The Tackboard

an incredible simulation

2011-11-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

I found out about "Winston Ackland" while navigating my avatar through Second Life. His RL name is Bruce Lash. Why is he such a well-kept secret?

Here are some of his songs that I recommend. These songs are all original compositions. He did a cover of Kurt Cobain's song Lithium for the movie Marley & Me, but none of the songs below are covers.

My Room (reminiscent of Neil Young)
Can You Feel It/Love Song (reminiscent of the Beatles)
Home (reminiscent of Paul McCartney with Eric Clapton)
Autumn (reminiscent of John Lennon)
Gene Siskel (reminiscent of Brian Eno)
Washed Up (reminiscent of David Bowie)
The Next Big Thing (reminiscent of the Sex Pistols)
The Saint of Alone
I'm Always Falling Down

I'm no longer able to find Do Me Right (reminiscent of Paul McCartney) at Bruce Lash's Bandcamp website.

Exhibit in Second Life

2011-08-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

THE DEGENERATE ART EXHIBITION OF 1937

"Over 5,000 works were seized, [including works by] Marc Chagall, James Ensor, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. The Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art] exhibit, featuring over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of thirty two German museums, premiered in Munich [Nazi Germany] on July 19, 1937."

"Speeches of Nazi party leaders contrasted with artist manifestos from various art movements, such as Dada and Surrealism."

Dada "began in 1916 in Zurichs Cabaret Voltaire, where expatriate artists, poets, and writers gathered in refuge from World War I. Dada started as an indictment of the bourgeois values responsible for the horrors of the war, and assumed many forms, including outrageous performances, festivals, readings, erotic mechanomorphic art, nonsensical chance-generated poetry, found objects, and political satire in photomontage."

OTTO DIX

"When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy."

Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas by Otto Dix, 1924.

His paintings The Trench and War Cripples were displayed at the Degenerate Art exhibition. "They were later burned."

GEORGE GROSZ

In his own words... "My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon... I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands... I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket... I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty."

Made in Germany by George Grosz, 1920.

MAX ERNST

He "was arrested by the Gestapo, but managed to escape and flee to America with the help of [Peggy] Guggenheim."

L'Ange du Foyer by Max Ernst, 1937.

MAX BECKMANN

"In 1937 more than 500 [of his works] were confiscated from German museums, and several of these works were put on display in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. For ten years, Beckmann lived in poverty in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam, failing in his desperate attempts to obtain a visa for the US. In 1944 the Germans attempted to draft him into the army, despite the fact that the sixty-year-old artist had suffered a heart attack."

The Night by Max Beckmann, 1919.

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Here are some landmarks in Second Life of possible interest.

claudia222 Jewell

Pavl Duke

Psychosomatic Rebuilders

Arcadia Asylum Museum

One Man's Garbage

Lollygagger Lane

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Bacon Gallery

The current exhibit at Bacon Gallery is 33 Years of Doodling.

independents day

2010-07-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Video title: All the Little Fishies
Machinima: Toxic Menges
Artist: Winston Ackland

All the Little Fishies is as good as any machinima I've seen.

Songs by Winston Ackland (Bruce Lash) such as Washed Up, Do Me Right and Can You Feel It? / Love Song are among the best I've heard in Second Life so far.

And I've heard a lot of good songs. A surprisingly strong community of independent musicians perform there. You can listen to a stream of their songs on IndieSpectrum Radio even if you aren't inworld. "Featuring artists that perform live in the virtual world of Second Life."

Here are some of the women who do it live there.

Idella Quandry (Alicia Morgan) does "Bluesday Jam" with the Cats-A-Renos band live from the Pig 'N Whistle club in Hollywood. It's streamed "every Tuesday from 9-midnight."

Tania of SpaceJunky enjoys the distinction of being better looking than her avatar. This Aussie band does a polished show.

The tremendously versatile Eva Moon has a highly developed sense of humor. And so does her band the Lunatics.