Burning Man

          
       This piece, called Big Rig Jig by Mike Ross, was constructed from two discarded tanker trucks and displayed at Burning Man, an art festival in the Nevada Desert, in 2007. The structure not only towers 42 feet in the air, but is also designed to allow a person to enter through the cab and climb through the tankers to emerge on a platform at the top. An incredible feat of art, engineering, and playground technology rolled into one.

         
     Big Rig Jig by Mike Ross was intended to show the creative spirit of truck drivers. As pervasive as 18-wheelers and delivery trucks are in our way of life, I rarely get to see them transformed into art pieces. I enjoyed some of the ways artists are transforming the backbone of America to make it more beautiful, or at least more interesting.

Improv Everywhere

          
          Earlier this year, the 10th Annual "No Pants Subway Ride" took place in NEW YORK CITY. The event was organized by "Improv Everywhere."  Hundreds of participants took different subway lines and then took off their pants inside the subway car, with the simple aim of making their fellow subway riders laugh. The idea to me is still very ridiculous and I still have NO IDEA what the point of this project is besides making people laugh.

          I think some subway riders were amused by the sight of people without pants in the freezing winter weather but others, like myself, think the idea is silly or even disgusting. From the picture, it looks like Improv Everywhere caused scenes of chaos and confusion in public places.

Donatella Versace

          Versace's couture cloths have been identified with celebrities and music for decades now. But, at the same time, her style is so dramatic it can overwhelm the clothes themselves. This dress is part the collection summarizing all the elements of the Versace vision: the feminine, maybe even the ultra feminine, and the trailing, torso-cinching, bosom displaying dress created in shades of aqua, pale yellow, ice blue, powder green, quartz pink, or gold.

         This particular light-as-air couture dress is somewhat interesting. The strength of this design is its lightness, in my opinion. This dress seems to have no weight.  It is both over the top and flowy, but somehow it works. The style itself seems to come directly out of the 1980's, so I'm not sure that it would be popular today.  It is said that Donatella reserves her couture dresses for her clients.  I wonder if they would like this style today?

Maya Lin

         Maya Lin is an American Artist who is know for her work in sculpture and landscape art.  She is the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.  This piece of artwork is called "Storm King Wavefield."  This is her new earthwork project.  This is a landscape art.  This installation is an excellent of representation of nature, land that looks like moving water.  When I see this piece of art, it made me feel relaxed.  There are many hills and trees.  The colors of this art are greens, blues, and oranges reflecting the colors of water and storm. This piece reminds me of and brings me back to my Vietnam.

        The 11-acre installation, which will open to the public next spring, consists of seven rows of undulating hills huddled in a inclining valley.  The hills look like ocean waves.  The artist wants to explain how the waves begin and end.  She is working with land instead of with water.  I like this piece of art because it looks so beautiful and it is amazing how she combines trees and hills that were formed from the action of real waves long ago into this art.

Masaki Fujihata

             This piece of  artwork of the Japanese media artist gives the impression of being lost in a digital world, rather than of being lost in a dream. Morel’s Panorama, which sees real time images of the viewer integrated with images of the artist, stretched and filtered through a strange cylindrical shape, was more intriguing.

           There's something confusing and alien about the work of the artist, Masaki Fujihata. And though it certainly has a very surreal Japanese aesthetic – with its playful take on technology that sees avatars chatting nonsense to each other – there is also something slightly subversive and almost Dada about it. But though this artwork is very intriguing and impressive, the cool, detached quality of a world dominated by technology seems far from perfect.

Harold Cohen / Aaron

                  Harold Cohen is regarded as being one of the first pioneers of computer generated paintings and Aaron is the first robot in human history to paint original art. Aaron mixes its own paints, creates artwork and washes its own brushes.

                Cohen's work is very abstract, particularly with this piece. It grew out of investigations about the nature of representation or how and why we see marks on paper. The choice of colors is absolutely beautiful.

Vaneeesa Blaylock

                Sometimes SL events are like watching paint dry. Wait for things to rez. More people arrive. More waiting for them to rez. There's the lag, there's the series of comments and asides that scroll across the screen, and the "we want the show" feeling.
              

               On Saturday afternoon,  Vaneeesa Blaylock and 26 young ladies performed Miss Blaylock's VB03 - Veinticinco Mujeres, in the gazebo of Oxbridge Village. The idea seemed to be that larger women - described as "beautiful, Rubenesque women" are "as refreshing as they are powerful and graceful," in Miss Blaylock's words on  her Journal. Fair enough, most women in SL are impossibly skinny.  These women were in Oxbridge Village to celebrate the diverse body types of women by showing up wearing nothing but a pair of shoes. Two small problems and one big problem: first, not everyone got the memo and wore bikinis, lingerie, or accessories. No big deal, as we all got the message.  Second, the "performance" seemed to involve the ladies just standing there. For more than a half-hour.  These avatars are second life representations of real people but they tend to all look alike. I thought she wanted to represent different shapes of the female body but these avatars all look alike, big breasts, skinny bodies, long legs, thereby, defeating her stated purpose.  If Ms. Blaylock is trying to represent many form of the female body, her technical efforts have failed.  Personally, I thought her work was ugly because of all these  naked women and I didn't understand what was meant.