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BRONZEVILLE
Etudes & Riffs
by Philip Mallory Jones
(aka Jacque Quijote)

Jacque Quijote is the avatar of artist Philip Mallory Jones in the Second Life® virtual world. We selected the work of Jacque Quijote "In the Sweet Bye & Bye" as a "Pick of the Week" in May, 2007, and featured this work in our 2007 print monograph, The Second Life® Art World. 

His current work-in-progress advances the development of narrative immersive space, and is a paradigm of the artistic exploration of virtual technology. Click on the image to the right and read all about it.  Then immerse yourself in it. 

First Life to Second Life

Mr. Jones has also written an extensive illustrated essay on his development of immersive technology art, beginning with his first Heathkit quartz crystal radio receiver as a youth in the 1950s. It is required reading for anyone interested in the creative process.

The essay, "First Life to Second Life: Notes on the Design and Development of a Synthetic World Installation, In The Sweet Bye & Bye: An Immersive Memoir:" can be read online.  Philip Mallory Jones  was Artist in Residence at Ohio University's Aesthetic Technologies Lab when he created In The Sweet Bye & Bye.
 
In April, 2011 he created a series of Mind Maps that visualize his current research and development for Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs. There are two kinds, one charts the narrative threads and navigation paths, the other is an accurate street map (in four parts) 1925-1955.

 

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Free ArtWorld Market Report Download:
The Art World Market of Second Life® (PDF)
Paper on the Business of Art in SL
presented at SLCC August 25, 2007
Over 20,000 downloads of this paper since then.

If you have missed any of our articles and reviews since December, 2006, many are archived in the Features section. 
Below are some Editor's Choices.

More Features

The Law of Futuristic Persons

The Terasem Movement, Inc. a not-for-profit organization that publishes two Terasem Journals. The focus is on the rights of people who will be revived from biostasis—cryogenic preservation of legally (but not irreversibly) dead or near-dead people waiting for a cure, and cyberstasis—people whose consciousness is preserved digitally. 

Does immersion in virtual reality involve similar legal issues? As the technology of personality archiving gets closer, VR citizens may opt to transition from DNA to silicon existence.  The legal/ethical issues they are dealing with might make you think of Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but relevance is relative, in light of current concerns about AI and FMRI. 

For example, one of the papers in The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness is "Pros and Cons of Corporate Personhood for Transbemans" by Dr. Martine Rothblatt: "Dr. Rothblatt imposes the legal notions of corporate personhood upon transbemans or futuristic persons, specifically those who transition from flesh-ware to software, and may lack the traditional DNA based biological substrate."

There are over 20 issues of the above journal and their Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology, with articles by prominent scientists, lawyers, psychologists, etc. in the Terasem online archive.

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Arthole Radio Now Archived at Soundcloud

Recordings of the broadcasts by Arahan Claveau and Nebulosus Severine now appear in the Soundcloud archive.  In addition to shows by the two Arthole founders,  there is a segment by artist and critic Amy Freelunch, one of our favorite reviewers of art in the Second Life® virtual world.  

For more about Arthole and the current radio schedule, visit the Arthole blog. 

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HOW TO PRESERVE LARGE BUILDS

Following the disappearance of Zero Point [read the article], we have been looking into how residents of the Second Life virtual world can protect their assets. click here to read
how to preserve your virtual investment

ArtWorld Market ALMANAC
 
Virtual Art Gallery Growth Declines 25%

On January 1, 2012 there were 513 galleries listed on Sasun Steinbeck's Art Galleries of Second Life website.

The growth rate of art galleries in the Second Life® world maintained a pattern of long term growth beginning in 2006 that was nearly linear, with a few leveling off periods but no significant decline through 2010, when there were nearly 700 active galleries. The statistics are kept by Sasun Steinbeck, creator of the Art Gallery Owners Group.
 

chart courtesy of Sasun Steinbeck
 
As the chart above makes graphically clear, the number of confirmed galleries stayed near 400 from the end of 2007 until May, 2008. Growth resumed and crossed the 500 mark in September. After November 1 the trend briefly reversed, but quickly recovered. The summer of 2009 saw a slight decline in the number of galleries, which hovered at about 650. After that the number remained fairly constant.
    Confirmed galleries must display the Art Galleries of Second Life Kiosk, which dispenses the gallery list and HUD that enables gallery goers to visit every gallery in the Group. This is an awesome tool if you have not used it, and is the best way to discover what hundreds of artists are currently doing. It is possible that the gallery growth rate continued during the flatline period, but was not apparent because new gallery owners had not become aware of the Group or had not configured their kiosk properly.

click here for the Art Gallery Map

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©2012 Richard Minsky 
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