Eshi Paints

Excerpt from CIAC Mag  article by Patrick Lichty:

"OBJECT: OTAWARA"

One of the most basic examples we can consider is that of the object as site of social exchange. Irena Morris (aka Eshi Otawara)'s One Hour Sim projects were a set of at eleven daily installations using the entire space of an SL server, or 256 virtual square meters in which she creates a regional installation in one hour. For Flower Tower, Morris created a recursive space where a meditative space is framed by shell upon shell of flowers. When the inhabitant ventures outside, the"upper room" is actually the top of a vast structure comprised of flowers stretching up several hundred (virtual) meters. This particular piece is a multi-tiered structure for inhabitation, including spaces for congregation, assembly, and singular contemplation. Also of note is that the Tower was purchased for four figures and relocated by the owner in a doubled use as sculpture and social space, fulfilling Bourriaud's principles of experience and exchange.
The relational model solves the problem of the inherent material valuelessness of the work except as site of social exchange.This also relocates virtual art into "milestones" akin to Conceptualism, except within the new contexts created by location in virtual worlds. Conservationists may argue that open source initiatives like abandonware and Open Sim may preserve work outside the Linden Labs "grid" potentially extending their persistence as objects. Conversely, genres associated with Fluxus and Relationalism are often self-reflexively immaterial, although the latter is often more connected to objective production. Persistence is a curatorial dialectic within New Media Art circles, and perhaps only more urgent than these works being a subset of applications technology as opposed to those of computer operating systems that have slightly longer lifespans. Except for issues of emulation, neither have persistence at conservationists' time frames, and should be considered as such. What is more relevant is the function of art as social"attractor" broadening into generation of milieux around it. For the Flower Tower,Morris/ Otawara's patron saw the work as social scaffold and milestone in that simulator, to the point where they desired to relocate that relationship, and through it build another social space, although perhaps more akin to those of Kaprow or Beuys."