Above: Beyond Human by Ichibot Nishi & Arahan Claveau.
← All WorkBrooklyn is Watching
A two-way window between Second Life and a Brooklyn gallery — a decade before "the metaverse"
Brooklyn is Watching was a landmark mixed-reality art project connecting a virtual island in Second Life with the Jack the Pelican Presents gallery in Williamsburg. A massive gallery monitor broadcast a live feed of virtual artworks to a physical audience of critics and peers, who debated the merits of the digital works in a weekly podcast — while the disembodied "Brooklyn Eye" avatar, Monet Destiny, carried the gallery's gaze back into the virtual world. The project forced a confrontation between the labor of virtual artists and the critical vocabulary of the New York art scene, probing the attention economy and the power dynamics of watching and being watched. Covered in The New York Times Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and Not Possible IRL.
Conceptual Framework
Brooklyn is Watching makes cultural power and who gets to judge art part of its artistic material. A live feed, gallery monitor, weekly podcast critiques, and the returning gaze of the Brooklyn Eye brought Second Life artists and a Brooklyn gallery audience into a shared exchange of attention. The same virtual artwork could be encountered through its makers’ and peers’ conversations, a gallery visitor’s expectations, or a podcast listener’s critical frame. The project asks how those contexts change what a work means and whose judgments carry authority.
The work develops ideas I explored in my 2004 and 2006 essays: art can address interconnected audiences simultaneously and hold different, even contradictory meanings for each. Its craft lies in how those readings relate to and inform one another. In Brooklyn is Watching, the attention economy becomes part of that form: selecting work, watching, discussing, and circulating responses shape both what is noticed and how it is understood. The project’s artistic material includes the work on screen and the relationships, interpretations, and exchanges of attention forming around it.
Bibliography
Press and scholarship
- Sara Corbett. “Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar.” The New York Times Magazine. March 8, 2009.
- Bettina Tizzy. “Brooklyn is watching (us).” Not Possible IRL. March 3, 2008.
- James Kalm. “Brooklyn Dispatches: Virtually Overwhelmed.” The Brooklyn Rail. September 2008.
- Lori Landay. “Virtual KinoEye: Kinetic Camera, Machinima, and Virtual Subjectivity in Second Life.” The Journal of e-Media Studies, vol. 2, no. 1. 2009.
- Patrick Lichty. “Why Art in Virtual Worlds? e-Happenings, Relational Milieux & ‘Second Sculpture’.” CIAC’s Electronic Magazine, no. 31. Fall 2008.
- Richard Minsky. “The Odd Ball and Filthy Fluno at Brooklyn is Watching.” The ArtWorld Market Report. October 2008.
Artist’s writing · conceptual background
- Jay Van Buren (earlyadopter). “Is Carl Rove a genius on par with Marcel Duchamp? PART I.” early-adopter. October 17, 2004.
- Jay Van Buren (earlyadopter). “Is Carl Rove a genius on par with Marcel Duchamp PART II.” early-adopter. February 5, 2006.