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Text by HYPATIA PICKENS and JEDDIN LAVAL
Photos by VERDE OTAARED
 Lance Winn, an award-winning professor of fine arts and MFA coordinator at the University of Delaware, entered Second Life Friday October 23 from 11:30a-1:30p as “Lawrence Winmore” to give a lecture on “Outsider Art” at the in-World UD site. The event kicked off an exhibition, organized by Firery Broome, of works of art by notable second life artists. Winn’s topic attracted about 30 avatars to the sim, was viewed live by about forty students and colleagues at his university, and for those who could not be available for the virtual experience or found the technical problems insurmountable, it has been recorded and available for viewing --crashes included.
An amiable, eloquent speaker with a contagious sense of humor, Winn began by stating that he was no expert on either “virtuality” or Outsider art. But the topic is a timely one that examines the evaporating boundaries between “real” and “Second Life” artwork; it promises to redefine our concept of artwork in the (perceived) “underworld” of this rapidly growing global virtual reality and its relationship to what has been called “insider art”: that which is established within culturally acceptable, trained methods, and has an impact on lived experience.
The sense of our own “outsider” status inside Second Life was ironically reinforced by the fact that discussion occurred in voice and typed chat simultaneously, while the simulation crashed repeatedly—thus creating that distraction and dispersal of attention so well-known to residents of Second Life and so confusing to non-residents. During the Q&A, Winn protested good-naturedly that the typed questions were leaving him far behind, driving home how differently we filter our commentary in Second Life. Winn stood at the UD speaker’s stadium wherein the viewer saw on the main screen the faces of Winn’s students and technicians watching Winn’s avatar. On a side screen, Winn projected examples of “Outsider Art,” which included, for instance, etchings by William Blake: a famous nineteenth-century “outsider.” For those who found the resolution slow and the lag unbearable, the event is covered by the ustream posted above, where the media still reflects the instability that residents wish to see resolved: Winn’s voice comes across excellently, but the visuals are spotty, the chat, of course, unreadable, and the stream affected by the repeated crashes. As such, however, it offers a splendid example of the mechanical reproducibility and fragility of digital experience and expression that became the focus of the discussion.
How Fast We Fly by AM Radio
Traditionally, Outsider Art has “rarely been linked to technology,” Winn stated. Practiced by the “untrained” retired laborers who “had to keep their hands moving,” it was driven by “necessity,” not “craft” or marketability. New Media, however, is changing that, and the question Winn posed to his audience was whether Second Life (and other digital media) removed the cost that makes “insider art” so difficult to the outsider, by offering “a cheaper way to fulfill ideas; a way to visualize things that may not otherwise be able to be made.” This statement was followed by a discussion about Walter Benjamin’s term “aura” made famous in his 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Vessel's Dream by Bryn Oh
All works of art, writes Benjamin, are reproducible, but the “mechanical” reproduction (particularly that recorded on film and vinyl) loses the aura of an original object: the “presence in time and space” of an “authentic work of art” that confers upon it specialness, uniqueness. In mechanical reproduction, “the powerful experience of art becomes available far more broadly, though at the expense of the uniqueness.” The largely unmonitored space of the Internet allows for easy visibility. While a YouTube may receive two million hits, Winn remarked, sheer number may mislead an audience into thinking that quantity is quality. Winn saw Benjamin’s concerns—that notions of success were moving “from a model of notions of quality to ideas of success based on quantity—to be present today as we make another major technical shift. What happens to the aura in virtual space? “Is there a way one could be bodily and sensorily in a work of art?” he asked. “There exists the idea of the body,” but the artwork is still primarily visual. There is no way for it to be tactile or olfactory he noted, although one could introduce motion and flight into it, and reward the careful viewer with hidden secrets. Were there any Second Life artists who challenged the “fetishization of control” that mechanical reproductive art enables, he asked, a question which we found fairly opaque (how does one do that in a medium so driven by controlling technology?), further ironized when the entire sim went down. When it was up and running, one resident remarked wryly that “it’s hard to define outsider art when we’re being tossed outside the sim all the time,” to Wynn’s delighted laughter. “Yes! Absolutely! A lot of media artists,” he replied, “are often testing the boundaries where representation fails to deliver.” Waiting for things to rez for instance, accustoms us to “the blur.” Referring to the lack of olfactory sensation, another resident quipped: “if there was smell and if the sim crashed, would it smell like farts?” The repartee, even though it was at lagging distance with Winn’s talk, was witty and delightful.
Nashaba by Filthy Fluno
Winn was firm, but without condescension, in the stance he took with regard to seeking quality and cultural impact at the same time that he recognized and applauded this “unique time in the creative realm” where “many boundaries are being challenged”—as long, he said “as the artist did not exploit outsider status out of “some kind of ...position of “safety.” “Terms like ‘Outsider,’” he reminded us, “are often used to forego criticality and questions of quality, as has the Internet in general. So at times it’s easier to say the work’s not having impact because it’s outside rather than deciding how to make the work have impact.” Such an event like this one takes us one step closer to bringing the inside art world of Second Life to the outsider majority.
The exhibit will be up at the University of Delaware sim until November 13, and features the work of talented and acclaimed Second Life artists in traditional ways (the simulacrum of a gallery with scanned images) and ways that are becoming unique to in-world three dimensional creation.
The three dimensional SL 'sculptures' are scattered around the grounds of the sim. Eighteen Second Life creators have taken part in the exhibit including AM Radio, Bryn Oh, Cheen Pitney, Cutea Benelli, DC Spensley, Filthy Fluno, Glyph Graves, Kilara Balnarring, Misprint Thursday, Raskolnikow Roffo, Sabrinaa Nightfire, soror Nishi, and Ub Yifu. A few are shown in this article but in order to truly experience this art, one must visit it in person.
Bellows Falls by Misprint Thursday
Winn’s own exquisite art of many media (including the digital) focuses, as he writes in his artist’s statement, “on reproductive processes to investigate the types of distortion that may occur as information is translated and multiplied.” It can be seen on-line at his university home page, and at a YouTube presentation taken of “Trace,” an exhibit of his at the Freedman Gallery of Albright.
More information
 Outside Art exhibit at University of Delaware
Wikipedia article on Outsider Art
IM Firery Broome in-world for more information
About the Authors
Hypatia Pickens is a poet, fiction-writer, artist, researcher, language-inventor, college-professor and treasure-hunter. Jeddin Laval is a writer, artist, inventor, mathematician, patent-maker, scriptor and ragpicker of ideas.
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Arts & Entertainment 
The University of Kentucky Libraries is hosting a new one man exhibit based on the work of resident builder Oriscus Zauberflote, also known as “Oz”. In real life, Oz is known as Dwight Newton, the public information coordinator for the University of Kentucky’s School of Music. With his extensive background in music, Oz decided to focus his Second Life explorations on the musical representations found in-world. These explorations inspired him to begin building musical instruments and other musical related structures as the University’s island developed many builds under his supervision. As his talent developed, Oz’s building scope grew to include many full size structures; most of which were based on historical real life buildings.
The exhibit consists of three main areas of interest. Inside the W.T. Young library a rezzing platform provides fully detailed miniature versions of the original structural builds completed over his years of Second Life involvement across the grid. Several of the buildings completed were based on historical European structures, such as Vermeer’s house or the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. Outside the library in the front lawn space is a large truck holding a huge, fully working carillon of bells. This is the largest example of Oz’s passion for creating realistic musical instruments in a virtual manner. The rest of his musical representations can be found in the third portion of the exhibit which sits on a huge platform that hovers directly over the top of the library. This portion of the exhibit is also the most interactive.
One other portion of interest to librarians across the grid is a full size replica of the Gutenberg press. Oz’s real life family background is steeped in the printing trade which inspired him to create a representation of this most important printing artifact. The entire exhibit will be open from November 2009 through January 2010. For further information please contact Oriscus Zauberflote directly or explore the following links:
