During April to May 2009, DSL Cyber MoCA were presented in several art institutions by Lily & Honglei, the artists contributing to the project concept and conduction. These activities have been documented below, click on following links to find out details:

: Penal Discussion on VR art at Boston University :

: Boston Cyberarts in Second Life :

: Cyberarts South in Universtiy of Massachusetts Dartmouth :

: Presentation at Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT :

: "TransForm" Exhibtion Representing International New Media Artists

 

:: the 10th Boston CyberArts Festival, 04/26 – 05/10, 2009 ::

Navigating Cyberworlds: Creative Practice in Virtual Reality,

panel discussion in Boston University

Boston Cyberarts Festival, April 6, 2009: This event was held in SCV (Scientific Computing & Visualization) Computer Graphics Lab in BU, and hosted by Boston Cyberarts Director George Fifield. The panel features artists associated with several of the VR exhibitions, including Mark Skwarek, Tamiko Thiel, Honglei, and Jeff Lipsky.

Honglei Li (representing Lily & Honglei) new media artist collective from Beijing. They actively present in a wide range of intenational art evnets. Their digital artworks combine traditional art and new media to reinterpret Chinese folklore traditions, and explore the potential of virtual world and cyberspace as new venues for artistic creativity, more importantly, the new media art’s possible impact on a global society. Collaborating with DSL Collection of Chinese contemporary art, Lily & Honglei launched DSL Cyber MoCA, museum of contemporary art in Second Life, in April 2009, with which they aim to enable the meaningful presence of contemporary art in virtual space, to promote more artwork exchange between Chinese and international art communities, and to present varied views about today’s China through contemporary art.

Mark Skwarek introduced the VR installation Children of Arcadia, which transformed the Cambridge Arts Council Gallery into a large scale, seventeenth-century Baroque-style painting that has come to life. “With panoramic visuals and high-quality surround sound, gallery visitors use a game controller to explore a real-time virtual Arcadia. The work gathers and translates real-time information from the Internet related to the American economy as well as current events and societal issues, and translates this data into either a view of apocalyptic ruin or an idealized utopia. The project is created by Mark Skwarek, Joseph Hocking, Arthur Peters, and Damon Baker (Boston Cyberarts press on April 6).”

Tamiko Thiel, the internationally recognized new media artist and pioneer, shared her work and thought of recreation of Berlin Wall: Virtuelle Mauer / ReConstructing the Wall. The Asian-German-American artist collaborating with Teresa Reuter to create a space for visual reflection on a major sociopolitical transition of out time. “This interactive 3D installation investigates the impact of the Wall, which divided West and East Berlin during the Cold War from 1961 to 1989. A digital reconstruction of a segment of the dismantled Wall and its surrounding neighborhoods creates a place of remembrance that users can explore in order to experience and reflect on this time in history. Viewers navigate through the virtual world, weaving stories and events through their own movements and choices (Boston Cyberarts press on April 6).”

Jeff Lipsky is an artist and gallery founder uniquely bridging the physical gallery and virtual presentation space in Second Life virtual world. Recently his projects were featured in Times Magazine with an extensive article. Lipsky is the host of “Traversing Sweet Illusions: Boston Cyberarts in Second Life” exhibition in his gallery “counterpART” at Lowell, MA.

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Traversing Sweet Illusion: Boston Cyberarts in Second Life

Boston Cyberarts Press, April 6, 2009: Boston Cyberarts’ presence in the virtual world takes place in Second Life, the popular online environment, in the “Artropolis” artist colony, courtesy of Jeffrey Lipsky (aka Filthy Fluno in Second Life). Artropolis is a Second Life island of visual and performing artists. The exhibition is organized by Carmin Karasic and Melita Podesta. One particularly intriguing work, entitled “Traversal for Faneuil Hall” by John Fillwalk and Jesse Allison, is a live performance that allows avatars to actually ring the Faneuil Hall bell tower in Boston.

Other featured works include “DSL Cyber MoCA,” “Land of Illusions” by Lily & Honglei; “In the Sweet Bye & Bye” by Philip Jones; “Adventures of Filthy Fluno” by Jeffrey Lipsky; “I’m Not Here” by Lance Shields; “Hostile Space” by D.C Spensley; and “Artropolis” by Todd Tevlin. The opening reception takes place April 26 in Second Life and includes live SL music performances and artist talks. Works from “Traversing Sweet Illusions” are also available for viewing in the non-virtual world. CounterpART Gallery in Lowell hosts the entire Festival Second Life exhibition from April 24-May 2, with a Cyber-flavor Mashup reception and artist talk on April 26. Lily & Honglei’s Second Life artwork is on view at Design Gallery 154 at UMass Dartmouth.

Visit Boston Cyberarts in Second Life website for exhibition detail.

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Cyberart South, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Boston Cyberarts: Lily & Honglei presented DSL Cyber MoCA and Digital Storytelling at Cyberart South at University of Massachusetts Dartmough, as part of Boston Cyberart Festival 2009.

Cyberarts South 2009 is a rotating exhibition of work by students, faculty and alumni of the Digital Media discipline in the Design Department at UMass Dartmouth, just 50 minutes south of Boston. During the Boston Cyberarts Festival, events took place in Design Gallery 154, a specialized space for digital media presentation on the first floor of UMD’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. Theater-style projections of animation, time-based works, participatory virtual events, hands-on interactive design presentations, exhibitions of digital prints, sound art, and a continuous web presence with links for virtual access…
www.des.umassd.edu/cyberarts

Sponsored by the Digital Media option of the Visual Design Department at UMass Dartmouth

artwork on view: alumni Yanyan Sun's animation

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:: “Upgrade! Boston” presentation ::

Lily & Honglei: New Media Art from China, CAVS, MIT

Lily & Honglei presented their new media art reinterpreting Chinese cultural tradition, particularly the folk tales’ metaphors and symbolism and their implications in today’s society, at Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), MIT on 05/19/2009.

Lily & Honglei also introduced the newly launched DSL Cyber MoCA, the virtual museum of contemporary art constructed in Second Life virtual world. They stated that “DSL Cyber MoCA is our collaboration with DSL Collection, the prominent Chinese contemporary art collections representing more than 90 leading Chinese avant-guard artists. Our collaboration are based on common goals, first, to present varied views about today’s China through contemporary art; second, to enable the presence of serious contemporary art in the virtual world, and use the virtual museum as a platform for exchanging opinions, ideas and experiences of new media art creativity with international artist communities. DSL Cyber MoCA opens to the public, you are welcome to visit it online anytime…”

Lily briefly addressed the key concepts of their new media art as following -

” First, we attempt to use new media art to reinterpret folklore traditions such as folk stories, fairy tales and folk art, and we are particularly interested in the metaphors and symbolism in those traditions, we think they are imaginary, beautiful, powerful, and accurately conveying people’s feelings, reaching humanity. In many cases, these traditions express the strong sympathy towards the weak and the repressed in a society. As Chinese contemporary artists, we consider those qualities of folklore or traditional legends deserve more attentions and more efforts to translate or adapt them, reinterpret them with a universal language, namely contemporary art language. And new media have become the tool assisting us to achieve this goal.

Another consideration is the relationship between new media and visual art tradition. In our understanding, new media art is characterized by not only employing 21^st century’s communication and imaging technologies, but also the functions of preserving and developing the aesthetic traditions. In our experiments, we have combined conventional art forms such as painting and folk art, with new media, and intend to create new artistic expressions belonging to this digital age.

Also, as our work involves virtual reality built in cyberspace, we would like to address the relationship between the virtual environments, and the reality in the physical world. For us, the virtual reality is always a reflection on reality, is a distant place where we can meditate upon history and current society, visualize issues in the reality. And another reason we apply virtual world platform to our work, is because we can take advantage of the cutting edge communication technologies of online virtual world to enhance interaction with audiences. In some cases the projects rely on the artists’ cross-continent collaborations via Internet, and participation of audiences is a significant part of the work as well…”

comment by audience: “You presented such a beautiful and profound body of work that touched at the emotional core of Chinese and cultural heritage. Serene even during some of the most violent, dark moments. Sensitive. Drawing from ancient folktales, universally known by those born and raised in China … the work, both in Lily’s Second Life virtual performance pieces and in Honglei’s animation from large-scale oil paintings, depicted a sense of story, texture and space at once timeless and distant while touching on the fundamental nature of human and cultural nature to open up and engage each and every one of us through an introverted self-reflection.

Fantastic work. Fantastic talk. Thank you for sharing your stories and your art with us tonight.”

More info on Turbulence.org

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:: Artwork Exchanges ::

One of the major functions of DSL Cyber MoCA is to enhance idea and artwork exchange between Chinese and international artist communities. To fulfill this goal, founders of DSL Cyber MoCA curated and sponsored the first group exhibition “TransForm” representing several influential new media artists from varied cultural backgrounds – John Craig Freeman (US), Cao Fei (China), Second Front (artist collective), Patrick Lichty (US), Lily & Honglei (US and China), Zhenming Zhai (China), Constantin Severin (Romania). The exhibition is held in Cyber MoCA in Second Life and traveling to Sun Yet-San University in Guang Zhou, China in July, 2009. Co-curator Professor Zhenmeing (Philip) Zhai will be the host of live presentation of “TransForm.”

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