Stephanie Rothenberg's and Jeff Crouse's Invisible Threads (2008) also uses Second Life as a framework, but comments on the intersection between virtual and actual world economies rather than qualities of representation per se. The mixed reality installation allows people to order, through a retail kiosk in the exhibition space, a pair of jeans, which is then virtually manufactured in a Second Life factory by worker avatars—representations of actual people around the world who have been hired through Second Life classified advertisements. The virtual jeans are output back into the physical world as actual jeans via a large-scale printer. Invisible Threads explores the ways in which virtual economies have begun to intersect with those of the real world. Items from online games are now frequently traded for real currency. Sweatshops in China engage in the business of “goldfarming,” where players of online games pay “farmers” (players who repeat mundane actions in a game in order to collect points) to gather in-game rewards for them in order to play the game at a higher level. According to Wikipedia,2008 figures from the Chinese State valued the Chinese trade in virtual currency at over several billion yuan, or nearly 300 million USD. Anshe Chung, the avatar that entrepreneur Ailin Graef created for herself, made headlines in 2006 for building an online business in Second Life–devoted to development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies–that made her a real world millionaire. It was the avatar Anshe Chung (rather than Graef, the person) who was featured on the cover of Businessweek, signifying the definitive arrival of the simulacra (in the Baudrillardian sense) as commodity.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 3, 2011
Droog 10:37 AM
Nov 28, 2011
Jul 14, 2011
Jul 2, 2011
Dave Wyatt Photogrpahy 2:56 PM
Euthanasia Coaster 2:32 PM
“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once sad that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead.”
Euthanasia Coaster from Julijonas Urbonas on Vimeo.
Philip Kwame Apagya 12:15 PM
Philip Kwame Apagya is a Ghanaian artist whose color photographs reflect a contemporary twist on traditional West African portraiture. In Apagya's photos, subjects interact with his brightly painted 2-D backdrops, interiors and exteriors that catalogue the trappings and accoutrement of an affluent international culture. Subjects inhabit faux living rooms showing library shelves or consoles stuffed with expensive electronics, or chat on cell phones standing before home computers, or prepare to board that international flight to happiness. While Apagya's photographs reflect a young and prosperous generation of consumers, one can imagine that for some, the photographs also present a "reality" beyond their means.
Jun 1, 2011
Ron Gilad 4:09 PM
http://www.spacesetc.com/home
May 29, 2011
May 27, 2011
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May 4, 2011
Erotic voyeurism 11:14 AM
Just look at this. Even without knowing what is the exact context, the intense directional swift that this composition holds is enough to drive you to conjure up ambivalent meanings and multiple interpretations. But knowing that the White House is watching a video, shot from helmets of special unit soldiers, facing Osama Bin Laden as he’s being killed in a military operation, elevates this moment to erotic vividness. The intensity of the faces as a source of creation, the body language which enhances males' manhood and females' womanhood, and the intimacy that allows into such a moment in the depth of the White House.
Is there any better way to look deep into the blinded moral devotion of a nation?
May 3, 2011
Beautiful tech 7:32 PM
Try to download these – see if they’re for free.
You can find the above 2 and a few more here:
http://www.snibbe.com/store/
Also, there’s this pretty playful thing. I can imagine myself playing with it for hours on end:
Source