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, who creates drawings and paintings inspired by her experiences in Second Life, calling for a new art movement she's dubbed "Gridism":Many games — Second Life, Eve Online, DayZ, and other, older massive multiplayer games — enable users to give enough input to carve out who they are and what is important to them. So much of this expression is present in these worlds, a culture unto itself begins to form. Gridism takes these cultures and studies them. The Gridist is not only interested in summarizing who the user is online, but how it might affect their offline world as well. They implement symbolism and key images into their paintings to give the viewer a full story. They not only show why games and virtual worlds can be important to pay attention to, but they show the other side of humanity within them.
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. As I told Kelly when she sent me an earlier draft of this essay, I'd love to see some more concrete examples which fit in this movement as she's defining it, to better explain what qualifies as "Gridism", and to inspire a community of creators around it. For instance, how about[To see links please register here]
?Maybe time for someone to start a new Flickr feed?
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