SL® ArtsParks

In the loop

2012-01-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Lepidopterous largeness in the form of Under The Sky opened to much fanfare yesterday night on LEA17 .
The opening was organized by Zachh Cale for Japanese artist, Yooma Mayo, and featured Skye Galaxy which was pleasing from a punning point of view, even if his music always conjures the sensation of an imminent arrival at Lobby Level.

People like ants and ants vastly bigger than the people doing the usual loop-the-loop of Being There At An Event. There was considerable lag, but not the fault of the public, as I discovered today, when the sim was empty.

Above the piano party, it was all paleness and detail-oriented prettiness.
In SL, flowers and butterflies have been done and done and done, (often in exquisite nanoprims, which is way harder to accomplish than this outsize extravaganza) and whole sim builds are now commonplace, so while it's a charming build, I was soon feeling antsy, and ready for a return visit to Wizard Gynoid's Klein Bottle.

Wizard Gynoid has loved Escher since High School. His pictures have been recreated in SL many times; Wizzy herself made a version of his Waterfall, and Stars, which you can still see at Primtings next to Solkide Auer's version of Relativity. - and yes, Primtings is still there. Guess everything is relative, after all.

The build at the Education Center on sim Clive borrows from Escher's Mobius ring, but conflates it with Felix Klein's concept of a 'bottle' imagined as two Mobius strips sewn together.
It's a much-revisited concept, but maybe the paradox that most speaks to our virtual lives. We see and often feel close to other avatars and their remote controllers, and yet everyone's on their own endless loop, essentially separated from all the other ants. Permanent parallelism influences our sympathies and reactions in ways that the head-on collision of the real world would never permit. And vice versa.

Wizard Gynoid: Soon you'll be able to ride the ants. This way each one will march around their own little Mobius strip. By definition, the Klein bottle has no "inside" or "outside", so, if we were to walk around it, we would end up on the other side of it, then back on this side again. About a month ago, Miso Susanowa made an awesome video of my build - I love it!

Wizard Gynoid: When I was in high school, I saw Eacher's black light posters. I heard you could take drugs and travel into the posters. I tried to but was never able to! Here I can make 3D copies of his paintings, and fly into them - a dream finally comes true. Escher had mathematician friends who influenced him a lot. Math and geometry inspired him, particularly the unexplained paradoxes the things that make your head hurt to think about! I'm very thankful to Escher, and sometimes I think I'm channeling him. He would have a ball in SL.
There's more to see at Clive. Compare Wizzy's studio on the ground with RL photos, and you'll see that it is a lot like Escher's office, with the same toys and concepts floating around.
Wizard Gynoid: My things are an interpretation using the tools I have available here. The artist is always defined (notice, not "limited") by the tools they have. Lately we've been talking about moving some of our stuff onto 3D webpages using Unity3D, so people could view the works without having to log in to SL or Open Sim. I want to put the Klein bottle on a 3D web page for the world to see!

Here be dragons

2012-01-13T18:10:00.000-08:00

It's an accepted paradox that Travel writing is best done by people who don't know much about their subject. Oh sure, they get the names of the major attractions right, and explain the money and describe that nice little souk where few tourists ever go. But the better you get to know a country or culture, the more you find yourself hesitating, qualifying your description of it. The ideal travel writer breezes in, gets an idea and has the gall to share it, unashamed of their status as an outsider. Take the Orient - the name itself betrays a point of view: it's only 'East' or even 'Far East' from a European perspective. Even the seasoned visitor, with both work and leisure experience in Asia, finds themselves hard put to give more than a glimpse of what is a vast and ever-changing enigma. Yet that glimpse can be hugely entertaining.

Part of the UWA Sky Series, Between Orient and Occident is a three part installation that expounds on Central European (as opposed to the Anglo-American, TV and film based) perceptions of Asia. It's well worth exploring, as much for what it tells us about what the east is "like" as what it tells us about the three artists Asmita Duranjaya, ChapTer Kronfeld and Louly Loon. Louly wasn't able to be with us, on the day, but her art is so cool, she's bound to have a whole post to herself before long.
The visit starts at a pyramid, where Magic Doors give access to each section of the build.
ChapTer Kronfeld's take on the orient is dark, masculine, intuitive. He embraces the unknowingness of the Westerner, presented with the concept of the East.

A sense of oppressive uncertainty plays against luminous panels, points of reference that turn out to be phantom prims that you're meant to walk to, and then through. It's a confusing and almost maddeningly disorienting place. ChapTer led the way through passages. Following his strong, capable avatar made it feel a lot safer, but in the end, it was time to step alone into the darkness.

ChapTer Kronfeld: It is my strong way to find the theme of Orient. The last few meters you must go alone, Thirza - your destination is to go to the light. You will find it's a good feeling in the stomach!

The reward fo all that uncertainty is a powerful open space, a vast contrasting web of lines that suggest skyscrapers, lines of communication, bloodlines, and so much more.
ChapTer Kronfeld: Here you can walk into the spider's web...

ChapTer's intensely masculine build is beautifully contrasted by Louly Loon's build, which takes its inspiration from the Italian opera Madama Butterfly. Three delicate sets follow the three acts of the opera. The theatrical effect exactly captures the stylized presentation of Japanese stereotypes in Puccini's opera.

This is not Japan, it is a dream of Japan; a dream of a world of death and love, loss and honour that cannot be said to no longer exist, since it was always a fiction built of indestructible truths outside the realms of the real. Pure feeling. Pure beauty.

Asmita Duranjaya is a tireless creator and performer in SL, and it comes as no surprise that her build is both didactic and energetic. Don't miss the word game she has set up to help visitors get the most out of the educational side of the install - there's a very cute gift up for grabs if you complete the puzzle and find the secret room!

Analyzing five aspects of the Orient, Asmita gets her audience thinking about the sensations of the physical world, and the way it is changing; the intersection of different languages and cultures, and the healing power of spirituality. Years of experience, as well as five months of discussion, research and building have gone into this install, and it shows.

The Tale Tower is particularly charming; take a moment to read the storybooks and be a part of the picture while you read!.

Striking also Urban Standardization a room full of shapes and noise that captures the trope of eastern cities as wildly crowded and increasingly samey.

Asmita Duranjaya: The sound is very important it is about the standardization of metropolitan centers - a blending of the appearance of Orient and Occident. Everywhere you look you see the same brands. there is a loss of individual shape but has also its own aesthetics. Each has its own beauty. That is the urban rhythm - its own true culture, or rather, a melting pot, a hybrid or transculture.

Move around the build to enjoy sensations of colour and shape, healing and meditation. It's easy to see why visitors have been known to spend hours in pursuit of the sights and sensations of the build.

Congratulations to Asmita and her team - including the talented Virtual Instrument Players, who performed for the Grand Opening - for providing a wonderful window onto their world.

In the pink: Fuschia Nightfire

2012-01-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

She says it's because she gets bored easily, but the truth is, it's because she's good. Fuschia Nightfire turns her hand to machinima and is witty, to installation art and is eloquent, to painting and is brilliant.

virtual paradox? Nina Camplin and Fuschia Nightfire

Nina Camplin became Fuschia Nightfire to 'find a new husband' - that's the story she tells: tired of being a WoW widow, she saw a news report about people finding new love in Second Life, and let RL hubby know she was going to see about getting a new man, virtually. The whole thing was a joke, and she thought she'd get bored and stop coming in after a while. None of that never happened. Four years on, Nina and her husband are still happily together, on separate computers but at the same big desk, and in the meantime Fuschia (that was the colour of her hair at the time) has developed an inworld portfolio to rival the one she has in the real world. Recently she's made a avatar for her 'real self' in a bid to avoid confusion, as she brings her SL and RL audiences together at a number of venues, like Vision of Beauty Art Complex.

Fuschia Nightfire: These are some RL paintings taken from SL scenes.I made a NinaCamplin Resident avatar for showing my RL painting. It's strange, but I could never quite get used to showing my RL paintings under a different name. I gave a talk a while back to a RL art group and they found the pseudonym thing very confusing, so I made a decision to show all my SL art under 'Fuschia Nightfire'. Fuschia is my 'trademark avatar'; I'm doing a photo project, logging my changing avatar for a year. I'll show the rest of my art with my real name.

At Lana Simondson's LA Gallery of Fine Arts, Fuschia spoke about her influences, and about her early days in Second Life. It was a while before she came across art communities - in part because she wasn't looking for them; when she did, there seemed to be lots of empty and uninspiring galleries. The community has come a long way since those days, and she loves the opportunities for collaboration and meeting with both the public and other artists. The feeling is mutual.
Lana Simondsen: Her work is stunning, graceful and full of life and her heart. Her approach is totally from her sense of fun and creativity.
That's more than evident in her contribution to the Pop Art show at Vista Hermosa Art Center shown here.
Nina/Fuschia has been painting all her life, and at home in the South of England she is a professional artist specializing in murals and animal portraits. The joy of Second Life is that, with a simple TP, you can see many of her murals just as they're meant to be viewed - full size, up close and personal to your avatar.

Fuschia Nightfire: This was done at the end of a lady's back garden; her husband was an artist, and this has lots of elements taken from his paintings.

Can't get enough of these cows!
I wondered what it means to an artist to be able to accomplish pieces in such different styles, 'to order'.

Fuschia Nightfire: It's very strange how that happened. My work was getting very expressionist, and I decided to go back to university to do a Fine Art degree when I was 40 - my mid life crisis! When I came out of that degree, I had gotten really into making photo realistic work which I guess had a lot to do with my trompe l'oeil murals.

Fuschia's trompe-l'oeil murals show the breadth of her ability to manipulate lighting and perspective in 2D art, and it's easy to see how her illusionistic bent would lead her to making 3D installations and dioramas. The technical aspects of building in Second Life didn't come easily. When she first started showing her work it took ages just to learn how to upload paintings and get them onto prims. Now she makes it all - even wearable art!

Fuschia Nightfire: In the real world, I have done a bit of sculpture; I learnt how to weld and did some metal sculptures a few years ago. In SL, I never thought I would have advanced in my building skills as much as I have. My next thing is mesh, I am dying to get started on that! I could never really get on with making sculpties. I can make all sorts of different blobs, but nothing more advanced than that. I often use full perm sculpties, since sometimes it's better to make use of ready made stuff, it's quicker than starting from scratch. When I first came on, the first artist who really amazed me was Feathers Boa with her avatar reactive pieces - I loved her work. Scripting is something I can never get my head around, so I sometimes commission scripts, but mostly I just pick up freebie ones and fiddle about with them.

The 'fiddling' works. Scripted landscapes (pictured here at a well-curated show on Artina) display her flair for both design and variety. Some cycle through night and day, while others, like the one in the foreground, featuring flowers by Fuschia's close and much-missed friend Sabrinaa Nightfire, bathe the viewer in a luminous, almost perfumed cloud of petals.
What's up next? For Nina in Real Life, it's more murals, and more time dedicated to getting her work out there. She confesses that a RL artist has to do way more legwork to get known and to get commissions - SL makes it all very easy by putting such things at the tips of our fingers. It's time to get down to some serious business! And for Fuschia, in SL? At the end of January she takes over at Metales, spreading her wings in a sim-wide build.

Fuschia Nightfire: MetaLES owners Romy and Ux invited me after seeing my zebras at UWA, so i wanted to do something around that. I decided to go with the theme from the title of the piece : 'Not everything is plain black and white'.
You can expect a build in many shades of grey, but ultimately, it will be Fuschia all over.

Pay / Play

2012-01-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

This blog isn't usually a soapbox, but something should be said. I can empathize more than most with Bryn's situation, but I can't agree with her reaction.
About three years ago, someone thought me 'worthy' of having my own land and left me two lovely parcels with a total of just over six thousand prims. It was a very kind gesture and I had a lot of fun making things, and playing in the huge castle at Evora that some of you may have seen in this blog.

After a while, I realized that no tier was being paid. Not being in a position to take on that responsibility, I just quietly accepted the status quo, and enjoyed my space.
However, all good things come to an end, and a couple of weeks ago a nice man from LL got in touch to say that it was pay up or leave time.
I chose to leave; all my building is done in opensim now anyway, and it's easy enough to find a Home nook in SL for little or nothing. Sad, not to be able to display the lovely art that kind and talented friends have presented me with over the years, but I'll survive.
All of us think we are a special case. But we're really not. It's sad that Immersiva is gone, but it's sad that Sextan Shepherd's Nemo build, or Luctesa, or hundreds - thousands - of builds (dare I say it?) even better than Immersiva are gone. To 'make a case' for being given free land, as Bryn has on her blog, is something all artists could do. To make a special case for one or two elite individuals would indeed set an unreasonable precedent.
For a long time, the received wisdom in art circles has been that Bryn is LL's poster-child for 3D art, (omg someone say 'Shanghai') and one can't blame her for being saddened by the loss of her space and perhaps her perception as a being set above and apart from the rest of SL's artists. But you can't fault LL for informing the land owner, not tenants, no matter how famous, when they're going to take land back. And if the registered landowner stopped paying, then Bryn should expect to stop playing - that's the system.
The Lab is in the business of making money, not building a community - that's our choice, we volunteer our time and talent, coming inworld to 'waste' our time making things. Looking back over the four years of this blog, and the weeks of unpaid work that has gone into it, could I rant against Blogspot if it disappeared tomorrow? Not if I want to be taken seriously. In the transient ocean of online creativity, every adventure is a gamble, and not all ships survive.
I have always been wary of putting too much faith in LL's generosity - I'm talking about the LEA - for this very reason: the Lab giveth and the Lab taketh away - and they have every right to do so.
If you put all your creative eggs in that basket you may live to regret it.

Calendar girl

2011-12-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

These days, Cat Boccaccio is one-handed and full of pain killers - she broke her arm! But that hasn't stopped her doing her bit this winter for SL art, and RL charity The Hunger Project. Here she is, in front of a lovely white poinsettia by Keiko Kohime, at DNA **Art and Music Fusion**. Go upstairs at the gallery/club and you'll see the full collection of her tasteful nudes.
They are all familiar faces from SL - women artists, models and gallery owners who've come together to be part of yet another stunning calendar, 'Goddesses of SL Art' available inworld at The Seaside Gallery at Nestor Marina. Who exactly is in it? You'll have to go and see!
My absolute favorite is the one of Gracie, but each picture tells a thousand, words, so be sure to pick up the notecard and get the inside scoop on both the art and the photo-shoot - it makes interesting reading!

Cat Boccaccio: I had very painful opening here! because it was just after my fall, when I broke my arm, but we had planned the event so long, I just had to go. We have raised about L$ 30,000 so far, I am hoping for much more. I will match it in RL money! !

Despite the arm, Cat was dancing up a storm at the Calendar event at DNA **Art and Music Fusion** when we chatted tonight. The club has a great mix of music and tunez! I took a LM and plan to go back.
Cat Boccaccio: There isn't a RL version of the calendar year, but I am planning a real-life version and a SL book with more photos, but I am such a klutz. I will do it next year - if I don't break any bones! The hardest photo shoot? Morgana, but only because she is in Australia, so that was tricky, time wise. This is my third calendar, and the second one for the hunger Project. We laugh a lot during the shoots. Fuschia and I took about 100 photos, we were having so much fun!

Gorgeous women, great art and a good cause, what more do you want? Show your Linden Love today!

Double Scott

2011-12-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Scottius Polke's been doing it for years - he even had a calendar out last year with in-the-wild 'nature' pictures. I'm a bit of a naturist my self - wait, is that the word I'm looking for? Let's clarify - I'm talking about art, scribbler art. Doodles that have become sketches worked up with digital colour and detail into delightful paintings, until now only available in the 'real' world - so it's good news that his scribblings are now on show inworld at The Looking Glass.
It's a pleasing contrast to the Italianate architecture of the palace - and a rare chance to wander among scribbler canvasses inworld.
Inworld and out, from installation art in Second Life, to his recent RL show in Austin, TX, the 'two' Scotts are gradually becoming known as a single person of talent, in drawing, assemblage, and virtual builds.

If you're already familiar with Scottius' RL website, don't let that stop you from tp'ing over for the opening at The Looking Glass at 6pm SLT, because it merits a close visit in itself - it is a gorgeous confection loosely based on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is the creation of Marcus Inkpen and Sharni Azalee, both RL illustrators, animators and so forth, with lots of tech savvy (click on their names! look at their websites!!), as you probably know from dozens of builds and installs they've been involved with all around the grid.

Marcus Inkpen: I like Scottius' art, 'cause it smells like otter! No, seriously, we've always been fans of Scottius's work. Not only are his building skills top notch - but his humor and warm hearted approach make his work irresistible :)
I'd like to second that.

Coasting

2011-12-15T11:18:00.000-08:00

Last month, Oberon Onmura got his LEA sim - number 20. It's his for 5 months, perhaps more, and he was thrilled from the start, promising something 'totally scriptalicious' - although I may be paraphrasing. I wonder how many points 'scriptalicious' would be worth in 'Words with Friends'. Anyway, he's thoroughly enjoying the luxury of both space and time to play with ideas without worrying about gallery deadlines. Despite - or perhaps because - of this great freedom, the first creation is here, and it's huge.
"WAVE FIELDS". It opens on Sunday December 18 at 1:30 PM SLT.
Oberon Onmura: The idea here was to see if I could create a sense of waves - liquid waves - from solid cubes.

Crank up your draw distance and be ready for a bumpy ride on a glassy sea of boxes. The four quadrants change color with the wind, recalling the much smaller but infinitely gorgeous Slow Chaos, and the shape of the build reminds one of another fabulous Onmura build, Coriolis.

There's an elevator to the glass roof, I fell off it seven times before achieving roofdom but hey, I also have no blue crystals in Linden Realms. Fellow observer Kakukkfu Yosuke had no such problems. He wanted to be closer to the waves though. Look how small he is against the sea of cubes.

Kakukkfu Yosuke: I have to check them, and stay a bit down to feel... these blocks reminded me of the Jewish monument in Berlin.
Oberon Onmura: Ah - that's interesting. I believe someone told me that about a different piece of mine.
It's truly mesmerizing.
Many builds with blocks falling feature knocking or fallling noises, but Oberon resisted the temptation. Enjoying this build is not the work of a few minutes; you want to linger here, and any looped sound would soon become a tiresome repetition, in stark contrast to the elegant variations below. Blocks writhe and flow against each other in one quarter, while in another they seem to be seeding themselves, and another, turning to haar. The blank spaces are both endings and beginnings, as endless as the sea itself.

Oberon Onmura: In each quadrant, the cubes have to find their place in the grid. Each one operates differently - they are scripted to within an inch of their lives. I think sometimes all four quadrants just go. It's a little random but it creates endless variations, which are pretty slow, it takes about 30 seconds for a wave event to complete itself. I like it when wave fronts crash into each other, like magic - but the magic is that our eye/brains perceive it as motion; the word roiling comes to mind.
Coast was the word, in my mind. The high, bright Oberon Coast. Brilliant.
Visit "WAVE FIELDS" for yourself on Sunday afternoon at 1:30 PM SLT.

Dawn Quest

2011-12-15T04:35:00.000-08:00

OK, making a tag that says 'This place is lame'within 30 seconds of landing at Linden Realms was a little harsh. What's a girl to do when the 5 am Airport run has been accomplished on only 3 hours sleep: it's too late to go back to bed. So that leaves the Number 1 Editor's Pick on Showcase: Linden Realms " - Go on Quests! Win L$$$!"

I'm in favor of L$$. You need a mesh-enabled viewer for this place: this is the Linden Realms landing place in Imprudence and, below, in Viewer 3.

Changing viewers borks your clothes, apparently that's a Bonus Quest.

It's basically PacMan for avatars. You arrive at a central portal...

...where 'U got a boyfriend' is still the No. 1 classy pickup line among noobs, it seems. Multiple offers of voice chat and friendship, yadda yadda yadda.

An oldbie who shall be nameless said: "Can someone please explain to me why everyone is flocking to a Linden Mole build sim i.e. a Linden owned and designed sim they featured in their own Destination Guide - it is almost artistic onanism."

It was a rhetorical question. It often is.

Step through any portal, and LL puts a HUD on you automatically. It detaches when you leave, and remembers your score when you come back.

Finally I meet the Master...

When you use viewer 3 you realize that people have lost their minds with alternate names and tags. It's like another planet - Planet Tritetag. Upside of Linden Realms, there are a lot of people about, and many are funny and willing to share their grasp of the game with fellow players. I encountered a profile picture which was hands down the most beautiful I have ever seen: kudos Ms Lazy. Sorry i didn't catch her actual name.

I can't really get behind mesh - the trees make me want to shout 'Oh Toodles' and I hate Disney. Now This is a forest:

Straylight/Botanical

not this:

From the starting point, portals radiate out across the realm. Bottom line, you collect crystals (by running through them) and eventually convert them into money. I'm a loooong way from doing that. It's reminiscent of Noob island, aimed at honing your arrow key skills, remember that? Never did really master walking purposefully, as you know. Quick tip: set Move to 'always run'. With good reason (it is a quest, no cheating!) point-to-point tp-ing and flying are disabled.

Tyrah's workshop contains vials, maps and the machinery for converting your crystals. She sends you to various destinations, or you can mooch off independently, towards picturesque sounding places.

Places that when you get there, all look the same: stones and cone trees on rolling hills. There are rivers of toxic water, they're all toxic, which may be a metaphor, remember I'm operating on 3 hours sleep.

These are the 'monsters'. wwoww. What they lack in cuteness they lack also in menacingness, which is not a word. Menacosity? Again, no.
Sprinkled on the grass are different colored crystals (see me run!) which accrue to your HUD according to colour.

~~Pacm~~... - sorry I mean 'rock monsters' ... lurk nearby ready to roll over and eat you, sending you back to a local hub. Which gets old fast.

There are also caves, more of the same, (plus mushrooms) which are even more pacmanic, perhaps, since you're in a tunnel when the rock monsters show up.

Linden Realms is quite fun really. If you're up at a weird tme of day and a bit bored, or if you want to meet some completely different people with whom you can be bemused and frustrated, or if you're a fan of cheesy builds, this could be the place for you.
LM? I think you'll find it easily enough by yourself.

Keeping it Wheel

2011-12-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

In four years of observing the artier parts of SL, despite the vast differences in ability, style, politics and approach of the artists here, it seems fair to say that the 99% put themselves first. There's spectacular variety - everything from screaming egotism, to strategic caution, to friendly reciprocity both inworld and in me-fest blogs- but self is the underlying theme. It's the way of the world, and fair enough, but every now and again it's nice to meet somebody in the 1%, a capable and talented artist who is keeping it real; who, quietly and without fanfare for herself, works to promote art in Second Life.

That's FreeWee Ling.

What's in a name: Freewee is not chinese, and people often conflate it to Freewing, which she rather likes, but you have to look at the whole name, the big picture, to understand. it says a lot about her. There's a lot to like. Here's her story
FreeWee Ling: When I first came to SL, I was just bouncing around, experiencing everything. It was a bit of sensory overload, and way too much angst, at first. I decided I needed new friends, creatives doing positive things. I did a search for artists communities, and the first thing that came up alphabetically was Artemisia. I came here and met Zephyre Zabelin. She was a wonderfully creative and generous person, who people who interested her and invited them to live here. She gave me a really nice parcel with about 2K prims. I was blown away; I know how much it costs. We became good friends, and, when she had to leave SL for personal reasons, she gave me the sim. Of course then I had to figure out how to pay for it. I had a gallery here with changing exhibitions, and a core group of residents who helped pay the tier. I just charged them my cost. Eventually that all just couldn't be sustained anymore. I'm not good at recruiting, and people were having to leave for various reasons. So now it's just me and fiona Blaylock. Fiona rents half the sim and I'm spread out over the other half.

Her extensive lab is laid out on multiple levels. Little here is what she considers 'finished' - art is always a work in progress. In that spirit of moving with the times, she recently got hold of one of the LEA sims; it's a 5 month 'lease' with the possibility of renewal. Characteristically, she's not taken it on for herself, but rather, with a project in mind to support art in general. Freewee has documented all 850+ entries from the last year, taking a phenomenal 443 pictures of the October round alone.

FreeWee Ling: I thought it was important to record what was done. Art is so ephemeral here. We need something to look back on and laugh at how seriously we took it all. My art? lol.. I don't really call it art. It's more experimentation. That's why I call this my laboratory. I've always had an affinity for all the arts. I grew up visiting art museums and going to concerts and plays and dance performances. I work professionally in support of arts and cultural organizations. Mostly using technology. I don't have that great physical dexterity. I can't be a musician, so I became a musicologist in RL. With art, it's the same thing. I have a good eye, but not such a good hand. So I use technology to help me.

FreeWee Ling: The avocado It was a gestalt of several things I was working on learning back then. I usually do my own scripting. I'm not an expert, but I can usually figure out how to do what I want.Particles, animated textures. Sound triggers. There are sensors in the floor. When you walk around they trigger the lightning and thunder. It;s fairly simple looking, but it used a lot of different skills. It was a good learning experience. I like the glowing portal. So that's a good example of an early piece.

FreeWee Ling: The hardest things I've made don't exist anymore. I led a team of about 20 artists in the Caerleon group in a collaborative project, and I built a rather large museum building for that, which I demolished at the end of the show. There's a cool video of the demolition on my website. It was spectacular, and led to my UWA full sim installation all about creative demolition, called Angry Gods.
The ambitious and complex Angry Gods build was an intense, and intensely satisfying experience. The sim was only available for a month, and it took her two weeks to put together the installation, the result of weeks of prep work. To work so very hard, only to have the install on show for two weeks really drove home the ephemeral nature of SL.

FreeWee Ling: Taking things down is the hard part. I do a lot of documentation. At UWA, I've taken nearly 3K photographs of the entries there over the last year.

This is her contribution to the Caerleon show ARCANA. Each artist got one of the cards from the pack, or 'Major Arcana', and FreeWee chose to turn her assignment, The Magician, into a diorama, with poses and a camera controller to frame the image, meaning that visitors can become part of the artwork. It was a great success and she has had lots of people send her photos of self inside the build. Avatar as art is, of course, central to her work and there's a whole wall of reminders at the Lab. As for dioramas...

FreeWee Ling: This one is probably one of my faves. From my series of pulp fiction book covers and vintage ads. I made the outfit and the pose and everything,. I also have a wearable version of the spaceman,, heehee.I have a whole series. Oh they're all based on real illustrations. Part of what makes all this experimental is that I'm often playing with ideas from other artists. Much of my stuff is derivative. I can often tell you specifically who influenced what. You should see my Barbarella!

I did!
Collaboration is key, for FreeWee, and she's grateful for the opportunities that have come her way.
FreeWee Ling: Thanks to Sabrinaa Nightfire, I was brought in on the Interactive collaboration led by Artistide Despres, and the Caerleon group . Then I was working on the Identity Museum project with Sabrinaa, who was the team leader for that. When she became ill, it fell to me to complete it. It was a huge project and Sabrinaa would have done it much better. It was really a tribute to her.
One thing led to another.
FreeWee Ling: I had submitted work several times last year to the UWA competition. I would always hang around the gallery and look at the stuff seriously, and I'd engage JayJay in conversations about it. I have pretty strong opinions, but I can usually back them up. Although JayJay doesn't have an art background, and had not, at that time, spent so much time looking at things in SL, I really respected that he was willing to engage and learn, and he does have a good sense about things. He came to see the Caerleon museum. We had over 2K unique visitors to that show. Some time later, when Quadrapop decided she didn't want to be curator at UWA anymore, JayJay asked me if I'd be willing to do it. The timing was perfect. Working for UWA was not only a really cool job, but it allowed me to keep my sim. I was on the verge of losing Artemisia, and was looking for someone to take it over. I've been really blessed and honored to work with so many amazing artists there.

If you've voted at UWA recently, you'll have noticed the more streamlined voting system, which has been a great leap forward both for the general public, and behind the scenes.
FreeWee Ling: The old system was a horror story. It was insanely difficult to keep up. By some miracle GeeJAnn Blackadder showed up and offered us a system she was developing as a commercial product. At no cost to us. We were her beta testers. And it was amazing. She made several changes that we wanted early on and it has worked flawlessly for us. I'm a strong supporter of the People's Choice process to get people to come engage in the art. I sponsored the awards during the first year out of my own pocket on behalf of the Artemisia community. It's been a great opportunity. I had a paper about it published in a Russian conference proceeding. And JayJay is looking into finding a publisher for the complete exhibition catalog of all 858 entries.

FreeWee with winning art: Daco Monday's fata danzante in the foreground.

In a way, she's UWA's 'fairy godmother', helping make it all happen behind the scenes, together with her boss Jayjay Zifanwe. Living on almost exactly on opposite sides of the world, 12 hours apart, works better than you'd think, as they both manage to be online around 9-12 morning and evening. That's handy because there's a lot to discuss, as you can imagine, with so many different things going on at any given time.
FreeWee Ling: What happens every month is JayJay takes the pieces from the deposit box and puts things out, and I make adjustments. The November round had 99 entries, many of them were large, and the gallery was packed to the gills. After the awards each month, the winners get transferred over here to the Winthrop sim Winners Platforms. So most of this stuff has accumulated over the last year. But since the Grand Finale round has a separate category for nonscripted, I made this floor for that.

Iono Allen and UWA's JayJay Zifanwe

Having been on the jury for this year's UWA Machinima competition, I got a little taste of how much work FreeWee must have to do. Just watching all the videos and keeping track of the best ones took time. The winning machinima didn't make my top 10, there was such variety and originality. As the crowd faded away at the grand Prizegiving ceremony, I asked these two handsome devils what FreeWee's work means for the art community.
Iono Allen: It is very simple: without people like her, or Jayjay and others, who take from their time to organize things, SL wouldn't be what it is. I know I would not come anymore, a big lot of my machinimas have their source directly or indirectly at the UWA so - without these people? no machinimas! or at least, or not so much.
Jayjay Zifanwe: FreeWee has been absolutely amazing. The time and thought she gives to each of the artworks is unmatched. The UWA 3D Open Art Challenge wouldnt be what it is without her. She is the 'silent sentinel'... who made it all happen !

FreeWee Ling: The future for FreeWee? Well, the UWA monthly challenges are over, but I still have the gallery. I'm planning to have some theme shows, I'll be announcing something for December. But I think the future is going to be mobile. Gridhopping. I like physics. The other grids are not good for the kind of work I do.They're supposed to be getting a hot physics engine in Inworldz. When they do it could be a game changer. I'm expecting virtual and real worlds to start merging. Augmented reality - I'll see you on the street with an overlay of your avatar. We won't be tied to our desktops or to any single grid. I like to think big :)

Face Book

2011-12-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

She's seen more avatars than probably anyone you know. This coming Tuesday, Gracie Kendal celebrates her 1000+ Avatar project with a big party at her studio on sim Coyote. It'll be an opportunity to both play and pay - if you purchase her book this week, there's a good chance you'll have it in time for Xmas. That's a lot of avies under the tree! Gracie's already in festive mode, with her baubled antlers. I had to ask - how does she feel about being a published author?
Gracie Kendal: Haha stressed! No, it's been cool. As an artist, it is hard work getting your work out there. and this book is really a work of art rather than a written manuscript. It is mostly pictures, and there is a limited audience, so that is tough.

Marketing one's work is an art form too, and the new media have made it even harder to get the right balance between overkill and not saying enough. Does she feel like she's getting it right?

Gracie Kendal: haha well luckily in the long run, I think my friends and acquaintances will forgive me for publicizing (or spamming as some call it) my book. I feel guilty quite often for sharing my work. I don't want people to get sick of me, but this is what I do. My art. I figure - how many times do we hear artists like Britney Spears or J-Lo mentioned in a day, and people just grin and bear it... of course, I'm not comparing myself to them - I'm more like Adele!!! Just kidding! The response has been really fantastic. People often contact me about what an amazing project it is, and how important it is to the history of Second Life. I hope it is, because success to me isn't monetary, but rather it is understanding and appreciation. Maybe even validation, and I feel I have that with this project and books.

I'm not sure Santa would approve of that ciggy, Gracie. I think there's a rule about antlers and naked flames.
Gracie Kendal: The hardest part was when people would be posing then go afk! When I was shooting, I would get a momentum going, a routine, and sometimes it would only take a few minutes per person. I would hate to make anyone wait, so it got a little frustrating when people went AFK without saying, and they didn't respond to me asking them to step down. On the other hand, one of the best bits was that I got to see some amazing gowns, and I showcased them a little in the book. People are so creative and talented here. Especially with fashion.
Speaking of fashion, I wondered if anyone (apart from me) had ever shown up with dreadful misplaced prims or a cringingly bad noob outfit that she just couldn't bear to photograph. And did she say something? The idea made her laugh.
Gracie Kendal: Well, I did have quite a few newbies pose, and sometimes skin was showing where it shouldn't. But I was always able to cover it up with a different camera angle. Anyway I am not one to really give fashion advice. I have been in this same outfit for 2-3 years now! I did have one guy with an erect penis; it's wasn't an oversight, he was a theatre student at a University, and it was a political statement but I didn't discriminate from shooting anyone however they wanted, so I took the shot and it is in the book :) On the other hand, some people contact me (mostly noobs) wanting to know where they can buy this or that complete avatar.
As we talked, the walls gradually rezzed - for Gracie too, who by rights shouldn't have been having any kind of lag - one by one, the grey tiles popped into life, showing avie after avie. The effect was mesmerizing. Camming back, the enormity of what she's done became clear.

While the first 1000 avatars were shot from the back, in Volume 2, you get a view of the avatar from the front. Gracie did this for several reasons.
Gracie Kendal: Firstly, I saw so much energy and passion from the front - people smiling, smoking, using gestures, waving their hands etc. There was so much humanity. SO much realism. They were so dynamic Even though the idea of the backs is more symbolic of anonymity, I reconsidered that idea. Having an avatar in Second Life, is almost the defintion of anonymity. The avatar is a mask that we wear. How much we reveal is up to each person.When the Google+ and Facebook Nym wars started going on, I thought about showing the avatars as strong independent amazing beings. I wanted to show them standing up strong as online representations. So I wanted to portray avatars as avatars.
If you were in Book 1, you don't get to be in Book 2. Gracie took the trouble to make sure she has 2000 different accounts, although the number of alts remains undetermined - she suspects, with a giggle, that it's rather high. And although she has a smattering of famous names, including Bryn Oh, always a generous supporter of artistic projects, and 'a Linden' (say no more), this is no Who's Who of Second Life. Eventually, I found the pic of me. I'd forgotten about our photoshoot, and was intrigued to see the dress in which I'd 'chosen' to be imortalized is, in fact, the first dress I made for exploring OpenSim. You can't take your SL clothes with you, sadly, so I had run up a butterfly-wing number to hypergrid in. Odd, because I hadn't meant to wear anything 'significant, and yet...

Gracie Kendal: Some people came here with an idea of what they wanted to wear, something with meaning, and others just showed up and said, OK, this is what I'm wearing today.. I'm good. It is all about diversity - an anthropology of SLers.

Gracie Kendal: I have actually been thinking of taking it down soonish, maybe the beginning of the year, as I have a big mixed reality show coming up in May I need to start working on. It is time to move on I think. I've been working on this project over a year and it has had its day in the sun. I can always re-rez this, it's not like it will be gone gone, but I think for me psychologically I am ready to move on.
All the more reason, perhaps, to get your copy of the book, for posterity. But hey, even if you're good for gifts this year, drop by here on Tuesday anyway, be part of the party, and wish Gracie well. See you there.

The Great Divide

2011-11-29T18:51:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm among the 99% who come into SL and then remember they don't have a mesh-enabled viewer and, at the end of an already long day, don't really have the time or inclination to go faffing about downloading Firestorm or (Lord help us) Viewer 3 - actually, wait, I do have Viewer 3, but no amount of wild horses or wicked art is going to make me open SL in that finger-fumbling, screen-blocking, fake-namery piece of shite.

Which is a bit ironic, as Eupalinos Ugajin's build at Split Screen is a meditation on the whole Occupy and 99% thingy. You miss out on the video, but you can get away with a normal viewer for most of the install, and it's a lot of fun. Keep the notecard open, you'll want to refer to it later. Here's the artist with Bryn Oh, and Split Screen owner and part time grouch, Dividni Shostakovich.

Eupa has a brilliantly weird avie, and isn't having any of it, with the whole 'I'm a fancy-ass artist' bs - this is all just an extension of long hours playing with Lego. Love it. I got this lucky action shot of Bryn trying out the rideable blocks being fired noisily into the atmosphere. Her avatar blended so well into the build I thought she was a bot to start with!

Not allowing point-to-point tp'ing is really irritating, although I get it that sim owners and builders see it as messing up the message or 'journey' of the install. While I appreciate the creator and owners of the art don't suffer lag basically cuz they're at home, many of us in the 99% do, and flying/walking towards a particular point of interest is a pain in the butt.

It seemed pointless to go to see Artistide Despres' build on the other half of the sim, as that's apparently entirely about mesh. But we had lots of fun with Eupa's crazy hat, and dive-bombing the patch of grass at ground level. To access the build, you get to jump through a hole, and float around in and on some neat boxes, and a lot more, but you should go see for yourself this weekend.

Eupalinos Ugajin and Artistide Despres are at Split Screen for the rest of the month.

2011-11-17T19:20:00.001-08:00

Today is a special RL day, and don't ask I'm not telling.... Here's something dreamy from Odyssey maven Jo Ellsmere

Hegira from Jo Ellsmere on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Leit motif

2011-11-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

Fiona's art is like puzzle

where you find the picture

in each brick you put on the table

Betty Tureaud

Ask Fiona Leitner what her pictures 'are', and she'll probably say something cryptic, like 'it's a square'. She's not being funny; unlike those dullards who paste a five-paragraph 'explanatory' notecard to their oeuvres, she realizes that the true experience of art is a lot like the experience of a good meal. You need to be left to sample and digest it on your own, without the cook hanging over you, describing what he was thinking about while he diced the chives. It's your meal now, and a yummy one at that.

She's a graphic artist in RL, and also an excellent cook. Fiona saw other people making art and selling it in shows, and thought it would be a fun way to make a little cash by making something people can enjoy. This one makes me think of Michelangelo through a blender: a sort of Sistine Chapel Smoothie.

A week ago today
the Praka gallery re-opened with artwork by Fiona (seen here through the gallery's stained glass windows) alongside lovely canvasses by Kira Westland and Dulcis Taurog. Mankind Tracer sang from 12.00-2.00pm. I asked gallery co-owner Pray Xonfor what he likes about Fiona's art.

Pray Xonfor: Fiona's scenes remind me of dreams. Moment upon beautiful moment, blended together into a lush landscape of thought-provoking surrealism.

Fiona's a fan of Italian and Indonesian cuisine and that love of mixing it up comes across in her work. At first glance, these pictures at Studio 33 appear to be oil or acrylic, as in imported RL canvasses, but no, this is all digital - she forms the base material and then cooks it in Photoshop until she's prepared a piece of 'eye candy'.

Fiona Leitner: Let me put it this way. I take my work seriously, and me? Well, I am just me an idiot - sometimes I am a dreamer. My best moments with customers when they start telling what they see. I always say my work has no meaning than to please. There is a darkness to many of the pictures, but it's not negative; rather, it's just the counterpart of your light side. That happens when you open yourself up.

Her top three suggestions for surviving the art scene in Second Life?

Fiona Leitner: No idea: maybe, don't go to openings, don't look at other art, and work hard.

She's only partly serious. It's clear from her conversation that she values the artistic community, is a huge fan of littleone Aries, and admires Chrome Underwood and Filthy Fluno. Fiona was delighted when Kicca Igaly dropped at her Showroom as we were talking.

Kicca Igaly: I saw your art at luciella Lutrova's Modern Art gallery and I came to see the other works. I love how you use color and I loved the composition of the 4 seasons. You are a sunny person!

Fiona Leitner: I seem to think colorful. I try to have little stress - that makes me happy!

The stress-busting benefits of making canvasses is pretty powerful. Her output ranges from five to as many as thirty new pictures in a month, depending on other commitments. Her impressive canvasses are usually huge - the kind of dimensions that would be logistical head-scratchers in the real world. No such worries in virtual reality. Plus - her studio is always clean! So many pictures, you have to wonder how she keeps it fresh and original.
Fiona Leitner: I don't have a problem with inspiration, but I do have my RL work to do. So sometimes I keep a low profile.

Twisted Prims

Occasionally she makes her base, à la Sledge Roffo, from photos taken in SL - in this case, using twisted prims. Experimentation is key. Some come out resembling faces, although she's quick to say none of her works are portraits - the 'sucky mouth' is purely coincidental.

On a cold day, these woolly looking ones are particularly warm and welcome. I wondered about her best and worst experiences on the art circuit.

Fiona Leitner: My best opening? I'd have to say my first at Pirats, because I was so new to it and it was busy and people loved it and sold 8! I was so made up! It is wonderful what Merlina and the team do here, they make SL 3 times better. I think LL should support them a lot more, but they are too cheap... sheesh give them 2 SIMS! it would cost them nothing! For my worst experience - you know, I can't think of one, I really can't. Sometimes I sold nothing, but the show was great. The worst part is when you have to be nice to everyone and have 8 IMs going on, but then everyone says nice things, and you have to be nice back, and I want to, too - it's just exhausting, draining!

The paintings are distinguished by serial numbers. Very few have names. We took a look at these exceptions, scattered around her Meadow Blossom Showroom. This muscly one is The Grinner.

Fiona Leitner: I have it printed at 140x140cm looks so good :-)

This patchwork is MSG My Sweet and Gorgeous.

Fiona Leitner: I had to make one at the last moment for my 1st Pirats show for a weird little wall they had. My then SL girlfriend came over as I was doing it, and I said it's called after you, but it wasn't, then I just gave it the name in that moment. Somehow it reflected my love for her, though. This one is my dream garden. That's where I want to live!

The next one looked like the whorls of a fingerprint, or an isometric map.

Fiona Leitner: It's called Avatar, because I saw the poster of that film.

At the next canvas, she asked me what I saw.

Thirza Ember: Orange peel first, then ice, then maybe crab shell, and rock salt.

Fiona Leitner: Do you see tequila too?

Thirza Ember: Yes, why not? I want that for my kitchen!

Fiona's branched out into the RL prints market, so I can really have it, by going to the Fine Arts America website. That's a huge step forward. Does she have more plans for the future of her art career?

Fiona Leitner: I want to round up this period with a website and a book or good portfolio. I could see this as a complete project: my life as an avatar. I would love to have open sim on my own computer - no lag! - and build away, trying some weird architecture. It's just so hard to install on a mac. But it would be great to experiment, then, when you're ready - take it here to SL. I like to build, and am busy with Betty in Inworldz, on her Tower of Babel project. I built my gallery, and I love experimenting a bit, but I like to stay 2D. I like to shape things my way best, and then have friends for friendships. Things easily get muddy when you collaborate. I must say they built a great structure at Pirats half a year ago. That was a wow thing, I really really liked that.
Drop by the Praka to see Fiona alongside Dulcis, and Kira - the show's on till the end of the month!

Art of the Undead: UTSA

2011-10-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

UTSA has met its Alamo. The gallery-sim will be wiped from Second Life by the end of this weekend. I took this photo at 4 this morning, and it felt like a ghost of itself already.
Farewell to yet another independent art organization in Second Life. At one time the University of Texas had an insane two dozen humanities and science sims on the grid. They've all been priced out of existence, but none will be regretted as much as constructivIST Solo's art sim.

At the Halloween-themed Farewell Party earlier this week, DJ Eifachfilm Vacirca kept us amused with the tunes, and the always charming and self-deprecating co was quick with her praise of the artists who have worked so hard to bring to life large, often dark and gritty installs and themed shows. None of it would have happened without her dedication.
You can't mention UTSA without mentioning their collection of Igor Ballyhoo items, including his forest of scissors, and Snowcrash at ground level. With Igor's exit from SL, all those prims go to dust. Among those stopping by to say their farewells were JayJay Zifanwe, Miso Susanowa (feel better Miso!) and FreeWee Ling. FreeWee, who helps out over at UWA, told us she is working on a photo collection of all the amazing art that's been entered in their competitions - the number 900 was bandied about. That is going to be quite a catalog!
Also present to commiserate was Ahmad Hosho, who protested in a strong Eastern European accent that he is not one of Igor's alts.
This final UTSA build is by Rebeca Bashly, who modestly described herself as 'a baby' in comparison with the other artists that have been hosted here. I dislike Halloween, but admired very much the work that went into her scary platform, built especially for the event. She looked the part! fantastic! If you hurry over, you'll find some spooky surprises inside the Haunted House.

Constructivist Solo: I guess I am going to be an SL tourist for a while!

She deserves the break. But it won't be long before she gets to grips with the search for funding for another sim. Options, like moving to a cheaper, more Art-friendly grid (did I hear InWorldz mentioned?) are also on the table, and of course she has many friends and contacts, like the Nordan clan.

...or, who knows? maybe she'll wake up to find she's been subsumed into the LEA. Stranger things have happened.

Am I scaring you? Boo!

Better Angles

2011-10-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

Gosh it's late but just a reminder to vote at the UWA. You have a couple more days. The art is the usual astonishing mixed bag. There is a stagecoach that looks like it's going 70 miles an hour across the prairie, and there's an amusing Witches Cauldron which I voted for, and Oona Eiren has a nice piece, so Oona-ish you can tell her stuff right away. I love that.

UWA always looks like an architectual salvage depot. Nothing has any relation to anything else.

Wizzy's hoodron is called a Morphometric shape. It was this guy Tomkin Euler who gave her the idea. he likes to make things, but not educate people. Anyway that's what he told me but he called me Ms Ember which always makes me suspicious.

Wizzy says equilateral triangles are special. Go into wireframe and you''ll see, she said. we're all made of triangels. No, I mean triangles, don't I? Or do I. It's very late.

Wow we are pointy. We voted. Wizzy went back to her mushrooms. I should get some sleep.

Sardinia unpacked

2011-10-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

First, let me say, Libriamo Tutti. Take that, Google Translate.

Anyway. When this blog started out, the aim of the ArtsParks group was to celebrate the brilliant builds in Second Life that celebrated great art in the real world - painters, poets, that kind of thing. Back in the day, genuine fans felt free to spend weeks of intricate, imaginative, and unpaid effort in order to represent and honor the genius of others. Thanks to their work in SL, I discovered Japanese erotica and the poems of Edna St Vincent Millay; Storm Petersen, Jerry Garcia, Anne Desclos, Kracow, and the Rumsey Maps.

SL is fleeting, we all know, but the honest-to-goodness Arts Park has become a rare find, and a quick trip through Linden Lab's Mesh IP Tutorial will tell you why: it's all about the cash. How depressing.

But cheer up, and go to Sardinia - for free, in Second Life! In Sardigna, as the locals call it, they know all about disappearing culture. Thousands of years ago, around the time the Egyptians were getting themselves mummified, the Sardinians were building fancy towers, statues and zigurrats like this one, Monte d'Acoddi, restored to its original glory, complete with altar, menhir, and hidden chamber for the sacred activity of priestly nookie.

Love those olive trees, themselves as old as time. The island of Sardinia is literally packed with hundreds of ancient structures, which have been shaken to bits by time and the unkind hands of invaders. Barisone Sirbu and his talented and friendly group, Sardinian People, have taken the lid off this long-misunderstood and belittled culture, and rebuilt it under a kinder, virtual sun.

But wait - there's more. Sardinian culture has taken a double whammy when it comes to demolition. Not only the structures themselves have been ripped up, but the very nature and history of this ancient people has been buried. The locals blame political reasons, the same reasons that led, for example, to the suppression of the Welsh language in the British Isles. Even today, most mainstream historians gloss over the idea that Sardinians had it going on probably before the Greeks and the Etruscans. It particularly ticks off the locals when their bronze-age towers are labelled as 'castles' rather than meeting places.

Barisone leads the way

In a bid to inform and redress the balance, the Sardinian People have put together a fantastic museum, underneath the reconstructed Monte d'Acoddi.

It's a journey through a culture that involves sombreros, compass-drawn eyes, and a classic Italian 'mystery': the Giants of Monti Prama. Smashed into over 5000 pieces, after their discovery they were neglected (or hidden??) for three decades, and only recently are coming back to life - as you can see in the photos here.

As you can tell, the sim is a Must-Visit.

If you're around SL today, you'll get a special treat, because they're hosting an event by Libriamo Tutti.
TP to the Sardinia sim before 12.30 SLT, take a seat on the gorgeous La Pelosa di Stintino beach, and watch a TV-documentary-style presentation of the Island, in which the owner Barisone Sirbu shows the island's main attractions to Imparafacile Runo and medievalist (stroke cunning cameraman) Sergej Zarf.

Sergej and Impa roasting their toes

If you can't be in SL, you can see the whole thing on LibriamoTutti's live stream. It'll be archived, too. They follow the guided tour with a discussion of books that will be either 1. about Sardinia, 2. written by Sardinians, - or 3. maybe just loved and read by them.
Imparafacile Runo: The important thing is to involve the public, to spend time together. Our events attract about 40 people at present. The plan is to extend this format into the real world libraries, creating evening events where folks can come in to their local RL Library branch and 'commune' with Second Life, via a big screen and voice, while in the SL venue, the RL audience will also be visible.
How neat!

Talking towers with Mysotis Flores

Libriamo or not, Sardinia has a regular program of quality events, their big night is generally Wednesday at around 1pm SLT On November 21, for example, Sardinian pianist Luca Sirigu will be playing... *I predict some slow dancing!!*.
Regardless of your time zone, I don't think you could ever be bored or lonely here. My only complaint, they don't let you tp from point to point: just like real life, then. But everyone is bubbly, friendly, kind and informed - so if this is Sardinia - sign me up!

Stock-upy

2011-10-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

If you're not otherwise occupied, this evening there's an Occupy Second Life event. They are targetting Capex which I didn't even know existed where you can play with stocks and shares, and their Inworld HQ looks very Gecko-smug and occupiable. And yet....

Miso Susanowa was busy putting together a few 'occupy' banners, props and poses at the SLLU Headquarters. If you don't know who the LSSU are, read this. They do all that 4 Bridges stuff, you know, anti- war and pro-cancer research, et cetera.
Miso Susanowa: They've been working hard. They just asked me in 3 days ago because they found out about my OWS work. And about my blogs. This is a legitimate protest, not a stunt, with no griefing. We are raising awareness of what Occupy means. It's planned (as much as anything can be in SL) for 6pm SLT. Look around this sim, there's a lot of info links here, shirts, stuff - free masks :D so come here before you go to CapEx!
Miso was making some props for another 'Occupy' event. She means business.
Miso Susanowa: I am making items for OccupyLEA :)
I looked askance.
Miso Susanowa: oh hunny i am putting my own reputation on the line for this :)

Quick recap, then: their plan is to head first over to SLLU to stock up on info and props, then off to CapEx to occupy for change'. Should be fun. I mean, important. Sorry.
...and yet, it really wasn't. Poor Skip Oceanlane the CEO of ComEx took it all really badly. He felt the event was harassing him personally: he repeatedly stressed to the crowd that he's no millionaire, and hadn't done anything to hurt anyone. Judging by his profile, he's seen his fair share of ups and downs in SL, and this seemed to really hurt his feelings, and he said having his sim crashed added insult to injury.

Hmmm... makes you kind of take stock of the whole thing, huh.

High heart: Robin Moore

2011-10-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others
that at last their true nature could not reveal itself
In every man there is something which to a certain degree
prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself;
and this may be the case in so high a degree,
he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life
which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself.
But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love,
and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.

The Seriousness of Making Choices, Soren Kierkegaard

Worthwhile things are always difficult, aren't they? Or - not difficult. Hard work. Fun, rewarding, absorbing, but distinctly work, not play. A serious, if joyful, business.

Relationships fall into those two categories, and as ever, SL heightens the gulf between.

To play In SL - with reality, identity, other people's feelings - is so easy most of us have done it one way or another. To make something really work in SL takes quite the opposite. Uneasiness?

Robin Moore's new sculpture, due to be unveiled at the Nordan Gallery next month, is a symphony to The Relationship. He developed it in a LEA sandbox; after many happy months working on the IBM sims, I wondered how his relations with his new neighbours are working out. Buddies, or budding rivals?

Robin Moore: I think it´s almost the same as before but it´s like here, or now, we are being taken more serious. I have learned from many great people or builders. I haven't done anything together with any of them yet, but I have learned form some and been inspired of some too. There will always be some rivalry but I make my ideas, and I try to stay out of competitions.

Relation Tower is, well, a towering stack of Lincoln Logs, if only you could only get those pesky Lincoln Logs to stand vertical without resorting to superglue. *shakes fist at gravity and small boys*
The tower is deceptively simple from a distance. Just like other people's partnerships.
Get a bit closer.

There is no superglue holding this thing together. Far from it. many of the joints are 'tension points' - classic argument-starters, like too many shoes, and an empty cash register.

At ground level, one of the tower's feet rests on a carrot, tantalizingly placed in a rabbit cage. ; on the opposite site, a cannon sits primed and ready to blow it all away,

...while another corner of the foundation sits in a bath where pirhanas jump after dollar bills. The sand dune doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, either.

Risk and trust and adventure. Sound familiar?
Perhaps from the top, you can see what's coming. Perhaps it affords a sense of security that those milling around the base, contemplating the plunge, will never experience. A chance to see the bigger picture. There's a ladder that animates the visitor to the top, but one look at that soapy bath, and the hungry rabbit, makes me think twice before setting out - what if I should fall?
Robin Moore: I will catch you :-)

Who wouldn't take a chance on that.
The top of the tower, like a shipwreck's raft, balances perilously on balloons. If you think you can cope with this fragile but level playing field, think again. A rusty nail swings around the deck, ready to crash the party.

At ground level, in the crazy outbuilding (a man's shed is his castle) you can see a line drawing of the build, which has been more than a year in the making. Hugging the heart at the pinnacle of the build, Robin described the concept.

Robin Moore: The question is will love last? will it fly away or collapse? can you balance forever? There are stones on the road - traps, like the baby trap, the hats and shoes, the cash register is empty, there is a piranha. But if we hold together to the all enveloping love, we will hold stand.

Back on the relative terra firma of the LEA sandbox, Robin mused on the number of 'relationship builds' he's made, like Playground of Love.
Robin Moore: Yeah, lately the last two years it has been a theme, I don´t know why. I have a wonderful RL relation, but that´s maybe because we have worked on it. I just love to think that even though many things can make your relation tough, from the inside and also from the outside, if you stick to the real love you can make it stand :-).
The Relation Tower opens at Nordan at the end of November.

The Sound of Mankind

2011-10-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

...but I'm not the only one

Imagine John Lennon

I was on noob duty last night, which turned out to be way more fun than I expected for three reasons. Firstly, after a couple of hours on Viewer 3, the noob decided to try Imprudence: seconds later there was unprompted yelling: 'Why didn't I get this viewer from the start! It's so much better!'. I love to have my prejudices spontaneously confirmed. Secondly lots of lovely online shopping, mostly through Fab Free - witty, useful and cute, and no whiff of self promotion anywhere, it's still the Best Ever SL blog.

The third great thing was to go to hear Mankind Tracer. 'MK' was headlining at his and Kalli Birman's club The Village. The always gorgeous Kalli, sporting a fabulous Halloween gown, was accompanied by close personal friend Bob, who took a break from occupying Wall Street to be at the concert. Bob's on the thin side, but his grip looks pretty strong.

It's hard to believe anyone in Second Life hasn't heard of MK, aka Seth Regan. A pioneer of the multi-region concert (his current record is 50 sims, simultaneously), he's won a bunch of awards and been involved in big festivals like Burning Life and the SLBirthday bashes for years, and a stalwart at charity concerts all over the grid. He co-owns the Village with Kalli and they have created a really great, welcoming atmosphere. Love it.

Yesterday night, there were 40 avies on the sim to hear him sing both his excellent original stuff (he has 3 albums, the latest one is 'Beyond the Shade') and great covers of Space Oddity, Over the Rainbow, Imagine... you get the picture.

The noob quickly got the hang of hitting on random single guys in the crowd, leaving me time to chat with New Toulouse's favourite shotgun house builder Pazzo Pestana, sporting a fab new look of his own. I tipped MK, but if he thanked me, I didn't hear it. Nuuuu just kidding, I'm sure I just missed his 'hello in the mix. And I did hear him give Pazzo a shout-out. But tell me, what's your feeling about that whole 'suggested amount' on a tipping jar? While it's patently insulting if someone tips you a single Linden, is it fair to assume that L250 is the least a person should be willing and able to give? Never mind all that, he has a great voice and a brilliant songbook, and we're really lucky to be able to 'go out' to a concert of this caliber without leaving home.

Here's the thing. If it hadn't been for the noob-watching, I wouldn't have gone to the concert; the notice would have been batted down without a flicker. The reason's simple: Kalli - you may know her as Brandy Maltas in the liminal world of Facebook - is such a thorough publicist that there's probably not an avatar in the metaverse who's not been hit by one of her notices, or friended by her on FB. While so many people are crassly publicizing themselves, she's promoting another person's considerable talent, and you have to admire all her hard work. Yet - how can you measure the tipping point between news and spam?

Choice paralysis, spam blindness, earnest people in tents stating the obvious like 'banker are crooks' ... sigh, it's a tough world we live in. Lemme put on some Mankind Tracer and get some Peace and Harmony back in my life.

Typo on Sundays

2011-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have made an art school, but I am a

drawer on sundays.

Typote Beck

There's a chill in the air, and from my window, leaves burn with exquisite individuality, according to their place of birth and circumstances. Little unobtrusive miracles, a myriad subtle tales of light and movement. Small is beautiful. And while Rose Borchovski's giant eyeballs - and all the rest of the familiar-looking works up at The Path- are great, I'm hankering for something more independent, more intimate. Like this.

Typote Beck's Studio Egg is part hang-out, part gallery, and the best part of both. 2D art stands happily next to posed pieces, like this one, setting the mind on fire. There's a fluidity not only in the individual works, but in the way he has curated himself that makes the studio experience a delight.

typote Beck (aka Vincent Nesler) is a desktop publishing trainer with humorous steampunk sci-fi tendencies, and RL hottie - check out the profile pic *now that's eye candy*. His job keeps him from being a SL art diva, but it also feeds his weekend hobby with a sense of fun.

Artist and otterpedic surgeon, Dr. Polke prescribed the visit.

Scottius Polke: I think typote is a great artist, and he deserves a lot more attention than he gets. I love his work.

Highly recommended, the tin-can moonshine, available at the bar. Don't worry, it only makes you a little silly.

Second Life offers a way for typote to create a more complete universe - to release his creations out of the confines of the page and ink, and into the virtual world, like his little bird...

... found all over this modular build. There's a danger, a self-confessed one, that typote might take over from Vincent; he's the first to admit how addictive the experience can be, and perhaps that's partly why he sports four different avie looks, from the kinda scary child-man, to the virtually realistic, depending on his mood. It's also got a lot to do with his kind of creativity and his love of altered states.

Auto reverse

It doesn't take you long to realize this is not all going to be sweetness and light. The robot is cute as all getout, but take a wary look around his rather vicious church.

An imagination fired by the need for social change, disgusted by everyday atrocities accepted by an apathetic public, he creates a narrative that is both varied and interesting, like this interactive box full of sarcastic protest - check out those springs!

His slightly-off English is charming: "In your graphical preferences, choose light of proximity to see the effects of the lamps." OMG cuteness! ....and a nice change from the po-faced abominations committed by the likes of Maccheronico "I-had-dat-idea-6-month-in-front-you, read-my-blog-of-it" Mayo.
I could go on.

Not that he's a stranger to accolades: typote's flag-waving 'Fill the Mountains' is currently on show over at Nordan, and his French language comic strip, "les Zoisos" is on show at Tournicoton, and of course he's participated in many other things, but honestly, the best way to get a feel for his phenomenal style is to be here at Studio Egg, by yourself or with a thoughtful friend.

It's rare that an artist manages to get away from him or herself and yet remain true to the fundamental look. Perhaps it's all the years in graphic design that have made Typote such a consummate expert at surprising his audience. Perhaps it's that he never betrays the paper-based origins of his art.

Perhaps it's also the sense that, like some sort of other-worldly barman, he's just slightly indifferent to you and me, and these are all simply doodles for his own amusement, his private outlet - one that just happens to be really good and interesting. Why not sneak over to Studio Egg and see for yourself. Hurray for Sundays.

Avast Art

2011-10-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

PiRats without lag! No, wait; like world peace, global fiscal probity, and Photoshop Touch, these are things I hope for, but it ain't going to happen. Yet, back we *the unbanned* go to the French art sims, again and again, despite those tiresome ten minutes of treacly greyness - and not for the kudos of being tagged on a FB piccie. There's more to it than that.

classic lag-n-tag

On the Second Life website, the Pirats Art Network is described as four 'expansive' galleries - you know they mean vast, but the idea that they're open, bubbly, and chatty kind of works too.

wtf moment

For more than four years Newbab Zsigmond and Merlina Rokocoko have been offering, free of charge, a superb ring into which anyone with artistic ambitions (or delusions) can throw their hat. In most cases it's been fifteen minutes of virtual fame; in others, the confidence booster that has led to great, if not always good, things.

ooh lala, loving Kira Westland's sexeh pictures

A process that inevitably involves a lot of eye-rolling in front of 'Exhibits' that even the most kitsch-loving, doting nana in the world would not stick on her fridge door, let alone inflict on the general public.

it's pink, Jim...

The gallery's drawn its share of criticism for this pot-luck policy, but perhaps that's the secret of their great success and longevity, for every vernissage promises to provoke reactions of derision or delight, often on adjacent platforms. Plus they have that whole French insouciance thing going on, a non-linear mindset perhaps best captured by Robin Williams' Minnie Mouse impression.

Maya Paris checking out Oberon Onmura's bots : they are smaller than they seem.

So, unless they ban me, I'm going to keep going back. See you there.

Fabulous piece by Marie Wattre

Pyramid Scheme

2011-10-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday was the first opening of the new artistic season at Piramide, the Italian gallery based on the Indire sim, and overseen by gallerista and fearsome firework maker, Lion Igaly. The gallery is bigger than ever this year (thanks LL for bigger prims!) and Lion has made that extra leeway work for him.

Lion Igaly: It's a fairly united group, we've been together for several years now; mostly Italians, but we also have the Italo-american Nino Vichan, from New York, who's been with the group since the beginning of 2010. His work is very nice, and has real feeling to it.

I liked this one, his other piece about pregnant women in jail is a bit alarming, but you can't help admire the attention to detail. He's among the eleven artists belonging to the Orions Tale group, chosen to contribute works - a total of twentyone pieces, including art by nessuno Myoo, who has two pieces...

... the intricately made (if unsnappily named) In the game of life we are as leaves in the wind...

... and the charming The Angel of Electric Waves.

Collaborator and cpf Kicca Igaly has her microscope on show, it was originally built for a Cancer Research event.

It's a lot like the effort made to inspire the art students from Milan's Brera Academy last year, over on Imparafacile Island. Nothing here is made using original sculpties, and the scripts are all off-the-peg, and you mightn't be blamed for thinking you could run most of this stuff up yourself, given a couple more hours of leisure during the working day. But that's kind of the point. It's no coincidence that those trees you see in the distance mark the edge of the Indire sandbox, where many of these artists rezzed their first prims.

Lion Igaly: I chose the works that seem most appropriate to the mission of Piramide. They're all artistic builds made entirely in Second Life; we sometimes have photographers, although this year there are none. I'm particularly interested in showing the public what it's possible to make, using the means available to everyone in this virtual world. I want to show the people working in the sand box next door what we're doing in terms of artistic scope, to encourage them to take up a career in art here in SL.

In the end, for sheer fun value, it's got to be Aloisio Congrejo's Flying inside colors. Walk into it and see what happens.

Then think about what you can make, and do it.

Three Parts Mask

2011-09-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Magical mask performance by the Odyssey group today over at Roxelo Babenco's Museo del Metaverso Art Space on Moya's sim, where the ongoing Art & Poetry show moves into its second week.

There were other artists on show, but I could only sneak into SL for a few minutes - in time to catch the outstanding performance by Jo Ellsmere, Pyewacket Kazyanenko, and Kai Steamer.

Three avatars, identical in size and movement, yet in startlingly different attire, moved across the stage to other-worldly music, asking us the eternal question - how many masks do we wear? Also -
how do you add a Windlight setting to Imprudence, as instructed on the notecard? There was no time and no inclination to do that, so Fogvari did duty, and I focussed on the higher issues at stake here.

"THE MASK: A SYNCHRONICITY" is a performance work based on yet another of Carmen Auletta's Neapolitan poems: 'A Maschera. It 's more Venetian than Neapolitan looking, different than I expected, but that in itself raises all kinds of musings, in this year of Italian Unification.
Not really. It was far more ethereal than that.

Don't worry that you missed the debut, this piece will be repeated at the Museo del Metaverso Art Space a number of times over the weekend, both by the artists themselves, and with bots playing the three parts. (Bots as understudies. This could be the beginning of a New Hollywood.).
Bound to be blogged to bits, "THE MASK: A SYNCHRONICITY" will soon also be available on video and of course will be beamed LIVE into Moya's Malmaison Gallery, in Cannes. Was there ever a better excuse to go to Cannes? I think not.

A History of Gothick

2011-09-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ahora que se quien soy

No puedes dejarme

Respira en mi y hazme real

Traeme a la vida

Bring Me To Life, Evanescence

If virtual artists were drinks, what would they be? Bryn Oh is the Coca-Cola of Second Life, obviously; Soror Nishi is a Long Island Green Tea, Oberon Onmura would be the shape of the place where the glass once stood, but what about the rest?
Silene Christen would be a rich, discreet Ribera del Duero, from a small yet renowned vineyard nestled beneath the walls of a forbidding castle, kissed by moonlight; and if, fair to say, not every offering is memorable, there are there are enough good vintages to keep you curious.

Not that Silene is an obscure artist, by any means. In RL her work has received recognition in museums and private collections across Murcia; in SL she's won a clutch of prizes from the
UWA, Odyssey, the Criss, and other groups.
She's active in groups like Life Art, Arte Intervencionista, and Fratte Space, where she often shows her work; Silene also creates SL tutorials and collaborates one way or another with machinima-makers, like Yesikita Coppola.
Silene Christen: I started out uploading RL art, as Silene Carnell. It took me about a year to discover the world of SL "real" art. Now that's my main focus - digital art. There aren't many Spanish artists knownhere and I join competitions, because it is the only way to be known in SL art, as myself, and as a Spaniard. I was very proud of the first exhibit I made, because it was all connected in the gallery, like veins connecting the works.

Big changes in Silene's real life led to a move to the island of Menorca, and a change of avie too - and somehow in the mix, the RL art was left behind.
But there's plenty to take its place.

Here are just some of her past installations. Most feature Silene's various female avatars, each one encapsulating, she says, a part of her personality. There's a mesmerizing sense of movement, escape, receding into oblivion on high. You want to run after it, to get an explanation, a closer glimpse; to stop time for long enough to see what's going on.
But it's Goth that really defines her.
Silene Christen: I would define myself as artist as: minimalist, conceptual, and deeply Goth.
Over the past months, Silene's been working hard on a series of compositions expressing the subculture, somewhat under attack from the chick-flick-loving, predatory twerps of the Vampire community, with whom they share a love of red and black. Goth in Second Life has a long and rich history, with splendid builds, amazing clothes, even a working Church, St Hilda's. That is hardly surprising, Goth is perfect for SL, it's an intense yet mannerly, maudlin lifestyle, in which dressing up is an essential ritual.

Silene uses Gothic costumes, makeup, and furniture to explore the broken doll trope, for example, without falling into that repetitious angsty-rusty look which has been done to death. Late one night, I slipped over to the Fafner gallery and immediately flaked out in this lovely Oona Eiren chair.

The pictures are large and dark, and at least at first glance, untitled. Every canvas is packed with extravagant props and poses.

The scenes meticulously put together, so much so that you imagine them all taken in the same marvellous palace. But here's the thing. SL is full of spectacular RP sims and gothic architecture. With those kind of possibilities, can a mere 2D picture, still capture the imagination?
With no explanation, I called in poet and man-about-Avgi, Sabreman Carter to see what he would make of it all. He was a bit stunned at first. That's just my personal magnetism. Happens all the time. Also I think he had lag. But then he sort of saw.
Sabre is not much about the RP world of Second Life, nor a big art-gallery trawler either. He prefers the voice-and-written-word world of Second Life. (Although that involves some role-play, surely, like pretending to listen to other people's recitals, and shouting APPLAUSE into Local Chat at the strategic time.) He's to be found all over the grid, at the literary circles like The Written Word, Poet's Plunder and (picture me cringing) the Blue Angel.
He's the first to admit to being 'no goody two shoes', and he's passed through the odd fantasy sim or two in his time, so I wondered if all that 'Lord and Lady'-ing appealed, and if dramah was good for the poet's soul.
sabreman Carter: I've had my share of drama, I don't look for it, but it seems to finds me, and sometimes I think it may have killed me a little as a poet...

No answer to that, for who can't relate, just a little. Looking or finding; the pictures seemed to crowd in on us with corsetted sympathy. They glowed darkly, full of love and loss, life and lust and death, pointing to the heart of Goth.
sabreman Carter: The picture behind you shows a lady with a dark dress and dark hair; the guy she is crouched down looking at the floor maybe in pain, or wistfully thinking that she is ignoring him. She is cast down in herself thinking what the hell do we do now do? I want this guy, what am I doing here, and why am I with him? He is in the gloom; i'ts all about relationships and how we deal with each other. Am I making any sense to you?
I supposed that he was.

sabreman Carter: Look at the picture in front of me. A black man and a white woman relaxing, being held; she doesn't seem to be struggling. Maybe she feels comfortable, held in his strong arms, leaning against him for comfort.
Thirza Ember: ...or else, she is holding him down, preventing him from getting up and going.
I didn't really think that, I just wanted to be awkward.
sabreman Carter: That's possible, her legs are at an odd angle looking like a pair of scissors, and his hand looks like it's in the wrong place - the wrong way around.
Well, it is Second Life - awkwardness comes naturally here, said I, looking around at the other paintings. Still figures moving us, emotion without motion. You don't need to be in a pose to pose the big questions, after all; I mused. But it was no good, he wasn't listening.
sabreman Carter: I love her stockings, and the white flesh so inviting, and her eyes are cast down, so you wonder what they are thinking. And he seems to be out of place: is he looking at her stocking feet? Pity the artist has not named it, I would have liked to have seen its name ...
It was time for me to go. I left him there, as transfixed as if he were on a battlement, gazing out into a windswept wood.
How is that not immersive.

Two days later, this arrived.

The Poisoned Apples

the mirror shows no reflexion

of this room that is full of death

and yet you see the church

which as failed her yet again

we are with the departed soul

she as eaten of her fill

and gorged on deaths bright apples

which one held the poison?

no one can really tell

she doesn't need another bite

because one was enough to kill

who gave you this tasty morsel

when all you needed was a pill

and now your dead and gone

and we are wondering at the thrill

was it a star crossed lover?

or old joe from up the hill

maybe you took your own life

in an accidental kill

as you played Russian Ruilet

with those bright red delicious apples

that are now sat upon the floor

will another bite the dust

or is this story evermore

Sabreman Carter © 09/09/2011

Floral Tribute

2011-09-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

That 'avatar identity' stuff is largely pretentious twaddle, but I always think you can tell quite a bit from somebody's eyes. Writer and collector Maeve Eiren's are a limpid green, and speak of sometimes melancholy thoughtfulness wrapped in glassy strength.

You may remember her Celtic-themed sim, Skellig Medb, a storytelling land; when the sim had served its purpose she left the mainland, washing up on the 'focused and sane' shores of the Avalon Art region, where she enjoys the sense of community, the good services, and the people. Here at her parcel, Croi Amhain she has a glassy greenhouse in a leafy suburb. It's a different life, and she enjoys interacting with people on neighbouring parcels, and speaks with enthusiasm of the new project which will allow Avalon rsidents to show their private art collections in the Town Hall. Rowan Derryth's the chick with more info about that.

I never come to Avalon, so I was a bit laggy, but a few minutes fixed that. And the textures are worth the wait. Maeve has arranged the plants in a very conventional setting - a Victorian-style conservatory, complete with sprinkler system. Even though, of course,
space-plants don't need water. Is that a deliberate juxtaposition of old and new?
Maeve Eiren: It is totally deliberate; this build is awesome, so it captures the sense of that style and culture, I'd characterize it as corsetted vs. free-ranging. That's what I was after. Do we really want SL to look like RL? Or can we imagine someting more fabulous, with the tools and capabilities here? It's like laying down a choice, really, while at the same time suggesting that choosing is not necessary. Excellent art, architecture, - whatever - can coexist. Also, to date, I've never seen soror's stuff in a traditional setting; not such a tight one as this, anyway. I do not make art in SL, unless you count the arranging of other people's, like being a stylist versus a designer. I don't think it's 'important' to be a collector, Thirza; I do think that, if an artist meets someone who can provide feedback, that's a gift to both people. soror and I seem to have that.

Maeve Eiren: It's been a challenge to incorporate her work with more traditional settings and plantings, and this is a combination of collecting for the past two years and more; with soror adding to my collection as new ones come available. Much of her work is in InWorldz now, so I'm getting the imports from her work there, and we will be adding selected new creations to this set-up.

Maeve Eiren: Many other SLers don't visit InWorldz, and since soror's big shop is long defunct, there are few examples of her work gathered together, except for some wonderful builds that arise from time to time. But even at those, the flowers seem to take a back seat to the trees, and these flowers are fabulous. They are also (for the most part) less primmy and easier to incorporate, so maybe some people can get inspired.
Just then, soror dropped in, looking very Fanta-summery

soror Nishi:..its hot in here... great green house! I've been importing plants today.
Maeve Eiren: Good, more fodder needed! I am ripping down prims left and right to dedicate to the plant goddess. Irrigation system gets sacrificed next... 80 prims! damn, you are tall!
soror Nishi: yep, I drink the seaweed feed
Maeve Eiren: gimme soma dat, den...
For absolutely no reason at all, I sat down and, while my bum took on the waffle-pattern of the wrought-iron floor, I wondered what effect (if any) it has on soror, to see so many of her creations all together in one place.

soror Nishi: Maeve has some of my early stuff here too! It's not really strange to see my plants like this, because I had a garden at my shop, and they have a greenhouse that Nyx Breen built in Inworldz.
That of course makes perfect sense, yet one couldn't help wondering, looking around the room as an outsider, if the confluence of history - the community of creations whether in her shop, or in a build, moves her to design flowers that contrast or will complement the previous creations? Does this catalog speak to her about her own growth as a designer, and the evolution of her artistic ability and technique?

soror Nishi: Well, my Blendr skills were a bit more primitive at the beginning, but some of the older plants are still good. I think my techniques haven't changed. As far as possible, I always try to come up with something new, but the colouration and so on is decided by the prims, really. I do try not to repeat, and I try to think what types of, say, petal haven't I made yet, so that's normally the starting point they will normally all fit in together. Of course, there are one or two that get composted, but that is normally because there's something not 'right'.
Maeve Eiren: Composting is a startling concept (word) to hear and think about vis-a-vis SL...
soror Nishi: Oh yes, even after they are made, they can still get the chop. My inventory is a compost heap.
Maeve Eiren: Yes, but SL is not at all organic and so the notion is very foreign. That makes me think that your work to create plants has that built-in push-pull.

I know soror has a background in agriculture and plants, but I wondered if, in the real world, Maeve would call herself a 'flower person'
Maeve Eiren: In RL, I was an herbalist of sorts, and that would include a passion for antique roses, but time is tight, so not so much now. This is less about flowers, Thirza, and more about stretching the little grey cells. I think allowing imagination, rather than self-censoring, is a big part of it. I seem to have a penchant for smart pot-stirrers, artists like soror, who don't follow the 'shoulds' (I hate that word) and don't feel they have to always be colouring within the lines. I think people censor themselves a lot, and too much hits the proverbial cutting-room floor prematurely, as a result of that. Early on, when we first met, I told soror that I needed to know whether she viewed her stuff as sculpting or as plantings. I could not envision how to do the Skellig Medb build without knowing that. It turned out to be a really tough question, but the answer was: plants! We "collectors" get to make sculptings out of plants by the context we create for them, just as florists do in many cultures. The thing comes full circle again and again: art - nature -art -nature. When I studied creative writing, I chose not to double major in English but instead doubled in Theatre. I chose Fine Art to feed my writing abilities rather than English, which has gotten so hung up on Lit Theory. But the point of all that is that learning is like sculpting. The sculptor has wheels on his cart for a reason.. so he can move around the model in order to capture all angles, otherwise the outcome is an incomplete, incorrect mess. Life is like that, and so I guess I want people in SL to put wheels on their carts, and move around this fascinating foreign model. Most people stay on somebody else's prescribed rails, but the whole point of the journey is to get things less wrong, fail better, not in an absolute sense, of course; but I think it's more a mindset. Yes? No?

Among the many beloved plants, here are three 'stops along the way' in Maeve's journey through the flora of soror.
Maeve Eiren: The first soror plant I bought is here, it's the candycane twist of a tree. "68th Ancient One" it is called. I stuck it by an Irish cottage on Skellig Medb and it worked... except for the fact that soror wasn't into phantom-izing stuff back then. So, I asked her for a helmet - that led to a visit from her, and a friendship (and an easing of the no-phantom philosophy!) The helmet? It's more like a fantastic diver's helmet, but it worked!

Maeve Eiren: The second plant is this one, "The Glade Lily" with a description of soror's that reads "grows in woodlands." I choose it because it makes me smile to recall the first time I saw it floating in air, like this, at soror's large mainland parcel, and so it floats here.Things do not need support in SL; we do not need stairs, plants do not need soil, and this is a tiny reminder of that. We choose to throttle ourselves with the necessary physical conventions of RL, but we have a new set of physics here, so why not stretch? It's funny, I agree with you about the surrealism of her ideas, but then they often seem more 'grounded' than most other things I encounter in SL.

Maeve Eiren: OK, number three is a no-brainer. It's the Sword Leaf Orchid, insectivorous, the note says. It just seems so damned lacivious, doesn't it? There's another one in the water outside (called Bog Asparagus) which has the same naughty feel.
The annotated retrospective at the greenhouse at Croi Amhain opens in October. Check in with Maeve, or the Avalon Town organizers, for more information about the show.

Crash, Bang: Mapping a Trollop

2011-09-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

It's a big crash, and it's quite serious.

LUMINATRIX, Smack the Pony

What's a bod about? In our search for happiness, love, and success, what are we making of ourselves? Corporeal or corporate? which matters? Crash Bang Trollop is the new build by Maya Paris, opening this afternoon at MetaLES.

It's a mad, bad, hilarious-to-know exploration of the prodding and primping that is so important in our commercial, superficial world. In addition to the Zap suit, there are seven
brilliant accessories for you to find and wear, scattered around the (mostly) ground-level install, which looks deceptively peaceful in this photo.

If the Smack the Pony song (in the link above) supplied the name for the build, and her interest in The Anti Advertising Agency gives a revealing insight into her artistic world view.

The ladies of MetaLES run a tight ship, with fast turn-overs and fresh art each month, but this build has no sense of being rushed, far from it. Behind the entertainment value is some really interesting research.
Here's a handful of articles that have inspired Maya:
Endangered species summit (follow the link on the right of the page), and another on the question of mental environmentalism.
Then there's this article on the horrors of armpit hair in BUST magazine - it's funny, and insightful.
Check out these two Guardian newspaper UK articles. First, a piece about cosmetic surgery and, then this description of erm, the worst 'cock-ups' you can imagine. Ouch. So not only a girl thing, this body-beautiful obsession.
What are we doing to ourselves - or at least, how is 'normal' getting so twisted? It makes you think.

That twisted feeling is all over Maya's razor-sharp build. It's all about waxing, and weights, underwiring and over-shooting, rockets and boots and all the spikes you could wish for. With charm and a confident hand, she mocks concepts that, duh, informed Thirza's creation - hair, dress, and all the rest. It's sobering, while being fun. Maeve Eiren (about whom more later this week) took a breather from the retrospective forestry work going on at her enchanted Celtic-themed sim, to come and take a peek at the build.
Maeve Eiren:omg Maya has outdone herself. Awesome good. I will return tomorrow :))
Shellina Winkler, who's exhibiting here in November, and came to scope out what goes on at metaLES, also liked it a lot.
shellina Winkler: It's a real fun to interact with all she made and wear all the items and gadgets she created to interact completely with the work. It's surely, as always, a "must to see"!!

Sim owners romy Nayar and Ux Hax also joined in the preview fun - who can resist this stuff?
romy Nayar: It's wonderful. It's very interactive and artistic - Maya Paris did a very nice work, it's great!!
romy Nayar: zap .... * ★ * LoOoL * ★ *
That says it all.
Crash Bang Trollop opens today, until October 7th, on sim MetaLES

Ground Control

2011-09-10T00:02:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling very still

Space Oddity

Rare, not to be able to sleep, or maybe I just missed the bus tonight, and so why not take up Oberon Onmura's Facebook invitation to check out his new/old install, Slow Chaos.

FB said I'd find it at the LEA Self-Curated Gallery. The good people at SLURL.com very kindly saw fit to open SL in Phoenix, my first Phoenix outing in months (I heart Imprudence), so I found myself wearing boots, sandals, and about thirteen different prim skirts, not to mention two different sets of hair.
But it's bikini weather.

Having always been a bit of a LEAgnostic, it was interesting to
look around a bit; there's a whiff of clubbiness to the whole concept that doesn't appeal much to me - one can't help not being surprised to see all the big names represented.
Not that they're not good, they are, but it's rather ... how can I put it? Corporate? All the good old reliables, plus a shoal of naff remoras, like Giovanna Cerise. A gallerista would ferret out some shy unknown and blow you away with something different.

Tiredness, perhaps; but whenever I see Oberon's work, even though, yes, he's a scripting genius in his own right and alll, ...one always thinks a little bit about the great Zachh Cale, is all I'm saying. That was where Slow Chaos got its first outing, I believe, a million years ago - back at project Z.
It is hot, and foggy outside. We're all tired of heat, and tired of wet. but better make it hot and foggy at the LEA. It masks the sim's wearisome sense of burgeoning achievement, a bit.

Slow Chaos stands alone, by which I mean it stands the test of time and context, because it forces you to look at space in the most reduced and elegant way. Two blocks stand poised to burst into a stream of blocks, like unread books, glowing from charcoal grey into sunset red, and then fading into blue. Depending on where you stand in relation to them. they move like a cloud of angular swallows, making sudden swirling turns, and in their turns, they make you turn, turn in on yourself, the size of your avatar, your range of unnatural motion, forcing to the surface thoughts of the a/o you wear, and notions of flying, and floating, and standing still.

You do none of these things, it is all an illusion, even apparently touching them is just pixellated fire-rings, no more. But the sensation is all the stronger, since these prims take you seriously, move you, and move with you, even clinging to your body at times.

Then, when they fold into themselves, and seem to have been motionless forever, just for fun you sit on the still singleton prim and find that you become one with their movement, or perhaps they willingly simplify their bee's-dance business, to allow you to join them, turning and swaying.

And sleepily, I remember riding about on a thing like this at the Black Swan, so long ago, and I try to recall, there was a necklace, and a cloud of prims and newbies falling from the sky... and it's hard to say whether it's the rocking motion of the prims, or the lullabye recollections of far-away times, or Alo, freshly awake in far off Italy, telling me it's time to go to bed, or whether all these, and the fog and the greatness, and the magic of scripts beyond my ken, I feel myself slipping away; hoping this slow, sweet chaos will still my dreams.

'tricks of the light

2011-09-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

Time to dance and be delighted, at Betty Tureaud's new build at Danish Visions. OMG how gorgeous does she look.

The theme this time is The Matrix, and as you can see it's inspired by those little boxy QR Codes that you see everywhere these days.
These particular ones were captured,
on the go, by Starshine Halasy, on her trusty iPhone. They all lead to movies and websites. Movies and connections hidden in plain sight, bathed in lyrical light. How cool is that!

Even more coolness, Ultraviolet Alter's music livened up an evening full of the usual artistic suspects, including Apmel Meerson, who spent most of his time showing a healthy interest in upskirting Ultra... aaaah, the Swedes.

Apmel Meerson: BETTER THAN SEX. well almost anyway...
More public-spirited but marginally less giggly, this was Dutch artist Fiona Leitner's reaction to the question: do artistic get-togethers matter?
Fiona Leitner: Of course! It's important. We have to stimulate each other, and see what we do.
Plenty to stimulate here. It's art that is at times puzzling, at times overwhelming, but impossible to ignore. She seems to make colours bigger than themselves, and the addition of original music is a joy.

Betty says she and keyboard queen Ultra have collaborated so often, she's lost count, and in a place as enchanting as this, it's hard to keep track of anything.
The enchanting Rose Borchovski, freshly radiant from the triumph of her FABULOUS Pink...tutu tour (what a woman!!) was in the best of humours. She pulled out her pink rings and began playing with them, much to my delight. So, what about Betty, then, Rose?

Rose Borchovski: So many naughty remarks are going through my mind!! Let me think. I love how Betty always makes an explosion of colours, and this time I'm utterly happy because it is so PINK!
Self-confessed Betty fan and grand machinimist Iono Allen was there, and his presence at the dance, considering it was about squifteen o'clock where he lives, was testament in itself to his admiration of the delightful Dane.

He's filmed Betty's builds in the past, this is Nine Steps to Heaven... and this is Woman is Africa's Hope

Iono Allen:There's always a message in her builds. See, I am a fan !
The message here? It's a matrix of connections, taste, current fads and fashions, light and exploration. Joined together by friendships, fraught and tenuous, but all the more fun, perhaps, for that. how much of what we really think is hidden in plain sight? no tricks, or maybe just one - enjoy it all...

Moving pictures

2011-08-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Why film Second Life?

I asked a bunch of people.

There's more than one reason. I'd just been to the spectacular RL Museo del Cinema, which is why movies were on my mind, but it seems that everybody's at it, independently and via SL groups as undiverse as the Phantasmagoria and the UWA, the LEA and the SL Machinima Guild. Fuschia was at romy Nader's new build, so she's up first.

Fuschia Nightfire: I think every kind of art has its place, but machinima tells a story more than just a picture. It's also great for recording installations. Imagine if you wanted to record this build. Taking photos just wouldn't portray it. I've only been making machinima for about a year, but I enjoy it - here's my Youtube channel if you want to look.

She's not wrong about the photo, is she? check out the spooky-cool dancing for yourself at MetaLES.

Obviously, machinima is great for porn, snarky remarks, tributes, tutorials, and
so on, but for many it's also a way to protect and remember moments in time. Aloisio Congrejo collects stills of his installs and sets them to music, mostly his beloved jazz, so as to have a permanent record of friends and creations from the past.

And then there's manic multimedia mogul Moya Patrick, sliding between realities like a lambskin locomotive. Video is central to his being. But someone sort out that waistline, please.

If you think I'm exaggerating how animé it all is, hit the Moya Museum where you will be instantly transported to a giant screen in the South of France, whether you want to or not. For more info on his schemes, check out his Cannes-and SL- based website. Patrick puts the art in party, and only video can really convey his lively-hood. It's all quite tiring.

...and more dancing dolly than dialogue. If you want reported speech, you need to go to a story-driven site, like Karima Hoisan's. She's making her first forays into machinima, see what you think.

And then there's another plane, occupied by Celestial Elf, SL's FreeSky Republic. To see all his machinima, click here, there's plenty to tempt you, from virtual Romanov Russia, to the Coeur d'Aquitaine. Romantic and legendary tales told in lush surroundings and using the best props and scripts that Lindens can buy, together with his soft English voice, are only part of the picture.

His love of all things 'pagan' (Natural is maybe a better word) and the ancient myths that adorn the concept of the natural world as a place that needs to be preserved, respected, and loved have moved him to make machinima that celebrate ancient tales and modern concerns.This is his Lammas Wickerman, for example. (Disclaimer: No Welshmen were harmed during the making of this film.)

From his gypsy caravan in SL, it's a case of networking, rather than joining any particular group; machinima makes that relationship possible, constantly moving on to the next project, within the overarching theme of a better world through spiritual awareness... and more common sense. It's a moving concept - moving people to get in touch with realities other than the cold, calculating commercial world that is often our accepted reality.

It's an odd but fascinating mixture of other-worldliness, plugged into real world events, connected to real people. Competitions don't interest him at all. Collaboration is key, whether it's working with sim owners, or with musicians like The Dolmen or the wonderful Lisa Thiel, or his invaluable casting assistant, Sienna Panthar. He's been involved with The Venus Project and the Etopia Eco-Community, both SL groups promoting action on real world issues to do with sustainability and the environment. This is The Bee Myth, a permaculture story co-written with planetary advocate Willi Paul.

Common sense, and a desire to help others, that includes helping with machinima, and Celestial is an enthusiastic member of the SL Machinima Arts Guild, he's also one of their moderators. It's a great resource if you want to learn about making film, get inspired or involved in a group project, or find out about competitions where you can show off your oeuvre to an adoring public. Oh yes, I know you well, you little diva, you.
So machinima is about... message? memory? money? movement?
Chantal Harvey: Machinima shows SL to the world - not only what virtual worlds like SL can be, but also what young people do online. I say young people, not to exclude anyone, but I am called mama, cos most are young, and I am ancient, lol.

She's not kidding. Chantal got into machinima within about 2 months of arriving in SL some 4 years ago, when videos of SL were few and far between in Youtubeland. The desire to make video came naturally; she has a background in TV; everything from art productions to running a local TV station. Now she's all about machinima, SL is her platform, but she supports it all and wants to pass on skills and encourage emerging artists, most recently as a part of the Linden Arts thing; makes sense, as machinima is a great way to promote LL's agenda, although they let select residents do all the actual work, here at the LEA cinema, built by Werner Kurosawa.
On the screens you see a still from Copy Design, by Urban Steampunk, recently featured on SL's front page.

I asked her - is there such a thing as a bad machinima?
Chantal Harvey: hmm... to be honest? Yes: sloppy, jerky filming, bad edit, bad sound, loud music , no storyline, no eye for detail, UI in film, bad light, all the things that make RL movies bad too. A good one is made with love, is fresh. It can be jerky filming by the way, and still be good.
What about the perfect machinima?

Chantal Harvey: If I knew the concept... I'd be living off machinima! but I am getting there, hehe, keep an eye out for Scissores!

The cinema explodes on request, I'm not sure why, maybe just because in SL, you can. Or wait, maybe so it can be filmed. *notices self missing boat*

Chantal Harvey: I was in Miami in March, at a short film festival. and among the 78 RL shorts there was one machinima. When it came on, it went silent in the cinema. I was watching the faces of the city film-makers and their crews, they had never heard of it.

She intends to change all that, by getting the likes of Peter Greenaway and Tony Dyson involved in judging events. There's MMIF, her stellar film festival, but also her Month of Machinima and the 48 Hour Film Project - offering all the buzz of working to short deadlines, while expanding on set themes. These are drawing in new blood from all realities, and keeping alive the enthusiasm of older SL hands, and indeed, together with two other senior ladies in the field, Toxic Menges and Phaylen Fairchild, Chantal runs a help group, Machinimamondays, with drop-in meetings at Virtual Montmartre on Mondays, what were the chances, I know. Anyway it's all on the Mamachinima blog and in the inworld group info: Matinee at 2.00pm, the Main Feature at 7.
So basically, you've no excuse, there's help, inspiration and audience enough for everyone out there. So put on your FRAPS pants, pull out that animated thingamegig, and get filming!

Rock Paper

2011-07-11T04:22:00.000-07:00

Do you know there is a whole world,

in books, newspapers, articles, drawings and paper-all ...

romy Nayar

It was Saturday night, and time to become a Papermakis spy.
The Papermakis are shy, party-loving paper-based creations by romy Nayar, a Paris-based artist. Her partner Ux Hax helped with the scripting. You may remember Ux from last year's Barcelona/Buenas Aires event Geometry of Sound with Maria Grot. The install is still up on another part of this hugely popular, Lady-friendly MetaLES sim,co-owned by Ux and Lanjran Choche, specializing in performance and interactive art by women. Here's the group's blog, with lots of machinima - don't miss romy's own blog too, or the group's install Nanobosque, made for the cancer-battling Istituto Catalan de Nanotecnologia.

But today we're strictly black white and read all over, with the Papermakis.
Thanks to the magic of SL, now we mere avatars can be
a part of their newsprint world. They live on oxygen, like us, and like us, each one has only a part of the story to tell, a letter at a time; they need each other to make sense of the world, and they are shaped by the things they read. They are easily scared, the note says, and when they get the wind up, they tend to turn into animals. Plus, they can jump like fleas, but they can't fly, and we can all relate to that, right?
It took a minute or two to get oriented, when I finally managed to TP in - the sim was full, but no whiff of lag, really, just a little blurriness my end, prolly brought on by excessive intake of mountain air and general Italian naughtiness *draws veil*.

Luckily, Maya Paris was on hand to show me the ropes. It's important to dress as one of the natives, so as not to scare them and, as you well know, Maya's always an avid avi-changer. Her sense of enchantment at this fun, clean, wonderful sim was obvious - and contagious.

Off we went, rushing here and there, clicking and riding about on everything; the superbly sparse landscape is simply popping with things to do. For example, here are some bots in an M pool. You can ride their wagons...

... or jump in your own little car. Those are Maya's feet - looks like she just scared a Papermakis, which has turned into a paper animal.

I'm saying nothing, mostly because the cars seems to have some sort of gun in the back, and anyway, Maya's feet are a Metaversal Treasure.

No flying on the sim, the proper way of going around the sim is via the jumps that take you to each field of action, which include a giant book, a shower, and hills of newsprint. Imprudent people like me fall back on the double-click tp and miss out on the bouncing, and by extension the leaves, the makihojas, which, like the snakes in Snakes and Ladders, make you go back to the start.

If Betty Tureaud's boxes are the fruit salad of SL this summer, then romy Nayar's Papermakis are the lemon sorbet: light, sweet, and refreshingly absorbing, even on a hot summer's night.
The opening party was a blast, with talented DJ Morlita Quan spinning the discs, and the Ladies of Spain dancing their hearts out.

You might have missed the opening, but any time would be a good time to visit the Papermakis on MetaLES. Go softly, don't scare them - and I hope you dance!

Take It Easy

2011-07-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

Don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy

We met, not on his sim Imparafacile Island, but in a real-life Tavola Calda, on the outskirts of Milan. Tell no-one. His avatar's name means 'easy learning'. An IT instructor in schools and colleges in Lombardy, Imparafacile Runo - Impa for short, and Gio' dalla Bona in RL, is boundlessly enthusiastic for his inworld schemes -but as we all know, when it comes to keeping up a vigorous interest in virtual culture, you need more than enthusiasm; it's all about staying power. As he sat down to a plate of vitello tonnato (I went for the Caprese), Impa told me about the idea behind his Island.
Imparafacile Runo: The important thing is to take small steps, and form a solid basis for our work. We have hosted many different kinds of shows over the past years, from educational seminars to art shows, e-learning courses, poetry readings, and social gatherings. Just a few weeks ago, we had a hugely successful immersive art event called IONOI (in English, I/Us), filmed by Christower Dae.

Italians have a schizophrenic attitude towards the internet. Even among the younger people, it seems like half
the population has embraced it, while the other half barely knows the internet exists. Mostly, I suspect, because it's freaking impossible to be online in any meaningful way, by US standards. *silent scream at the slowly turning wheel of wait * On the other hand, they often kind of want to run before they can walk, as a visit to your average Italian website will tell you - way too many bells and whistles, heinous or hilarious English translation, and the general sense that, if they had as much substance as they do style, they'd be on the moon by now. Possibly eating vitello tonnato. Which is what makes this guy, and this sim, a little different.

Imparafacile Runo: A well-planned, regular mix of events that don't last too long - that's our policy, events like Bookcrossing, our regular literary evening, where RL books are presented, with selected readings, comments from the audience, and interviews. We have another upcoming event in our series on the virtual economy, which will discuss the Linden $ and Facebook Credits. We often stream conferences that relate to virtual life, and have more planned.

The connection with RL is important. One way in which the island has fostered the SL/RL cross pollination is through their connection with the Brera Art Institute thanks to Bruno "Canadeo" Aliprandi; art students came inworld to experience building for the first time, and to see how they could expand their techniques in 3D - all of which grew into this imposing build by

Merlino Mayo, high above Imparafacile Island, complete with anatomically incorrect trains. As you can see the Meeting area nestles comfortably in the cranium of a very big head.

The project flowed out into the real world in the form of a series of screens, set up on the Milan Metro, where images by Brera Fine Art Students were mixed with photos of artwork made in Second Life, including pieces by Prajna Seetan and Christower Dae.
It was a positive experience all round, and now another department within the Academy has set up a presence in SL, and their main sim is being being constructed by another Imparafacile Island stalwart, Vive Voom, seen here with Simba many moons ago.

Imparafacile Runo: One of the best things about the events we have here is the people I get to work with, people like Helenita Arriago, Maryhola McMillan, Morghana Savira and Marinu Gausman, to mention just a few. They are completely reliable. For each upcoming event, I know I can count on them to do their part, whether it's having the interview questions prepared, getting the publicity out, or being ready to document the gathering on our Ning. That really makes the difference. Simba Schumann is another valuable ally when it comes to the SL art community, something I don't know much about. Right now we're delighted to have soror Nishi's Midsummer Night's Dream installation on the sim.

The Imparafacile website is an important asset - it's a tangible record of the scope and variety of learning outcomes offered by the group, an online CV that they can use when applying for grants and sponsorship. The site is multi-functional, with help for italophones, whether noobs or just otherwise flummoxed, plus updates on sim activities, and links to places interest. As the summer holidays loom, and Imparafacile Island prepares for its customary hiatus, I wondered what the prospects are for Fall 2011.
Imparafacile Runo: We plan to relaunch Bookcrossing; although it will have a new name, unique to SL, it will essentially be more of the same, and as part of that we'll be looking into welcoming RL publishing houses to the island, for presentations and interviews with emerging authors. We're looking into some local government sponsorship, too. And there will be many more art events, certainly. Another new thing, whch we began developing just recently, will be a course in English conversation, with Nymphea Kira, who's just graduated as an English teacher. This is a demo lesson she did in SL, which she shared with faculty and students at her college.

She will be organizing a series of classes in the fall, based on games and communicative exercises - should be fun. The lessons will be short, weekly events, and we encourage anglophones to come and join us for some conversation and cultural exchanges!
The season at Imparafacile Island is coming to a close with a final Bookcrossing, on July 14th, and the wrap party will be on Sunday July 17th. Worth a visit, I think, even if you don't like tuna.

'Round Paris

2011-06-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

If Montmartre and Harlem don't spring immediately to your mind as naturally twinned neighbourhoods, then I have one word for you - Jazz. Virtual Harlem is one of the oldest sims you're ever going to walk on. Originally made by the advanced technology center at the University of Missouri-Columbia as part of Bryan Mnemonic's dissertation on 20th century African American literature, it transferred into SL back in 2005, originally by Pleiades Consulting, and the current incarnation is by Mick Huet.

Bryan Mnemonic: Jazz was introduced to Paris by African American troops who fought in WWI under the French flag. Some of them stayed in Paris after the war and were employed at cabarets in Montmartre. The sims are mostly used for my teaching, projects with students researching the period or individuals within the period, and educational events. There is also a lively artist community being constructed on Montmartre, mainly led by Indea Vahlor in SL. She and her other colleagues have created exhibits, and there are jazz and poetry events held at various locations on both Harlem and Montmartre. For the past 6 years, I've had a partnership with the Sorbonne, and in November I'll be back in Paris, coordinating with students, who occasionally add authentic content to either Montmartre or Harlem.

Speaking of authentic content, you may have noticed that Chrome Underwood has been around a little less lately. That's because he's in the middle of writing a memoir of artist Mick Brady, including

his time as a secret agent, artist, psychedelic pioneer, New York taxi driver, and a whole lot more. Chrome's way too busy these days to hang out with me, so I got Camille to come play with me a little, on the real streets of Paris.

Hills of Paris, I should say - Thank goodness for TP's! we were at the top of Montmartre in no time, without having to climb the 235 stone steps. Of course, our diva just had to talk me into posing in front of Sacre Coeur, which is one of those places that looks less and less attractive the closer you get to it - the opposite of Camille.

We sat down on the steps in front of the church, and looked out at the view. A guy with a guitar and a South American accent was playing Ricky Martin songs. I wondered if that was Chromes sort of thing. She gave me that look: yeah, right. Ricky Martin.

Camille: Actually, Chrome has been to Paris a lot of times. He came here when he was a young guy, the first time: he was on his way home from doing some spying in Turkey, or something like that. To begin with it was all about the music and the night life. now he's a little more - mature - he's more about the museums and the history, I guess.

We wandered down the steep steps of rue Utrillo (strictly no parking), which in these heels is no mean feat, and at last came to the current location of one of Paris' most famous jazz clubs, Le Blue Note. It's mainly Brazilian jazz here now, and a big sign outside promised karaoke that evening. It seemed like there was something missing, apart, of course from the music itself. An edginess, maybe? We were only a few metres from Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge, but it seemed nothing like atmosphere that the movie Round Midnight calls to mind. Has Paris lost it, maybe?

Camille: Today, I'd say what's missing is the darkness. And the smokiness. And the people. And, I guess, the times, that was another time. I mean, among jazz artists, and artists in general for that matter, Paris at the time was first, the art itself, then one's status as an outsider; for blacks it was automatic, for others something that you achieved by stepping outside the lines drawn by society... for a young romantic like him, an artist had to be 'pure'; that is, they had to have the courage to follow their muse wherever it led regardless of the cost.

And what about the original Blue Note, I wondered. Maybe the atmosphere was still alive over there, in the Latin Quarter, on rue Mouffetard. We went to see. Of course, we'd only walked a little way down the road before Camille found herself an admirer.

He said something like: "Que fait une gentille fille comme toi dans un esprit mal tournè comme le mien?"
I thought - oh boy, if only you knew. Camille did the whole 'who, me?' thing, and it was only when I reminded her that we were on a quest for pieces of Chrome that she reluctantly followed me around the corner to the site of the Old Blue Note, now this Student Bar.

In the summer, I am not a fan of students, even Sorbonne students, so the name didn't inspire, and being RL, not SL, we couldn't set Midnight in Incongruous Truths, which would have looked better. *Shakes fist at reality.* But it was a glorious day, and before I could turn around, Camille was halfway through her first crepe and ordering 3 more. Dang,that girl can eat, and never puts on a pixel, either.

So this was the place where Our Hero had come to, to hear jazz and feel the soft, dark underbelly of the City of Lights, the place where he had found himself whiling away the time talking to Bud Powell, all those years ago.
Camille: Paris had a deep history as a sanctuary city for creatives, obviously; as a refuge for the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Duchamp, - a lot of them dwell within his work, whether it's his music, visual art of writing. There's little distinction between them, but for the fact that they use different parts of the brain. They use all of the heart, by the way - when the work is pure. I think he admired jazz musicians the most during those years; they seemed to be the bravest, and their art was spontaneous, from reaching deep within, as chronicled so beautifully by Kerouac. He always says that it's sad to think that this beautiful original art form has turned out to be no more than a footnote in cultural history. Art itself is a minor player in the culture these days, but what does that matter? It's all about remaining true to one's self.
You know, talking to Camille, sometimes I think I'm talking to Chrome in person. Weird, huh.

She stopped eating, and became thoughtful, as we walked on to the Crocodisc, and admired all those classic discs in the window. Is chrome a CD man, or vinyl?
Camille: Oh, vinyl, for sure, if it were a must buy and he didn't already own it. Or maybe if he did already have a copy, and it was irresistible.
Thirza: And what would constitute 'irresistible'?

Camille: It would have to be the one and only Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The one jazz record that should be sent into outer space in a space capsule, so that other life forms in the universe would know we were not only intelligent, but had soul :)

Just then, we got an IM from Chrome.

man, I been buried in it.... just had a meeting today, finalized the table of contents

never knew I had to wrestle with that but i did

the structure of it is now settled pretty much... 2/3 written

and 1/3 will be graphic novel style, shot in sl

Can't wait to read the book, and who knows maybe he'll do a reading on Bryan Mnemonic's Virtual Montmartre ...

Heart and Soul

2011-06-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Thirza has a little crush on Chrome, ever since she felt his connection between jazz and art and Paris, where she currently resides, but don't worry, with Camille in the mix, there can be no harm, and no foul. There may be more posts about art, Parisian and virtual, but not tonight. Since I can't write anything Ess Elly, and since he won't mind sharing, here's a letter to him from the city.

Hello Chrome

It was a long day of walking, and some Metro. I'm always torn about the Metro. Something sinful about moving through the city without seeing it. Somehow, the train is less alarming than the bus, why is that? You'd think jumping on a train and disappearing down a dark tunnel would be more daunting, but I'm always afraid to get on the wrong bus, even though I'd be able to see perfectly where I am going.

End result is a lot of walking, which is like a watercolour wash. It changes the city. When you're here for a reason, for a meeting, for another person's agenda, the city breaks down into a set of places and times, and the gap between them is so much dark matter. But just walking, you become as light as a piece of litter, carried on the breeze, on a par with the smallnesses happening around you, the moving van, with its box-elevator, bringing packing cases down from a 5th floor balcony, the drunk fumbling for his car keys, or the dog tied to a railing while his master finishes his expresso. A stocky man and his wife, in their fifties, stand inside a public toilette, the curved door slowly closing on their anxious bemused faces, as they search for porcelain, or a partition. I am too light to take a photo, which is a shame, but maybe not. Instants like these get crushed by being memorialized - it would be like taking a picture of a dream.

My goal is the Pompidou, yes, but first to the obvious, just to make sure it is still there: the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe. It is a different Paris, the Champs Elysees part, venal and in the right light slightly absurd, like 5th avenue's older sister in the mold of Hyacinth Bucket.

Snaking around all that Hausmann architecture, to the Grand Palais, I try to think what Chrome would make of all this, I think he wouldn't like it. I think he would still be on the Metro, not on a train, exactly, but wandering the tunnels, soaking up the music, like the 8 piece Polish band playing at le Chatelet, or the Spanish guitar at Roosevelt, or the thin girl with the fluting, voice on the steps at the Trocadero, offering a rather pathetic 'thank you' to every passerby. Chrome would love the eternal twilight, the glow of the tiles under a rainless roof, and the virtual breeze when a distant train blasts up to a platform far below. I think Chrome would be happy to stay down there, marvelling at French ingenuity in positioning each singer just out of earshot of the next, endlessly curious to hear the next one play.

The Musee d'Orsay has that Disney-Dachau quality; middle-class, middle-aged middle Americans lined up obediently with only a vague idea of what awaits. The Orsay is like every arty postcard you've ever seen: lovely yet obvious Renoirs, Monets, Gauguins, Seurats, as familiar and disconcerting as if you walked into a room of your own possessions. The virtual has overtaken the real, in 2D art. Once, you had to go in person to gaze on Van Gogh's self-portrait, because an engraving or photograph just wouldn't do it justice. I don't think that's true any more. The poster in the entrance, ten feet high, is no different than the 'real' canvas just down the hall. Perhaps if you could touch it...

On and on, unspooling footsteps. Even without four inch heels, I stumble a lot on cobblestones and intersections, heading North over the river via the love-locked Passerelle, past the ghastly Louvre, and the rue de Rivoli, to the quartier de l'Horloge, which, apart from the glorious mess of the Pompidou, and Foucault's pendulum at S Martin, has nothing going for it, and seems quite happy that way.

I love it.

I put on the radio, which, together with sunglasses, make a good line of defence for a woman wandering alone, and suddenly, gloriously, the city jumps into focus.

A mere chance of the dial brought me Here to the sound of John Coltrane playing Body and Soul. Now the sound of the traffic is lit up with purpose, and the random faces of the people in the bars are knitting together, and the swaying, surging pedestrians are a troupe of performers, acting out the city. And I wish, in a wave of sadness, that Chrome were here to hear it too, until I realize that, of course, he already has.

Thirza

Her Final Boa

2011-06-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

The curtain is coming down on a stellar SL career. Feathers Boa is such a strong, vibrant, beautiful person with a wonderful future ahead of her; in order to fulfil that potential, she is saying goodbye, and retiring from SL.
We were all three of us crying a bit, Feathers, Explorer Dastardly and me, (silly girlz) as she started setting up her Last Ever Show at the Feathers Bay Gallery on sim Esterhal.

Feathers Boa: I am too busy in RL, I have no time for SL these days. I will fill this gallery space up, and my last day here will be June 29, the date my SL bill comes.
If you're a bit shocked that the LEA or some similar
body hasn't come forward to offer her work permanent space, despite her well-publicized departure, well, that was never really Feather's style. She laughed a little at the thought.

Feathers Boa: Well, I am not really all that into stuff like that guess. Besides, I'm not famous enuff for LEA, and anyway, I don't wanna belong to any club that will have me as a member!
I still think it's the LEAst they could do. Sorry... I've been wanting to say that out loud for weeks.
In a way, maybe the lack of 'institutional' interest is a good thing. Knowing you've poofed it all out of existence makes it easier to make a real break with the Life, which as we all know has a habit of sucking us back in despite the best of intentions.
As she put down pieces that are part of SL Art heritage, I wondered which ones mean the most to her, as a woman and an artist. She immediately chose the tryptych "Little Girls", with a commentary that tells, from a child's standpoint, the chilling tale of what is means to grow up in an abusive home.

Close friend Explorer, instead, chose the haunting but optimistic 'Butterflies' series, showing the 7 ages of a woman, reviewed long ago here, when it was on show at AHO. Curiously, that was a crossover RL/SL post, she's always seemed so very real to me.
Two faces of Feather's artistic message, although for many, it's the clockwork pieces they remember best. I asked her about that.
Feathers Boa: Those steampunk ones were like me testing the waters. These are more what I am as an artist. With the clockwork pieces, I was experimenting. I was not confident back when I did those. In my pictures, like Little Girls, I just wanted to reveal something about me to everyone who looks at my stuff. I wanted what I did here to mean something. not just look cool. I don't do art to show off or to get accolades, I do it from my heart to express what i feel inside, even here. I think some SL artists are more like designers than artists. I did that in the beginning, but I stopped early and started making from my heart.

And so it has been. She is a kind of walking poem; the voice of her art has such clarity, depth, and harmony, even when dealing with painful subjects, and she has made SL richer by sharing with such honesty things that are often hidden.

Now working as a junior designer in Seattle, Feathers is loving the RL scenery of the Pacific Northwest, as well as the great variety of live music and the vibrant art community in the city, and she plans to put on a RL show of her artwork next year. What will she miss from SL? Well, perhaps not the virtual art world, which she feels is too commercial. Nor will she miss the pressure that goes with being a well-known figure, something that runs contrary to her rebellious nature - and is 'too much like work' to be fun. But she will miss the many good friends here, and the opportunity to socialize at odd hours of the night with unseen dear friends all over the world.
Feathers Boa: It's emotional looking at all these old pieces. It makes me sad. It's a big deal, leaving.
Gone for good? She leaves the door open, I'm glad to say.
Feathers Boa: Maybe someday I'll come back and play around ...

Feather's Last Ever Show opens at 11 am SLT on Saturday June 11 for your final opportunity say your goodbyes to this dear and unique artist, and to pick up a piece or two of beautiful SL history.

Pythonesque

2011-06-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

It made Newbab a little mad, but, well, that's not cucumber-grade serious.

It's my first and last notice in the group. And before you say (although strangely, nobody is saying this) that it's harsh and unfair on poor old Chuck, firstly because he's far from being the only offender, and secondly because he did send out an apology, via ... Group Notice, I know all that. And sure, other names spring to mind; Vaneeesa somebody or other, a person called Monroe, who I think is a gallery owner, then of course, there's the spamalicious
Kalli Birman, and ayayayAY, the Spammy Gonzalez of SL, Mexi Lane. Seriously. It's not that we don't want to know what's going on across the worlds of art, written word, and music, but come on, all those damn' self-interested blue boxes! Enough is enough.
Someone said that there is a fine line between joyfully sharing your art and spamming. There isn't.
It's a big fat freeway of a line, constructed of workmanlike good sense, proportion, and awareness of those around you. Anyone who says - "If you don't want to get my messages, then leave the group or disable notices" might want to double check their self-absorption meter, and remember how annoying the Ancient Mariner was, stopping one of three with his stupid story, and all that. And remember, studies show that people who send out dozens of self-promoting notices are 275% more likely to produce derivative, poorly executed crap.

So what ought to be "Miss Manner's Rules of Notice Sending"? Send me yours.
My top 3 are:
1. Never send more than one notice a day, 3 a week is probably more than most people want to see from you. Notices about a performance event about to begin don't count, of course. But try some empathy - think about all those people in Facebook you've hidden - they were all over-posters, right? yeah.

2. Remember that if you're in, say, 5 of the big art/music/literary groups, well so are all your friends, and we don't appreciate getting half a dozen duplicate messages about your latest oeuvre.

3. If you must be a boasting ninny, try to get a grip, and save it for your fawning friends. Describing yourself as 'Epic' 'makes you sound like a complete fool. Other epithets that become ridiculous, when you apply them to yourself, include: 'Award winning', 'Legendary', 'Brilliant', 'Beloved Poet', 'Renaissance Man/Woman' and, of course, "I'm also in a band".
Try to realize that the prefix "self-proclaimed" is shorthand for "'only in my own head".
I have no idea if Chuckmatrix Clip's art is any good, or indeed how much wood he would chuck, if he would and could chuck wood. Thanks to his "Epic" Notices, I've no inclination to find out.

X rated

2011-05-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

It is stormy here.
Kolor Fall sent a gift in the night. I thought he'd forgotten about me, since I'm hardly ever in SL, but he hadn't. I opened the simple granite column on the roof, the only part of my house that I use these days.

The build starts with a spark, and then unfolds.

That's beautiful in itself, but once open, it's hard to take your eyes off these silent, spinning creatures.
After Y is part of the gorgeous Puddles of Light build, currently under construction on sim KolorFall. The new build, which opens this ...fall (how appropriate) is out of this world, but this small taste has a solemn, living grace that outdoes any photo or machinima. Machinima is great, but it's someone else's viewpoint, and no substitute for your own vision, your idiosyncratic camera movements, the serenity of waiting on your own time, in your own moment, for the flock of after Y's to move again.

Jayjay Zifanwe, fresh from his first 'real blog post' on the UWAinSL website, stopped by to take a look.

Jayjay Zifanwe: I love things like this. I love the fluidity.

JayJay went back to work, and shortly after, thanks to my Jane Austen tag, the granite column was returned to my inventory. (More about Marjorie Fargis' Jane Austen in SL Club soon.) The exes remained, the way exes do, phantoms tethered to the mind's eye. Stately as starfish, the primordial ancestors of fireworks, they churned beneath Harleywood's ancient particle fountain.

Sublime kinetic energy turning cartwheels, they roll apart and then reel back in on their other selves, like the untamed persistence of memory. They make you want to set them free.

(see my Flickr for photos of the big build, complete with Lime Jelly dance)

Facebook

2011-05-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

There's something of the Anne Frank about being an avatar in Facebook, don't you think? You're there, you function, fight, write and love, but for how long? The login page of Second Life actively encourages us all to join the FB community - but FB policy does not permit 'fake' accounts, and every now and then, people send out dire warnings of an impending avatar cull. And we all know what happened to SaveMe.
A few weeks back, Georg Jannick
(not shown here in a recent photo) threatened to denounce me to the FB authorities as a fake person (hmm, /me starts joining the SaveMe dots). George also 'defriended' me. I was impressed especially because we'd never been friends in FB, SL or anywhere else. Guess it proves he really is of a Superior Race.

Talking about Superior Non-friends... The weirdest thing about FB is the stream of Philip Rosedale updates. I know it's not just me - Nathalie Gobe and Artée have both mentioned the same anomaly popping up in their news stream. I tried friending Philip, in the hopes that he would reject me and that would end the connection, and now I'm not even in that 'awaiting confirmation' limbo, yet the updates keep coming. I never, ever get updates about other strangers in my news feed, so why Philip? Does the FB software detect that Thirza is an SL personality? Does it consider Philip my spiritual leader? Does Philip know complete strangers like me (and you) are getting updates about his private goings-on? I propose a FB support group : P Linden Stalkees, what do you say?
The FB group 'Save PouletFritesMayo Boucher' was set up to support PFM, whose account was deleted from SL without warning, or (apparently) reason. The attempts by PFM's friends to get his case re-opened, or at least get an explanation, all failed. Look at this devastating piece of Gallic charm, written by Apalah Kujizawa:
Bon miam a tous :)
Je me suis permis aussi d'envoyer un ticket :))) en anglais :sss......
Et voiçi voila ce que ça donne :

Pouletfritesmayo boucher is not a bad man ! restore him please :-)
Don't kill him please!!
He was not guilty
Many many many avatars in FRENCH COMMUNITY (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_221187041230675 ) knows him like a good man and he always help any body...and we don't understand what be happen and why do you not explain why he was ban of SL.....???
So why you want to kill him???
What did he do to be ban of SL ?
WE,many avatar of FRENCH COMMUNITY, want to restore pouletfritesmayo boucher in SL please ,because we don't understand what be happen with him...no explications=not guilty,no?
It was maybe a mistake from LL about this.....
SOMEONE must read any tickets about this case and not a bot for this case?...
Did you have an heart or little moment to read any tickets about pouletfritesmayo boucher please?

Thank you for reading and think about this like it was your problem.....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(hein que chu ach'ment bon en english ? ........c'est inné chez moi chu sur !!! ;-p)

Only a heart of stone could resist. I'm off to France myself, shortly. Yummy. More about that soon.

Betty's Boxes

2011-05-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sitting in front of a computer is a sin, on days like these. Everything non-virtual presses its case, urging one to think outside the box, to get out of the room. The Great Outside, where my experimental pineapple bed has nothing to do with furniture, or prim count. Further outside, where mockingbirds mob a burly crow, the timid hydrangea opens one flower at a time, and the evenings are made for long, honeysuckle-scented walks to the pub amid fireflies in the sweet heat that will soon melt into oppression.

But then there's Betty Tureaud. Her build, The Box at Danish Visions, is like a fruit salad for the eyes. I went to see it with Karllos Decosta, who has recently fixed and updated the links in the ArtsParks sidebar. If you have some suggestions of unsung and interesting places that should be in the list, let him or me know and we'll see what we can do. (But no shops, vampire related crap, or obvious places like Bryn Oh installations.) Meanwhile, back in the box...
Karllos Decosta: There are many aspects of Betty’s art that you can explore: the political side, like her Arab Spring work at Kelly Yap Artist Gallery, her little robots, the use of search engines to structure our experience of ourselves and the world, following the ideas of the theorist Lev Manovich about the database as a new symbolic form. Other artists explore topics like identity issues or interactivity. I think Betty wants to explore the immersive possibilities of virtual worlds. So the big size suits that. The cube work is the best I have seen this year. As you walk, light goes through the cubes. I always liked huge spots of color, and I like how the colors change as you walk. I keeping coming back here, it's a beautiful work, it reminds me of Paul Klee, with his controlled and subtle chamber music style that you can see in a painting like Flora on the Sand. Both Klee and Kandinsky were accomplished musicians. Maybe Betty will surprise us by taking an electric guitar out of her sleeve and entertaining us, setting everybody in a mood of luxury, calm and pleasure.

I'm all for that. And of course, Betty's famous for her Facebook collection of Danish Girl vocalists, including The Asteroids, Louise, and many more.

Just then, Betty tp'd over to the sim to chat. She looked chic in her asian maiden outfit. We asked how long it took her to construct this huge, bewildering place.

Betty Tureaud: One day - no, just kitten, I think a week. It's based on an old computer game.

From now on, we all should substitute 'just kitten' for 'just kidding', don't you think? It's way better. Betty introduced us to her art bot. Bettybot sounds a lot like SecondLie; she's funny for oh, about 30 seconds, then sinks into an overkill of smart remarks. There was a taste of an earlier build themed around nebulae and space in the maze, but also something more, and I wondered if the scenery of Betty's native Denmark, in this season of the year, has inspired the range of hues in the maze.

Betty Tureaud: It's me, I am a color freak.
Thirza Ember: Is this an impression of what Denmark looks like?
Betty Tureaud: Yes this is a Danish sim.
Karllos Decosta: So, Danish people really love colors..:)
Betty Tureaud: I do. SL is my home planet, I come here to make my dreams...
Karllos Decosta: I love your playfulness, with hues and tones blossoming all over, transforming forms in mere vessels full of colors to sooth our eyes. Do you like painters like Matisse and Gauguin?
Betty Tureaud: Yes, very much. I love all the old masters. Gauguin stayed in Denmark, and had a child there.

We got a little lost in here in the glow, and then she took us off to get really lost in her Blue Diamond build high above PiRats. It's the gigantic space, designed to make you feel tiny in a flood of colours.

Karllos Decosta: It's like being in another planet in a sci fi story!
All too soon, Betty left us, and I asked Karllos what makes him such a fan of her work.

Karllos Decosta: It's beautiful. The works exhibited at Normasian Straits show her releasing the color energy the way Kandinsky did with his abstract paintings, resembling the dynamism of a symphonic orchestra. Second Life is for me a kind of proof of concept about what we will see and live in the future.

There will be news ways of working, to relate to people, to study. Art too will create new ways

of expression, maybe something like the big buildings of Betty. And certainly the experience

that the Box gives me is something I don’t feel in RL. In the end I have the same feeling in SL that I have watching a silent movie. You are observing the birth of a new language, you see the first close-up, the first time a movie director moved the camera. All possibilities are open and the most creative artists are grabbing it.

Screen Saviour

2011-05-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

He's mad for movies. Madmaninc Zapatero came into SL to sell computers, fell in with the Steampunk crowd, and ended up living his dream, owning his own movie palace, the Phantasmagoria Theater. He started out with P.T. Barnum's American Museum, but he quickly moved from a 'phantasmagoria' or magic lantern show to showing full length films through blip.tv.
As GoldenWillow Resident, Maddie Mhia, Trilby Minotaur, and the rest of the crowd milled around the grand lobby, getting their popcorn, I asked Mad what is up with film in SL.

MadManinc Zapatero: I love movies. I love talking and watching and showing movies to people. Movies are a social experience, and if your friends are across the globe, now you can sit down watch a movie together. Plus, it beats pretending to dance to music I don't like.

Federica Muircastle, working the concession stand, is Theater Manager.
Federica Muircastle: I've done many things and this is another chapter in my SL. I found the theater while researching Steampunk. I met Mad and hung out. The films are fun, and I doubt I would know about them unless they were there in front of me.

Trilby Minotaur: The Phantasmagoria is a great place to hang out. Mad knows an incredible amount about films.
The main theater seats several hundred people, it's based on a cinema MadManinc worked at years ago. The record crowd so far is 25, who all showed up together to watch the Rocky Horror Show, but you don't have to bring a mob with you to be part of the fun, in fact, you don't have to be in SL at all to watch the full season of films.
MadManinc Zapatero: All of the films are set 24/7, since there are so many time zones, and lag can be a factor, of course. Maybe Linden Labs will get off there asses and install some new servers and I can have World Premieres! But you can see all of my films on the internet, podcast through my Facebook or Twitter accounts, even MySpace if anyone still uses that. Or check out blip.tv, or phantasmagoriatheater.com

The current season is Gladiator films. They're actually pretty educational! With all these golden oldies on the screen, what about the Phantasmagoria crew making their own movie magic in Second Life?
MadManinc Zapatero: COMING SOON! we are starting to remake an old sci fi film: The Phantom Creeps! We also produce SL machinima in our studio, so if anyone wants to record something in SL, just ask. I have a empty sky box studio waiting for machinimists. SL is the best place for machinima.Some might say the down side is that you have to build everything. But in RL, you have to find the right town, get all kinds of permits, then there's the waiting around for the weather etc. And there's no SAG in SL!
One outstanding feature of the Phantasmagoria is the huge variety of film genres available, everything from classical stories, to horror, foreign language, and scifi.

MadManinc Zapatero: So many years working at a video store has made me obsessively catagorise movies. Each theater shows a different genre of films: Theater one, fantasy; Theater two drama,and so on.
How does he respond to those purists who think all content in SL should be original?
MadManinc Zapatero: Everything was made of pieces of something else from the past. Movies have inspired builds in SL, but then also it's a representation of time. When people are trying to build something from the 1950's or 1500 BC, they don't go to museums to check out this stuff, they watch movies. If a picture's worth a thousand words, films are 30 pictures a second. The virtual is the future. Second Life and places like it will take over as the only media.

MadManinc Zapatero: I would like to see more plays - I think live entertainment in SL is its best feature. Take a TV show. It takes huge amounts of money for cast and crew. All that cost disappears in SL. A small group of people working virtually can make it happen.
Of course, there's a lot of room for improvement. Faster internet speeds, to start with. But Mad has even more change in mind.
MadManinc Zapatero: What I hope and would like to see happen in SL is what you get in home gaming systems like xbox, playstation. Hands free controlling, which makes avatars virtual puppets. It will do what you're doing. Then there's 3D TV. That's pretty much virtual reality off the shelf right now. I believe that in less then 5 years the "internet" will require an avatar to navigate it.
Meanwhile,back in the stalls, the friends of the Phantasmagoria were chowing down on snacks and cracking jokes. It's a warm, fun crowd, and they made me feel part of their family. Skye was explaining to Jeremy that he needed to 'wear' his popcorn. I asked her what kept her coming back.
Skye Fairywren: It's a great place to congregate, to talk about the movie with one another as if we were all on Mystery Science Theater. I particularly love watching the old movies with my friends, and just laughing over the exaggerated acting we see in those old films. It is also an absolutely gorgeous building, inside and out, and we love sitting in the beautiful VIP box many times too, for those special occasions, we dress to the hilt, eat popcorn and have one very "phantastic" time!

U Wiz A

2011-05-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

Mighty is geometry. Joined with art, it is irresistible.

Euripides

Last month, soror nishi filled UWA's Virtlantis sim with an incredible, and much blogged-about build, Transubstantiation. It was a beautiful sight, and showed just what can be done when an artist is allowed to expand an idea to sim-sized proportions.

This month it's the turn of Wizard Gynoid to spread her geometry out before us. The UWA's JJ Zifanwe is closing the sim for reasons of cost, but with classic Antipodean good humour, rather than doing a lot of hand-wringing about the decision to downsize, he's taken the opportunity to give some of SL's best loved artists the opportunity to make the sim go out with a bang.

Wizzy is calling the build fractal and hyperboloid art. She told me a hyperboloid is a very excited boloid, but I think she was teasing... the pieces on show here are a mixture of newness, like this piece, with an optical illusion at its heart.

There are also some interesting items she's made over recent months, also on other grids. One piece - the centerpiece of the build, was originally made on Craft. It created a very surprising effect when it was imported.

Wizzy Gynoid: It's a fractal, meaning that it gets more and more complex and smaller as you go inward, and it's a huge number of prims, so it's in pieces. I started importing the smaller pieces first. building outward. When I got to the big shell pieces, the blew up when I imported them because they are made up of 'megaprim' pieces.
(Outside SL, you can stretch a regular prim to any size you want, rather than being confined to 10x10x10m)

Wizzy Gynoid: At first this upset me, but then i realized that it looked kinda cool, with the outer shell pieces exploded like that.So I left them like that, and it points out too how limited SL is in that way. In open sim you can build without concern.

Wizzy combines her love of sacred geometry with experiments in numbers and a pension for high primcounts, and on the sim this month her goal is to use all the 15,000 prims available. The island is a geometric shape in itself, prepared using her own terrain texture.

Often people describe Wizzy's art as a lot of straight lines, but this is a very curvy build. Just look at this hyperbolid.
Wizzy Gynoid: These sort of look like particle effects, but it's really 366 moving prims. It looks a bit like one of those black light posters. The center hole is suggestive of the vesica pisces, and of course that means it has all kinds of feminine connotations
To me, it kind of looked like the Time Tunnel on speed. Drop in and make up your own mind. Wizzy's build will be at Virtlantis the for the whole of the month of May.

Not Just Anybody

2011-05-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, so much younger than today...

Help

How is it that even in SL you can choose your friends, but not your family, I thought, when my brother started shouting stuff about "un orgy room da niubbio". He is a much-married, howling combo of Arthur Daley, Scarface, and the Cable Guy, for whom factual reality is a movable feast, and trouble a companion never more than one step to the rear. We have absolutely nothing in common, except for everything: we are the last survivors of a once vibrant family. Those first fatal days in Second Life have cemented us together in a childhood shared, and the memories of those places and people are a sticking post in the heart.

Like you, I was moderately intrigued to know what constitutes a 'newbie' orgy room, but, being busy with something else at the time, was kind of glad when we moved into the standard Third Act, the familiar 'no, you better not threaten me' stage. One of his 'becauses' rang false, however. Surely I'd read somewhere that they don't have mentors any more in SL. And this proves he really is my brother, because if any random dude made similar wild statements, I'd simply mute him. But sibling rivalry demanded that I bring living proof of his BS to his door.

I took time out to consult my favourite Knower of Things Linden, Wizard Gynoid. She rolled her eyes and passed a link to the Alphaville Herald, written some 6 months ago. I shook a triumphant sisterly fist in the air, but Wizzy's reaction was more reflective. Poor noobs - what happens to them now when they have questions? We packed some sandwiches, Wizzy got out her 'Noob Assistance' folder, and we TP'd over to Help Island to see what went on.

The noise is the first thing that hits you; Help Island Plaza was full of people. There was a big fight going on in Chat about Viewer choice, and the term 'smart ass' was being passed around pretty freely.

Wizard Gynoid: Part of the reason they did away with the mentors is because they all argued, lots of ego problems.

Among the 'patients' - not all of them noobs, strictly speaking - were a woman who was ruthed, a guy inquiring about megaprims, and somebody who spoke only spanish. Wizzy found herself a newbie with a texture/money problem, but I was curious about the helpers, and asked Lisa Lowe what was going on there. After all, didn't the Mentor program get nuked by LL?

Lisa Lowe: They fired 1/3 of the personnel last year and with that it also killed the SL Mentor program. The people here are mentors in other groups, from the RHN. Everyone is free to come here, it is a public place. I do it because I always liked helping others. Many also become good friends.

A person called rapists Resident appeared on the Plaza, and offered his services to the group.

Wizard Gynoid: It's obvious to me why retention rates are so low if this is what noobs have to wade through. They need a safe place to ask questions. To do that they need to trust you. This place does nothing but make noobs doubt you. It took a few minutes for that guy I helped to realize that he could trust me. He was astounded that I gave him $200L.
The person called rapists Resident was still holding forth.

That kind of talk, Lisa said, is par for the course, and a week on Help Island would give you material to fill a book, of bizarre conversations, threats, and avatar choices, not to mention genuine difficulties and people looking for a connection or a solution to keep them in the game. It was obvious, even in the brief time we spent on the Island, that despite all the silly chat, these mentors take their volunteer work seriously.

Lisa Lowe: Teaching is a real job. Many often try to help, but they sometimes only make it more confusing. I've been mentoring for about 4 or 5 years now. I have professional expertise in IT, engineering, programming and so on, so I can often help with werid stuff. I used to be a coach for mentors, and I try to keep track of all the developments, like with the viewer or ways of doing things in SL, by visiting Linden meetings.

She worries that people are too quick to paint the Lindens as the bad guys.

Lisa Lowe: Trust me, I am not happy with everything they do either, but I try to be rational about things. If you talk to the Lindens, you often get a different perspective on things. Too many people shout very stupid things in here and on blogs. SL is still the leading platform when it comes to it, and very complex also.

Time to go. I went dancing with Jay, which is a form of humanitarian aid, if you know Jay. Meanwhile, Wizzy was showing a second noob how to win hair with Lucky Chairs, and how to open boxes in a sandbox.

Wizard Gynoid: Such simple but necessary things to know. Back in my day, it was not uncommon for oldbies to give noobs money. People gave me money, some took me shopping and paid for it. That sort of thing makes all the difference. It helped me to stay. The community I lucked into made me want to return. If you don't find that - if you aren't lucky - then you won't return.

Who cares about the machinations (or mishaps) of Linden Labs. All the time Second Life has people like Lisa and Wizzy in it, it will be a lucky place to be. Oh go on, and my brother Jup too.

Double Build

2011-04-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's almost Golden Week in Japan, when they celebrate both heritage and the environment in a four day festival. After recent events, one can only imagine what a poignant occasion this year's Greenery Day will be. Many SL residents have contributed in a practical and a spiritual way to the long road to recovery. Alizarin Goldflake has made Requiem for Fukushima, a sort of sculptural haiku that helps us reflect on the awe-inspiring effects of nature unbalanced.
Alizarin Goldflake: This build is the beginning of the story post-ecological disaster, which is exactly what Fukushima is. This is my vision of what the radiation is doing to the nearby sea. It is awful and beautiful at the same time.

Enter the pyramid and you're surrounded by
tongues of fire, volcanic rock, spectral seaweed, and the vast woodlands above and beyond them. The sound of fire crackles underfoot, along with a melancholy chord or two, fusing the connection between fire and water and loss.
Alizarin Goldflake: I have just always been in love with Japanese art and design, and the sea is a big influence on my art, RL and SL. I'm a sea kayaker; I summered by the sea most of my life, it's in my blood. My ancestors were seafaring. The ocean is my favorite place to be - actually, the intersection between land and ocean is what I find endlessly fascinating, and it shows up a lot in my art. With this build, I really got into using glow for the first time, because it creates this radioactive feeling. The rocks emit light, too, which adds to the glow.

All change with the traditional laggy and gossipy vernissage, too. Instead of staging a single opening, she's inviting people to visit the build throughout the month. It's also the first time that Ali has shown a build simultaneously on two grids - you can visit an identical installation in InWorldz at Nexus Central. Ali's been busy re-visiting ideas from her Sky Sculpture Garden on a greater scale than would be possible in SL, on a sim donated by the much-publicized art patron, Jeri Rahja.

Alizarin Goldflake: I like building in IWz, there are few groups notices, and no griefers yet, just peace and quiet and all the lovely tools. We don't have physics yet, but they are getting in the phlox script engine which wipes the lag astonishingly.
It's a second window for her art, to both sell and be seen. With the economy still so cruel to RL art, this is a way to expand her visibility. But Alizarin's really charmed by the possiblilities of making art virtual worlds.
Alizarin Goldflake: I just want to see where it all takes me.
So do we.

The freakiest show

2011-04-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

If you're curious about what war is good for, and would like to confirm your suspicions that it's absolutely nothing, then the place to be this weekend in SL is Four Bridges.

Trill Zapatero has curated a wonderful, all-star show at
the The Howard Zinn Center for Social Consciousness and the Arts with artwork by twenty Sluminaries

ranging from Chrome Underwood, Fiona Leitner, and (shown here) Igor Ballyhoo,

to Filthy Fluno, Fuschia Nightfire, Pol Jarvinen, and Larkworthy Antfarm. Affiliated with Amnesty International, Four Bridges is well-known for hosting art that may be considered too political for other galleries. These drawings say they're by Drumstick Ah.

It's a two day Peactivity, with music and poetry as well as meet the artists. On Sunday at 12 SLT you can hear junivers Stockholm and Medora Chevalier, the musicians behind CARP's The Wall.
If you don't know Trill's art, you could do worse than checking out her studio on Artropolis. As curator of this exhibit, though, she's brought together a huge and diverse collection of fine art, which has inspired a whopping 40 page book and - wait for it - a Hudvitation!

I won't lie, it's way too much information, on top of the rezzing issues connected with an unfamiliar sim bursting with prims. Thank goodness, the lovely Miso Susanowa, resplendent in a flower-power outfit, was at hand to explain it all, including her contribution, Theater of War perhaps the show's jewel in the crown. Cuz lord knows I'm not wearing a laggy Hud. Not even in the name of Peace.

Miso’s State of Mind was already on the sim when Trill Zapatero began setting up this latest show. At the time, Miso was actually making the Theatre for Sabrinaa Nightfire's last show, Black White and Red. Clearly, though, it was a natural fit for this collection. The ghostly audience cheer quotes from popular war films, in a misty ghoulish setting. Movie posters line the walls, and the sounds and moving images are flawlessly sewn together, creating an unforgettable sensation. With the support of Trill, Miso was able to concentrate on the Theatre itself, which took two days of long hours to put together, plus a week or two to get the right audio clips. It helped that she had a good idea of what she wanted.

Miso Susanowa: I wanted it to take a while for people to get the sense of the place, and to point out that the flashy figures and the familiar audio clips, the 'light fixtures', the coffins and so on. A lot of the work went into the glow and animation settings. If you focus on the center of the figures, the animation will make the glow jump dynamically between the triangle. If you set to midnight, the bluish texture is stark and the "entertainment" fades into the background and throws the diorama into sharp relief. the figures are made to flash and animate with the background at regular lighting they are much clearer at midnight.
Sailors fighting in the dance hall, Oh man! Look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show.
Take a look at the Lawman, beating up the wrong guy. Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know,
he's in the best selling show ... To really get Miso's work, you should be listening to Bowie's Life On Mars

Another stunning piece is Sgt. Aaron Hughes' poem I Am Who Survived; you can both read and hear it. Unmissable.
War and Peace e starts tomorrow at 12.00pm SLT.

The weight of consequences

2011-04-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

If you're dancing physics, you're dancing contact.

If you're dancing chemistry, you're doing something else.

Steve Paxton

Push is the perfect name for a sim containing Oberon Onmura's work. He is a pushy artist - in the best possible sense of the word, not angling for publicity, but producing amazing physical effects of collision and collapse that are the hallmarks of his minimalist art. The five piece retrospective show at Push is a window into his thoughts on dance, music, nature; it's another opportunity to enjoy the themes and admire his genius for elegant lines, both in his scripts and his builds.
Primcounter extraordinare and handyman/ex superhero Dividni Shostakovich was at Push with us, he likes all that dance and art stuff, and (being ancient) knew all about the 70's dance movement that inspired Oberon's build Contact Improvisation.

The men rattled on about all that for a while, naming names of
artists and such, it's a field in which Oberon has RL experience, ask him, he'll tell you. The prims pirouetted and bounced off each other in seemingly endless variety. I thought that the Americans spent the 1970's doing Disco, so this site about CI was all news to me, and really informed the piece with historical and conceptual perspective.
Yet the art stands alone; even without the backstory, there is a glassy clinkyness to the way the trio interacts that is about as far from limbs and lumbar support as you can get. This is Oberon's favourite build of the five, for the way the colour and the sound and the movement all come together. But don't stop there.

More dancing with a vintage piece, Light and Heavy. Are those cubes dancing or fighting? You can look at them for ages and still not be sure; one thing is for certain, you keep your distance, unsure if they'd crush you if you stray too close. Look for the sparkles.
Plaza is another angular, apprehensive build. Take the weight off on one of the plastic chairs, and you'll drown in the bricks, as the pavement rises like a monochrome tide. The chairs pop out of the ground, and are kicked over or thrown into the air by invisible hands. When he sat down, Dividni's pose turned out to be very Guantanamo Bay - perfect for such a stark build.

At odds with the powerlessness of the Plaza is The Stand, a fragile forest that is easily trampled underfoot, with beautiful consequences.

The last is perhaps the loveliest. It's the electrifying Khamaseen, inspired by tales of the dust storms of the Sahara and Sinai desert where, at this time of year, unwary travellers can find themselves engulfed in spiralling sand. Oberon has combined atmospheric effects with an old favourite from Coriolis, I leave you to discover the consequences of straying into the sand for yourself.

Oberon Onmura's Retrospective is at Push for the foreseeable future.

Private Eye

2011-04-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

Sadly, you'll never see Photo of the Month; this is a PG blog. It's of Georg Janick, wandering about Caerleon with his penis out. Questions whir across your mind - Who was the lucky non-gender-specific lady? swiftly followed by - How can you eliminate every atom of that mental image from your mind? and then - Is she kidding? Idk, with difficulty, and no.
Then again, it was at Caerleon, so maybe it was Performance Art? An ironic acknowledgment of general opinion? No, he'd have to wear the attachment a lot higher up for that to make sense.
Which brings us to: What is proper SLettiquette when you see unexpected genitalia in a public place? (Snapping a discreet photo is a given.) A floating tag above your head saying 'WANG ALERT' might make the people around you check their fly, but that seems a bit too client-side. Any suggestions?
I miss the heyday of the SL Fashion Police, so much better than the halitosis pumped out by shut-ins like Prok, Saveme and Crap.
Non-gender-specific ladies is a misnomer, of course; any real woman will tell you that we can all specifically spot a shemale a mile away, but like the Happy in the Room, we choose to pretend we haven't noticed, mostly out of pity, sometimes out of friendship. It's not an anti-gay/bi curious thing, it's an anti-don't take me for a moron thing. Everything from word choice to wardrobe lets us know you're a hetero father of three, just like you know we're not 21, and imagining anyone has anyone fooled is beneath your intelligence.
But then that whole Avatar Identity stuff is arrant (and arrogant) nonsense. You don't 'become someone else' when you enter a virtual world - your talent, real life experience, morals, and education don't suddenly take a giant leap forward when you log into SL. *Gosh, imagine those dire poetry evenings and art openings if that were actually possible.* You just drop some of your inhibitions, that's all.
When you open your mouth and move, the real you is revealed, whether you're aware of it or not. For some, that's a wonderful revelation worth sharing with the world, but in many cases, well, let's just say it would be better if you kept it in your pants.

Invitation Theory

2011-04-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

The worst way to advertise your art show is by sending a Primvitation. Firstly, they're not nearly as decorative or informative as the makers think they are. Secondly, people are not always home or in a place where they can rezz when your Special and oh-so-unsolicited Gift arrives, so we can't see what the hell it is you're sending us, and the stupid thing goes stinking up our already overflowing Recent Objects. Unlike an IM, which I can read in email, the 'invitation' bit of the primvitation is lost when you send a mystery 'Object' to my Inventory when I'm offline. This one, by Misprint Thursday, showed up when I was inworld and having a bit of a sit down. I've not been well.

It turned out to be an invite to the UTSA's latest show Visualizing Theorem.
Misprint has created the Primvitation from Hell, an ugly perspex column thingy, crammed with 2 notecards, 2 scripts, a LM (the only useful item) and a HUD. Apparently the theory being visualized here is "more is... more".
The HUD is fussy and distracts from the art. Unintuitive to a tee, it makes TP balls rezz when you click on it, because yeah! that's what the sim is lacking! more busy crap floating about.

This is what the HUD looks like when you're in Douglas Story and co's installation, called Galileo something-or-other. 'Colonic irrigation meets Trip to the Planetarium' would be closer to the mark. The 3 page notecard dumped on you upon arrival has 'excerpts' (whew) from Artist's Statements, a trite gushapalooza about dog friendships maybe? Not sure, they lost me. But I am sure that all the 'surprise particles' in the world aren't reward enough for being subjected to that much drivel. It's always amazing that people who work in close collaboration still end up with so little sense of proportion/absurdity in their work.

The nicest part, to be honest, was the cool clean sky above UTSA. 16 is too many exhibits, and many of them are too close together to really work, both visually and in terms of lag. But the worst part is still that Primvitation. Don't send me any more, I mean it.