An Interview with Nessuno Myoo
Artist interviews: http://www.brynoh.blogspot.ca/2014/07/upcoming-artist-interviews.html
Nessuno Myoo is a graceful, charming artist with a wonderful sense of composition and colour harmony. His palette is often that of earth tones or as a Brunaille. In my minds eye his compositions are often characterized by long thin lines and angles. A master prim artist whose work shows that it is not about using mesh or other tools but rather the ability of the artist which matters most when creating.
Bryn Oh: Where are you from? And who are the most renowned artists from
your country in your opinion?
Caravaggio |
Bryn Oh: Often the average person outside SL is perplexed with virtual
worlds in general. When people unfamiliar with the virtual ask you what
you do how do you explain it?
Nessuno Myoo: It's true, when someone asks me what is Second Life, and what I am doing all
this time, day and night, in front of a computer monitor to play around with
mouse and keyboard... not always it's easy to explain. Maybe they think I
have problems of socialization or maybe I'm allergic to sunlight. Who knows? It
's easier to make them understand that this is an enormous game involving tens
of thousands of people from all the world. The 'playful' idea of the videogame
is more acceptable than that of a 'virtual reality' lived like experience of
personal growth, in various fields, but in the collective imagination,
unfortunately it still has undefined outlines. This is related to the fact
that, up to now, virtual worlds represent a limited and niche reality. So in my
country. To go back to your question, I strongly believe that does not exist a
better way to explain the virtual reality than to invite people to try it firsthand.
Bryn Oh: Who are a few of your favorite artists and why?
Nessuno Myoo: Seven years of activity inside a virtual world, such as Second Life, trying to make a living reason of my sculptures, they are a long period. Very long. In such a long period, you will inevitably meet, learn, and often weave relationships with a multitude of artists. There are some to
Kicca Igaly |
Bryn Oh: Whose artwork do you personally dislike the most and why?
Nessuno Myoo: I hate all those jobs, or all those works, or all installations, where the
authors do a great use of mannequins, sculpted or mesh. Full-perm artifacts
available in the SL marketplace, or imported into SL through free external
libraries, which are not the result of their work, of their hard work, of their
creativity, of their own construction. They appear to me anonymous and
absolutely expressionless. What's really funny is that, at a superficial
glance, it might seem that all of these 'artists' have developed the ability to
work the same sculpted or mesh. A skill that for some unknown reason, however,
is expressed only in the production of identical human figures (...) Over the
years we have had the availability of mannequins ever new better in the
technical aspect, with added details also of great quality, but absolutely
useless for use in a work of art or in an art installation. Besides, I find
them terribly ugly. And the ugliness, in Art, assumes very precise value only
when it becomes a means to tell something, and not when it's only the clear
inability of being able to produce other, because they don't have the tools to
do otherwise. I consider Art the highest form of language that man has ever had
available in order to evolve. If this language is rich in nuances, dialects,
accents, sounds, dissonance, images always new and different, then it has
reason to exist and be appreciated. The uniformity instead flattens and
impoverishes this language up to humiliate it and make it completely barren.
Bryn Oh: Which of your own works are you most proud of? Do you feel any
failed and if so do you now know why?
Nessuno Myoo: Seeking to answer your question, I did a kind of mental journey back through
time, trying to find an answer as close as possible to what I feel inside of me
today. I'm quite attached and proud of many of my works. For various reasons.
Not all of them of course. Besides the series devoted to the world of music and
musicians, which I opened in 2008 with the sculpture named 'Trio Jazz' and that
includes the last coming in the last year called 'Voices', I am so proud of all
those dedicated to some of my favorite horror writers, contained within the
anthology presented in 2011 on the Mic island, edited by Mexi Lane (aka Marina
Bellini), entitled 'Tales in the Shadow'. I really love also 'Back To Home',
because it tells very well the story of a voyage that I feel intimately mine,
or 'Until To Touch The Clouds', because it represents an emblematic condition
for many, even if really lived by few. Also I love the lyricism and sheer
madness of 'The Strange Coincidence', initially
inspired by a scene in Stanley
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and then become something else, completely
uncontrolled and uncontrollable... so full of details that only a mad could
have created: for example, the only toothbrush has almost 300 prims. Also I am
affectively and emotionally attached to 'As An Angel In Search Of Colors' which
I think is a higher level in many points of view, not just the technical or
stylistic. Among the large-scale installations I like to remember the first one
I made called 'Life Again' or the one presented in the last project curated
by the LEA together with Kicca Igaly named 'DangerInEvolution', last year. So
even in this case it is really hard to choose. I love them all as if they were
children. But since I do not have children, then I can say I love them as if they
were my parents, because they understand me and offer me protection and
security. In front of them I do not need to be different from what I am.
Regarding the second part of the question, instead, I can tell you to feel
myself totally inadequate and I have failed the target more than once, in all
those rare occasions when I worked in very large groups. I do not know why it
happens and what brings me to fail: the spirit or intent of the group, the
purposes for which it is created. Perhaps in those situations I become really a
kind of solitary animal.
with Kicca Igaly - Image taken by Ziki Questi |
Bryn Oh: Do you have a method when creating? If so how does it often
progress? For example do you sketch or write out ideas first for weeks or
do you perhaps just jump directly into the project with little planning and
adapt as you go?
Nessuno Myoo: Oh yeah sure, over the years I think I have crystallized a 'modus operandi'
that I respect every time in the same way, and that occasionally I modify a
little only in very special situations. As the pattern of a serial killer. In
SL I've never drawn anything before grounding the first cube of each work.
Everything comes, grows and dies in my head. It begins with an image that
becomes light in my mind. This image is suggested by anything... by a book you
are reading, or a movie, a chat with a friend, a melody that filters through a
window left open or a memory that resurfaces after years, held there in the
warm under the blanket. It 'a powerful image, if you know what I mean, but not
complete. Reflecting on this image, I suggest a possible way to follow: a
theme. At this stage I do a bulimic search for information about it, I take,
directly from the Web, most of this information, but also by other media that
may be the most disparate. Each of us has a kind of 'sieve' within themselves
and their own life experience, and uses it as needed to stay afloat just what
you need at that moment. When the material is put together enough to start
putting on something concrete and that makes sense in my eyes, I start to
really build. Going forward, in the project, I add items always new and
unexpected, that I would never have dreamed of taking into account only at the
stage of just imagining it. I work slowly. Very slowly. Too slowly. Ok, for a
careless eye I could actually seem completely immobile. But for me it is
essential to work slowly. So long as observe what I do in construction. For a
project completed in the time period such as a month, I use at least 3 weeks to
observe what I've built. Perhaps adding even one prim, from time to time, or
moving of only a few millimeters something that still does not convince me at
all. Important: I use only native prims, not sculpted or mesh. Only SL native
prims. It is damn tiring and I understand that it is foolish to believe. But I
am not able to proceed in a different way. And basically I do not want to
proceed in a different way. One aspect that always leaves me incredibly
intrigued then, is the fact that at every start the final result is always very
different from the original that image that I mentioned above. I think it's a
good incentive to go forward: the curiosity to see how it will end every story
that you start to write through digital sculpting. And every time I fear that
it is the last one. And I am afraid that this beautiful thing that happens all
the time unless I can explain it really, can suddenly stop working forever. Do
you know that in a couple of occasions I've even found myself thinking that I
could stop living? It would be a shame, if for no other reason I would not have
had a way to finish the work I was doing, Crazy but true.
Bryn Oh: What are you currently reading, listening to or looking at to inspire
your work?
Nessuno Myoo: While I am committed to building I can't do more than that. My concentration is
totally focused on that. If your question is what I read, watch or listen to
inspire me a new idea for a new work to be done in SL, as I said above, it is
different from time to time. Every situation can be an inspiration, just that
you know how to read between the lines of reality that we have in front of our
eyes, not just the physical ones.
Bryn Oh: Does your work have an overall theme and if so what might that be?
If not please describe how you tend to pick your topics.
Nessuno Myoo: In truth, a kind of thread that ties all my work exists. And in many cases it
is sensationally obvious. In other cases it's more hidden, and it's hard task
to be able to discover it. I'm talking about that aspect related to what I call
'fragmentation of the human figure'. A constant research devoted to the
dismemberment of the figure, which implies a rejection of bodily imperfection,
to transfigure into soul. If you like, my rather simple expedient, it also
serves to emphasize a dogma, which wants a human being in a constant search for
what completes it. Whether it be a person, a passion, a love or an object. The
metaphor is always the same. Another aspect, absolutely not secondary, which
binds all my work is also tenacious research of the movement, sublimated in
volumes, shapes, and lines, although it's completely absent the use of
SL-scripts, and other stratagems.
Bryn Oh: Have you ever had to deal with negative publicity or a disappointing
rejection of your artwork? How do you deal with it?
Bryn Oh: Would you like to take a stab at explaining what defines virtual
art?
Nessuno Myoo: In fact, I strongly believe that the whole Art, in the past, in the present, in
the future, can not ignore the condition of being, by its very nature,
intimately and inextricably linked to the virtual aspect of all things. After
all, if we think about it, who makes art, using the means that history, through
technological evolution from time to time supply it with, does nothing more than
projecting with the imagination in a virtual space, where to take with
enthusiasm, to those fantastic visions that his sensibility then turns into
something else, which can be appreciated and enjoyed by all humanity. And this
happens all the time. And ever since. In my view, therefore, to speak of Art
and Virtual, is to speak about the exact same subject. In addition to being a
good escamotage through which you can avoid a stab.
Bryn Oh: What would you say makes virtual creations unique over other art forms?
Nessuno Myoo: Every form of art has its own uniqueness given by the means with it is
achieved. If I have to look for a "uniqueness" in virtual creations,
such as on SL, this consists precisely in the fact that a work remains unique
despite its multiplication. In the real world a work of art has a value and its
copies have another, on the other hand, on SL the value of the various
"copies" of a work does not imply a devaluation of the so-called
original, because they are all original and no of them can be degraded to a reproduction
of a unique copy. So, back to your question, we can say that, paradoxically,
the uniqueness of a virtual work of art is manifested in the abasement of the
concept of the uniqueness of the work. I think this is an extremely significant
and revolutionary factor of virtual art without thereby diminishing it. Imagine
if each of us could enjoy his favorite works comfortably at home, it would
surely be not acceptable for the market, but the art would really be shared.
Bryn Oh: Centuries ago there was no such thing as an "artist" just
craftsmen, as time progressed superior technical ability and creativity created
the elite "Master" artist whose work stood recognized above all
others. In 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted a work entitled
"Fountain" to the Society of Independent artists.
He stated "... He (the artist) CHOSE it. He took an article of life,
placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and
point of view – created a new thought for that object" He wanted to
shift the focus away from technical craft to
more of an aesthetic intellectual interpretation. Some say that because of him almost everything is considered art today. From an elephant painting with its trunk, a Banksy, a child's drawing to someone vomiting paint onto a canvas. What is your perspective on this?
more of an aesthetic intellectual interpretation. Some say that because of him almost everything is considered art today. From an elephant painting with its trunk, a Banksy, a child's drawing to someone vomiting paint onto a canvas. What is your perspective on this?
Comments
This interview again was intelligent and thoughtful, leaving me feeling I should perhaps be getting course credit for taking part, and wondering how much of the material will be on the final exam :)
In all seriousness, these discussions make me feel once more that we are all part of something great in our virtual world.