The Ability of an Artist to Recognise Art

We are going to start featuring our new guest writer Rhonda Hoffman as often as she want to share with us ... you all know her as Mavenn in SL. Her writing, like her music, is moving and insightful, and entirely, legitimately, and authentically "her!" So, Enjoy! (Bonnie)

Author’s note: This piece comes out of long participation rather than theory. I sing live in Second Life, and I am also a regular audience member who shows up for other people’s performances because I genuinely love the music there. What I am writing about comes from paying close attention to what actually happens in those shared moments, in a virtual world that is often mistaken for something less serious than it is. This is not meant as a technical or philosophical argument, but as a reflection on how liveness, presence, and connection are felt and recognised by me from inside the community.

Artists don’t recognise art because they’ve read the right theory. They recognise it because they’ve lived inside the work. They know what it feels like to choose, to hesitate, to miss, to recover, to adjust while something is already happening.

That kind of recognition isn’t technical. It’s perceptual. A singer hears breath and tension. An instrumentalist hears phrasing and restraint. A writer hears when a voice has earned its meaning. These things aren’t analysed in the moment. They’re felt. When you’ve made work yourself, you can tell when something has been risked and when it hasn’t.

That’s usually what people mean when they say something feels alive. Not that it’s perfect, but that someone is present inside it.

Human agency makes art possible, but it doesn’t guarantee it. Music can be played correctly and still feel empty. A person can execute something mechanically, without intention or responsiveness. In those cases, the presence of a human alone doesn’t make the work art. What matters is whether decisions are being made in real time, whether something is being listened to as it unfolds.

In my own work, authorship is embodied. As a singer and trained instrumentalist, my body is the medium. Breath, timing, phrasing, silence, restraint are physical choices made in the moment, shaped by training and limitation. The work exists because someone is there, taking those risks as it happens.

But I’m not only a singer. I’m also an audience member and a fan of live music in Second Life. I go to other people’s shows. I sit quietly. I listen for the same things I listen for in myself. The moment where something almost breaks and then holds. The moment where a phrase stretches because something just changed. My sense of presence doesn’t come only from being on stage. It also comes from recognising agency from the listening side, where the only thing being produced is attention.

Frisson is one way this recognition shows up for me. In my experience, shared presence arrives with frisson and synesthesia together. They don’t create the moment, but they signal it clearly.

Classical instrumental training sharpened this sensitivity further. It teaches you to hear not just what is played, but why. You learn how tension can live across silence, how discipline shapes expression, how restraint creates meaning.

Second Life is often misunderstood as a space where performance is diminished by distance or mediation. But liveness doesn’t depend on proximity. It depends on risk. In SL, performers work inside latency, compression, abstraction, and delayed feedback. You can’t rely on spectacle or momentum. You have to listen harder. You have to stay present to what is actually happening rather than what you planned.

That demand keeps the work honest.

What I listen for, both on stage and in the audience, isn’t polish. It’s responsiveness. A rhythm pulls back because the energy shifted. A phrase stretches because something just happened. These aren’t mistakes. They’re signs that someone is listening while they perform.

Frisson happens when tension and release feel earned. It depends on risk, restraint, and timing. It comes from someone responding to the music as it is being made, and from others staying present long enough to meet it. The heart of an artist isn’t limited to those who make art. It exists in everyone who is genuinely moved by it.

Artists want to share that feeling. They want to try to call it into existence for an audience, knowing it cannot be forced or guaranteed, and that overcoming noise, expectation, and the urge to control is part of the work itself. The urge to control comes from risk, but control collapses the responsiveness the moment needs. Control shows up when the moment matters most, and leaves when presence finally takes over.

That is what makes live music in Second Life real. Not the platform, not the avatars, not the illusion of proximity, but the shared commitment to stay present long enough for something unplanned to arrive.

Frisson cannot be commissioned.

It only shows up when someone is present.

About the author: Rhonda Hoffman is a live singer, trained instrumentalist, and long-time participant in Second Life’s live music community, where she performs singing rock & blues as  her character Mavenn. She performs regularly, runs a venue dedicated to supporting live artists, and spends as much time listening in the audience as she does on stage. She is a poet, writer and academic. Some of her writing focuses on liveness, presence, and the shared experience of music in virtual spaces, drawing from years of embodied practice and some communication and musical theory. She lives in Canada and continues to explore how attention, risk, and connection shape creative communities.