Lost Their Wings: Bryn Oh at Burn 2

Location: Remembering what it really was all about

A special thanks to Bryn Oh for her installation at Burn 2 this year. Her work never fails to revive a sense of excitement about Second Life's potential.

After Linden Lab backed out of sponsoring the arts event, not even providing free sims for a few months, I felt let down and, once again, felt it time to look elsewhere for inspiration. See Phaylen Fairchild's story about Linden Lab's preference for fake bunnies to real art.

I like to support SL's artists and Bryn Oh is one of the finest makers of 3D art I've encountered. Her aesthetic is consistent and convincing. So off I went to Burn 2. Not a Linden or fake bunny in sight. Good. The artists pulled it off on their own.

I found navigation at the event difficult until I discovered a Playa map by
Miso Susanowa. Many thanks!

It was easy to find the build, but it look me longer to get inside. Once I figured out how to enter the unremarkable exterior of her build, as always, I found myself in an immersive wonderland. Bit by bit, I came upon the exquisite sculpture of Lady Carmagnolle, who "painted faces on rocks/ with things/ she pretended they were birds/ who had somehow/ lost their wings"


Oh's works within the larger work include, early in the build, a skeletal "Seraphim" and a little Steampunk music box with a video link to "Format." As always in her work, there's a sense of childhood loneliness, a subtle and never-quite-glimpsed menace, and (naturally) exquisite detail. The music box and many other parts of the otherwise darkened interior of the Burn 2 build invite close camming. There's a "prim poem" with a reference to "Angler Girl," one of the highlights of her build from last year's Burning Life, "Vessel's Dream."


My wife shoulder-surfed Iggy's journey through the build, and she liked how much of Oh's art, in particular the centerpiece sculpture this year, has been inspired by sewing. It's easy to spot a seamstress' dummy in many figures she crafts. I saw that influence last year at "Vessel's Dream" as well.

It's also interesting to see Oh work with Peter Greenaway, whose films so often are carnal in a literal sense: there's a lot of meat in his work, while Oh's work is so often fragile, skeletal. I like this pairing of these two different sensibilities. Have a look at "Dreams," a video linked from the Burn 2 site and connected to a Greenaway project, "Big Bang."

So find your way through this door while you can. Burn 2 ends soon and we all wonder what, if anything, will follow it in 2011.

I don't mind the sadness of Oh's work, especially this fall as so much seems uncertain about this particular virtual world. Whatever happens to SL and its maker, Oh's work will remain important (and ephemeral) moments to what is not otherwise possible.

Arts on the Playa: Burning Life 2009

Location: Binding Gulliver

Venturing beyond The Crater, I found an array of fascinating constructs emerging from the baked mud of the Playa like strange and short-lived flowers. From Byrn Oh's "Vessel's Dream," I learned the term "immersiva," which I wish I'd known before. Now I have a phrase for the new artforms I have met, things difficult or impossible in real life.

Olivia and the Crater-crew were dancing, but I told them I could not join in because "I am touring the art." Now that is a new verb for the artworld.

I'll run a slide show as a link, but given how the Koinup shows can lag the Web browser, I'll run stills here instead.

Viewed last night:

"Gulliver's Travel Scene" by Ub Yifu and Copan Falta

Pick up the notecard as you begin to assist the animals in restraining the prim-giant. As the creators say "We could have expect[ed] a wiser civilization built by animal spirits but they are just like humans....Greedy, aggressive and armed."




"Vessel's Dream" by Byrn Oh

At once it's wistful and nightmarish, a mediation upon what we flee when we go into imagined worlds and what we imagine we have lost as we age in the world of flesh. I highly recommend reading the notecards and watching the machinimas linked from certain objects such as:

Angler Girl: "She is one of the benign abandoned robots who has been forced to catch other robots and steal their batteries in order to survive. She does this by luring them with a lightbulb at the end of a long cord, much like the angler fish."

There was something lonely and terrifying about her and other parts of the build. It's a must-see. Get a peek on Blip TV here.



"Towards the Future" by Shellina Winkler ande Solkide Auer

Sound, light, and a fireball to ride. From their notes:

"Move inside the space as you like, you can walk to the top through the light blue path or fly through. . . . Don't miss the fire ball at the top, simply click on it and you will roll down through, sounds, music, colorful shapes. . . Once you get the floor you've got few seconds to stand up or.......... roll down again :) and the view will be always different!"

Bottom Line: Repeat "Gulliver" or "Towards the Future" if "Vessel's Dream" rattles you a bit too much.

Here's a complete slideshow of my journeys at these three sites.