great for us because they’re places where you can encounter other players doing interesting work.
Single Player
You can’t find other artists in a single-player game, however, you can use games, multiplayer or single-player, as one or more of the selections for your gallery. You can pick any 3 artists, games, worlds, environments, as long as you can write an essay contextualizing how the 3 function together to express the Theme Idea for your art gallery.
Artists
You can also search online for interesting artists. Try terms like Net Art, Internet Artist, Digital Artist, New Media Art, and so on, and see what you can find. Here are a few interesting artists you might like to use:
TWO: Find 3 Artists There
Visit virtual worlds and surf the net for artists/environments/experiences. Collect 3 that you can write a Theme Essay about.
THREE: Take some pix
Yes, please!
FOUR: Present your Virtual Art Gallery as a blog post on your website
Theme
The art exhibition (blog post) you will curate should have some theme. Some idea that you want to explore through the work of the 3 artists you pick. You’re welcome to message me if you want help thinking through your theme idea. But it’s not required. Any theme you want to choose is already approved.
Theme Essay
Your gallery (post) should begin with a theme essay explaining the organizing principles of your art gallery. What idea are you trying to explore and why did you pick these 3 artists to explore your idea with.
Present Your Artists
After your theme essay, you can proceed to show 2-4 images for each artist you have curated into your gallery. Now talk specifically about each artist and describe what you see as the important points in their work.
One Page
All of this should only be one page on your blog/website. Theme Essay and 3 Artist Essays (not as long as our SOA Artist Conversations!) and pictures can all just be published as one post on your website.
Optional EC: Aaron Swartz
For up to 30,000 points of EC, watch the documentary The Internet’s Own Boy about Aaron Swartz and write a separate blog post reviewing the film, what it says about contemporary culture, and how these issues and ideas might impact your life.
