SARA LUDY
Fire Beach
This work, titled Fire Beach, is a video snapshot of a peacock on Fire Beach in Second Life. Second Life is a collectively built online metaverse where one can embody a virtual life as an avatar. During the summer of 2014, I took a virtual vacation and made the series Beaches, which this work is a part of. This piece also reflects my love of birding.
I chose this existing work from 2014 that’s a lightweight representation of simulated nature; a low-res animated gif. Since this is a carbon negative auction, I wanted to conceptually support that. Hyper realistic renders of nature typically require large amounts of energy. This is something I’m aware of in my own practice and something I wanted to emphasize here. While we’re discussing the carbon output of the NFT space, it’s also important to recognize the vocabulary of digital works and how they function in the carbon conversation.
About Sara, Climate and this Drop
My feelings on climate change are a combination of bad words, anxiety, mourning, and dread. We've been gifted human life; we get to experience consciousness in these bodies alongside all other life forms. It’s mind blowing that we’re alive on this planet, yet we’ve lost touch with the awe of simply being. We’ve stopped looking up at the stars in favor of our reflections. The disconnection we have with Earth, and each other, is one of the reasons we’re in this moment. It has fueled fear and greed, embedded and upheld systemic issues, and continues to pummel all life on Earth. Unless we can come together, learn basic things like respect and community, then all the carbon offsetting and green technologies we implement won’t get us very far. We greatly need to heal the human spirit.
If art is a mirror reflecting contemporary life, then my mirror is slightly tilted towards the Earth and sky, where daily life ambiently casts in. As artists for centuries have questioned fundamental aspects of being, I do as well. I try to be reminded, and to remind others, of possibilities that exist beyond our everyday.
I believe in the Open Earth Foundation’s mission towards carbon accountability, to ensure that we are doing the work at a root level to meet our climate goals. This will be my first NFT release, and I’m honored to participate in this important carbon negative auction alongside so many great artists. For this to happen on Nifty Gateway, which has supported one of the largest communities of artists in the NFT space and contributed to massive amounts of carbon output, is also to hold them accountable and push them to move forward with greener solutions.