Manx Wharton, with Kolor Fall’s help, will present a panel that will provide an informal overview of the main theoretical and practitioner thinking on “plastic realities” (the synthesis of virtual and real art), as well as panelists’ firsthand reflections on the subject in the context of their own work.
Manx Wharton is an awarded SL activist across visual art, design, music, and literary circles. His work explores and blurs the lines between RL and SL, co-opting elements of each to enhance the other. He and Kolor Fall have worked together and independently in various areas of SLRL arts and media “mash-up” since coming in-world in 2006. Manx is one of the most widely noted poets on the Grid, as well as a respected visual artist with in-world contributions ranging from RL painting to in-world site-specific happenings, including Repurposed: Your Leisure Lifestyle at SS Galaxy Gallery, the controversial The General Welfare at Burning Life 2008, the first SL exhibit of RL avatar portraits, Real Avatars, at SL5B, and the groundbreaking SOMARTS SLRL mash-up exhibit Synthetic Masquerade in November 2008. He is a member of Artopolis, The Virtuati, and The Plastic Collective.
The panel will explore how much of SL’s most intricate design work and broad artistic efforts focus on taking fullest advantage of the platform’s tools to create in-world art that would be impossible in RL. A growing and focused number of artists are starting to embrace the nascent opportunities of combining SL and RL media platforms to generate exciting and unexpected creative insights. As much of this work is formative and may not be widely known to attendees, substantial time will be held for panelist discussion and Q&A.
This may be one of the most interesting topics at SLCC this year!