WHO IS BUNNYKEN 2

A BRIEF HISTORY

Images from original Bunnyken listing, circa 2001-2002? Photographer unknown

"You Have to See It to Believe It"

I can't recall how many times I've had to tell the story behind Bunnyken, so I created this page to help explain as much as I can about its background and my relationship with it in my artwork.

Bunnyken is a half bunny, half chicken creature based on a toy of mysteirous origins. (hence its name). Although I often refer to it as "he," it is of indeterminate gender. But the mythos of Bunnyken cannot be explained that easily, not by a long shot.

It all began in the early 2000s or so, when I came across a very strange item for sale while searching "weird auctions" on Ebay: It was a strange doll listed simply as Bunnyken, with the word BUNNYKEN embossed on the back of its head. It was so baffling, funny, creepy and odd that I saved the pictures of it.

(I wish that I had simply bought him back then, one of my deepest regrets)

Table of Contents:
* BUNNYKEN IN SECOND LIFE * "VERY RARE EASTER CHICKEN RABBIT CANDY DISPENSER"
* THE SEARCH FOR BUNNYKEN'S ORIGINS * BUNNYKEN IN 3D

BUNNYKEN IN SECOND LIFE:
THE EARLY YEARS

BUNNYKEN: THE AVATAR

In the mid 2000s, I was experimenting with making art in Second Life (SL), a pre-VR headset user-created 3D virtual online world. I had become acquainted with a number of other artists & creative types there, including the members of a community called W-Hat, who described themselves as: "the non-griefing* Something Awful goon group in Second Life" which was "created on April 27th, 2004, to get away from the bad reputation of the original SA Goons group. W-Hat is for people who actually want to play Second Life, not people who want to see how fast they can get banned." W-Hat became legendary/infamous for its subversive group builds.

[See also: http://www.w-hat.com/]
[*griefing: the practice of harassing other users/players in an online game or world]

For W-Hat's Third Birthday celebration in April 2007, I was one of several people invited to virtual-DJ the Second Life event, alongside my friends & fellow artists Arahan Claveau and CickMyLunt (who eventually was forced by SL mods to change her username to "CensoredMy Lunt").

W-Hat's collective was infamous for its bizarre, hilarious, and outrageous avatars [avatar: digital body/costume], so I wanted to wear something suitably weird for the event. Luckily, I remembered the pictures of the Bunnyken doll that I had saved, and I attempted to recreate it as an avatar in Second Life.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, dressing up virtually as Bunnyken began to change my life.

The first Bunnyken avatar I made, which I improved upon later.

Partying in the metaverse with W-Hat & friends

ARTHOLE AND BROOKLYN IS WATCHING

Creating the Bunnyken avatar only fueled my renewed obsession with the character. In Second Life, I began to make various Bunnyken virtual sculptures. The first significant one was titled Bunnykenball, circa 2008, which I created for the virtual gallery space at the now-defunct mixed-reality space, Brooklyn Is Watching**, which held weekly podcasts at a real-life gallery location in Brooklyn, NYC to discuss the artworks set up at the SL location.

Brookyn art fan enjoys the view. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Is Watching

Sadly, Brooklyn is Watching came to an end in 2010, but screenshots and images from the SL location can be found on their Flickr page.

Giant Bunnykenball, me in a Bunnyken avatar, and the "Beholder" (lower right), the avatar that functioned as the navigator for visitors to the RL gallery

** //Brooklyn is Watching was a hybrid SL/RL project that existed in Second Life. We were at Jack the Pelican Presents (487 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA) where gallery visitors had been able to see and interact with anything that happened at the sim via the 52 inch monitor.//
(source: Brooklyn is Watching Flickr group description)

//'Brooklyn is Watching' [was] a project sponsored by Popcha, a New York based media technology company, and [it took] place simultaneously at the [now defunct] art gallery Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, New York and in Second Life. A performance space and presentation/sandbox in Second Life [were] set up for this. An avatar, in the shape of an eyeball and under the name Monet Destiny [viewed] and [projected] the goings-on there at all times onto a large screen monitor at the Real Life gallery.//
(source: Bettina Tizzy/Beverly Millson at npirl.blogspot.com)

ORIENTATION

For the next several years, Bunnyken returned time and time again to my SL artwork, often in collaboration with Arahan Claveau via in-world voice chat. He and I curated an artspace & partnership in SL called ArthOle that opened in April of 2008 which consisted of a virtual gallery space, performance art venue, and music events, all of which occurred in SL, including the somewhat infamous ORIENTATION interactive theater event.

ORIENTATION was a multimedia promenade performance created in Second Life that incorporated audience participation. The first performance of ORIENTATION was a mixed-reality event in 2008, performed live in Second Life and simultaneously broadcast to a real-life event space in Amsterdam, Netherlands as part of art collective PLANETART's event, PICNIC08.

Attendees who were invited to participate as extras in ORIENTATION logged into Second Life from various locations around the world. After arriving at the virtual location, they were then instructed to change into Bunnyken avatars, and follow directions from the actors (ORIENTATION employees, played by SL users Arahan Claveau, Dekka Raymaker, Penumbra Carter, and me). Due to the nature of the performance, numbers were limited to 10 guests per event.

In 2011, a remixed performance of ORIENTATION was held for the Odyssey Performance Art Festival in Second Life. Odyssey Contemporary Art and Performance Simulators are a group of online simulators dedicated to contemporary art and performance with a focus on performance art and is possibly the oldest artist-run sim in the metaverse.

Video documentations of ORIENTATION were filmed in Second Life in the Virtual Holland region by machinima film artist Chantal Harvey.

AUTOSARCOPHAGY

The idea for one of my Bunnyken-related SL installations, Autosarcophagy, came to me in a dream in 2009. When I woke up, I immediately sketched it. I built it almost exactly as I saw it in the dream. In later versions, I expanded upon the build with additional interactive elements.

Autosarcophagy is self-cannibalism, the practice of eating oneself, also called autocannibalism.

It received a brief moment of notoriety when it was selected to appear in the Second Life Showcase, a listing of notable and interesting destinations, around June 2010.

"When you first step inside the latest art exhibit at Numinous, you're greeted by a giant chicken holding a shotgun with a chicken-skin rug lying on the floor. Man, that just ain't right. Follow the blood-stained footprints around back or click on one of the build's many interactive elements and things really get weird."

"VERY RARE EASTER CHICKEN RABBIT CANDY DISPENSER"

BUNNYKEN FOUND

For years, I was filled with deep regret that I had not purchased the Bunnyken doll on Ebay when I saw it in the early 2000s. I was obsessed with finding out more aboutit, and searched the web in vain for any information about its origins for a long time. I didn't know if I would ever be lucky enough to find one again.

BUT in March of 2008 I found ANOTHER listing for "Bunnyken" for sale on Ebay. Needless to say, I bought it before I even had a chance to think about it. As I looked at the listing page, I noticed that this one looked DIFFERENT than what I was expecting.

This is Bunnyken in its original form. The one I saw in the yellow suit must have been someone else's genius creation -- a Bunnyken head on a decapitated doll body.

This Bunnyken looks like it was meant to be some kind of cheap plastic Easter toy. The head is easily removed and has a hollow tube neck. The button on the front of its body turns. I think it's some kind of candy dispenser to be filled with jellybeans or other small candies. Turn the button, and a single jellybean would be dispensed into one of the little indentations on the base, each of which has short phrase:

BE GOOD - BE HAPPY - YOU'RE SWEET
I'M IN LOVE - LUCKY ONE - ROCK 'N ROLL
SAY YOUR PRAYERS - HUG ME - KISS ME

I asked the Ebay sellers if they knew ANYTHING about Bunnyken's background -- what year(s) it was made, where it was manufactured, anything -- but they had no idea, either. They had literally brought this Bunnyken to Antiques Roadshow, and even the appraiser there had no idea what the hell it was.

From the original Ebay listing:

"It reads BUNNYKEN on the bottom so I am assuming that is who made it.
I took it to the Antiques Roadshow, they had never seen or heard of one before and thought it was pretty rare and very different than anything they had seen.
They apprised (sic) it between $75 and $100...."

In 2012, I went back to college and had to spend time away from Second Life. Also, my PC died and I couldn't run SL on my crappy replacement laptop til many years later.

In the meantime, my obsession with Bunnyken continued to thrive. During this period, I found and purchased several other Bunnyken figures via Ebay, including one with its original box.

I EVEN FOUND ANOTHER BUNNYKEN WITH A DOLL BODY.

What are the chances that TWO people had the idea to make a weirdo doll like this?? Amazing. This one didn't have an outfit, though - it was completely naked. I planned on making a yellow suit for it, as close to the "original" Bunnyken as possible. I have zero sewing skills, so initially I used an old decommissioned sock as a sort of tunic.

THE SEARCH FOR BUNNYKEN'S ORIGINS

BUNNYKEN, INC.

Over the years, my research (Googling) has uncovered a few facts about Bunnyken. It appears that it was a short-lived toy designed as an Easter candy dispenser -- so one of my hunches about Bunnyken turned out to be correct. I also found out that it was manufactured for a brief time in the late 1950s in Midland, TX, USA by an enterprising person named T. R. Ewart, who apparently named this business Bunnyken Inc.

I also found a public record of a 1966 tax court case which mentions Ewart's commission for the design of an Easter toy:

// In September 1957, petitioner [T. R. Ewart] engaged an artist to make some preliminary sketches of a plastic candy-dispensing toy which he planned to manufacture and sell. He paid the artist $150 in September of 1957. Two handmade models of this toy were acquired at a cost of $800. The device was a combination of a bunny rabbit and a chicken. It had a mechanism which when operated laid a candy egg. It was intended chiefly as an Easter novelty to be handled by candy shops and department stores. It was given the trade name of ''Bunnyken.'

Production and sale of the Bunnyken were commenced in 1958 but due to certain mechanical defects the venture was abandoned in 1959. //

I have found no information at all (so far) about the artist who was commissioned to design the Bunnyken toy. I did find a couple of old newspaper clippings advertising Bunnyken for sale, however.

Here's one posted in an ad for a now-defunct department store in San Antonio, TX, called Joske's:

And another mention of Bunnyken in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, 19 March 1959:

Bunny-Ken
Part rabbit and part chick is this fortune-telling addition to the Easter toy list. You have to see it to believe it.

The Bunny-Ken has a bunny's head and a clear plastic neck inside of which you can see a row of edible jelly bean eggs. Its body has the shape of a chicken. It stands on chicken feet attached to a round platter indented in miniature egg shapes.

Turn a handle in its chest and the Bunny-Ken lays a jelly egg. Then you read the 'fortune' written above the groove the egg rolls into. Pay $2.95 for one at Gimbels candy counter. Packages of right-sized refills are 20 cents each.

BUNNYKEN IN 3D

MULTIMEDIA BUNNYKEN

Bunnyken continued to inspire my art-making process in and outside of Second Life and through multiple different mediums: painting, sculpture, cosplay, illustration, t-shirt design, short film, memes, zines, social media, and more.

During my junior and senior years at Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA, USA) in 2017-2019, I returned to Bunnyken as a motif in various art projects, including some experiments in learning 3D modeling and beginner VR development. In Maya, I built a very basic Bunnyken mesh model, which I then printed using an old Makerbot on campus.

3D printed Bunnyken figurines

In Unity 3D, I learned how to develop and export a very basic Google Cardboard VR app, which is essentially just a 360 non-interactive environment. I used the model of Bunnyken I created in Maya to add to the scene. The app was installed on a smartphone, which could then be used with the Google Cardboard device to view the 3D scene.

Using Unity, I also developed a very simple game called Bunnyken Blastoff, in which the object of the game is to navigate Bunnyken through an obstacle course without crashing.
The game can be played here:

BUNNYKEN: The ALTER EGO

BECOMING BUNNYKEN

As part of my senior year Capstone projects, I created a Bunnyken costume.