So today I logged in to Second Life and I was intending to be online for like ten minutes. I needed to do something in-world then was gonna do some real life things and....
Well.
Just as I was about to start, a group chat opened and it was Immersiva, Bryn Oh's group. Normally if there's chat going on in that group, they are talking about some event and it's definitely worth a look. So I looked.
A couple hours later, I logged off very pleased that I had looked at the group chat, and then attended the event.
It was a presentation by Bryn Oh to the MaMachinima Group during their weekly Monday Machinima gathering. She talked about the videos she makes, which is pretty much what machinima is, videos made using computer software instead of cameras.
It was fascinating, especially as it was a good mix of people, a few of whom were not familiar with her work. To bring everyone up to speed she had to talk about the poems and stories she chose to share and it was truly a special moment to spend time listening to an artist talk about and then answer questions about her work and the films of them she's made.
Forty or so people gathered to listen to an amazing artist talk about what she does and why she does it and even quite a lot of how she does it. At the end of the presentation, Bryn took questions and people asked a range of things from the software she uses to the meaning behind some of her work.
I literally could print the whole of what Bryn Oh said here and it would be the best blog post ever on the SLuggle because what she said about her work is so important and insightful it should make our little Second Life community stand up and get the attention of the rest of the world and point this stuff out to them. because Bryn and other Immersivist artists are creating some amazing and important pieces here and I hope others can share in this awesomeness too.
So here's why- EVERYONE can relate to this, the ideas are important and universal, the art is accessible and available at many levels of interpretation.
Here's an example, the words are Bryn Oh's
My artistic focus is in the way modern society is affected by technology, ranging between human/machine and machine/machine relationships.
Often we consider technology to open channels for people to interact and engage socially, however, the opposite can occur where people become isolated within their own personal bubble, separate and witnessing the world from a distance almost as a product with brittle popularity.
My work expresses a yearning for meaningful connections within the new technological realm that often contains human remoteness. I build virtual reality environments that convey the juxtapositions between human emotion and machine sentience.
To take this further, Bryn explores even the most basic parts of being human, like breathing. The first video she showed us was Rusted Gears and here's what she said about the video itself;
For this machinima I was playing with an idea where the poetry matches the rhythm of the music. But I also wanted to see if we might subtly alter our breathing pattern to mimic and follow that rhythm.
I am fond of a slow stillness and minimalism so you will see that in most of my work. I write the poetry, build the models and film in all my art.
A tine is those metal parts coming out of the end of a cable which connects to a plug. So 26 tines is a very complex cable which attaches from the back of one character in the poem to anther so that they may understand each other directly and without words.Sometimes, in my life, I will feel that my words are awkward and ungainly. That they are a blunt instrument that can’t properly express how I feel to people I care about. Where I might leave a conversation and an hour later think of all the things I should have said but it is too late.This machinima is about a cleaning bot and a experiment in a jar that come together at night after the scientists have gone home to their families. They connect through a cable and understand each other on level the humans who own them can not understand.