Fuck SL photography

Jay from Brooklyn Is Watching recently discovered a piece I had impulsively thrown together at BIW last week:

Unfortunately, the full meaning of the piece was lost -- there had been another box there, placed by someone else, when I created mine; but it had been either returned, deleted, or taken down.

Jay had this to say on the BIW blog in response to my piece:

Thanks for coming back nebulosis (sic). I would agree with you generally speaking. And I would also say… um… so? There are a hellovalot more of what i call “blah blah blah blah” galleries out there than there are galleries showing anything interesting. ( these are galleries that have their hands over their ears and are saying “blah blah blah, im not listening to you… its still 1865 its still 1865 its still 1865″ — then down the street is another one that is saying “its still 1945, its still 1945″ etc etc. ).

Most of the stuff in the world is crap. always was always will be… what was it that drove you to particularly point this one out? And do you have any awesomely bad examples to point to that we can all enjoy?

To which I responded:

I definitely agree, Jay, that most of the world is crap. But what drove me to rez this particular piece was a box that isn’t there anymore.

Sometime last week I had been strolling through the grounds of BIW and came across a box with a mosaic of generic avatar portraits all over it, with the hover-text “Touch/Click me for invitation to a gallery of SL Photography” — and it just annoyed the shit out of me to see it — so I rezzed the box that you are sitting on in the above picture.

Fortunately, I took a picture of the two side-by-side; I’ve just posted it to Flickr (and I expect it will piss off some people):

Below the pic I added a caption, elaborating a bit further:

The box on the left is something I rezzed at Brooklyn Is Watching last week, in response to the box on the right.

(The box on the right has floating text which reads:
"Touch/Click me for invitation to a gallery of SL Photography"

The box I rezzed also has floating text, which reads: "Touch/click me for no apparent reason -- SL photography is fucking bullshit")

While SL snapshots/photos can be interesting to look at, I don't consider 99.9% of them to be anything more than mere snapshots -- I don't care how much Photoshopping went into it.

There are & have been a rare few individuals who can elevate it to an art form, but SL snapshots do not equal "instant-art" any more than random real-life snapshots do.

Perhaps the thing that irks me the most about SL photography -- and what has put me off about it as a medium altogether -- is the bandwagon mentality. It's trendy; it's a "me-too" hobby; it appeals to the 15-seconds-of-fame seekers. Most people who get into it never before had an artistic urge in their lives; and once they get bored with Second Life, they most likely will never do anything creative again. It's just a passing fascination for them.

ART is not a fucking hobby or a trend or a fad, it's a fucking way of LIFE, it IS life; and if you don't feel that way about your art, then you're NOT a fucking artist, you're a hobbyist at best & a phony at worst, so don't CALL yourself an artist simply because it sounds cool.

And, as I said -- I find many SL snapshots to be interesting to look at, but I don't consider them to be art. I don't take my SL pics seriously, either. They're fun to take, fun to play around with, and a cool way to document what I've been up to in SL, but in no way does come NEAR to calling upon my emotions and efforts in the the ways my REAL artwork does.

These statements & observations might piss you off, but I don't really care. You don't have to agree with me; it's simply my opinion.

So there you have it.

As far as awesomely bad examples — you can’t throw a rock in Second Life and not hit half-ass SL photography. How I wish I could throw it all into a fucking blender and just hit Purée.

Tag search in Flickr for Second Life (plenty of lacquered up tits & ass - *yawn*):

http://flickr.com/search/?s=int&ss=2&ct=6&w=all&q=%22second+Life%22&m=tags