Media Release

Established in 2008, Spencer project continues to advance creative and collaborative potential of virtual museum space.

Lawrence, KS, November 10, 2011 – a Petrovsky flux—the complex virtual artwork currently occupying the Spencer Museum's island in the online, virtual world Second Life (SL)—features the work of a talented international team including a script writer (blotto Epsilon) and a designer (Cutea Benelli). Recently, the work has drawn significant attention: SL creator Linden Labs touts the Spencer island as a top destination; Italian Vogue name-checks the Spencer in a recent feature article; and respected SL blogger Bryn Oh—the virtual artist/alter ego of a Toronto, Ontario oil painter—praises a Petrovsky flux as the author’s top 2010 SL art destination.

Steve Goddard, the Spencer’s Associate Director/Senior Curator of Prints & Drawings, leads the Museum’s initiative in Second Life. He says that as described by its creators, a Petrovsky flux is a cluster of devices that grow, assembling themselves from modular units, only to blow apart and rebuild themselves. Each time they rebuild differently so the overall flux is, as the name implies, constantly changing. Visitors to a Petrovsky flux can also explore the inside of the organic architecture, and they also receive a free "noggin protector"—a miniature version of the flux that is worn on the head to protect against falling debris.

The project takes its name in part from a previous project, the Bogon flux, and in part from the “Petrovsky lacuna,” named for Russian mathematician Ivan Petrovsky. blotto Epsilon summed up the impulse for the Bogon flux in the now defunct blog, Not Possible In Real Life: "The organic architecture idea had been rattling around in my head for a while, like buckshot in a rusted tuna can."

If you have a Second Life browser you can visit a Petrovsky flux on the Spencer’s island at this slurl:http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spencer%20Art%20Museum/56/36/21 Real-world Museum visitors may also check out the island via a dedicated computer in the Spencer’s Teaching Gallery. More than 6,000 visitors from around the world have explored this iteration of the SMA island, and according to Goddard, they may soon have more to discover.

“Cutea and blotto plan to pursue a new project, or elaborate on the present one, soon,” Goddard says. “The Second Life world is a fluid, exploratory space, and it raises important questions about the future of the museum experience in both the ‘real world’ and the virtual world.”

International Press

In her story for the September issue of Italian Vogue, reporter Simona Lamonaca writes, "In its earliest years, Second Life has been talked about and hyped as the bleeding edge of communication and business on the Net; many perceived (and marketed) it as a promised land, which would allow anybody to create fabulous parallel lives just inside their computer.

“Then, like a modern Ferdinandea island, the virtual archipelago seemed to have sunk right after its volcanic rise. Awareness about Second Life faded. Just another trend? Actually, those who think this world is dead are wrong. After the hype, Second Life simply became what it meant to be: an interdisciplinary platform for experimentation. Here, art is one of the most vibrant experiences.

“All over the world, institutions are leveraging on Second Life as a medium, buying virtual islands called 'sims' to promote and host art research: UWA (University of Western Australian), ArtSpace UTSA (University of Texas), and Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas).”

Blogger Bryn Oh names a Petrovsky flux as personal favorite for 2010: http://brynoh.blogspot.com/2011/09/1-petrovsky-flux.html

Linden Labs features the SMA island in its Destination Guide: http://secondlife.com/destination/spencer-museum-of-art.

An interview on rockpapershotgun.com with Linden Labs CEO Rod Humble includes an image from a Petrovsky flux (the fourth of five images; no credits given): http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/rod-humble/

More about the SMA Second Life project

In September 2008, through the generosity of a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Spencer purchased an island in the online, virtual world of Second Life. The Spencer’s island (search “Spencer Art” in-world) is an exploratory, fluid space.

“The grant allowed the Museum to investigate the potential applications of Second Life in an art-museum setting, and it revealed a spectrum of possibilities,” Goddard says. “We focused on Second Life as an educational tool, extending from two real-life exhibitions,Trees & Other Ramifications, and Climate Change at the Poles. In the initial incarnation, trans-disciplinary artist Stacey Fox created an environment where visitors could interact with a variety of concepts introduced in the real-life exhibitions. Now we are focusing on configurations in which we work with various digital artists and encourage audience interaction and participation. The Museum’s island is designed to change, so we encourage people to visit often to see what’s new.”

As the Spencer experiments with and considers Second Life’s place in the museum experience, many questions bubble up, including:How can a work of art created and seen in a virtual environment be meaningful in a real-world museum? How can such work be shared in a real-life museum? How does the Museum catalog and document such a work? Is Second Life a viable medium for the arts? The Museum invites constituents to weigh in on these and other questions by emailing spencerart@ku.edu