i wrote the blurb for Body by Body’s raunchy pornographic new collection of flash fiction pieces: TG-30, you can read it here www.klausgallery.net

TG is a common abbreviation in transformation/fetish fiction sites for TransGender (or in some forums To-Girl), but this book actually goes over a lot of other paraphilia which I myself am interested in.  Good job, too bad it’s an ebook and i dont have an ereader.  

lol,

J.R.

Body by Body at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles:

The Angel Collection (2013) consists of a series of set design pieces from a larger upcoming installation from Body by Body entitled Creative on the Weekend...

excerpt from the description:

“…On the floor, embedded in four round rugs are guardian Angels who protect and hold up the artist. One is a steroid bodybuilding woman, another a Black Panther porn actress in an IKEA livingroom, another an androgynous hip-hop corpse in Venice, and the fourth, a sexy frog. They are sexually, politically and stylistically ambiguous images that are an amalgamation of different kinds of work seen on DeviantArt and ConceptArt.org websites. On these sites it is not uncommon to see bizarre micro-genres as well as unlikely “slash-fiction” style juxtapositions between seemingly unrelated subjects. This split is echoed in the larger installation that points to a dichotomy between the work that the artist creates (post-conceptual neo-minimal works not unlike some of the pieces in this Steve Turner show) and the utter personal schizophrenic meltdown of the artist. All in all, Creative on the Weekend is an allegory with tragic elements much like Faust or It’s a Wonderful Life; but one that questions artistic production as well as the loss of ‘style’ or artistic ‘identity’ in an increasingly unstable contemporary landscape.”

from HERE

“Passion!”

If i had to describe ksplus’s (aka Kiriko Sato) work in one term it would be: life-affirming.  Each piece explodes with manic, ecstatic energy.  While the figures in the foreground provide the anchor, it is Sato’s backgrounds and setting that really hold the magic.   The first work I came across was “Girls be.”  In it, a schoolgirl stands in a doorway opening out of a Ben-Day dotted magenta sky.  At her feet various random objects: a doll, a speaker, an umbrella, a giant spider, a knife,  some books and CDs, railroad signals and some design flourishes.  In the foreground, barbed wire and different kinds of flowers.  To the right, a parrot!  And far off in the back, what looks like either public housing or office buildings (or both) are rendered in two tone black and white.  These twelve or so elements  appear to be outsourced from a library* and their use here is so haphazard it makes what would otherwise seem like a commercial image into something far stranger.  These objects as well as a few other motifs are used in a stamp-like manner throughout all of her work, thus Sato builds a vocabulary and world with which the viewer can familiarize themselves.   However, Sato goes so wild with these stamps that, like a true alchemist, she actually manages to bring them to life.  These are defaults that talk, sing and move.  Talk about a lesson in pictorial economy!

“Girls be”

For example, in “—”  the parrot from “Girls be” reemerges, peeking out from behind the protagonists smartphone, while dolphins dance across a spiraling keyboard into, yes, that very same black and white housing and Ben-Day dot sky.

“—”

 I can’t think of another work that evokes the same kind of feeling as “Music” except for perhaps the Syndrome-produced music video for Freeze by T-Pain:

“Music”

Sato’s use of stamps and stock design imagery is so rampant, it becomes unclear for the viewer where the artist’s hand ends and the presets begin.  So enmeshed are we in these software-surrealist pictures that the viewer is left with no other option but to surrender to their kinetic energy.  In “Daily Mystery” an overturned trashcan spills giant chess pieces against a sky made up of crumbling puzzle pieces, while an anonymous crowd march on an off-kilter blue-striped ground.   The ever present barbed wire and Ben-Day dots remain, accompanied by floating black butterflies.  

“Daily Mystery”

“Sweet?”

In “Sweet?” Sato takes a darker turn.  In this dreamworld, the cookies and the forks are the all the same, replaceable and indistinguishable whether they are reversed or given a different color.  The only singular subject is the young girl on her back and the giant flamingo interrogating her.  In this world, like the others of Sato’s, the artists subconscious is an ‘engine’, and every environment can be broken down into the same essential readymades.

It is well to remember that a picture before being a battle horse (a spiral keyboard), a nude woman (a parrot) , or some anecdote (a manga girl lost in music), is essentially a flat surface covered with colours (clip art) assembled in a certain order.

Artist’s website:

http://acrylicdays.web.fc2.com/

http://ksplus.deviantart.com/

*These could all be original drawings that Sato is self-stamping for the interest of time

Have been very busy :0)  Need to catch up on my writing! ;-P  In the meantime, the extreme HD figurative work of tigersan.deviantart (click to enlarge)  xoxo

lol,

JULIA ROB3RTS

Natural Body Magic (or NBM) was the first micro-art-“fetishist” scene I came across on DeviantArt.  I stumbled across a user named Nerson25 whose page was filled with Photoshopped images of women with various limbs (usually legs, heads, arms) removed or conjoined in odd ways, but done in a ‘cartoonish’ non-violent way.  In his bio he explained that he wasn’t a “freakin’ psycho” but that his work was just a “magic-sexual-fantasy-fetish” called Natural Body Magic or NBM. 

The name intrigued me, and a few Google searches eventually brought me to this definition on, strangely, Trip Atlas (it has since been taken down):

“Natural Body Magic (also called Natural Body Separation) is a paraphilia where the main subject is fantasizing about a person that can be either cut or disassembled into various pieces, and live and function normally. The most common separations are at the neck or at the waist. A common visual example of this is the ‘Sawing a woman in half’ trick that was popular among stage magicians in the early 20th century. The name was coined by the late wife of one of the community members in the early 2000’s. This paraphilia has not been the subject of any research, and may be restricted to very few people.

Usually, people with this paraphilia find the sight of blood very disgusting, and almost always in the fantasy, the cut surfaces are described as covered with normal or slightly darker skin.”

NBM images are almost entirely of women and of an erotic nature. It’s hard to gauge exactly how many people are involved in Natural Body Magic (the NBM forums currently has 400 registered members).  The participants are usually very insistent that the work is not intended to be misogynistic, violent or hateful towards women.  In fact, a big emphasis is on the ability of the subject to still control the disassembled parts and to reassemble into new ways. As one user (dividetconquer) added on DeviantArt:

…In my opinion, the “Natural” word needs to be stressed a little more. What really makes such complex fantasies different from violent (and possibly dangerous) fetishes is the separation process itself, which, as I’ve learned by digging NBM related pictures and short stories around the web, is always depicted as: safe, painless, consensual, reversible.

It is for this reason, he goes on to explain, that ‘paraphilia’ is an incorrect description:

Though it does have a slight sexual nuance (since the separations are very often visualized on sexually interesting subjects) I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “paraphilia”. To me at least, NBM has more of a pure aesthetic value.

Another definition from Urban Dictionary I found:

From what I can recall, www.naturalbodymagic.net (sadly, non-existent and not archived on the WaybackMachine) featured twelve or so artists (with names like CardQueenX and MultiMaree), galleries and links to relevant DeviantArt pages.  In it’s place there are the NBM forums where users exchange their homemade and found ‘manips’ (photo manipulations)

One of my favorites: in this manip, Mariah Carey looks almost like an ancient mythical creature on display, captured in a blown-out camera flash:

From NBM, I was introduced to the larger world of “Female Transformation” or “FTF”.  FTF being an umbrella term that encompasses NBM as well as a plethora of other body-related micro-fetishes revolving around the creation and distribution of visual images and fan-fiction.  

The most well-documented aspect of FTF, is Breast Expansion or BE.  BE is exponentially more popular and it’s history more well documented than NBM*.  

BE even has it’s own novel-length fan-fiction (published on the web in 1997), which is regarded as a milestone in the community.

Sometimes, strains of FTF make their way into the mainstream, and this is usually met with excitement on the forums where they are spread quickly among community members.  These headless T-mobile ads and an amazing scene (special effects by Screaming Mad George) from body horror director Brian Yuzna’s “Faust: Love of the Damned”:

But besides BE and NBM, Female Transformation’s wiki page includes much more genre’s including:

-Ass Growth, Inflation, Amorphous, Vore, Bimboization, Unbirth, Nipple Growth, Implants, Cyborg, Petrification, or “Frotterotransformationalpartialism” (to transform a person into a part of the body rubbed for sexual gratification, A Philip Roth novel revolves around this exact fetish):

There is also “Genitomastia”:

The popular Shitting Dick Nipple meme is a descendant from Breast Cocks:

But back to NBM…

To me, this is the kind of art Dubuffet was referring to in his writing updated to the contemporary landscape.  A “Dionysian state of revelry and intoxication”, this is primitive art in the 21st century; devoid of the marketplace or academic posturing (‘I’ll swap you two Agambens for one Lacan”**) and equipped with image editing software. It is no surprise then that it is closely equated with “fetishism” and that the participants don’t consider themselves artists.  Why would they? This is image-making not aimed for commercial consumption (high or low) or targeted at an audience versed in art-historical narratives (this is why I would also separate it from the genre “fetish art”). It uses social-media, forums, distribution, hyper-appropriation, aliases, watermarking and other aspects of post-Internet work naturally, already taking as a jump-off point what most post-Graduate artists struggle to make sense of and incorporate into their own practice.  This is not to over-romanticize or elevate this work to some other arena in the way that Dubuffet did with art brut.  But it is this ‘dumb’ honesty in it’s content, it’s intent and it’s use of materials that should be noted.  I’m reminded of one of the earliest examples of NBM; detached arms, detached feet, faceless with breast and butt expansion:

“Even in their crude way they make for a better orientation in a world but dimly comprehended and imperfectly understood.”

lol,

JULIA ROB3RTS 2012

http://divideetconquer.deviantart.com

http://bubblesguarddog.deviantart.com/

*See the full history at the Overflowing Bra website: http://www.overflowingbra.com/wiki/history:be_community

**Nina Power “The Art World is Not the World” http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2008/03/the-art-world-i.html

 I first became acquainted with the contemporary Dolling scene when I started to see images and art of bald naked genderless humans crop up while *patrolling* through DeviantArt.  These depictions stuck out for several reasons.  For one, they were done by many different artists in as many different styles. Second, they were almost always referred to as “Bases.” And third, they were often imprinted with a specific set of directions for use (genderbending OK, link back, no frankendolling, show me, etc.) even sometimes coming in utilitarian packaged zip files called “Base Packs”.

Some bases by Pinkland.net:

Zobeida base by Maudee

Bases are often affiliated with DeviantArt groups like BasesRUs, Bases-For-You, BetterBases, Original Bases Only etc. with members churning out hundreds of these images.  ”Frankenbasing” “Pillowshading” “Tooled Dolls”  are some of the many unfamiliar terms I came across on these group’s pages.

Bases, I soon found out, are templates for Dollers to work with.  A “Base” is a digital mannequin, and a Doller (or “Base User”) collects Bases and ‘dolls’ them up; adding their own hair, makeup, clothing and accessories.  Literally, it is a digital version of playing with dolls and this digital subculture has carried this much older tradition into the 21st century for about 20+ years now.

In some cases, artists supply the Base packages with props, accessories and skin tones for the Base User to play around with, but more often than not, Dollers paint their own additions with Photoshop, MSPaint, Paintshop Pro or GIMP. This simple premise leaves a lot of room for a wide variety of different kinds of participants: on one end, there are the casual users who like to just collect bases and dolls and accessories to mix and match.  There are online drag-n-drop games made for this kind of user.  And on the other end, there are the serious Dollers, who insist on creating original, sometimes painstakingly detailed art pixel by pixel.  

Some classic Doll examples:

Sumomo style:

The current Dolling scene on DeviantArt has it’s earliest roots in a Japanese program from 1991, the Kisekae Set System (KISS) , a digitization of the the paper doll tradition dating back hundreds of years.  In this program, the user is given a model with a set of accessories which they could mix and match:

Screenshot of KISS: 

However, Dolling’s closest and more relevant ancestors are the “Dollz”, a late 90s-early 2000s “Internet fad” which were “small pixelated digital images, generally consisting of illustrations of people with clothes and accessories”.

Dollz were created by people who frequented an early chat program called The Palace, which allowed users flexibility with their avatars (think Second Life meets AOL in 1995).

Screenshot of the Palace post-Dollz invasion:

Although the history of Dollz is somewhat murky and hard to pin down (it being essentially a folk art), a popular story is that Melicia Greenwood created the first Doll in 1995.  A ‘goth’:

i made her goth, cuz i’m goth… i didn’t want to keep making a new prop in Palace each time, so i started using Photoshop layers for some of my editing. for example i made a leather jacket and jeans in Photoshop as a layer, by drawing them on *top* of the Barbie body. then i copied them into my prop bag and “dressed” the doll. at first i kept getting it wrong but using the arrow keys i finally got her outfit to fit right. and i started giving her away so people could make their own outfits. here’s a pic of her in a top, skirt, and stockings:

the first “doll” …the little goth Barbie that started it all …i drew this in December 1995.

then people asked for a “Ken” … by this time, people were making her some outfits of their own, but she needed a man! i can’t stand Ken dolls, so i made him as a cartoon goth guy standing there in big black pants that were getting in style then, and i was too lazy to draw hands so i put his hands in his pockets, and i was too lazy to draw much of a face so i gave him long hair in the front. again, i gave him away, and a lot of people edited him. so basically, the first skater/sk8r doll was this scribbled dude right here:

The story goes that from these early templates, others began modifying and creating their own avatars using Melicia’s creations as a base.  At first they were called Little People, but soon this expanded to include a whole range of groups like Sk8ers, Bratz, Preps, Weirdos, Silents, Wonderkins, Divas, Raverz, Momz, etc. Many teenagers adopted dollz avatars as a sign of rebellion against older Palace users. This led to a period where anyone wearing a dollz avatar could be kicked or banned from certain Palace servers, where it was assumed such an avatar implied an ill-intentioned teen user.

Preps:

Goths:

Divaz:

Raverz:

Momz:

Bratz:

Celebz:

Eventually Dollz became popular outside of the Palace scene, with personal websites devoted to the art form.

In 2003, Salon.com featured an article about the Dollz scene, tracing it’s history with interviews by some prominent Dollers. At the time of it’s writing, Dolling was still spelled ‘Dollz’  and the influx of Japanese cultural influence had just started to seep in.  ”The gothic Lolita, the most popular new doll type, is rooted in Tokyo street-culture and is notable for its bloody nurses and leather-clad, bandaged goth girls who, presumably, listen to Bauhaus.”

In 2007, DeviantArt created a digital doll section on their site and Dollz became what it is today. The introduction of DeviantArt brought a larger audience and influx of different styles.  During this time, as a way to distinguish from the earlier generation, the Z was dropped.  Dollz pre-DeviantArt were merely a half inch to four inches tall, giving the artist an incredibly small amount of space to work, Dolls now can be done at any size, and in almost any style (anime, chibi, pixel, cartoon, realistic etc.):

We Danced Anyways Base + Dolls by 1995Runaway

Hold base by SceneFag.

And some Dolls made from the Hold base:

As the Salon article pointed out: “Like Photoshopping or game mods…dolling responds with lightning speed to trends in popular culture. It is more than an opening into an alternate dollhouse universe; it’s yet another window into the zeitgeist.” DeviantArt has only exaggerated this aspect.  In the same way that the earlier Dollz reflected various real life subcultures like Goths and Ravers, it is not uncommon to see Dolls today in Burning Man/Suicide Girls/Steampunk scenes like these:

Some chibi-style dolls:

An example of a Collab:

Whereas earlier Dollz fit into specific categories that were the same across all sites,  in the digital Dolling world post-DeviantArt the sky is the limit. Take, for example, this bizarre “Pregnant Mafia” set:

Although the Dolls scene still generally fosters an inclusive, friendly, opensource environment (as did the earlier Palace Dollz) there are certain rules that must be followed, and it bare’s similarities to other more conventional artistic endeavours in the sense that originality, skill and most importantly knowledge of these rules be highly valued. One of the worst things a Doller can do is to “Frankendoll” or “Frankenbase”, which is to use bits and pieces of other people’s work to create their own. In DeviantArt, offenders are ostracized from the community with users posting ‘proofs’ like this (click to enlarge):

“You are indeed a disgusting person for pulling such underhanded shit and really should be ashamed of yourself, you are worse than the tracers.“ 

There is no monetary gain in Dolling (unless you count Gaia Gold and DA points as currency).  Digital Dolls are made strictly for the praise and credit of a job well done. A lot of Dollers bring their Dolls to online ‘pageants’.

The Alternamodel Pageant 2012 is a beauty ‘pageant’ for dolls featuring alternative styles, as the rules state:  they must be “alternative” based. This means goth, punk, pin-up, emo, scene, retro, vintage, etc. No preps. No thugs. No gangsta’s. Nothing “main stream”.

On Dollers personal site’s, news about what contests they’re participating in and awards posted of past contests that they’ve won:

A Best Shading Award from 2008, a Base of the Month award from 2005, and a Steampunk Pageant Award from 2011:

Digital Dolls is interesting not only because of the way it has upgraded and kept a much older analogue tradition alive, but also in the way that it has naturally coalesced into a self-organized, self-“policed” sub-art culture.  As Melicia Greenwood stated in 2011:

“I have always felt very strongly that art is for the people so I would drop my Palace avatars, prop by prop, onto other users (or into “drop rooms” )as fast as I could make them. It was great to watch 10 or 20 iterations of the same avatar appear within mere minutes!….The Palace pioneered a creative and competitive atmosphere where internet chatters first broke free of the constraints of static icons and text-based emoticons into a dynamic, ever-changing visual representation of the self that the user could change in an instant. Because of the large number of separate, highly-populated Palace servers open in the mid-90s, and the creative, at times chaotic atmosphere of “editing contests,” it was possible to have several people creating similar images on separate servers without either seeing the other’s work. When “dolling” web sites began, it was much easier to keep track of new developments and to merge all of these designs together into coherent histories. I know that many people feel a part of the creation of the original Palace dollz in many ways; the advent of dynamic graphical chat was a very exciting time in internet history and I’m glad I’m still around to report on it.”

lol,

JULIA ROB3RTS 2012

A full Dolling 101 with ‘netiquette’ can be read here:

http://finepixeldolls.deviantart.com/gallery/?30696759#/d4aghxi

http://www.thepalace.com/wonder/ezine/sk8ters.html