Second Life and Real Life artist Milena Carbone first registered with SL on June 22, 2019.
An artist who´s life is all about art.
Her fields of inspiration are mainly science, psychology, philosophy, religions, and I would also include politics because of her statements about the climate problem and other topics with which she deals in general.
In her work she expresses the deepest feelings, fears, anger, friendships and despair.
Milena presents photography, to which she also adds appropriate stories so that she doesn’t necessarily see herself as a photographer, but rather as a storyteller.
Full of ideas and without following certain rules, she expresses values in her work.
Depending on which topic is moving you and how strong the inner urge is to express her feelings and of course always paying attention to many small details and the quality of the work, she create and transform her vision into photography and words.
She feels called to what she does, and she always give her best to make our and her own world better, or to make us all aware of a topic.
Milena’s favorite artist is Banksy, Van Goog’s “La Nuit Etoilée” left permanent traces in her artistic presence.
Vivian Maier’s photography inspires her and she is very impressed by the philosopher Simone Weil. Basically, as she says, she admires people who live behind the scenes.
I personally,got to know Milena as a highly motivated person. She is very enthusiastic about things that move her, goal-oriented and very often withdrawn in her creative world.
Milena’s work is very complex, as her pictures are part of a story that she shares with us in her exhibitions. Nevertheless, and regardless of presented stories, there is always enough free space for the viewer for their own interpretations.
Milena is a reserved person, very friendly, a young and yet very serious person, enthusiastic, credible and convincing.
Riding Milena’s *stories*, they all have a strong foundation and are deeply rooted – sometimes unexpectedly heavy and deep going, but diverse and often alarming for our attention.
In my opinion, Milena is one of those artists who always try to inspire us to dialogue, to create madness and thus to provoke clarity.
The artist as Milena, often bring colors into an empty frame that we sometimes feel inside ourselves on certain topics.
Artist as she is give a voice to people who are normally not noticed or heard, and many times they manage to draw our attention to a certain situation.
I would like to end a short presentation with a quote: “Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.” by Victor Pinchuk
Milena: I don’t know. I’m enthusiastic. Etymologically “enthusiasm” means having “God inside”.
Inspiration is out of control, I let it go and “it” shows up. Probably I am not an artist, but inspired.
The fields of inspiration are mainly science, psychology, philosophy and religions.
What is your work about?
Milena: The work is the result of what is outside :
the questions emerging from the world, beginning with Leibntz’s one :
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
and with all its corollaries ; and what is inside, my deepest emotions, my fears, my angers, my joy and my despair.
The main topics of my work, in sl, are the collapse of humanism, and even humanity, the advanced civilization of trees and of course, the assumption that God could have been an alcoholic.
It is important to know I mix pictures and writing. I am not an artist, but a storyteller.
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?
Milena: There is no rule, but values : openness, liberty, humility.
Openness: welcoming what happens with no judgement, everything that happens is a gift.
That makes it possible to have a flow of ideas, of “possibles” with endless variations.
Liberty: I don’t care about academicism, fashion and style or failures.
Whatever comes and moves me is what i have to express. I test, fail and learn.
Humility: the less worse things I am creating are always totally unexpected, as if it appears in spite of me.
So it is useless to try to have any theory or identified process of creation.
The only thing I try to do is to take care of details, on the quality of the image or the story, as far as it is possible for me.
Your mantra?
Milena: “Every day is the best day of my life”.
Currently, the best place for you in SL?
Milena: Almost all my SL time is dedicated to my galleries and exhibitions.
Sometimes my avatar is parked in different clubs, like Fogbound or Exhale, listening to music, while working on the Adobe suite. The rest of my time I like to stay in the little home I’ve built with the few prims left, with one of my few friends I can talk to in full trust.
Milena: I am desperate by climate change and its denial by most of the humans.
I am horrified by violence and its media coverage which makes it trivial.
I see the future of our world as a choice between competition and cooperation.
For me the myth of paradise is the metaphor of our limited earth.
We have reached the wall of paradise, the limit of earth.
Competition is no more accurate, only cooperation will save life on our tiny earth.
It is what I wanted to express in my exhibition “American shot”.
As the result of this exhibition, an artist friend wrote to me accusing me of being “anti-american”, and irrespective of the people who saved Europe during WWII.
He brutally unfriended me, without listening to my explanations. He obviously didn’t see the exhibition. QED.
Is there a work of art in your life that particularly impressed you?
I stood gaping in front of this painting for I don’t know how long, drowned in the depth of this overwhelming blue of the sky. Some months later, I read in a book it was the first time a painter painted a galaxy in the sky.
Science inspires.
What is art for you – now completely independent of the usual definitions?
Milena: Art today has to question our way of thinking, of feeling, of living, of cheating, of loving…
Not because it has to be always, but today. Otherwise it is a decoration.
Having the possibility to create in this unstable and dangerous world incurs responsibility.
An artist will probably be the first to be jailed or killed in a totalitarian regime, and the temptation of totalitarianism was never so strong than today for the people in power.
Hanging an artwork in your lounge, has to enlighten your soul more than the color of your wall paper.
Do you think that you can make a difference with your art?
Milena: It is a whole.
I do my best in my life to make the world better, for the family, friends, neighbors and citizens, not only with what I am doing in SL. I am clumsy, but try harder.
Do you think that everyone is an artist?
Milena: Looking attentively, every living being is an artwork. And also the little bug on my desk right now.
Do you have any role models? If yes, which?
Milena: Unfortunately, I admire people who live behind the scenes.
Simone Weil, the French philosopher, and Vivian Maier, the American photographer, for instance.
And they are far far above any possibility for me to reach their talent and thoughts.
They went in light, beyond the human cavern.
There were and still are people beyond humanity, anonymous persons, lost in their world.
If you can carefully open the door of their world, you can discover lights, smells, landscapes, music, dances that do not exist yet in our world, because our senses are mostly derisory.
Milena: The ability to survive. I don’t let myself be pushed around, and I work hard.
What was the best advice you have ever received in SL?
Milena: Probably as many, the first person I met in SL said to me this short inequation I’ve always had in mind: “RL>SL”. And I got some fantastic advice from SL developers to make E-Books in SL, to build my galleries, to fiddle with scripts, and even to be able to use BOM on my avi!
Your next projects, exhibitions. Where your art can be seen?
Milena: There are many projects at the moment. The exhibition Faded faces in New Berlin closes end of the May.
Work is in progress for three new exhibitions, and new ones are in the designing phase.
I will open two new Carbone Galleries, one this month, the other probably next month.
And my most thrilling project is to set up the Carbone Dance Company, a SL dance company for contemporary dance. After this, I plan to go to the beach for a while.
On May 27, 2021, Milena Carbone will open her third art gallery.
Installed on the private sim belonging to Charlie Nova, patron, it has the capacity for 3 to 4 exhibitions in an exceptionally natural and intimate landscape.
The gallery is made up of a reception building with an open and refined design in which you can have a drink and stroll, surrounded by works of art from Charlie Nova’s private collection. There is the exhibition board, common to all the Carbone Galleries from which you can access all her current exhibitions with 2 clicks.
The Carbone Gallery @ Serena will swiftly host three skybox exhibitions and one floor exhibition in the form of Landart, as well as events. Performances of the future Carbone Dance Company are already planned, including a contemporary ballet project written for excerpts from Richard Wagner’s opera mixed with the German metal band Rammstein.
“Milena Carbone is French born in 1992 in Strasbourg.
She has written and photographed since the age of 16. In 2010, she entered university where she studied psychology.
In 2012, her life changed. She met the love of her life which only lasted forty days. She reads the IPCC reports and realizes the risk of the collapse of civilization, sacrificed on the altar of ignorance and greed.
In 2013, she cut short her studies, and did an accelerated course in computer graphics.
She worked for two years in an advertising agency, and in 2015 started out as a freelance graphic designer.
Between 2017 and 2019, artist friends encouraged her to publish her texts and to exhibit her photographs.
She participated in two exhibitions of artists’ collectives where she presented photographs associated with short stories.
In mid 2019, she signed up for Second Life.
She discovered its artistic potential and since then has devoted all her free time to creation, associating, as in real life, images and texts.
Milena Carbone is a fiction in which, as in any artistic work, biographical and imaginary elements are mixed.“
MILENA CARBONE’S ARTISTIC PROJECT IN SECOND LIFE
Milena Carbone’s artistic project on Second Life is the continuation of her work in RL. Its specificity is based on anonymity, an important component of this virtual world.
By accepting the rule of the “double” (the real “I” and the virtual “I”), Milena Carbone includes herself in her artwork : she is fiction and questions her place in the world and the scope of her word.
By asking the question: “Who speaks in Second Life?”, Milena Carbone, author and fiction, returns this question to us in our real life: Who speaks ? How and why is it that an “I” appears capable of observing, from the inside, the universe that created it ? How can we ignore our ignorance to the point of destroying ourselves ? How does our language, limited and discontinuous, lose us in sufficiency?
Her creative process is iterative: some of her images inspire her stories and these stories modify the development of the image, which itself transforms the story.
The phase of editing is very important. It combines the raw image of Second Life with a black and white layer and textures. These different photoshop layers represent, for Milena Carbone, “layers of meaning”.
THE RECURRING THEMES IN MILENA CARBONE’S WORK
Her main themes are:
The collapse of humanism, and even humanity;
Fiction, reality and consciousness
Poetry of science and spirituality;
The advanced civilization of trees;
The assumption that God could have been an alcoholic.
To feed her artistic project, she draws inspiration from science, psychology, philosophy and religions.
Her favorite subjects are female avatars and / or natural or urban landscapes. She rarely takes herself as the subject of her images preferring to discover model avatars with attitude.
In the coming weeks, an exhibition of works by Melusina Parkin, ‘Fragments’, will be open at the Galerie Carbone @ Serena, with texts and an installation created by Milena Carbone.
Accepting an invitation from a friend to exhibit in his castle, under a XIXth century glass roof, MIlena Carbone is currently exhibiting 9 works from her Arts & Rats exhibition. On the occasion of this creation, Bryn Oh lent her formidable series of mythical creatures. Each painting contains a combination of its creatures.
Milena Carbone is launching her Carbone Dance Company, a contemporary dance company. After her first ballet, Scandal, which was very successful with spectators, she devoted a lot of energy to the creation of a new ballet which will be performed as part of the exhibition Fragment, by Melusina Parkin with music by Steve Reich and a booklet from texts written for the exhibition.
The dance company will also produce micro-choreographies of around 5 to 10 minutes presented in a loop for several hours. Visitors to the gallery can enjoy them whenever they want. Called “Living PIctures”, the staging of these choreographies is expressed in a frame that resembles a large painting, in front of a video background. Living Pictures # 01 and # 02 have already been featured in the main Carbone Gallery.
Celestial Demon first appeared in Second Life on January 11, 2012.
For Celestial, art is the voice of the soul, a way to feel less alone or to be better understood.
Through understanding and compassion, strong emotional intelligence as well as perception of his surroundings and circumstances or situation and in-depth conversations with his fellow human beings, he gives the feelings back in his works of art.
His work is his personal diary, with which he talks about himself and the feelings he receives in the world.
Often only through the sounds of music or through a special situation, he feels the inner desire to capture this moment and express it in one of his works.
He is one who never judges too quickly over the others.
Celestial is very aware that we are all complex beings and that each of us has our past, our struggle and our feelings, so he rater to listen to the voice of others in complete silence.
Celestial doesn’t necessarily see itself as an artist, yet believes that anyone can be an artist. For him “there is a drawing in every pencil”, it is just that knowing how to “move the pencil” is very important, and therefor are diverse and different ways of artistic expression.
Through his creative work, Celestial gets to know himself better, understands others better and gains deeper contact with others.For him, being creative is always a way to feel better.
Celestial fondly remembers the advice he once received in SL:
“As much as you think you are alone, you never will be.
Someone will also be there in silence. “
I personally,
got to know Celestial as a very friendly, but also reserved person. His SL profile revealed to me the poetic, advanced thinker and profoundly sensitive soul that hides inside.
His creative work awakens a feeling of floating, lifted a little dreamily from the earth up and with a view of the open horizon of the sky.
When I look at his photography I always think of the famous William Shakespeare quote from Hamlet:
“There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”
Celestial: Art is expression. As a man he needs to use words to let himself be understood by his fellow men. I think art is a way to help us be understood. Feeling less alone. However much the right words may be used, they are often misunderstood. But art is not. Art knows very well what to express. Without art we are voiceless.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Celestial: You don’t need inspiration when you know what it feels like inside. Talking with other souls, music, dreams, everything around us helps us to give the final shape.
What is your work about?
Celestial: My work is a personal diary. I’m talking about myself, my emotions and how I perceive the world. right or wrong that may be.
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?
Celestial: The image arises in my mind, often just listening to the music. So many small factors create their own together.
Your mantra?
Celestial: Each of us has a past. Everyone is fighting their own war. Never rush to conclusions without understanding the people in front of you.
Currently, the best place for you in SL?
Celestial: I have explored many lands in 9 years. But only a few have returned. Only a few do I feel at home. Green story, Memento Mori and Tempura.
A question that moves you right now …
Celestial: Honestly, I don’t know how to choose at the moment.
Is there a work of art in your life that particularly impressed you?
Celestial: The Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarroti, located in the Vatican.
What is art for you – now completely independent of the usual definitions?
Celestial: For me, art is the voice of the soul. Our deep selves swimming on the surface and come to light.
Was there a key experience or has the artist profession always been your dearest wish?
Celestial: I don’t consider myself an artist. I just started out of the blue. Never having taken a picture before in my life. Everything else came by itself, one wave after another.
What drives you?
Celestial: Getting to know myself more, so that I can never again misunderstand and know more deeply, in contact, the other close soul.
Do you think that you can make a difference with your art?
Celestial: I don’t think there is a difference. The difference is only if we help ourselves to feel better.
Do you think that everyone is an artist?
Celestial: Yes. The soul has nothing to do with the figure we build in the life of ourselves. In each pencil there is a drawing. You just need to know how to move it. Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves. A goldfish can’t ride a bicycle, that doesn’t mean it can’t do anything else.
Do you have any role models? If yes, which?
Celestial: Even the one who does nothing can be inspiring.
What does the term art mean to you?
Celestial: Listen to the voice of the other in full silence.
Are there any topics that you are particularly interested in implementing?
I will let myself go in a few lines. I don’t quite remember the cause or the reason that brought me into this illusory endless universe, but I know well why my presence is anchored here.
Free creation, unparalleled exploration and the few splendid people worthy of the name continue to give me the energy necessary to swim deep into this immense ocean, to grasp every shade of color and different points of view. I thank them, for better or for worse, for everything I have received.
Joy made me strong. Pain made me phoenix. I admire the idea of this universe in itself, particularly offering my flame and my interiority to strangers with mere photographs.
I’m here at the bottom, to improve myself, knowing you.” – Celestial Demon – Flickr – E-Mail: demoncelestial@yahoo.it
On September 3, 2006, Blue Tsuki logged into Second Life for the first time.
Real life artist, designer, graphic artist, content manager, UX designer, technical writer, animator and art director for a variety of well-known software, entertainment and educational brands. Skilled in creating a work of art in a variety of media including photography, painting, drawing, printing, and installation art.
Blue describes Second Life as “virtualism”, an art that is made with 3D environments of the virtual world and can only be experienced in this environment.
As he says, “This is a medium that is only present in the computer. The essence of this medium is to create immersive installations or experiences that you navigate in a 3D world. These include space, avatar interactions, animation, Sound, music and scripted code. It is possible to point out these environments with photos or videos, but to really capture the experience you have to experience and interact with the virtual space. It’s the difference between photographing the forest and standing in one. Virtualism favors interactions and immersive experiences that are not possible in the real world. An aspect that makes for a unique and exciting art medium. “
Driven by dreams, memories, landscapes, maps, poetry and music and inspired by well-known artists, Blue is always keen to experiment and remains true to his own vision.
When creating one of his fantastic installations, he makes use of various experiences from the past and with his inner imagination he uses all the possibilities that are given to him in SL to carry out his idea, always driven by the power of the original idea.
With his art, he creates an experience for the viewer that is visually entchaned, appeals to our feelings and transports us into another world.
Through his art, Blue expresses feelings that can be felt intuitively if you only let yourself into it for a brief moment. On closer inspection, you will always find many small elaborate hints that suddenly create space for many visions according to your own perception.
Personally,
I find Blue through and through as an artist who impresses with his work, who has the ability to encase you with the most varied of emotions and all the more often can kidnap you into a meditative state.
His work actually not only conveys a feeling of completion, but also a broad channel for the our own visions.
As he himself says, he cannot remember the time when art was not creative and that is exactly what is reflected in his whole personality.
His words are just as well chosen as his work, his focus as soon as he has felt the creative impetus, owns him entirely with his vision and the deep level of his feelings is evident and omnipresent.
Acting creatively opens him like a door to a positive world view, always gives him new momentum to experience, see, feel and create new things.
Blue Tsuki is a Second Life artist / builder and an RL artist through and through. He is a very smart, friendly and accommodating person who got power to leaves a lasting impression with his work.
How pronounced and complex his emotional sensitivity, and the state of mind is reflected in the quote that I found in his profile: “If you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes” by Roy Batty
Blue: Without art I would feel like a ghost in the world. Art has been a touchstone, an anchor to a world too often unseen. Art does not just provide a feeling of accomplishment, it provides a conduit to your vision and the vision of others.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Blue: So many things inform my art: dreams, memory, maps, the landscape. But also to a large degree, music. I listen to lot of music when I am working. It puts me in that evocative creative space.
What is your work about?
Blue: It hardly matters what I think it is about. Saying how I think someone approaches my work handcuffs their imagination as to how they perceive it. Some may think that is avoidance but I too often cringe at artist statements.
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?
Blue: When I create an installation here it has a genesis that comes from experience or imagination. Sometimes it is generated by an image I found. Regardless, it forms in my head first. As it gets implemented I am flexible and see how some things work and some don’t. But the original idea is the driving force. SL of course has special technical considerations but making art here, at its root, is like making art anywhere. You look, you see, you make choices.
“Blue Tsuki is both a Second Life artist/builder and a RL fine artist.
He has worked for many years in a variety of mediums. Trained as a painter and printmaker he has a history of experimentation and unique process art-making. He has shown painting, mixed media sculpture installations, unique process photography, interactive electronic music sculpture, traditional graphite drawings and digital prints.
Blue has worked with computers for many years with a concentration on art and design.
He has become deeply involved with the potential of Second Life as an art medium, pursuing installations and interactive sculptures.”
Dixmix Source entered Second Life for the first time on November 10, 2006. Belgian artist, photographer, director, musician, curator and owner of the Dixmix Gallery since 2007.
He owns a music video production company and the official national newspapers have declared his status as an artist.
He himself said that he never asked about the label “artist”, he got this label from those who looked at his life’s work and reported about it. Dixmix says he never had an undue need to be an artist, for him it was a means of having fun. His inspiration comes from many places, the nature of a simple imagination, sometimes he feels attracted to heaven, where he sees the variations of blue and gray tones, other times inspiration comes from his deep inside.
Poetry can also lead Dixmix into a new dimension and depth, be it how light hits an object or a person and makes it so special, beautiful or interesting, or the desire to capture a special moment.
He doesn’t follow any specific process, he just lets things run organically.
That this is actually the case is shown by the example when his business partner took his beautiful ring from a coffee cup and placed it on the table. The imprint of the ring would become his company’s logo.
Art is omnipresent for Dixmix and the feeling he gets when he sees something he likes is always there, the way he perceives art changes with time and context.
In his role as a curator, it’s not just about inviting artists and letting them do their work, he’s always interested in a healthy exchange with one another, familiarizing the artist with the idea and information on how the art works should be presented in the best possible way and is always there making sure that everything really fits together perfectly.
Some photographers (like himself) have many different genres (portrait, surreal, landscapes, erotic), Dixmix always makes a strong selection and makes sure that all images in a series match.
If he is impressed by a art work, he checks the production quality and style, seeks a conversation with the artist and discusses whether a collaboration for an exhibition can take place.
It is very important to him what an artist presents in his gallery and he is always involved in the selection process, he supports and encourages the artists to produce exclusive pieces for the exhibition in his gallery.
He is a man who can definitely always rely on his own actions, a man who learns from the past, dreams of the future, and always looks up.
In our interview he told me that he is a fan of Sheldon Cooper which really made me laugh as I also find some traits of Sheldon in Dixmix, especially when it comes to innocence and humor.
Personally,
I’ve known Dixmix for a very long time.
There is hardly an exhibition in all of the years that I have not visited. For me, his exhibitions have a very special charm. On the one hand because of the quality of the art he is presenting, on the other because I can always intuitively feel the good cooperation between the artist and his person. This connectedness and togetherness is always quietly present, while you don’t hear a lot of words, rather an inner satisfaction that is reflected in the whole mood at the exhibitions.
The cooperation with Dixmix is accompanied by a healthy dose of humor, he is a very reliable partner, an advanced thinker who has mastered the most important components for effective and productive communication. In addition to his art and gallery, I really appreciate his ability to build trust, expand it, and his professional approach as well as his competence, be it in solving problems or with new ideas. A very respectful person who is always looking for solutions, has an interest in the well-being of his partners and friends and this is also reflected in very good cooperation with him. Dixmix not only inspires with its art and gallery but also with its multi-layered arrangements in its music sets. He has a fantastic feeling and in fact he manages to teleport us into another dimension with his choice of music. I would like to end my introduction to our interview with text I found in Dixmix SL Picks:
“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden. “
Dixmix: Life without art is like eating frites without salt.
It would be terribly boring and tasteless.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Dixmix: Inspiration can come from anywhere and everywhere. All of nature in fact. The simple notion of looking at a sky, and seeing within that, ‘art’ ; it’s never just blue, but rather shades of blue and gray mixed with light.
My inspiration comes from many places.
What is your work about?
Dixmix: Sometimes it comes from a deeper place within, like my last show, using a theme of doorways and a connection to travel, as the point of departure for the work, and the poetry came as a result, adding to this dimension and depth, and sometimes it’s just about capturing a moment in time. For example, the way light hits an object or a person making it beautiful or interesting.
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?
Dixmix: I have no specific process. I just let things go organically.
Your mantra?
Dixmix: One of my personal mantras is, “I can definitely depend on my actions”.
Currently, the best place for you in SL?
Dixmix: I have a secret place that I only share with friends.
A question that moves you right now …
Dixmix: A little Shakespeare applied to SL … To TP or not to TP?
Is there a work of art in your life that particularly impressed you?
Dixmix: I had a music video production company. My business partner left the most beautiful ring on the table from his coffee cup. This image became our logo. I look at it everyday, and am reminded that I see “art” everywhere.
What is art for you – now completely independent of the usual definitions?
Dixmix: I don’t want to look pretentious, art for me is about the feeling I get when i see something i like, some are good to intellectualize about, some are just visceral reactions.
I generally go in the opposite direction, the way we perceive art changes with time and context.
Was there a key experience or has the artist profession always been your dearest wish?
Dixmix: My official national papers, declares my status is “artist” .
Do you think I asked for that? No way.
They looked at what I had been busy doing during my life, and gave me the label.
Honestly, It was never a professional need, but rather a means for having fun.
What drives you?
Dixmix: Black coffees matter!
Do you feel understood with your art?
Dixmix: Not even by me … sigh
Do you think that you can make a difference with your art?
Dixmix: No, I don’t.
Do you think that everyone is an artist?
Dixmix: I certainly don’t feel like an artist, and worse, I don’t like the ones who pretend to be an artist.
Dixmix: Marcel Duchamp said, “Everything in life is art. If I call it art, it’s art, or if I hang it in a museum, it’s art”.
I feel the same.
Are there any topics that you are particularly interested in implementing?
Dixmix: To defy gravity while riding a bicycle.
What is your strength?
Dixmix: My strengths are innocence, humor and being reliable.
What was the best advice you have ever received in SL?
Dixmix: RELOG, you’re orange.
How it came to choose name “Dixmix” and why?
Dixmix: dixmix@gmail was my email and i thought i could change the name after, i can’t and i had no clue 15 year later Dixmix would still be active in SL.
What have moved you to open first Gallery?
Dixmix: I showed some of my abstract RL pictures to a friend who told me to import them in sl to show them in world. Quickly my NY loft turned into a gallery and i invited another photographer, then an another, then it’s history.
Dixmix projects and exhibitions can be seen at the Dixmix Gallery .
In one of interview´s time ago, for one Magazine Dixmix described his Bio in less then 50 words:
“When I rezzed I thought SL was a chat forum and then I discovered this new media, with many creators.
As I am an RL artist (director, photographer, musician) SL is an extension of my artistic life.”
Dixmix Source – Artist, Photographer, Musician, director & Curator
On 4 March 2007, Michiel Bechir logged first time into Second Life.
For Michiel, people around him are very important, he loves his family and friends, and is always open to new experiences, new collaborations and opportunities to share views and experiences with others.
His father inspired him to work with others, to connect with others and to gain experience from different perspectives, different backgrounds and different cultures.
In his works he play with colors, perspectives and styles. Inspired by other artist, by nature or motives from his travels or sometimes just motivated to experiment and try new things.
Michiel understands art as the deepest human expression, at a very young age he had wished to be a comic artist, at the time he was already creating his own stories.
I see his greatest joy in creating and sharing with others. He enjoys organizing events in his gallery with his creative director Tresore.
I got to know Michiel as a very good listener, he is always clear and precise, factually very friendly comrade.
His events are always planned down to the smallest detail, he not only supports artwork but also musicians and with his wonderful space and opportunity to promote artists, talk to others and make new friends, gives a strong justification for being there.
I am very happy to have made Michiels acquaintance and am looking forward to his new projects and good cooperation that we have always had.
Michiel: A life with less energy and inspiration. It is an expression of our inner thoughts and strength.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Michiel: From all kinds of sources, from RL experiences. I love to travel, to explore nature, cities and cultures.
I also get inspired by others, it can be a motivation to do experiments and try new things.
What is your work about?
Michiel: It is how I look at the (virtual) world. I like to share my views and experiences with others.
I play with colors, perspectives, styles.
But it is also about working with others, collaboration, doing events with others.
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?
Michiel: It can go start in different way: by accident (discovering things I like, are new to me), by doing trials and errors with color settings. I take a lot of photos before i decide to use it for publication.
If I dont like the final result it is never published.
Your mantra?
Michiel: People around me are important. I am blessed with an incredible family and wonderful friends.
I like to meet new people and collaborate with others, during events, taking photos.
Michiel: Is Second Life a world in which we are more ourselves then in RL, a world in which we can be what we always wanted too. Not limited by the restrictions they experience in real life.
Is there a work of art in your life that particularly impressed you?
What is art for you – now completely independent of the usual definitions?
Michiel: The deepest of human expressions.
Was there a key experience or has the artist profession always been your dearest wish?
Michiel: As a child I wanted to be a comic artist. I created my own stories. It was my wish as a child to become one.
At older age I changed my plans, I had also more and more interests in IT and technology.
What drives you?
Michiel: Interest for others, in their cultures, ideas. I want to learn, listen, enjoy.
Do you feel understood with your art?
Michiel: Sometimes, and sometimes not. And some cases people really give personal feedback on my works. It gives them a feeling, inspiration, reminds them of things from the past.
A couple of my works have a meaning, they can be more serious, for instance the work dedicated to my father who passed away last year.
Are there any topics that you are particularly interested in implementing?
Michiel: In my works there are some elements returning: Asia, nature, colors. I have no strong topics in most of my works, not about political and social topics. I try to unite people, not divide.
What is your strength?
Michiel: I am easy accessible for people I hope, i can listen well.
What was the best advice you have ever received in SL?
Michiel: They advised me to change my avatar a couple of times, and I should do maybe…but at the same time I am very attached to its looks.
Your next projects, exhibitions. Where your art can be seen?
Michiel: Monthly expositions at my gallery and art cafe.
“I have started my long virtual journey into Second Life as a photographer in 2009.
First my main motivation was to share the richness of creations of all those different sims, with all their aspects. During my trips I did meet a lot of people from all over the world. They learned me a lot of their backgrounds, passions and interests.
I have discovered the possibilities from all kinds of tools which helped me to improve my captures.
By editing them I try to add a personal touch and feeling. Experiments with the effect of colors are often done, and more recently I am trying to show the details by working with high resolution photos.”
Please note that I Love Events(TM) is not associated with Linden Research, Inc. or any of its affiliated companies or products, including Second Life (collectively known as "Linden Lab"). The opinions and views expressed on this site belong to the content creators and do not represent the views or opinions of Linden Lab or its employees, directors, officers, agents, or representatives. The usage of the SLBN logo by I Love Events(TM) does not indicate endorsement or representation by Linden Lab.
