11 November 2013

Lost Second Life

Opening tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12, at 11 am slt at Anita Witt's Dryland Gallery is an exhibition of my work entitled Lost Second Life. When Anita suggested the theme of "Lost Second Life" several months ago, I was intrigued and excited.

I thought it would be easy, just sifting through images and selecting a few here and there, but it turned out to be a surprising challenge. For starters, there were more than 15,000 photographs to look through, and it turned out that many weren't what I would consider exhibition quality. And then there was the title itself: Lost Second Life somehow implied a comprehensive survey of all that had come and gone, and that's not really what either Anita or I originally envisioned.

This exhibition is not intended to be a survey of all Second Life locations that have come and gone over the past few years. Hundreds of places—ranging from iconic locations such as the Lost Gardens of Apollo and Omega Point to Gorean and other roleplay sims—have disappeared, and I can't claim to have ever visited or documented many of them. Additionally, although I've been taking images in Second Life for a long time, my serious work in photography really dates from early 2011.

So the exhibition is, rather, simply a reflection of varied places that have come and gone. Some, like Greenies or AM Radio's installations at the IDIA Laboratories sim, were locations almost everyone in Second Life visited, or so it seemed. Others, such as a 2304 Rain or Coney Island, 1922, came and went so quickly (sometimes in the space of only a few days) that few people ever got the chance to explore them. I did discover, happily, that one place that had been gone just returned a week ago—Lemondrop's Forest—so one planned image has now been omitted from the exhibition!

Older images—ones that I thought captured essential places but aren't of the highest quality (as SL photography has changed over the years with the introduction of anti-aliasing and environmental settings)—are included in smaller sizes here and there on easels, while newer images are mounted on the gallery walls.

7 comments:

  1. This looks to be an intriguing exhibit, can't wait until tomorrow!

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  2. looks really intresting i will come check it out

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  3. Thanks! :) It's not an enormous exhibition, maybe 40-50 images or so (still working on it!), but it will probably bring back some memories.

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  4. "It's not an enormous exhibition, maybe 40-50 images...", grins. Well that´s quite a bit, isn´t it? Which just shows how serious you have been working on it over the years ;) While the pre 2011 shots might not match your current photography standards, I´m pretty sure, they are of tremendous documentary value. It´s a very cool theme and I´m already curious to have peek at the "good old times" :)

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    1. Thanks, Nelson. :) Yes, the older images (and there are a lot that aren't even there lol) are pretty horrible looking compared to what we can do now. Just imagine trying to photograph without high resolution, no environmental settings (windlight), no anti-aliasing, no shadows of course, and so on. As I look at those images, I wonder what they might have been with all those tools—but then again the builds themselves probably would have been different as well, because the creators would have been seeing things differently. :)

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  5. Fantastic exhibit! I am featuring it on my blog tomorrow. Thanks for doing this, it brings back great memories.

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    1. Thanks so much, Eddi, for your lovely blog post, and for visiting the exhibition as well! :)

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