netfilmmakers' blog

Dear Netfilmmakers and participants in the presentations and Q&A of Real-Un-Real,

Instead of writing a recount of my experience with this 17th Edition, I’d like to leave you with a series of questions either asked by yourselves, one of the artists/curator, a resident of Copenhagen or myself at some point during the week. I don’t plan on providing answers for these and leave it up to you, dear reader, to consider the answers. I’d be interested in hearing your answers to these questions so feel free to leave any in the comments below. OK, here goes nothing…

1. Are you here for business or pleasure?
2. How do I plug in my Japanese computer?
3. Should I bring anything to the party? Wine? Beer?
4. Why did you decide to create a girl avatar?
5. Isn’t that a typical thing in sl for a rl male to want to control a female in that way?
6. Can there really be art genres anymore?
7. Can we really call anything art anymore?
8. Red or white?
9. Do you like omochi? I do…
10. Do Iceland people get along with Danes?
11. Is there a need to preserve virtual art (in sl) through some kind of archive?
12. Isn’t art just a process that needn’t be preserved accept as documentation?
13. Yeah, but much of this virtual art is experiential so isn’t it a good idea to be able to rerezz them for future viewings?
14. Why do American men talk about women that way?
15. Don’t Danish men do the same?
16. Why don’t the locker keys at Louisiana Museum have numbers on them?
17. What does OpenSim mean to art museums as far as a way to collect sl art?
18. Shouldn’t virtual artists be held accountable for questions of morality?
19. Where did this reindeer come from?
20. Why did you start making art in sl?
21. Are there often bomb scares at the Central Station?
22. Is this really machinima?
23. Why is a virtual world needed to make this kind of work?
24. Isn’t collaboration in sl just a given?
25. Isn’t what you’re doing with your avatar’s career a form of branding?
26. Why get a Phd in machinima?
27. Why is the Danish Art Council willing to pay for foreign virtual artists to come to present for 2.5 hours?
28. Why did you choose a medical museum?
29. How can art museums use social media effectively?
30. Won’t there be issues about losing curatorial control?
31. Where are the majority of sl artists located geographically today?
32. Why do you use such bright candy colors in your art?
33. Have you tried smørrebrød?
34. What’s all this interest in machinima about?
35. When do you think you’ll be back in Copenhagen again?

Before closing, I’d like to give a big thanks to Netfilmmaker director Annette and exhibition curator Sachiko for arranging Real-Un-Real. I applaud the interest in virtual art and appreciate the support for my work. Also, I’d like to thank the other Netfilmmaker crew Asta and Hallur for taking me in and filling me with reindeer steak. To all the visitors at the presentation, thanks for coming out and making this a meaningful event!

For those who couldn’t make it, here is the powerpoint I showed in the presentation:

Best wishes,
Juria (sl) / Lance Shields (rl)