Tag: Bryn Oh

The Brittle Epoch: Canadian Artist Bryn Oh Unveils a New Immersive, Interactive Art Installation in Second Life

Brittle Epoch

Bryn Oh is a Canadian artist and sculptor whom I often have written about before on the RyanSchultz.com blog (here is a link to all my blogposts which mention her). She has long been active in the virtual world of Second Life, and has also created art installations on other metaverse platforms such as Sansar and the former High Fidelity.

On November 1st, 2021, Bryn unveiled her latest immersive, interactive art installation, a continuation of her previous work, called Brittle Epoch. Second Life blogger Inara Pey writes:

Opening on November 1st at her arts region Immersiva, is Bryn Oh’s latest work, entitled The Brittle Epoch, an installation that has been several months in development.

Most of the work is set in a mysterious frozen landscape, with a howling winter wind blowing the snow around, under an oversize full moon. The art installation makes good use of hidden teleporters to whisk you from scene to scene, and you are encouraged to click on everything in order to learn more about what happened! A HUD that is automatically attached to your viewer when you enter helps guide you through the experience (be sure to read all the signs at the entrance!).

Here’s a two-minute promotional video for The Brittle Epoch, released today by Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life):

You can pay a visit to the experience here. Inara Pey also notes:

As noted, Bryn’s installations all take place within the same over-arching universe, and thus share degrees of connectedness. As such, for those possibly unfamiliar with her work, or who wish to re-acquaint themselves with her themes and idea, I recommend the following resources:

Thanks to Inara for compiling this list of links! You can read her full review of The Brittle Epoch here.

Bryn Oh Opens a New Artistic World in Sansar: “I See Our Movement As the Immersivists”

Canadian artist Bryn Oh (whose work in Second Life I have written about before) is opening a new art installation in Sansar on Friday, December 6th, 2019, on which she has been working over the past year, thanks to some financial assistance from the Ontario Arts Council.

Titled simply Hand, Bryn Oh describes the artwork as follows in a recent post to her blog:

Hand is the story of a girl named Flutter who carries something precious in a suitcase.  You follow her story in the same world that my others characters inhabit, and some of these you will recognize furthering their story and place within the world I have been working on for over a decade. 

Bryn created Hand to be best experienced in a VR headset, and she has some insightful observations on the use of virtual reality as an art form:

I believe that the virtual reality medium is a new art form which, in my case, focuses on immersion.  Throughout art history many artists have striven to immerse the viewer in their sculpture, painting or even cinema. They want you become lost in their artwork whether it be compositional methods such as the eyepath leading the viewer around a painting, to cinema where they turn off the lights, turn the sound up high with a screen large enough to reduce the peripheral vision distractions to a degree where the immersion is strongest. They overwhelm or control your senses, then tell you a story which, if well written, will take the viewer away from the world for a while.  We had the Cubists, Impressionists, Surrealists, Modernists and I see our movement as the Immersivists. 

Having been very impressed by Bryn’s art to date in both Second Life and Sansar, I look forward to experiencing her latest creation!

If you want to visit Hand, here is the Sansar Atlas entry for the world.

Second Life Artist Bryn Oh’s Rabbicorn Trilogy

I first encountered the work of Canadian artist Bryn Oh in a whimsical yet menacing 2012 installation called Anna’s Many Murders, commemorated in this machinima created by the artist herself:

Since then, Bryn Oh has created dozens of evocative and compelling art installations in Second Life, skillfully using the virtual world as her canvas to tell many stories at the intersection of technology and art. Linden Lab has chosen to highlight her Rabbicorn installation trilogy in the most recent episode of their Second Life Destinations video series (created by Draxtor Despres):

If you have never experienced Bryn Oh’s art before, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit to her sim, Immersiva, and explore her work! Part one of the Rabbicorn trilogy is Daughter of Gears, followed by The Rabbicorn Story, and the third and final part is called Standby.

You can follow Bryn Oh on Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or via her blog.

High Fidelity Pick of the Day: White Moth

White Moth is a High Fidelity domain created by the well-known Second Life artists Bryn Oh and Cica Ghost. I found it via the new Guide on the Tablet UI, which spotlights various domains worth visiting. I quite like the overall whimsical effect of this environment. It’s a great example of how to create an engaging experience in High Fidelity.

hifi-snap-by-RyanSchultz-on-2018-03-11_14-08-36hifi-snap-by-RyanSchultz-on-2018-03-11_14-10-15

(These pictures were taken using the in-world Snap tool from the Tablet UI. I’m not crazy about the rounded black corners on them, but at least you don’t have to take off your VR headset to take pictures in High Fidelity. Sansar really needs to add a similar photo/video-taking tool.)