Gem Price has been in Second Life since May 4, 2008.
A thoughtful hiker, trained in science and math, strongly tied to everything to do with nature, cosmos and earth, from astronomy to geology, who spends his free time traveling the world, taking photos and mostly creating digital sceneries, and summaries of the fractals.
In Second Life he found the opportunity to expand and present his passion for creating fractals thanks to digital tools.
As the Gem says: “Nature is subject to physical rules that apply everywhere, regardless of the size of things, and on earth they design landscapes by repeating shapes or movements from gigantic size to the smallest detail: dunes, waves, branches , clouds, rivers … The world of fractals is also dominated by mathematical functions that, like physics in nature, make it possible to create objects whose properties are repeated on any scale. “
This is Gem’s passion for fractals: thanks to the power and purity of the mathematical concept, creating images whose complexity can be reminiscent of natural beings, objects or landscapes.
And this is reflected in his high quality work that he presents in Second Life. His latest exhibition can be seen on the island of Akimitsu as part of “ The Borderless Project, ” sponsored by Akiko Kinoshi, owner and curator, who writes:
“The Borderless Project” is an 8-level, interactive digital art exhibition wherein we play with light: reflections, structures, movement, creation and evolution.. With sounds and music to match the emotions brought to life by the multi-talented team of artists and scripters. The Borderless Project derives much of its inspiration from teamLAB founded in Japan in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, and now a series of multinational installations throughout the world. The Borderless Project, in Second Life, explores what we can do within this world where gravity is unimportant, physics is negotiable, and magic is possible!”
Gem’s levels contain a multitude of thought-provoking spaces such as: Souls, Petals, Lumen, Beads, Dream, Marbles, Jungle, Stream, Lamps, and many more. And these are only 2 of the 8 levels of The Borderless Project. The whole Borderless Team of Magicians are: Betty Tureaud, Gem Preiz, Delain Canucci, Thoth Jantzen, Mitsuko Kytori, Blaise Timtam and Akiko Kinoshi. There are many other levels to explore and all the levels are designed to react to movement and are accompanied by music, sounds and media that allow you to completely immerse yourself in the experience.
All in all, The Borderless Project is a fantastic exhibition and experience that no one should miss and everyone should take some time to journey into these worlds!
I personally got to know Gem a few years ago, primarily through the exhibitions he presented in SL.
True, I have to admit that apart from this interview, I didn’t often have the opportunity to chat with Gem for a long time because he is very cautious and is more of an observer who pulls himself in the background and rarely starts chatting with others first.
This interview opened the door for me to get to know the Gem a little better and gave me an insight into the world of his thoughts and his life. I feel very grateful and deeply honored for this opportunity.
I took the liberty of asking Akiko Kinoshi how it is to work with Gem, as I know that she values him very much and has carried out several projects with Gem, to which she replied:
“I met Gem at one of his fractal art openings some years ago, he greeted me in Japanese, I greeted him in French and that was the beginning…Gem is a wonderful artist with great depth who loves to learn new things and then apply his vast experience to personalize it. The Borderless Project is our 4th project together: he installed ‘Skyscrapers’ then ‘Arcadia’ followed by ‘Journey to the Center of a Fractal Earth’ and finally his 2 levels of Borderless. Gem is a total professional as well as a great friend. Humble, self-effacing and generous, he is the ultimate team-player with a great sense of humor whom everyone loves to be around.”
Gem’s personality inspires me, his way of thinking, his complex and broad knowledge, as well as the numerous exhibitions that he presents in Second Life, generate *wow effect * again and again and give me a feeling of the vastness and immeasurable size of the world we are living and the huge cosmos. It is not uncommon for me to find this size as well as the extension of the horizon to generate the necessary distance, which I consider to be very important in order to see things in everyday life from a different perspective. His work has an indescribable power to absorb knowledge, feelings and outlook on life as well as the theory of being, to question and expand it.
Therefore, I can only warmly recommend everyone reading this interview to visit the Borderless Project exhibition and get to know Gem Preiz.
Interview with Gem Preiz
Gem,
Your life without art would be …
Gem: “long comme un jour sans pain” (French saying which means approx. “boring like a day without bread”). It applies to the art I enjoy in RL every day in reading, paintings in exhibitions or found when surfing on the net, listening to music etc., but also to my own hobbies : creating fractal or digital images, RL photography, and building surreal environments in metaverses, mainly SL.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Gem: from anything which makes me feel insignificant : Nature, Universe, Time, Mankind considered as a whole organized entity, are among the themes I like to illustrate or refer to in my exhibitions or builds.
What is your work about?
Gem: about making an individual (me or a spectator) face a disturbing dimension (spatial or temporal), and lead to questions about our (Mankind) position in the scale of complexity of the Universe (or of our human society), and thus our ability to understand it. In order to achieve this, I try to make the spectators feel overwhelmed by the environment in which I place them : its size, scale or level of details of what I show (e.g. Temples in 2013, Polychronies in 2014, Metropolis in 2015, Heritage in 2016, Sapiens in 2018)
How is the artistic process like there? Do you see an object / person / landscape first and then the idea comes up? Or is it upside down?
Gem: what I create is out of reality, and mostly unrealistic. Fractal images by nature, and even my builds never intend to reproduce reality, but I try to evoke the latter through what I create. As far as fractals are concerned, I produce many images of different styles and I pick up among what I produce, series of images which can illustrate the themes I want to develop. There is obviously a link : if I finalize an image, it is because unconsciously it talks to my mind, and I would likely find a way to include it in something exhibited. As far as builds are concerned, initially I created them to stage the fractals and emphasize them (e.g. Cathedral Dreamer in 2014, No Frontiers in 2017), but more and more they become a creation by themselves (e.g. The Anthropic Principle in 2017, Skyscrapers and Arcadia in 2020).
Your mantra?
Gem: difficult. It would be more likely a question than a saying. I love the way Hubert Reeves (Candian astrophysician) questions the Future : in the scale of complexity, from the elementary particles to the Human body and conscience, what is the next step ? … and without answer, I would stick to an Haiku by Ozaki Hôsai that I recently read and loved
“On the tip of a grass
facing the infinite sky
an ant”
Currently, the best place for you in SL?
Gem: Borderless project in Akimitsu Sim, where some people including me exhibit installations in the spirit of TeamLab Japan (project initiated in SL by Akiko Kinoshi). Otherwise the places I visit most frequently at the moment are Art Galleries (depending on what is displayed of course), and shows (particles based or not).
A question that moves you right now …
Gem: my main concerns at the moment are RL : Violence, Inequalities, Social Networks negative aspects.
Is there a work of art in your life that particularly impressed you?
Gem: Many, among which some I often come back to : Charles Dickens works, John Martin or Thomas Cole paintings. I don’t know why, England has always had a great influence on me.
What is art for you – now completely independent of the usual definitions?
Gem: regardless definitions, schools, trends, etc. … I completely assimilate Art to the act of creating. The artist is the one who creates. Then someone else can appreciate, praise, value, judge, like, dislike, feel, think, whatever. But to do something out of nothing : that is art for me.
Was there a key experience or has the artist profession always been your dearest wish?
Gem: though I always appreciated art, especially literature and music in the first times and then painting, I came to creating by myself only 10 years ago, pretty much all of a sudden. At that time there was a conjunction in my RL life of lots of time available, digital tools that I discovered, and SL as an environment where to display my works.
Do you feel understood with your art?
Gem: I use to introduce my works with exhibition notecards. I am cartesian, I like to explain, argue, clarify. So “understood” in the meaning of what do I evoke or what do I mean ? Yes. Understood in term of praising or liking, well … people are kind in SL.
Do you think that you can make a difference with your art?
Gem: Honestly with the images only, I’m not sure. I might be able to create or share a feeling, an emotion thanks to the immersive power of large scale images and thanks to the awe-provoking theme of the Universe that I frequently illustrated with fractals. But I feel more comfortable in sharing thoughts or concerns by the mean of words. I tried twice to link my fractals with stories I wrote (e.g. Wrecks in 2016 and The Anthropic principle in 2017) and almost always join an extensive notecard of explanation (e.g. Gemmy’s World in 2014 or Demiurge in 2018). Adding selected pieces of music to complement the atmosphere has always be another mean to establish the connection with the spectators (e.g. Rhapsody in blue fractals in 2015 or No Frontiers in 2017)
Do you think that everyone is an artist?
Gem: referring to what I answered to a previous question, I think everyone is able to be or become a creator. in my RL I have known kids writing tales, a marketing director becoming illustrator for children, a doctor in medicine and a tax expert turning into glass blowing, banking executives becoming painter or creator of glass beads jewelry, many many examples of people non educated in Art but driven by the thirst of creating. And the results are often amazing ! Unfortunately too many artists who would have loved to live from their art cannot achieve their dream. A friend of mine’s uses to say : you cannot be rich if you’re an artist, but you can be an artist if you’re rich.
Do you have any role models? If yes, which?
Gem: Apart from all great RL artists I love, I have always been specially impressed by artists who were able to create a complete world through their works, either by creating any single element of it (e.g. Tolkien in RL literature) or thanks to such a different vision of an existing world that they create a new one in parallel (e.g. Melusina Parkin’s extensive and remarkable photographic work in SL)
Are there any topics that you are particularly interested in implementing?
Gem: Thanks to Akiko’s Borderless project, I learnt a lot about lights in SL and how to use scripts to manage them. I would like to go further with these tools, by themselves, or to better display my fractals works. I also greatly appreciated to work with Delain Canucci to improve my exhibition “Journey to the center of a fractal Earth” thanks to her subtle and wonderful particles. All this can bring life and movement to my installations, and that is something which was missing in them, I think.
What is your strength?
Gem: I would answer “the scale” of what I propose, which emphasizes the immersive dimension and enables the spectators to forget that my fractals are 2D works. But the scale would be a nonsense without the complexity of the patterns, which also gets the spectators lost in the sceneries.
What was the best advice you have ever received in SL?
Gem: “forget what people think”
Your next projects, exhibitions. Where your art can be seen?
Gem: I will be part of virtual art biennale 2022 in Amerika, Germany (project promoted and managed by Art Blue and Juliette Surrealdreaming on Craftworld metaverse). In SL, I am slowly preparing an exhibition of fractals on a science-fiction theme. I have no idea when it would be ready. Concerning my personal gallery, I recently closed it (temporarily) cause it needed to be totally reshaped.
Gem Preiz´s Bio
“Educated in science and mathematics, I have always been fond of anything related to Nature, Cosmos and Earth, from astronomy to geology, and also a contemplative walker who spends his leisure time traveling around the world (not enough though), taking photographs (a lot), and mostly creating digital sceneries, abstracts, and fractals.
Nature is governed by physical rules which apply everywhere, regardless the size of things. On Earth, they design landscapes, repeating shapes or motions from the huge size to the tiny detail : dunes, waves, branches, clouds, rivers … The world of fractals is, in the same way, ruled by Mathematics functions which, as Physics do in Nature, enable to create objects which features repeat themselves at every scale. There lies my passion for fractals : create thanks to the power and pureness of the Mathematical concept, images the complexity of which can suggest Nature beings, objects or sceneries.
I hope you will enjoy the diversity of shapes and colors that fills my works, as a reflection of Nature’s one.” – Gem Preiz
Gem´s Exhibitions on Second Life
Fractals:
– Gem’s own gallery (Sep. 2012): Universe, partially re-exhibited at Rose Theater in a Kylie Sabra’s build (Jan. 2014)
– Hotel Chelsea (Oct. 2012): Waste
– Guild of Lys Noir (Oct. 2012): Science and Future
– Aneli’s gallery (Nov. 2012): Heaven and Hell
– Art Garden (Jan. 2013): A journey through color
– Guild of Lys Noir (Jan. 2013) : Temples – (open YouTube please)
– Timamoon arts (Feb. 2013): Imaginary worlds, followed by Time Witnesses, then Oniric
– Angelwood Bay art center (Feb. 2013) : Chromatic retrospective
– Somnium gallery (Mar. 2013): Order and Disorder
– Gem’s own gallery (Apr. 2013): Journey to a fractal space (open YouTube please)
– Two shores art gallery (May 2013): Myths
– Timamoon arts (Oct. 2013) : a simple trip into complexity (open YouTube please)
– The Mavin Tinker Gallery (Nov. 2013): Fractal paintings
– Angelwood Bay art center (Nov. 2013): Cities of dreams
– LEA Full Sim Serie (January 2014): a Cathedral Dreamer
Video 1 – Video 2 – Video 3 – Video 4 a Cathedral Dreamer is now a permanent exhibition on Metropolis grid, where it is also part of Vulcanicus Art Museum. Extracts of the Sim have been exhibited at Plusia Ars (Mar. 2014)
– le Bronx (February 2014): Polychronies
– La Maison d’Aneli (June 2014): Gemmy’s world (some of the works exhibited at Fetish Circus in June 2015)
– Galeria Mexico (September 2014): Geometries – Genesis
– Influence Art Gallery (April 2015): Rhapsody in Blue Fractals (open YouTube please)
– Influence Art Gallery (June 2015): Metropolis
– FIAT 2015 (Sept. 2015): Fractal Variations
– Space4Art (Oct. 2015): Undisplayed pieces
– LEA – Artist in Residence (Jan. – Jun. 2016): HERITAGE a twofold exhibition composed of
– Vestiges
– Wrecks – English version: YouTube – French version: YouTube
– LEA project:
– Surreal Tower (1st quarter 2016)
– Surreal Cube (3rd quarter 2016)
– LEA – Artist in Residence (Jan. – Jun. 2017):
– No Frontiers
– The Anthropic Principle (including a short novel)
– Aneli’s Gallery (Jan. 2017): Oceans Fractals
– R&D Art Gallery Diotima (Sept. 2017): 5 years of fractals – Retrospective
– The Eye Art Gallery (Nov. 2017): Chaos
– Galerie des Machines (Dec. 2017): A Touch of Steampunk
– LEA – Artist in Residence (Jan. – Jun. 2018):
– Sapiens
– Demiurge
– Vegetal Planet: Delirium Fractalens (Feb. – Mar. 2018)
– participation in Santorini Biennale 2018 (Nov. 2018)
– Club LA Gallery: some Unclassifiable fractals (Feb. 2020)
– Hannington Endowment for the Arts: Elusive Reality (Mar. 2020)
– Akiko Kinoshi sponsoring: Journey to the Center of a fractal Earth (Jul. 2020)
– Love & Love Art Gallery: Intimacy (Feb. 2021)
Architecture:
– Akiko Kinoshi sponsoring: Skyscrapers (Apr. 2020)
– Akiko Kinoshi sponsoring: Arcadia (Oct. 2020)
Immersive Installations:
– Akiko Kinoshi sponsoring: Borderless Project – Visual Entertainment (May 2021)
Digital:
– ArtEdLand (Nov. 2012): Planet Artwork
– LEA (Oct. 2013): contribution to the Gaia Theory Project
Links to Blog
Inara Pey
Heaven and Hell and Simple Tour into Complexity
Ride into the Universe – YouTube
Echtvirtuell
Diomita et Jenny Maurer’s
Fanette Crystal (en Français)
Quan Lavender
Honour McMillan
Kara’s Corner
Ricco Saenz
Zarrakan Yue (all linked to YouTube)
Veemonthedemonking (all linked to YouTube)
Pia Klaar
Journey to the grid (anthropic principle) Video 1 & Journey to the grid (anthropic principle) Video 2
Apmel
Vimeo
Magazines
Anthropic Principle (short novel)
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