Pernille With Madsens installation Endless Structure (2009) is inspired of the vertigo experienced in the meeting with reality and different constructions or architecture. The possibility to emerge in her scripted construction is another example of artworks by participating artists who are all new in SL.
It surprised me at the opening of Endless Strcutere, when there suddenly was a lot of avatars gathered in the hole in Endless Structure inside Second Life. It was quite differently than my first thoughts about the project, as an interactive work. At the opening there were ten avatars at once, all was dragged down into the hole at once, and pulled up again, when the structure changed to construction mode. It was actually fun. When I come to think of it, it was also funny when we were in there, just the two of us, and was dragged down into the hole and pushed up again. In general, there is something that has surprised me, as a beginner in Second Life. This belief in who you are, after this silly avatar has been selected. Though, I have only found it easy when I have been there with someone I had some kind of link to. It need not be someone I know beforehand, outside Second Life. But there must be some connection before I think it’s interesting. What made it fun to be me in there to be my avatar, was the surprice how easy it was to handle the projection that this is me and this is Jon. Jan Northoff and I have never met but he’s like an old friend. It’s not what we said to each other, but some effect of the ugly avatar body. I expected it to be like watching moronic puppet theater. I still think most of them are top ugly, but I think it’s fun because you believe in them when you are in there together. You are loosely connected to other people, but you respect eachother. One of the first times we went around in there together, I saw a man with bare ass and angels wings, and thought that it couldn’t be less interesting, but it would have been okay camp in Real Life. We didn’t know him and that is central to my experience of Second Life, I need to have a connection to the people i meet inside, it doesn’t mean anything to me if that I can say hello to a Japanese, so many hours away.
I would probably be surprised if I meet Jan in reality. Because I have completely accepted the way he looks in there, and the lion which follows him.
I had the impression that those who were present at the opening in Second Life did not know it was art. They knew those who had designed the gadgets and it was interesting as a design. They didn’t go there because they were interested in art. It was very spectacular to make art in there and it seems completely divorced from the visual arts profession. It does not let go of its locally based authority. There were many parallels with the sculpture in public spaces, in relation to how people talk about it in the art world. In front of Town Halls and otherwise, it takes a second before they are completely overlooked. First noone likes it, then it is invisible. But again Svend Wiig Hansen Oceania, located in front of Odense City Hall, she is completely blank at the stomach because the kids play at her. Then you work with an accidental quality, or the opposite when they come out and be among a lot of people.
I do not think there were any who saw it was a perspective drawing which becomes three-dimensional, and in principle an infinite structure. And so it is with sculpture in the public domain for the most part. There are not many who think about the proportions, and if they add up, orf it is a paraphrase of something from eighteen hundred century.