Saturday 29 October 2016

Let's start from the (almost) beginning...

It's a very good place to start....


Ok that is quite enough sound of music for now...so let me start with an introductory post....

For the people who already know me by my Second Life blog which can be found here, this may be a little confusing. I am splitting into two blogs simply because I wanted to talk a bit more about the art and philosophy stuff as well as the Second life stuff, but the two aren't always compatible.

The second life blog is important but I can hear a lot of the people following my art musings scratching their heads and wondering what it has to do with my art, so I would like to explore that idea a little further.

 My main question is..."What would it take as an artist, to go from having no skills, and no conceptualisation of the social constructs in a virtual world to being an exhibiting installation artist in that world?"

The whole idea was so foreign to me when I first thought it. My abilities lie in physical art. Things I can touch. I have a conceptual and often abstract component to my artwork and a great love of installation art. I would like to do more of it.  I enjoy the physicality of making art...the smell of paint, the sound of a pencil scratching on a page, the feeling of sculpting something with my hands...so to think that I could possibly transfer the skills, learn the language of the digital, find my place in a virtual world....it is a little bit mad and also very, VERY exciting.

Part of the totality of the art I am creating is based around the cultural, the social and the story of the journey. It is about understanding what a virtual world is and being able to become a part of that community, to feel a sense of belonging and to give back something in return. The journey is as much the art piece as the finished installation and chronicling it transparently and publicly and in turn letting people comment, in a weblog format is also important to the evolution and understanding of that journey.

So that is WHY I am writing the chronicles of the Second Life of Mangrovejane. I hope that has cleared things up for my huge audience of...one. 😄 If nothing else, it clears things up for me and gives me a clear focus and purpose for the separate blogs. And on that note, I bid you a fond so long, farewell, Auf Weidershen, goodbye.....errrmmm until the next post.....