Peterborough Museum has published a monograph of the work of Michael Takeo Magruder, entitled Remediations. It covers various projects that he produced between 2000-2010.
One of the projects (or two, depending on how you interpret it) of his that I was involved in was Changing Room v1.0 in 2009 and v2.0 in 2010.
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Changing Room v1.0[/caption]
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Changing Room v2.0[/caption]
In these projects, myself and several artists were given the opportunity to construct a virtual exhibition in a Second-Life remodelling of Eastside Projects (v1.0) and an empty green space (v2.0). I’d never worked in Second Life before, or any virtual work for that matter, so it proved to be quite a challenge but still very enjoyable!
Changing Room is being showcased as part of Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music and The Two Thousand + Ten symposium from November 4-7th.
You may remember this piece from last year at Eastside Projects. Unlike last time instead of one artist having a week to develop work this time a group of artists will have a day to produce something.
When
Myself, Ana Benlloch and Rachel Darke will be building and showcasing our work in the space on Saturday 6th November with a ritual ‘performance’ taking place from around 1pm
On Thursday 21st January I’ll be doing a short bit about my involvement with the Changing Rooms exhibition that’s happening at Eastside Projects.
EXTRA SPECIAL PEOPLE SALON
Please join us between 6.30-8pm at Eastside Projects for an introduction to ‘Changing Room’ a project by the Visual Realisation Unit at EP. With an outline of the project concept by lead artist Michael Magruder and EP director Gavin Wade, individual presentations by those developing work and a workshop exploring the technology that makes it happen.
My part in the Changing Room exhibition ended on 6th December. For the benefit of those wishing to build in Second Life here’s my experiences working in such an environment.
Monday
I was feeling ill so didn’t do any building in world but I did discover the joys of working collaboratively using Skype.
Tuesday
I was working in Eastside Projects as usual so decided to look around to see what inspiration I could draw from it. Although there’s less barriers when creating work in Second Life I wanted to create something that worked with the space or at least reflected the current show in some way. I began by documenting recurring themes throughout the current exhibition. I noticed that there were a lot of vertical lines and this could also be seen in initial work in the virtual space.
This week I’m putting together a piece for an exhibition in Second Life and Eastside Projects:
Changing Room is an evolving mixed-reality installation that considers the inherent mutability and reusability of artefacts, concepts and situations in the Digital Age. Lead artist Michael Takeo Magruder will collaborate with Extra Special People artists Ana Benlloch, Iona Makiola, Antonio Roberts, Lee Scott, Zhao Wei and Selma Wong to develop a new collaborative space.
Blending the shared virtual environment of Second Life with the shared physical environment of Eastside Projects, the artwork will facilitate the realisation, curation and documentation of seven distinct - yet interrelated - art projects arising from a common pool of virtual and physical resources.