When Iono Met Igor...

Igor Ballyhoo was one of the first artists whose work I was introduced to when I joined Second Life in Feb 2010.

(click to enlarge images)

'Christ from Abu Ghraib' by Igor Ballyhoo (click to enlarge images)

His work remains amongst my favorite of all the work I have now seen in SL.

'Christ from Abu Ghraib' by Igor Ballyhoo

Indeed I see the sculpture pictured here, 'Christ from Abu Ghraib', out of my caravan window each and every time I log into SL and, further, his work has appeared in two of my films: 'No Self Control' and 'Personal Jesus'.

View of Igor's sculpture on my home sim

Igor currently has three major exhibitions at the University of Texas at San Antonio's (UTSA) ArtSpace sim.

• "Metamorphosis"
• "SnowCrash" (with Rebeca Bashly and others)
• "Forest of Scissors"

The Forest of Scissors has already been filmed by such luminaries as Osprey Therian, Debbie Trilling and, I seem to remember, ColeMarie Soleil (although I cannot find the link to CoMa's machinima right now).

Each of them presents a quite diffferent spin on Igor's fabulous work: Osprey's vision is stark, cold and metalic; Debbie presents us with melancholy and resignation - a literal and emotional sense of 'slip sliding away', suicide; CoMa with an ephemeral and fleeting existance with a dark unconscious undercurrent.

The Forest of Scissors

The Forest of Scissors inspired these filmmakers to produce three very emotionally different films; Igor's work caused a different vibration or resonance in each of the filmakers which, in turn, resulted in three very different outputs.

It is therefore appropriate and very perceptive of UTSA to run a contest inviting machinimatographers to create a machinima focusing on one of the other two of Igor's exhibitions at ArtSpace - Metamorphosis or SnowCrash.

It would be very unsurprising if, again, we see very different emotional outputs being created by different machinimatographers as a result of being stimulated by Igor's work.

The closing date for entries was yesterday, 1st September, with the winners announced on 15th September.

Here we present Iono Allen's entry, 'The Red Zone'. I found both visuals and sound to be exciting and it kept me on the edge of my seat! I would also recommend watching at 1080 on YT.