Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott

Bio

Scott Kildall (USA) and Victoria Scott (Canada) started their collaboration in 2006, after meeting in the Art & Technology Graduate Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Their first project series, ‘2x2’, experimented with physically materializing the psychology of online relational spaces and was conceived at the Banff Centre for the Arts as part of the conceptual art residency ‘The Future of Idea Art’.

In 2007, they were awarded the Turbulence.org sponsored 'Mixed Realities' Juried International Networked Art Commission, for their second project, No Matter. Both the physical and simulated installations of No Matter premièred simultaneously on February 7th, 2008 in both Second Life and Emerson College, Boston. This was recently shown at the Subtle Technologies Festival in Toronto in June, 2009.

Their most recent relational installation, Ghost in The Machine, provides a hired philosopher to assist the public in drawing or writing a response to the question “What is the Ghost in the Machine?”

Abstract

No Matter

Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott will present an overview of their artwork, “No Matter,” which is an installation of “imaginary objects” made both in Second Life and physical space. They will discuss the labor issues surrounding the project, which use virtual labor from anonymous builders in Second Life.

No Matter traffics ‘imaginary objects’ in simulated and physical spaces. These objects appear repeatedly in myth, literature, in thought experiments, popular culture and as placeholder objects in language. Items such as the Holy Grail, Time Machine or Schrödinger’s Cat, do not exist in the material realm, except as replicas, and embody the tension between the ideal and real.

The project explores the tension between the virtual and real economies by (1) commissioning 25 builders and artists to produce 40 cultural artifacts in Second Life space; (2) paying them in Linden dollars at an equivalent scale of $1.50 to $12.00 per object; (3) extracting the objects from Second Life — a closed system where 3D models cannot be exported; (4) reconstructing these objects as 3D paper replicas with high-quality printed textures in physical space.

The artists will discuss tactics of economic engagement from developing relationships with anonymous freelance builders to imbuing psychological investments in a conceptual project to making five-step sales pitches using an “Imaginary Objects Showroom”. The results where vast differences in pay scale, ranging from $55/hour (for a 10-minute build) to 60 cents/hour (for a 50-hour build) and widely divergent interpretations of the form of various imaginary objects.