Wow. This is amazing. Chrome actually loosened his grip on this blog site and graciously (though belatedly) allowed me to jot down my own thoughts here. Interesting, because I know for a fact that he was confronted by a very good friend recently about his intellectual and artistic perfectionism, and advised to lighten up a bit, goddam it! and join the neohuman race. Love ya, Mr. Underwood.

That’s a photo of me at the staging platform high above his gallery at Avant Garde, where he’s been assembling some of his new work, which includes 3-dimensional walk-through versions of his comic strips, and a new form he calls ‘microcomics‘, in which he tries to capture an entire mood, idea and even a hint of narrative in a single image.

I happen to appear in many of these new microcomics, for some reason, so I thought I’d stop by and check them out. Hey, I havta tell ya, I could get used to seeing my face the size of a billboard; makes me feel like a movie star. I might even begin angling for an extra five or ten minutes of this fame thing. It sure would be a nice gesture by the new, looser and freer, Chrome Underwood, dontcha think?

The work above is being prepared for the upcoming show at Caerleon, the Ambiguity of Identity, which opens in September. Details to follow.

OK, this guy walks into an auto repair shop dressed as a woman to check on his twin sales guys who are standing behind the counter waiting to be tested for their rez speed. It just so happens that a friend is hanging around the shop and he asks sarcastically: hey, is your facelight bright enough? Not for me, (she) says; I can’t see a thing. Well, here, he says, I got a better one for you. So he gives (her) a new facelight, which looks like it may have been used to light up the Nurenberg rally for Leni Reifenstahl. Thanks, (she) says;  this oughta scare the papparazzi away. Yeah, they generally don’t do studio work, he says.

This is a (true) story. Bodies have been changed to protect the innocent.

“Go forth and multiply!”, she say. “Can I borrow your calculator?”, I say.

Just over a month ago I began the daunting task of creating a small tribe of avatars for an education project in Second Life. Having spent three years focusing on the subtleties of ‘synthetic individualism’ – tweaking shapes and skins and other things into distinct and credible virtual beings, I thought to myself – hell yeah, this can’t be that difficult, right? Well, I was cruising along at a pretty good clip until I hit the magic number ten and began to realize that creating fake people by the dozen was not for the faint of heart.

To make things more difficult, they all had to be ‘professionals’; that is, their appearance had to comply with the standards of the business world. Needless to say, having spent most of my real life (not to mention my virtual one) avoiding those standards by invoking my artistic license, I suddenly found myself staring into a yawning chasm, an occasional white shirt and tie drifting by. I not only had to quickly get a handle on an unfamiliar style of dress, but I had to find places to buy the damn stuff. I soon learned that there are a lot more mini skirts than pencil skirts in this little paradise of ours.

Now that it’s all over, though, I must admit it was satisfying in an odd sort of way. Not to sound megalomaniacal or anything, but it did make me feel a bit godlike, even though it was probably a bit more like being one of the elves in God’s workshop. But don’t tell that to the 21 new creatures who now believe in me. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

That little fox up there, btw, is Quin, my femme finale. She had just acquired that glorious crown of cascading locks and I had just enough strength left to snap a photo. A fitting image to end one of the bigger population explosions in the history of sl; 21 avatars birthed in 36 days. Would that qualify them as noobie boomers?

Anyway, I think I’ll  try to grab me a bit of sabbath. Procreating can be a lot of work, ya know.

I had just finished writing this post yesterday…. well, actually, the one I had written yesterday; this one is completely different… and just as I finished, the damn page froze and the whole thing disappeared. Odd indeed, since I hadn’t posted in a while (creative slump ya know); so it felt somehow like the gods were not at all pleased with what I had written.

Too frustrated to start over again, I picked up my Ross MacDonald mystery and went out on the back deck to read. As soon as I opened the book, though, a squadron of gardeners launched a full-out ground assault on my next door neighbor’s greenery – hedge trimmers, lawn mowers, leaf blowers – man, those gods were pissed. So, I put the book away and took my dog for a walk. Fortunately the coyote we ran into just looked at us and walked away. The coast must be clear by now; let’s try this again.

I think the problem might have been that photo up there; they probably thought we were taking over the metaverse, when we were actually just holding one of our many meetings for the upcoming Ambiguity of Identity exhibit at the Caerleon sim. The show is a virtual followup to the rl show held last April at the UMass gallery in Boston, the brainchild of Dr. Gary Zabel aka Georg Janik, and the embodiment of some of the ideas put forth in his upcoming book by the same name. His work has been cited on the blog site of the PBS documentary series, Art21, along with an interview with one of the artists, Artistide Despres.

So, now that all of that confusion about who runs the world has been straightened out, I’ll finish by naming the demigods shown in the photo above and some of the other artists in the exhibit, which will be held in September, details pending. From left to right: Pete Jiminy, freewee Ling, Fuschia Nightfire, Chrome WhatsHisName, Botgirl Questi, Gracie Kendal and Maya Paris. Participating artists also include Alizarin Goldflake, Cat Bocaccio, L1aura Loire, Lollito Larkham, RAG Rant, Sabrinaa Nightfire, Swann Jie, Taralyn Gravois and Wotthe Dickins.

Hey, maybe we do run the world.

“It’s been a long, long time coming,” as the man once sang, “but change is gonna come.” This particular change has been in the works for a long time here in the Chrome Zone, but now, it would appear, it is on the horizon: noted techno pop artist Manhattan Atlas has joined our growing team of troublemakers. Given the name, you might assume he’s from New York but, alas, you’d be wrong. He’s actually a native of Turkey, where his mother was born, but moved to America as a young man to attend art school. His father was a cabdriver in New York; thus, the colorful first name.

His primary interest is in digital painting from within virtual worlds with the intent of capturing the inner lives of their inhabitants, offering it as a mirror for humanity to catch a glimpse of its own foibles and frivolities. Manhattan has been Chrome’s virtual apprentice for the past year and a half, and now feels he is ready to venture out on his own. He’s begun a series of avatar portraits called Face/Time, and plans to have them ready for exhibition in the near future. Though it might be difficult to resist riding on Chrome’s coattails, he is determined to establish his reputation as an artist in his own right. He might even give Chrome a run for his money.

Photo: Manhattan with one of his new paintings, None of the Above. Click to enlarge.

Noted techno-electro beatmeister Cari Lekebusch (Mantis Oh in SL) threw one hell of a party to celebrate the release of his new album, State of the Art, today in Second Life. As you can see in the photo above (click to enlarge), the place was packed. Lekebusch, well known in Europe and North America for his sonic wizardry and flawless production skills, is also a familiar figure on the SL rave scene. He commissioned Hern Worsley of AVZ, creator of the legendary Poetik sim, to  build the dark and magical setting for the parties. Keep on rockin’ in the v-world.

That lego comment reminded of another serious artist who once took a detour off his career path to play with legos, also for a very serious reason. Norman Mailer, the great 20th century novelist, once built his utopian vision of “The City of the Future” in his living room, using thousands of legos to bring forth his dream. This fascinating story was recounted in Mary Dearborn’s Mailer: A Biography:

In many ways this was a typically Mailerian project. He announced it in advance in the pages of the New York Times Magazine and, to underline his seriousness, in Architectural Forum. The prose city he outlined would change the face not only of public architecture but of society itself. He had long blamed architecture for many of the woes of contemporary society, and now he applied himself to setting forth his plans in pronouncements and, beginning in the fall of 1965, the creation of an actual model city, immense in scale and meticulously planned.He decided to build a model of a city that could be populated by 4 million people, and to build it in his own living room. He conceived it as a monument to his sweeping utopian vision.

At the quotidian level, Norman acted as the brains behind the project, soon discovering that he didn’t like the sound of the plastic Lego pieces snapping together; it struck him as vaguely obscene. He delegated the task to [fourth wife] Beverly’s stepbrother, Charlie Brown, who worked as a kind of handyman for him, and to Eldred Mowery, a friend from Provincetown now in the city. The two men drove Norman’s 1961 blue convertible Falcon out to the Lego plant in New Jersey and returned with cases of the colored blocks. Then Norman directed them, instructing them to create hanging bridges, buildings with trapdoors, and four-foot-high towers, all constructed on an aluminum-covered piece of plywood on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood supported by five-foot legs.

Construction proceeded apace, and Norman never really did call a halt to it. But someone from the Museum of Modern Art came out to Brooklyn to take photographs of the model, hoping to display it at the museum. At that point, Mailer and his helpers found that the “city” could not be taken out of the apartment. though they consulted movers with cranes and took measurements of the glass in the front windows, they soon saw that it couldn’t be removed without being disassembled first. Here Norman drew the line. He told Mowery to build a fence around it and leave it where it was. There it still sits, occupying a third of the living room’s floor space. Beverly, who contributed a scale model of the United Nations to indicate the overall scale of the city, professes that she loved it, but concedes, ‘It was a bitch to dust.’

Though, like most utopian visions it never came to fruition, the image of one of the giants of American literature stretched out on the floor snapping legos together for hours and hours on end is one that stuck with me; and, in my own experience,  the best work I’ve done has always seemed to pour out of me like a kid with finger paints. So, I suppose a good definition of the word ‘master’ could well be: someone who makes extraordinary accomplishments look like child’s play.

Let the games begin.

Read the complete article at Greg.org.

It’s been nearly three years since I arrived at the immigration reception center in Second Life. By the time I took the shuttle over to Help Island wearing my new avatar getup I felt like I had discovered the New World, a virtual echo of my Irish forebears coming to America. At that moment I had no idea of the adventures awaiting me, and even now I’m amazed at how much of my soul has been poured into this place since then and, conversely, how much I’ve received in return.

Since that day I’ve devoted myself to probing the mysteries of the human/avatar interbeing through art, writing, and most importantly, through the creation of avatars (one of them seen above) – creatures who have evolved into fully-formed adults over time, much the way a child eventually does in First Life. Though I’ve approached this alternate reality from many angles and had innumerable discussions about the “identity issue”, it’s still the mystery of it all which I find most compelling. The virtual experience is tangible in many ways, and that’s enough to satisfy me. But, hey, I’m an artist, not a scientist.

One of the jokes that has been around from Linden Time immemorial is the notion that some day we’ll all be able to upload our brains to a database, link that data to our avatar and, voila! be rendered immortal. Though some may find that a horrifying prospect (Dr. Frankenstein comes to mind), I’ve always kind of liked the idea, perhaps because I’m so comfortable in my skin, even though it is store-bought. Now, it seems, attempts to bring that idea into reality have already begun in the physical world.

In the latest issue of New Scientist, Linda Geddes documents these wide-ranging efforts and brings to light a surprising amount of activity, some with mixed success and all in the most rudimentary stages. Though I’m sure there will be as many opinions of this quest as there are individual human databases, just speaking for myself and my avatar, I’m prepared to dump all my data into that dude even if he only becomes a reasonable facsimile of me; hell, it sure beats those old home movies. Then again, they might just stick me up in the attic as well.

Read Immortal Avatars: Back up your brain, never die, at New Scientist magazine

Above: Camille Topaz; photo by Chrome Underwood, a reasonable facsimile of Mick Brady

Proud to say that I’ve been included in a recent anthology, entitled Metaverse Art, by Josina Burgess, aka Jose Den Burger of Amsterdam, Holland; Velazquez Bonetto, aka Laszlo Ordogh Diabolus of Stuttgart, Germany; and Nazz Lane from the USA. It is part of a series of books on the subject by the authors, who are also the co-founders of the Cybernetic Art Research Project (CARP) at ArtSpace Diabolus in Second Life. CARP has been a pioneer in the field of experimental art installation in the metaverse, and has contributed significantly to the dissemination of knowledge and understanding of art in immersive virtual environments to the world at large.

The text of the publication consists of the artists’ own words, which were submitted in response to a length questionnaire, and as Josina says in the foreword, they are not edited… so you get to hear the artists voices as well as see their art. Some  of the other artists included in the anthology are Alizarin Goldflake, Artistide Despres, Dale Innis and freewee Ling. Another great job, guys.

You can purchase the book here.

You can see the CARP photo collection here.

As I was saying, after a long period of creative activity I had crash landed in the burnout zone, and in an attempt to jumpstart my mind and leave the past behind I moved into a concrete bunker nestled high in the clouds, far above the studio. This was the place I would come to for solace, silence, inspiration. Since I had neither the energy nor the desire to decorate, I thought I’d bring in my virtual sidekicks, Vanilla and Camille, and give them the run of the place. It needed a woman’s touch. I called Camille first.

Rock star, tomboy and fiercely independent soul, Camille had certainly mellowed over the past few years. Once the band broke up she seemed to have lost her way, causing a lot of soul-searching. It would have been easy for her to slip back into her comfort zone of pink nihilism and rage against the unseen, but she danced away from all that and, before I knew it, became a woman.

“I’m spent,” I said; “worn out. These empty walls suit me fine, but this is your place too, so feel free to make it more like home. I’m just a recovering artist with a creative block, so pay me no mind.”

“Ya know, Chrome, I’ve been wanting to say something for a while, but you were like a man obsessed.. you lost track of the other world, the one we depend on for our very existence. Glad to hear you’re slowing down. Now we might live to see another day.”

“Guilty as charged,” I said, smiling weakly. She smiled back, then vanished; presumably off on a shopping spree.

An hour or so later she returned, and immediately began rezzing what she referred to as ‘creative blocks’: a giant set of colorful, highly-detailed wooden children’s blocks, exactly like the ones I had played with as a child. In fact, the blocks seemed almost the size of the originals, when I was no bigger than a tadpole. Rather than filling the place with things she wanted, she went looking for something to soothe my soul. Taking my own negative words, she transformed them into something positive, something playful, something to heal the wounded child within. She, of course, being me and me being Chrome made this an act of pure, selfless, self-love.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob

to be continued…