I visited Melusina Parkin’s newest exhibition “Wrong Mirrors” at Melusina’s Minimum Gallery.
I am a fan of Melusina Parkin’s art and have seen quite some of her exhibitions. Melu’s style is minimalistic. She usually takes her pictures in Second Life. The minimalism forces the spectator to focus on details, that might stay unseen when too much distracts the view.
“Wrong Mirrors” is once again an exhibition featuring something new from Melusina, something that I didn’t expect from her. Melusina played with Artificial Intelligence. Each exhibited picture consists of one bigger and four smaller images. My fist thought was that the big picture was taken in Second Life and provided the source for changes by the AI. But I was wrong.
I talked with Melusina about “Wrong Mirrors” and she revealed a bit more about her work:
Diomita: I’m curious ….. Is the large picture the one you took in SL and the smaller ones is what the AI made of it?
Melusina Parkin: All the images have been generated by AI, then I worked on them… I’ve thought to show them that way to put more similar images in the exhibit 🙂
Diomita Maurer: but the AI must have got initial settings, right?
Melusina Parkin: yes, they work after a “prompt” written by me. I describe the image I want to generate, adding some parametes about light, style, size and so
Diomita: Do you use Midjourney?
Melusina Parkin: Not only Midjourney, mostly Stable Diffusion
Diomita Maurer: The result looks very “Melu”-like. It sounds so easy, but it isn’t! In the end it is still the artist, who selects what to keep, what to further develop
Melusina Parkin: yes, AIs are totally driven by the author, who decide style, subject and other features
Diomita Maurer: well done, Melu. I like the result!
Melusina Parkin: Thank you!
As mentioned in the conversation with Melusina, the pictures clearly show Melu’s style even though generated by AI. And they made me smile. Imagine you’d look into such a mirror, what a surprise not to see yourself in the mirror but someone else, or your backside! Look for all the details and enjoy Melu’s art.
On the second floor of the Minimum Gallery is Melusina’s exhibition “Art Deco Symmetries”. I wrote about it in June 2022 (read here).
Melusina Parkin is in Second Life since September 2008. She has been a fashion manager, a journalist, a furniture creator, a builder, a decorator and a photographer. Her work as a photographer has been showcased in more than 50 exhibitions – from which I saw just a few. Melusina has a flickr account which counts more than 13,000 (!) photographs. Extensive collections of her photos can be seen also on her blog Virtual Exhibits and on some slideshows on Youtube (links also under this post).
There’s also an online book with her Second Life exhibits 2011-2019 here.
Melusina Parkin has an own gallery at Time Portal, “Melu’s Photo Gallery” and an own store for Art Deco furniture called “Melu Deco“. Melusina also owns a second place (Melu Space) with another gallery (Minimum Gallery), a bookstore and another “Melu Deco” inworld store.
Thank you for “Wrong Mirrors”, Melusina. I enjoyed my first gallery visit in 2023!
Landmark to Melusina’s Minimum Gallery and to “Wrong Mirrors”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lunula/129/107/621
Melusina Photo Gallery
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Time%20Portal/248/101/1940
Landmark to Minimum Gallery
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lunula/130/107/621
Landmark to Melusina Parkin’s store for Art Deco furniture “Melu Deco”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Time%20Portal/243/99/1930
Melusina Parker’s flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melusina_parkin/
Melusina Parkin’s Virtual Exhibit blog
http://meluphoto.blogspot.it/p/home.html
Melusina Parkin’s youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVzglBiqhrOLXnAp3Qt3Zjw
On line book Second Life exhibits 2011-2019
https://www.calameo.com/books/005997622f28dd58ca75d
Diomita Maurer’s Blog 