Photos of Becoming Dragon

Poster

Press Release

Live blogging Archive with Journals, Photos and SLURL’s
(use “previous entries” link at bottom to go through entire archive)

Visit the Model of the Performance Space in Second Life

I am becoming something else. In this moment, this being-in-transition, I am willfully stepping into the unknown. I am between realities. I can only imagine what I want to become, and then choose to become that new thing, but it is radically ungraspable, inconceivable. I can never know the reality of what I am choosing to become, desiring to become. My decision to transform can never be the right one, because it is always based on an illusion, a fantasy, a false conception with only a few points of data, not the rich details of an embodied life. As the transformation unfolds, those unknown events begin to occur, like seeing my breasts in the mirror for the first time after shaving my chest closely, feeling the movement in my orgasm change into something new or just walking down the street for a moment as a girl, unnoticed and not needing any special attention. My decision to become something else is always a decision to become mythopoetic, because the reality of the new state is always unknown, imaginary, a construct, a fantasy. Yet I don’t seek to decry this radical state of uncertainty but to embrace it. The very moments of everyday perception are also simply intersections of a real materiality with my symbolic and imaginary processing engines making sense of them, down to the way that I understand what pleasure is and what pain is and when the two become too close so as to be confused. And a choice to not transform is of course still a choice to transform into a different state, as our bodies are all in permanent transition, aging, training, consuming, producing, perceiving, creating new folds in our craniums.

Read the rest at Augmentology.com and leave a comment! I’d love to know what you think of this writing…

Teleport here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Magoo/122/226/23

More info about the show here…

SLon Central on Magoo SIM (slurl)

Vote for Becoming Dragon in the People’s Choice award here!

The 2009 Unofficial Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 International SLon des Refuses will open in a relaxed and beyond casual way at 1PM SLT 6 August. The exhibition will occasionally be viewed live on a RL (Real Life) 52 inch mega-monitor screen by RL gallery visitors in the front space of the highly regarded RL Jack the Pelican Presents art gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, along with the SL 30 Best show hosted by the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas SIM ( KU ART to the South). To the North of 30 Best is the Impermanence SIM, also hosted by KU ART, where the new incarnation of Brooklyn is Watching now makes its home. So come to Magoo or KU and show off your avatar-as-artwork! Brooklyn will be Watching!

30 Best show on KU (slurl)

Brooklyn is Watching Now on Impermanence (slurl)

The RL Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery (link)

Although all the Slon Artists on Magoo are winners by virtue of being requested to be in the SLon in the first place, there are further rankings to be determined in the Official Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Festival, including the awarding of the People’s Choice and the Golden Eyeball. The People’s Choice will be made by online poll and the Golden Eyeball will be presented to one of the Final Five on the basis of votes made by RL visitors to the RL Jack the Pelican Presents gallery, not all of whom will be familiar with SL art or its intrinsic nature. The Final Five works will be shown for this purpose over the term of the exhibit on their own wall-mounted monitors in machinima form (link) by filmmaker (and SLon muse) Penumbra Carter.

Details on People’s Choice and Golden Eyeball (link)

For those of you not familiar with Brooklyn is Watching even though your artwork was nominated to be in the 30 Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 (hey, it can happen!), here is a concise description by Juan Rubio from the press release:

“Brooklyn is Watching, conceived of by Jay Van Buren, executed as a collaboration with Boris Kizelshteyn and the Popcha! development team in February 2008, is a breakthrough relational art project that invites interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. It consists of a series of inter-related spaces for artists, audiences, and participants. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned), and an alcove in the Williamsburg art gallery–Jack the Pelican Presents where the sim can be viewed on a large monitor and entered via an avatar.”

_I am Transreal_: A Reflection On/Of Becoming Dragon [Part 1]

I am transreal. Look at me. When you do, a million iridescent scales across my dragon hide flick, move and align to create a multiplicity of perceptions, transversal illusions and realities cutting through each other, intersecting, dancing. Look at me. You see a shimmering of my fantasies and yours, a convergence of your minute sensory events, your imaginary constructs and my desires. Look at me. The mythopoetic elements of your reality and mine come into contact, unwind and become a recombinant event of male and female and something else, something more, for just an instant. Perhaps after that initial instant, one of your myths takes over your perception and you decide that you understand, but before that, I instill confusion and doubt. I can see it on your face… read more at augmentology.com

Conversation: (NOUN) 1. An informal spoken exchange of thoughts and feelings; a familiar talk.
2. Social intercourse; close association. 3. Rare. Close acquaintance, as with an object of study.

I-5 Gallery is pleased to announce the first of two scheduled art talks in conjunction with MFA Conversations Part II on Saturday, July 25, 2009 from 2PM to 4PM. Participating artists are from Art Center College of Design, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, UC Riverside,
Otis and Calarts. Please join several of the artists to discuss their work, each otherʼs work and to share those conversations with you, the public.

Calico Brown
Micha Cardenas
Alison J. Carr
Alejandro Casazi
Kristen Foster
Monica Elayne Hicks
Glenna Jennings
Erica Love
Greg MacLaughlin
Brian J. Marrier
Carrie Maseredjian
Lisa Miller
Clare Parry
Brianna Sendziak
April Totten
Alison Walker
Michiko Yao

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, July 25th from 2PM to 4PM.

II-5 Gallery
2100 North Main Street, Suite A-9
Los Angeles, CA 90031
323-342-0717
Press Information
For Immediate Release
Contact: Nancy Ramirez, Gallery Director
Curator: Marla Koosed
breweryartwalk@yahoo.com

MFA Conversations Part II
At I-5 Gallery
July 17th, 2009 7PM to 10PM
July 17 to September 11, 2009
Artist Talks: July 25 and August 22
2PM to 4PM

Conversation: (NOUN) 1. An informal spoken exchange of thoughts and feelings; a familiar talk.
2. Social intercourse; close association. 3. Rare. Close acquaintance, as with an
object of study.

I-5 Gallery is pleased to announce the second in the “MFA Conversations” series of shows being offered this summer through the fall of 2009. MFA Conversations Part II continues to explore the abundance of MFA programs in the Southern California area from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Despite their shared geography, these programs represent a range of diverse offerings, foci, students, and work. While such diversity yields richness, it can also have an isolating effect on students from these institutions, who do not have many opportunities to interact in the greater southern California arts community.

Curator Marla Koosed explains: “MFA Conversations Part II builds on the foundation established by Part Iʼs show and artist conversations and will offer another opportunity for dialogue among the artists and their works. It will also offer visitors to the gallery an exceptional opportunity to see an edited sample of some of the finest work being produced by Southern California MFA Graduates. While most MFA shows are up for a limited period of time; Part II will be up for 2 months. This allows time for the scheduled artist talks, for the participants to discuss their work, each othersʼ work, and to share those conversations with a wider audience, the public.” Artist talks are scheduled from 2PM to 4PM on Saturday, July 25th and Saturday, August 22nd.

On the heels of Part I, MFA Conversations Part II will show work from 7 schools; Art Center College of Design, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, Otis and Calarts. This show is not a survey or comprehensive of all the graduates: Instead, studio visits for
all eligible candidates for this show were conducted, and participants were chosen from that pool. The intimate space of the I-5 Gallery allows for an exhibit like this to function and for the works to interact by the space they cohabit.

The MFA Conversations series will conclude with a third show, Professor Dialogues that will feature select works from faculty of the 15 schools and will take place Winter 2010. Stay tuned….

I-5 Gallery
2100 North Main Street, Suite A-9
Los Angeles, CA 90031
1-323-342-0717
Press Information
For Immediate Release
Contact: Nancy Ramirez, Gallery Director
Curator: Marla Koosed
breweryartwalk@yahoo.com

i-5 GALLERY at THE BREWERY ART COLONY
2100 N. Main St., #A-9 (in the Atrium at The Brewery), Los Angeles, CA 90031
Director: Nancy Ramirez. Curator: Marla Koosed
Directions: http://www.breweryartwalk.com/?page_id=13
323.342.0717
E-mail: breweryartwalk@yahoo.com
Web site: http://www.breweryartwalk.com
Gallery hours: Fri.-Sat., 12-4pm; & by appointment

Conversation: (NOUN) 1. An informal spoken exchange of thoughts and feelings; a familiar talk. 2. Social intercourse; close association. 3.Rare. Close acquaintance, as with an object of study.

I-5 is pleased to announce the first in a series of shows being offered this summer through the fall of 2009. MFA Conversations Part I (May/June) and Part II (July/August) explore the abundance of MFA and MA programs in the Southern California area from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Despite their shared geography, these programs represent a range of diverse offerings, foci, students, and work. While such diversity yields richness, it can also have an isolating effect on students from these institutions, who do not have many opportunities to interact in the greater southern California arts community.

RESCHEDULED

Upgrade! Tijuana
Fifth session / Quita Sesion
Wednesday, May 13th, 7-9pm

charlas sobre/de… // talks by/about…

Transborder Immigrant Tool – Ricardo Dominguez and Brett Stalbaum
Becoming Dragon – Micha Cárdenas
Thighmaster – Annina Rust
Kixly – Moisés Horta

mas informacion sigue y en // more info below and at
http://upgrade.dreamaddictive.com

at Lui Velazquez

Lui Velazquez
Calle José Maria Larroque #273.
1ro Piso, Int. 6, Colonia Federal.
Tijuana, Baja California.
Mexico, C.P. 22 300**

directions and map at http://luivelazquez.com

*Becoming Dragon*
a Project Discussion by Micha Cardenas

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 @ 6PM

Refreshments will be served.

Teleport to the performance in-world:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Seventh%20Eye/144/39/235

New Media Lounge / Cal(IT)2, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California 92093

The New Media Lounge is excited to bring MFA Candidate, Micha Cardenas for an exclusive motion capture demonstration in the Performative Computing Lab at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA). Micha will be discussing her recent project /*Becoming* *Dragon*/, a 365 hour, (2 week long) performance in Second Life. The performance is believed to be the first of its kind in Second Life, and Micha will talk about her experience and research, in addition to a techie demonstration of the motion capture setup involved.

Performative Computing Space in CRCA is located in Cal(IT)2, (Atkinson Hall) in Warren college, on the first floor. Make a right past the elevators, follow the hallway to the right once again, and you can’t miss it. There will be signs posted as well.

For more information on Becoming Dragon please visit:

http://secondloop.wordpress.com
http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1431