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Artista             MEILO MINOTAUR  AKA     SAMEIRO OLIVEIRA MARTINS

Artista             CAPCAT RAGU           AKA     CATARINA CARNEIRO DE SOUSA

  

 

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".

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.

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