All the Rage

 Rage Darkstone has recently arrived in opensim, and has already begun to make his mark. His first big show was 'Death and Transfiguration' for the Pangea Art and Culture Festival, directed by Lampithaler Artis. 

Rage's 3D art is ephemeral, vibrant, tenuous, full of life and drama, and this performance had it all. Pretty good, too, for his first attempt in what many artists find a foreign country, OpenSim, where even on well conducted grids, scripts can mess with you, and your carefully honed SL inventory is not available, making life a little more... interesting.  

There is a rather joyous complexity to the artist. A name like Rage leads one to expect a fair bit of anger, but it's not that kind of rage at all, it's passion for life, for community and above all for  art. (Plus, let's be fair, the name 'passion' in virtual is going to get you into some unwanted conversations.) Darkstone is a great choice too, because his art although beautiful has its moments of undeniable obscurity, and obsidian jaggedness.

The Pangea show, on a dedicated region, involved synchronized prims, media, particles, music and dancers. 

The audience, on matching, texture changing chairs, frequently being moved to new vantage points.

The event/installation is an experiential journey hinting at the disconnect and reconnection with the 'other' Undiscovered Country - OpenSim. 

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the naming of artwork by its maker, some people feel the need to identify, explain, underline the meaning through a title, while others, like Rage, find it hard to put a label on what they make, in part from an inability to find adequate words; and in part, because by leaving the work undefined, the audience is invited into the creative process in a way, for each viewer becomes a partaker, able to invent for themselves their own definition of the piece, according to their point of view. 

A colossal silvery sphere enclosed the stage and the audience, and on it, kaleidoscopic patterns spun and danced, while rose-like rows of objects, in this case arms reaching out into the metaverse, filled center stage. There is something mechanical, something beseeching, reaching, encircling going on here. A cosmic wave.

Rage Darkstone artwork at the Peace is a Choice Gallery, SL

 For the first ten years or so, Rage's participation in Second Life was of the more social kind. He wasn't even aware of the art groups, events, exhibitions, competitions, machinima and blogs, which goes to show, I suppose, how even a closed world like SL with all its directories and centrality, can be compartmentalized. Pretty soon after beginning his artistic journey in Lindenland, he was spotted by Lampithaler and she made this video.

Rage  immediately became involved in the community, with dozens of Vernissages at different galleries, including successful applications for land at both LEA and SLEA. 

Currently you can view his art in three places in SL: the Peace Gallery on Jaxipun, on Juliette Surrealdreaming's Surreal Gallery on Claressa, and at the gallery Rage shares with Terra Merhyem, TerRage. These beautiful locations give you an idea of his games of form and movement. Even his 2D canvasses are set rotating, maintaining the sense of living movement.

Art at the AvA gallery on TerRage

Having artistic antecedents in the real world, his relationship with the making of art has been necessarily complex, as with any activity coded into both our genes and our development. In Rage's case, it's clear that the creative process is itself part of the story, and if there's no initial conscious attempt to send a particular message with his art projects, the delight in making is itself a protagonist within the design.

Rage's dance themed artwork at the Surreal Gallery

Making art, then not making it. These are choices that we often have little power over, since tides of our real life and work, coupled with the drive to create, these things often come not so much from will or wisdom as it does from those under-feelings that rarely find expression in complete thoughts, let alone words. And yet, so completely relatable, and so perhaps that is at the heart of his appeal.

Rage and Terra

What's next for Rage? A region on Craft Grid, at time of writing. It's a workshop, rather than a gallery, a place where he can be wowed by the freedoms of opensim, where prim size and linkset numbers vastly outperform the possibilities in SL. Then what? more performances, more opportunities to see the many worlds that make up opensim, and to share his art with them. It's an exciting time to learn and improvise, in company of good friends both new and old, a voyage of discovery and transformation. 

The fashion for joyful creativity can so easily wane, so in this case, it's wonderful to see that here in OpenSim, it's still all the rage.