We start in this issue a review on “types” of shopping in SL and how it affects RL, too.
Shopping, in its modern meaning, has deeply changed our habits and some of our behaviours and both Western and Eastern society recognize themselves in it: we have clear in mind a Tokyo or New York street, so similar. City is the scene in which commercial business has developed in different ways, from nineteenth century store palaces to nowadays air conditioned shopping mall, more suitable for movement and transition. E-commerce and Web 2.0 advent are now enhancing shopping possibilities: Second Life, in this sense, represents an experimental platform ready to be used.We’ll look through some examples of these differ-ent ways of selling goods, discovering new typolo-gies and categories. We are interested in under-standing which of these commercial spaces can represent this changing mood: vendors freebees, retail, store, disco-club, shopping mall, but also real companies’ brands, link, websites and note-cards.
One of the greatest and more effective sales system, really able to open a channel between RL and SL, is that of highly specialized websites linked to the in world shops, like shop.onrez.com and slexchange.com-SL Exchange Headquarters, Exchange (38, 121, 28). Real databases where you can find everything: organized like stores and archives, indexed and rated. It’s a system linked to substantial results more then other.
Another macro-typology are parts of sim, entire blocks, urban corners or real district, completely dedicated to sales activities. The Dacham crossing (94, 146, 45), for example, is the perfect spot to find the latest fashion trend. 3xd boutiques are open to welcome all of those strolling in the front square, full of flying pigeons. Inside the boutique, modern windows and spatial varia-tions offer characteristic fashion products, defining new lines and trends in this case only for SL residents.
Single buildings, usually big boxes, represent the most common retail places for all goods typologies and are the best way to commercialize big brands. Typical of this system are suspended goods form top or walls, like in GuRLyWood - GuRLyWood (126, 49, 70), for Hair that we are showing you.
We also entered the Reebook store - Reebok (151, 139, 99)- a simple building, with wide and generous spaces, minimal furniture, clearly showed products that can be chosen directly by clients, through a window-menu which permits, for example, to choose shoe colours. The land is composed by a urban nature with uniform buildings, as if the store was plunged in a popular con-text. A good solution, even better then an anonymous building used as a shop.
The last group of retail points we’ve reviewed for you in this issue, is the most variable one. Is that of interi-ors: spots and corner corresponding to real exhibits, where the author’s creativity has the freedom to ex-press itself. We’ve chosen a futurist-metaphysical store actualized by EX.IT - Experience Italy C (14, 28, 25): a prototype with a fresh look and a perfect, in our opin-ion, language that aims to be in strict relationship with RL aesthetic standards. Different and original is the effort made in Envy, by our Bianca F. Envy (110, 35, 23) where a more international research suits a sharp space with her clothes as protagonists: they are actu-ally staged as a real artistic set. Notable also the scroll dynamic windows.
If you want see the another pictures.
This article is published in ESSENSUAL N.01 review by arco Rosca
18/11/07
SHOPPING 1. Immersive retail
MI. Permanent Exposition of Made in Italy and Italian Design.
Last month a new sim called Experience Italy has been opened as one of the projects wanted by Fondazione Valore Italia and that include the realization of a land with the same name in SL. The choice made by Experience Italy experts is to five shape and life to 8 sims that will reproduce the EUR block in Rome. First Italian institutional and government enter-prise in SL, which is arousing a wide curiosity, especially because it is complementary and antici-pates what the Foundation is actually doing inside Palazzo della Civiltà e del Lavoro in RL, through the MI exposition, Permanent Exposition of Made in Italy and Italian Design.
In this article we’ll try to understand, through the organizers’ voice, what the Italian Government is doing to promote design both in Second and in Real Life. For those more curious about this subject, we leave you the web site addresses http://www.valore-italia.it/IT e http://www.experienceitaly.it/ for a deeper read. For this occasion we’ve interviewed Umberto Croppi, general manager of Fondazione Valore Italia (Umberto Oh in SL), whom we’ve asked to show our readers the works in progress.
The MI project, what is about?
The permanent expo, wanted by the Economic Development Ministry, goes further in respect of a classical museum system. It is more a platform, a window for Italian production and somehow a lab. The public opening of the expo, previewed in about two years, needs precise planning steps, including a design international contest aimed to the realization of a museum based on innovative and highly technological expositive criteria.
What do you mean by calling this enterprise a “metaproject”?
Using the SL platform we’ve been able to show the project progressive steps and in the same time have some information on what the MI should contain. This not only for the contest partici-pants, but also for those who, through the SL land EX.IT, would like to interact and bring ideas and critical comments. All welcomed, since they are immediately interesting for us who manage the entire project.One of SL features is to widen creative world possibilities, and therefore also of art and design.
Do you think that part of this artistic production could be represented in your permanent expo?
The lab idea originates form the need and the will to create an open space for each type of con-tribution, both from SL direct artistic production and, indirectly, by realizing events in the spaces we have created.
At the moment, which are you current projects?
Inside “Palazzo dei Ristoranti” we have reproduced “Made in Italy Files” exhibit, realized in RL last month of May. This exhibit shows the result of 13 exercises made by Universities and Inter-national Master Courses: multimedia products on the theme of exposition itself include videos representing the aims achieved through this experience.We are preparing “Museo Italia”: inside this space each month three different expositions, already visible in Italy, will be chosen to represent our subjects and will be staged in SL with direct link to read more about them: among those, there will be Depero’ s exihibit now at the Mart in Rovereto.
We leave you with the promise to update you on these projects and we invite you to take a “training” stroll along EUR boulevards. And if you have any proposal, then, go ahead: stunning Italia Oh is there to welcome you!
If you want see the another pictures
This article is published in ESSENSUAL N.01 review by arco Rosca
Art in the “media era”. Interview with Mark Kostabi
Mark Kostabi is a versatile artist: painter, sculptor, musician. Always aware of present time trends, he lives between Rome and New York and his art talks about contemporary men’s condition. A male avatar, precisely a little white man without a face, gives the idea of what is happening to us. A market blockbuster, first in the states and now also in Italy, he continues his artistic research like a child always surprised of what surrounds him, always curious and ready to catch novelty and nu-ances.We interviewed him inside a Taxi, from Parioli to Via Pellegrino, the day before his winter depar-ture for NY. What we’ve asked him for this issue of ES is his relationship with media.
In your work you often touched the relationship between contemporary men and media, how you see your art in the “media era”?
Back in the ‘60s, when I used to draw with pencil and paper, I liked to represent the technologi-cal world, computer sci-fi; today I keep drawing media icons and, especially, I use media to create my art. For example I make my drafts in my stu-dio in Rome, then I send them via e-mail to New York, where I get them painted by my staff and every day I can check their realization and quality through the Internet. It’s a while now I have my own game show on Tv, called “name this” during which I give titles to my work through critics and a celebrities jury. The show goes on air form the Kostabi Palace in New York, but I am in my studio in Rome and you can watch it on line. In the end, for what concerns my music I often use MySpace, especially to distribute it, and it seems to work fine.
We know you are an expert of art in general. How do you evaluate the influence of new media on artistic production? And do you see any differ-ence between United States and Italy about it?
To this question I like to answer with a joke: a gallery director, friend of mine, says Italy is far in delay for what concerns the Internet, but speak-ing of selling art on Tv, the States are in big delay. Moreover I can tell you that Estonia, from where my parents are, is strangely considered very ahead in the filed of technology, so??
Art itself has always communicated its messages through different languages. At the moment some environments like virtual reality offer vari-ous communicative possibilities, that suit our contemporary time. What do you think of these possibilities? And can you tell us about your expe-rience in entropia?
I’ve been in entropia, in New Oxford, for a while, now. There you can find and buy my virtual paintings, but at the moment I don’t dedicate much time to that. I’m in any case interested in what can happen in virtual worlds and would like to work more in that direction.
Mark, which are the project you are working on at the moment?
First of all, thanks to my brother Paul, we’ve moved the Kostabi Palace form Soho to Chelsea, a new studio that will require a lot of energy for its start up. For what concerns exhibits going on right now, here they are: in Legnano, near Verona, in the exhibit space inside Ferrarini bookshop; in Bologna we have an exhibit called “It’s a wonder-ful Kostabi”; eventually, I will expose my works also in San Francisco, California, and soon I’ll have an exhibit in New York that I am preparing with my gallery director.
We leave Mark preparing his journey, but we make him promise to drop by our seat and to do, to-gether with ES, an exhibit in SL. And, who knows, maybe we’ll see his avatar without face performing in his famous show.
If you want see the Mark Kostabi's paintings
This article is published in ESSENSUAL N.01 review by arco Rosca
17/11/07
ESSENSUAL arte architettura e design
é in edicola si direbbe cosi......
il primo numero della rivista ESSENSUAL, curata da Bianca Foulon.
Buone intenzioni e molte rubriche, tra le quali quella che si occupa di arte architettura e design curata dal sottoscritto; molti degli articoli presenti saranno riportati in forma estesa in questo blog, per essere sottoposti ai vostri commenti.
03/11/07
arte e architettura in sl. Mario Gerosa
Continuiamo a seguire il dibattito in corso.
Riportiamo qui l'articolo curato da Serena Patierno sul manifesto del 01 novembre 2007, dove in un'intervista Mario Gerosa descrive lo stato dell'ARTE in sl.
E' posibile ascoltare un'intervista a Gerosa sullo stesso argomento.
