DanCoyote Antonelli and brother DanCoyote Artful on the Director’s perch, SkyDance V stage set, working title: FALL

Graciously hosted by NMC Arts and Letters Sim.

The organizing principle behind this exhibition is to encourage guests to take advantage of Second Life’s ability to “cut the tethers” that hold us in the gravity based world and gently release real life concepts like “Ground” and “Water” in favor of another, less encumbered experiential space.

Hyperformalism is formalist abstraction in hyper medium. By disabling rendering of facsimiles of real life, a surreal space for viewing art is created. Things no longer conform to the field of view of your avatar and scale and context are no longer measured against the arbitrary figurative standard.

View the show as intended, please take a few moments to optimize your Second Life viewer for the exhibition by using these keyboard shortcuts for PC or Mac:

• Turn on Client/Server controls: [PC = ctrl - alt - shift - D] [Mac = cmd - option - shift - D]
• Disable Camera Constraints: [PC = ctrl - alt - C] [Mac = cmd - option - C]
• Turn off clouds: [PC = ctrl - alt - shift - minus] [Mac = cmd - option - shift - minus]
• Turn off SurfacePatch: [PC = ctrl - alt - shift - 5] [Mac = cmd - option - shift - 5]
• Turn off Water: [PC = ctrl - alt - shift - 7] [Mac = cmd - option - shift - 7]
• Turn off Ground: [PC = ctrl - alt - shift - 8] [Mac = cmd - option - shift - 8]
• Set Draw Distance to 512 [Preferences/Graphics/Draw Distance = 512]

It is the role of a contemporary artist to remind us of our capacity for wonder. Wonder is an affirmation that our being holds experiences that transcend practicality and cut through ideology in such a way as to make wide eyed innocents of us all again. And while the creation of wonder is far from the only role of the artist, it is the one that has always enchanted me personally and the core reason I still engage in the “art “mode of cultural production. I feel it is important to make a distinction between practical matters: what is required and aesthetic matters: what is desired. I think “what is desired” reflects more truly the nature of being, than the requirements of material existence so I support the distinction between modes of production and call some art and some modes other names. I choose to believe (and to demonstrate) that art exists, and support the assertion that this is an important distinction in the minds of people. (read more in Mini-Festo)

Hyperformalism is a neologism that names something, distinguishes some observable social and cultural phenomenon. The term suggests a use for the word to describe formalist abstraction created in a hyper medium such as abstract 3D digital space or pure mathematical space.

(read more in Hyperformalism)