AM Radio: The Red and The Wild at IDIA Labs in Second Life

AM Radio’s The Red and the Wild Opening Reception Sunday, April 26th 2009 7 pm SLT

IDIA is pleased to host artist AM Radio as the inaugural artist-in-residence at IDIA Labs – an exhibition and installation sim for virtual installation art and performance. IDIA hosts AM Radio’s The Red and the Wild as the inaugural artist-in-residence at IDIA Labs, an exhibition and installation sim for virtual art.

The Red and The Wild is an experimental shift in my work. The Red and Wild has its basis in earlier builds, notably Husk and Beneath the Tree that died. This time, a third house structure appears, based on a house which figures strongly in my childhood memories. The train that appears as a symbol in many of my works returns, but revived. A doorway represents an impossible or at least implausible path. Water towers dot the horizon, displaced in the context of an over abundance of water. A large red shape looms over the water and into or out of the house.

The title itself has its origins in a film and music artist friend from Atlanta. He had sent me a collection of music experiments of his just as I was in the midst of trying to understand why I was feeling a need to bring in abstract and maybe creepy shapes into my work. One of the tracks sampled some audio from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The audio lead me to watch the film again and read Capote’s Novella. In the story, the main character Holly invents a world around her in reaction to her anxieties and fears which she describes as the “mean reds.” Holly says, “But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll just end up looking at the sky ”

-AM Radio

THE INSTITUTE FOR DIGITAL INTERMEDIA ARTS is a hybrid art and design studio established as part of the Center for Media Design at Ball State University and funded the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The institute’s interdisciplinary studio collaborative explores the intersections between arts and technology – employing virtual reality, visualization, simulation and human computer interface.

Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/IDIA%20Laboratories/15/134/21

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