We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image.

– Barnett Newman, Selected Writings (1953)

Artists entering online virtual environments that offer the ability to create three-dimensional objects in space, such as Linden Lab’s Second Life, encounter a set of materials, forces, and interactions unlike those that they encounter in the physical world. These artists are faced with an immediate dilemma: whether to expand their current material art practice into the virtual realm; or create a new art practice based on the unique characteristics of the new virtual environment. In essence, whether to “keep a foot in the real world” by expanding their artistic vision into the new environment, or to fully embrace an alternative existence in an unfamiliar metaverse and develop a new artistic vision that fully integrates and reflects that existence.

Artists who choose the second alternative, to create a body of artwork that is “native” to the three-dimensional virtual environment, are literally inventing a new visual art paradigm with rigorous disciplinary principles to make it possible. This work, which comprises what could be called a “native” or “vernacular” art practice, is ultimately conceptual rather than material.

Oberon Onmura "Storm Cells"

Artists seeking to create an effective body of work within this context, along with an identifiable visual idiom, are finding ways to encode meaning in the virtual environments’ unique characteristics by consciously exploiting the unique capabilities of those environments, and often by actually integrating those characteristics into the work itself.

American minimalist artist Donald Judd wrote about the new installation work in the 1960s that:

Selavy Oh and DC Spensley at Brooklyn is Watching

In the physical world, artists have many different materials to work with (clay, stone, paint, chalk, fabric, metal, etc.), each material having a set of effective techniques for conversion into art. By contrast, in virtual environments artists have one material to work with–the prim (primitive object)–but almost incalculable ways of manipulating its form and behavior. The multiple components of the art discipline that is developing in 3D virtual environments necessarily derive from that premise.

First and primarily, artists working in virtual environments must be comfortable manipulating, combining, and rotating three-dimensional objects directly within the virtual space (if possible), and using various three-dimensional rendering programs on their computers. Next, any artist intending to use textures must develop some familiarity and skill with image processing programs and image file formats. And, if intending to texture sculpted prims, must be able to map those images onto three-dimensional shapes using UV maps and other tools. In addition, artists seeking the ability to control the behavior of objects, or to make them responsive to various forces and entities within the virtual space must gain some familiarity with scripting, which can in itself become a serious discipline. Other useful skills include audio editing and processing for artists interested in using sound in their work; video and still image capturing and editing to document and exhibit the work outside of the virtual environment; real-time motion capture techniques for artists interested in using avatar animations in their work; and so forth.

I propose that a distinction be maintained between art that is “native” or “vernacular” to 3D virtual environments, and art that is first created in the physical world and then imported into virtual environments for display. Exciting developments in virtual world art making occur only when the art making process–and all the discoveries artists make during that process–manifests fully within the virtual environment itself. Additionally, I feel that the losses experienced in the exchanges between environments are so great that artworks transformed for viewing outside their respective “native” environments sustain damage to the extent that they literally can no longer be seen, and so are not appropriate for critical appraisal or any kind of meaningful discussion.

In drawing such a distinction, like Judd stated in the 1960s, I do not claim that artwork made in online virtual environments constitutes some kind of movement or direction. I would claim, however, that a specificity of differentiated art practice is developing based on a discipline that is unique to and closely correlated with online virtual environment experiences. If we consider those experiences, when embodied fully by participants, as constituting a kind of “post-human” awakening, where we embrace “the [liberating] possibilities for disembodied communication and exploration presented by cyberspace”, then artists will be more prepared ” … to think carefully about how these technologies can be used to enhance human well-being and the fullness and richness of human-being-in-the-world …” as they go about their business of creating new ways to make and exhibit art.If we consider those experiences, when embodied fully by participants, as constituting a kind of “post-human” awakening, where we embrace “the [liberating] possibilities for disembodied communication and exploration presented by cyberspace”, then artists will be more prepared ” … to think carefully about how these technologies can be used to enhance human well-being and the fullness and richness of human-being-in-the-world …” as they go about their business of creating new ways to make and exhibit art.. In these virtual environments, art making becomes at once a discipline wherein agency exists and artists seek to “get clear of these forms” left behind in the physical world they also inhabit. And in the same sense, a new critical practice, solely focused on the unique characteristics of online virtual environments and on the art made there seeking to “get clear of these forms” must arise if meaningful discourse about “native” virtual art is considered imperative to its ongoing development.

By Oberon Onmura