Gracie Kendal and Ub Yifu at LEA8

I wrote several weeks ago the brilliant works on LEA8 by Jo Ellsmere and Daniel Mounsey (or Pyewacket Kazanenko in Second Life), installed as part of the Art & Algorithms Digital Arts Festival. Several other artists are also exhibiting on the sim, among them Ub Yifu and Gracie Kendal. Ub describes his work The Tree People, pictured above (click on images to zoom in), as "an absorbing immersive environment, which is at the same time a tribute to Nature and its many gifts, the mysterious duality of life, and the creative people who explore virtual worlds in search of their holy grail." While Ub's work is effective and beautifully done, one wonders what he might achieve with some additional space — The Three People exists within a fairly confined area for the scale it suggests.

Gracie Kendal's installation, A Comfortable Skin, is "an ongoing multimedia project that documents how Kristine Schomaker [her real life persona] uses virtual and physical avatars to bring attention to the obsession society has with physical appearance, and to explore 'identity' as a vehicle for self-reflection and acceptance," thereby continuing her long-standing interest in avatars and their relationships to identity. Here, we're invited to select a new skin from among many offered by Gracie — all brightly paint splattered in appearance — and, using poseballs, to stand in a real life image, while her human looks on. (In the second image, my friend Kinn and I stroll along the sidewalk as Kristine stands in the foreground.) "Do you have a comfortable skin?" she asks.