Artista CAPCAT RAGU AKA CATARINA CARNEIRO DE SOUSA
Artista MEILO MINOTAUR AKA SAMEIRO OLIVEIRA MARTINS
Sameiro Oliveira Martins AKA Meilo Minotaur is an artist with a background on Sculpture.
She was as a member of the handicrafts group Gárgula, having participated in several
international exhibitions and won various prizes.
Since 2008 has devoted her artistic activity to the Metaverse, working individually and
collaboratively in the Second Life virtual environment where she held several solo
exhibitions and collaborated with artists from different fields and nationalities.
Together with CapCat Ragu she is the builder of the Second Life Sim Delicatessen, that
held projects like "de Maria, de Mariana, de Madalena", "Petrified" and "Meta_Body".
Catarina Carneiro de Sousa AKA CapCat Ragu is an artist with a background on Painting
and Art Studies. She was a member of the artistic association Caldeira 213 and the artistic
collective ZOiNA, having participated in the creation and organization of several artistic
activities since. She is an assistant professor at Escola Superior de Educação do Instituto
Politécnico de Viseu since 2007.
Since 2008 has devoted her artistic activity to the Metaverse, working individually and
collaboratively in the Second Life virtual environment where she held several solo
exhibitions and collaborated with artists from different fields and nationalities.
Together with Meilo Minotaur she is the builder of the Second Life Sim Delicatessen, that
held projects like "de Maria, de Mariana, de Madalena", "Petrified" and "Meta_Body".
Photo exhibition by CapCat Ragu
Collaborative Virtual Environments, like Open Sim and Second Life, enable us to capture still
images of virtual worlds. Usually the icon that signals this functionality depicts a camera. It is
common practice among metaverse residents to refer to these images as photographs. Image
capture in the metaverse can serve the exact same purpose as in the physical world — memories
of time spent with others, news reporting, fashion, advertising, and of course, artistic purposes.
In this exhibition I show some pictures from three different photographic series taken in Second
Life.
The Epifania series marks a great revolution in the way I see my avatar that happened when I
found alpha.tribe’s avatars — an Epiphany. Those avatars inspired me to totally rethink
embodiment in the metaverse. My virtual body expanded in the new expressive potential offered
by Alpha Auer’s creations. This series is a tribute to her avatars. Earth Flesh is constituted of
heavily manipulated virtual photos, where body blends with landscape. Raven Tales is a series of
images that tell parallel stories of the relationship between a girl and a crow. In this exhibition
we have the moment when the two became confusingly entangled.
The last series is not virtual photography, but mixed media digital illustration — the Siamesas series.
The metaphorical appropriation of digital body extends beyond Collaborative Virtual Environments
and becomes, at this point, a fundamental territory of new languages and aesthetic experiences, on the
one hand, and inevitable reconstruction of concepts such as gender, on the other. Stripped of all the
biological dimension this body is just a sign, exposing itself as such and questioning our own
physiological experience.
Meta_Body at Museo del Metaverso
Meta_Body is an ongoing project initiated in 2011 by the duo Meilo Minotaur (Sameiro Oliveira
Martins) and CapCat Ragu (Catarina Carneiro de Sousa) in the Second Life virtual environment
platform, in the Delicatessen region. Initially, this project consisted of a set of eighteen avatars,
distributed in a virtual installation, which were free, copyable, transformable and sharable.
Residents who got them were invited to share with us any derivative creation, which resulted
from the manipulation of these avatars. These manipulations were first presented in the form of
machinima and virtual photography and in a second phase of the project as derivative avatars.
Here, at Museo del Metaverso, we reconstructed the initial installation and we are distributing
the first set of eighteen avatars, hoping to extend this creative flux to OpenSim.
Project Meta_Body has two major concerns: on one hand the constitution of virtual
corporeality in the metaverse; on the other, the participatory nature of this process. The
constitution of corporeality in collaborative virtual environments makes the avatar a form of
distributed artistic expression, not just for professional artists, but also for any user.
The virtual experience of the body is not exactly an experience of the flesh. We can look at a
very realistic virtual cake and salivate, but if our avatar eats it, we won’t feel its flavor. These
sensations, albeit having a physical sensorial aspect, continue to be experienced in our bodies
behind the screen, not in our avatar body. The virtual body is a metaphorical body, all language;
therefore open to experimentation and possibility.
As an artwork, Meta_Body can be experienced on many levels, from contemplation to
participation, but in the embodiment and transformation of the avatars, the aesthetical
experience of the work can become a creative process. We feel privileged to play a part in this
creative flux, turning our artwork into a constantly changing organism that we can observe as it
continues to grow and mutate, this time on OpenSim.
Meta_Body by CapCat Ragu and Meilo Minotaur
Meta_Body by CapCat Ragu and Meilo Minotaur
