Bananas by Moonlight

Earlier this summer,with her install 'Destruction', Asmita Duranaya challenged artists and builders to come up with a modern fable.

The result, or at least the top of the iceberg, from a creative point of view, was unveiled last night at Space4Art in the form of the winning entry, 'Fleeting Captivities' by Lilia Artis and Haveit Neox.

 This lovely construct is a 3D interpretation of their charming morality tale which exudes all the best values of Second Life, impossible climactic conditions, bridges over infinity, and unexpected friendships in the face of adversity. It's a must read, and if you do nothing else, TP over to and pick up a copy. But no, hang around a little longer on the sim, and try out Asmita's Destruction word-game-with-a-message. Looks like sinister fun.
 Center stage is the build by Haveit and Lilia, who took their tale and fitted it into quite literally a 'space for art'. last night was the dance-filled vernissage, and Lilia read the story out in both German and English. She has a clear, bright delightful reading voice. It was like a sort of bizarro crap mariner event, put it that way.

Floral Tribute

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,

'Round Paris

 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

Betty's Boxes

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.

The freakiest show

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

Invitation Theory

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.

Tuning oona

It seems like a lost town, a HiFi wilderness of circuits mysteriously broadcasting, and old signals leaking out of valves and scratchy needles. The little girl in the Test Card shivers a blank smile across the decades. There is nothing on TV... or is there? Are we just on the wrong wavelength, would a touch of the dial make it all spring to life? Among the shadow-filled carcasses of old speaker cabinets, the wire in the voice coil sings a hissing song of rare earth returning to earth, and the ghost of life and light glows in the valve glass darkly. Full of gaps and static, this is a whispering temple  to the age of analog, a far cry from the pure sound of the digital, poles apart, like the difference between teleporting and walking. The modern journey of sound has been truncated, perfected, but here among the hiss and scratches, we are reminded that in all refinement there is loss, that getting there is half the fun, and that is perhaps what makes us human.

This is Live! oona Eiren's new build which opens tomorrow at Dividni Shostakovich's  Split Screen Installation Space.

oona Eiren: Valve amps have the sweetest sound. I like to use lots of scratch in my sound work. Digital seems to want to do the opposite, to clean sound. The inspiration for this build was some vintage Hi Fi record players and TVs. They have history. I have records that jump in the same place they did when I was growing up, I love it, and old cassettes have it as well, they get stretched and warp.  I have software that's very good, but it all begins with hands on recording.

Oona jumped at the opportunity to exhibit at Splitscreen, a space she's sharing this time around with Misprint Thursday's  install White Sheets. It was a great opportunity for oona to try her hand at a bigger build, and over four weeks, the radio and televisual ensemble came together, both visually and with improvised sounds, starting with an image of an old TV and a ten second loop of sound that she recorded while out walking. As you move around the build, touch the objects and listen to their sounds.
oona Eiren: In RL I sometimes do illusration work, but work more with sound making installations and working with dance companys - and then theres a bit of film making thrown into the mix! My next move in SL is to try machinima. I've been playing with that a bit, it's fantastic, to build sets like this and then have a blast filming them!

Under the fun, though, there's a serious, purposeful side to oona's virtual work ethic.
oona Eiren: When I first got here, I had no idea how to use it but am slowly getting a handle on what I want to do. Now, I'm very excited about what I'm achieving, and I hope it's a launching point for my career. I want to show work I'm doing here at venues and places in RL, too. There's lots of places to show stuff, and I want to my feet in RL, not get lost in the SL whirlpool. I had a gallery in Avalon - that was my first public outing, but I always wanted to do bigger stuff. I do think people are missing out on a lot if they just stick to 2D. I must say the real artists for me are the great builders here - that's the way to go. I like what you can do if you layer, say, three or four ten second loops and play around with them.

 oona Eiren: Sound is so important!  Imagine watching a David Lynch movie to a soundtrack from some random band. It would ruin the experience. I'm a fan of Lynch. You should watch 'Fishing for Ideas', a video where he talks about his process of creating. Great stuff.

Among all the melancholy crackles and pops, a single, timeless, living image stands out in the build.
oona Eiren: That's Elsa Lanchester, the Bride of Frankenstein. I love this image, because she is strong. She rejects the monster. She is looking away, like she's saying  - No, you don't just build me to be someone's bride!
Oona a paused.
oona Eiren: I'll do a happy tune next I think - after all this doom and gloom :))) Maybe even a tune you can hum along to!
Live! is at the Split Screen Installation Space from tomorrow Sunday, February 6th at 2 pm SLT.

Turing: Back to the Future

He has the appearance of a space man from gentler times,  when the only cyber bullies were the Cybermen, and jetpacks were boxy, like Volvos, on the safe side. In real life, Patrick Millard is a Pittsburgh-based photographic and sound artist, and a graduate of SCAD (oo Savannah!). In SL, Formatting Heliosense is part DJ, part curator, part exhibitor, and all round good guy at the Turing Gallery, at the heart of Galatea Gynoid's Extropia Core region in Second Life.

Formatting Heliosense: I didn't plan to curate or own a gallery when I entered into SL per se, but I certainly entered into this world in order to extend what I was doing artistically. The idea of virtual worlds is in conceptual alignment with the work I do in RL about technolgical and environmental symbiosis. The thing that is unique about Turing Gallery compared to most SL galleries is that we have a consistency on theme. We do not show particular media or approaches to artwork, but we show only art that coincides with Extropian interests - Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, The Singularity, Transhumanism, Technology, Space, and all things that emphasize a a more complete future through advancements in technology.

 When Formatting said that, I had visions of migratory goatherds in space, but then I googled the difference between transhumance and transhumanism. Don't tell him, it's embarrassing. But back to the Turing - the structure's by Vidal Tripsa. Originally intended to be part of a mall, the Turing Gallery has been home to futuristic and conceptual art since August, and has already attracted big names including Maya Paris and L1aura Loire, Scarp Godenot, Kolor Fall and Wizard Gynoid. 

Formatting Heliosense: Along with the gallery, I run the club here, Technohenge, DJing and organizing the other DJ's while Zada Zenovka is on extended hiatus. The music and the scuptures and painting - it's all art to me; but it is a group that makes the sim run.
 Like all buildings in Extropia, the gallery  is named after a famous transhumanist. Alan Turing (you know, Bletchley Park and all that) devised a test to tell when a robot/machine/computer has achieved human communication skills to the point that it is believable. Now, if that could be hacked and used as a Contacts List filter...

Formatting Heliosense: Our first artist in the new location was Xenophile Neurocam. His work was a fun showing because it filled the space in a comprehensive sense. He did not allow the space of the gallery or unique divisions between halls and open exhibition spaces become a hindrance, but rather a opportunity. He even made one room completely immersive by putting the viewer in a completely dark environment and then adding his sculptured and annimated work to the space.

The next show is being set up - it's an installation by Scottius Polke called The Shrine of Previously Discarded Notions. It sort of looks like a ribcage, with a warm glow. Formatting summed it up in a single word: 'hugs'.
In his studio you can see a couple of pieces from this Formatting Gaia collection; you may recall that naked acreage on show at the Enaxia and also at Quadrapop Lane's Tree Gallery last year.

From the tower, you can look down on Extropia to the strains of techno music; there's also his original work Nanoresponse. Want to experience Nanoresponse but afraid of heights and/or not inworld? Click here.

What's Formatting looking forward to in 2011?
Formatting Heliosense: The 2011 edition of Scien&Art, organized by Marjorie Fargis and Talete Flanagan. I have offered to host part of it here at the Turing. I'm also quite intrigued and attend the Cybernetic Arts stuff that that group is doing in world.

The future's bright.

Mazed

You'd be forgiven for dubbing it Art Mess rather than ART MAZE 2011, the Zindra based collaboration on show until the end of the month. More than thirty artist of wildly divergent taste, style and talent have been mashed up in a land crossing a couple of sim boundaries, connected by series of tunnels. These days, I'm inworld mostly to look at scripts, not art, but Dividni Shostakovich was going back to the Maze for his second visit, so I got a lift with him. Or rather he sent a 'teleport lure', as the kids are calling it these days. Stuff happens when you're away.
If the ArtMaze Welcome notecard were a dog, it would be a golden retriever puppy; large, good natured, energetic, a bit over excited. It promises "an amazing world of endless imagination and exploration", and "the chance to be a real life travel writer" on their Art Maze website!

I had my doubts.
Oh dear, are we so jaded we can't be amused by the Souvenir Mug? Or persuaded to try on the (surprisingly dry) freebie Teeshirt? The show has its own Linden Rep, Blondin of the same name, which I suppose is code for Nipple Police, although, considering we were on Zindra, nipples were disappointingly few and far between. But that might just have been the sag. I mean the lag.

We did get lost, but not in a good way at first, stumbling against a horrible psychedelic trompe-l'oeil. There's no cohesion in the overall design; each artist improvised the links to the next with tunnels.

It's a sort of litmus test to talent, and the winner has to be the wonderful Oona Eiren - much more about her coming soon! - whose Murder in the Lake build is one of the Maze's best bits.

I never did find the hidden body in the room, and that's the problem with massive shows like this, there is so much going on, both in your brain and on the screen, that it's almost impossible to pay the sort of attention to detail the work deserves.

Renowned ischyophile Scottius Polke was lurking in the bookstacks, and he took me to see Penelope Parx's ants.

 
Aloisio Congrejo's Universes are also lovely.

But I fell in love with Corcosman Voom's room, hosting not just his 2D art, but two lovely statues, The Flautist and The Aerialist. It sent me back to my tightrope anim, freshly inspired.

The immersive and interactive elements at ART MAZE 2011 are mostly poses in dioramas, the custom music stream and the chance to share your photos and thoughts with the group. Yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. Although it is a contest, so you should enthusiastically stick a photo or two in the hut, if that's not a euphemism.

Sound Mind

Essendo cosi è necessario che la bellezza sia una natura come quella della virtù, figure e voci; perché noi non chiameremo qualunque di questi tre bello,se non fosse in tutti e tre comune definizione della bellezza.

Marsilio Ficino, Il libro dell'amore

It's the bleak midseason, and many of us are suffering from Blue Martian Disease, the main symptom of which is loudly anguishing about things of zero importance. We need harmony, serenity! We need to know upon whom Hamlet Au next plans to bestow his ample self!
OK, we don't really need to know that last one, but the other two are essential. Here's an idea.

On a crowded, rather untidy sim, Miso Susanowa has created an oasis of sound and harmony, where every flower sings its own microchord, and as you walk among them, they fill your mind like perfume. She sat on a magic mushroom, a sort of Yoko Ono thing going on, but less hard-faced, and with leggings. I swooped my cam among the tinkling bells, a breeze of harmonics.

Miso Susanowa: Some of those notes aren't being played, they are the harmonics your own brain is making between the notes actually being played. It is truly interactive audio; even if you are still and look in one direction, you will hear the sound field sweep back and forth depending on which harmonics are resonating.

  Miso's RL career in visual art and music began back in the 1970's; she's been a performance artist, composer, sound engineer, and informal IT teacher. In 1995 she set up a website that helped women (especially preteen girls) to learn to write HTML. She is an 'oldbie' in terms of digital art: she started doing digital drawings as long ago as 1982, on a UNIX system. In 1995 she participated in some early virtual worlds, so that her arrival in Second Life in 2008 offered a very different learning curve to the one many of us experienced.  She has an impressive portfolio of work with galleries and art collectives like UWA and Caerleon, and has collaborated with some of SL's biggest names; she's recently been featured in Spanish art magazine Arte y Parte. Starting with her 'Angelic Clocks' and most recently with the atmospheric Solstice tree, shown in InWorldz in December, which included her composition The Longest Night, sound has dominated her artistic output. Her first experience in SL was a silent one, mostly rollerskating, but without the sound element it failed to pull her in; before long she'd imported a rollerblade sound, just to make the experience more complete.

Miso Susanowa: When I was 5 I stole my dad's tape recorder to tape the wheels of my schoolbus because I liked the rhythms. Sometimes you think, wow, it's so quiet, but if you focus in, the world is not silent, ever. Audio is our second most acute sense after smell, before vision. It gives a person a sense of place and depth that far surpasses sight. So to me, all this talk of "immersion" when all you have is mostly graphics is not immersion. 
The place seemed to be brimming with vibrations, like a swarm of sounds, the way a gong makes you feel, like a resonating congregation of noise developing around us.
Miso Susanowa: It will entrain your brain to alpha state in 10 minutes. It's a simple and well known effect but it requires pure sine waves which are a BITCH to loop - it took me two weeks to do it without pops. The corpus callosum will try to sync your brain to the waves and your heart will attempt to match the yogin's beat, which is about 68-72BPM, a "restful state". People paint with paint; I have audio synesthesia. Shapes, colors, lighting, texture will trigger songs, music in my head - it can be aggravating!

  Across the garden is the Temple of the Radiant Moon, used by Reikian healers and meditation groups. No advertising; people just find their way to Miso's  temple, to bathe in the sounds.  From the textures and artwork it's easy to see she's made a study of world faiths ancient and modern, and has tried to blend cultures, drawing from them the aspects of the moon.  Two deep, mellow sounds boom out of the Temple even before you enter the door, the Earth Tone and the Heart Drum. It's a sound that seems to sneak into your bones. Add to these Japanese taiko drum, Tibetan Throat Singers and a Gregorian chant, and you have a  menu for deep meditation. 
Miso Susanowa: This is applied research, not mysticism! Hospitals use ultrasound for bone knitting and muscle relaxing and healing. Consciousness is based on electrical signals, which are waves: so is your blood flow. Over 20 years, I've tried to ferret out what I could about the "secret healing tones of the Lyre of Hermes Trismegistus" etc., or how the Tibetans can hypnotize people with a drawing. I've closely followed the work of  modern researchers like Pauline Olivera. Online life is overstimulating. These tones help fight that online feeling of I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING, but a word of warning - such pure tones can be contraindicated. They are here to use, but if you are tense, uptight, a cup of coffee isn't gonna be good for you, yes? Well, these sine waves affect the brain, so need to be used with caution.

  Back outside, the sounds diminished, and she led the way to her third sound zone. She had me click on the sun above her head. Excerpts from a 22 minute composition of Miso's, based on the radio frequencies of each planets,  filled the air, and I cammed in until my avatar filled half the screen. The exquisitely accurate planets revolved around me, playing their tunes. I wondered what it meant to Miso to be able to influence people so much. 

  A victim of abuse as a child, Miso's struggled with feelings of self worth all her life. These sounds have helped her over the years, and it's her desire to share them with other people who are hurting.
 Miso Susanowa: The Code of Silence is the most deadening thing there is and I defy it, I talk about what is distasteful or uncomfortable for people because it's real. It's important to get beyond the mind that can be twisted up. This is nothing new. My tools are just different. I learned science and even computers as a left brain strengthener, to help me not be overwhelmed. It isn't natural to me to be a geek, I use it to help me not drown. It's a discipline, a mental yoga, and it's saved my life more than a few times...

standalone

[08:02 PM]  Oberon Onmura: hola!
[08:03 PM]  thirza ember: omg
[08:03 PM]  Oberon Onmura: are you totally here yet?
[08:03 PM]  thirza ember: here I am
[08:03 PM]  Oberon Onmura: yay! In my basement!
[08:03 PM]  Oberon Onmura: I'm so excited about this I can't tell you. I've only killed it twice and it's been up almost three days!

Now, I know what you're thinking, 'basement' and 'killed' in the same sentence - not good - but wait! This is actually super cool! If you've ever wondered what it would like to be your own personal Linden, Oberon has proved it's possible.
 thirza ember: I have no idea what this technology is/means. How can you make your own grid in your own computer at home?

To a crisp

We're deep into the burn today, but not nearly as laggy as you might think. Raven Haalan and the team, organizers and builders and bacon-purveyors alike -  have done a really great job! Raven was even nice enough to edit himself for this photo, when I couldn't get him to rezz quite right.

 I said he was a star for being so cooperative, when he must be multitasking like crazy, but he was quick to play down his role, and seemed sweetly positive when I broached the subject of - what else - doing it all again next year.

Raven Haalan: No, I'm just a helper bee! Next year? lol yah, of course! This is just a start, not the end, the team is good this year, and everyone is playin' nice, mostly, which makes for many smiles, if tired ones.

This was the scene at the Main Stage, lots of jugglers and people on stilts, I showed up in time to hear the excellent group ♫~D R U M~♫ Divine Rhythms of Universal Music, they're a seven-strong drum ensemble, including Lorin Tone, who puts the group's success down to the beneficial effects of bashing things.  If you've never heard them play, you can catch them tomorrow at noon for the opening of super spooky Halloween- themed The Unknown Country.

Machinimuwa

Making movies in SL is super fun, but ideally, if you're a beginner like me, or not very good (ditto), common decency should prevent you from inflicting your oeuvre on all but your most kind-hearted friends. Someone who makes trailers for a living, and knows what he is talking about, told me the other day that most machinima are way too long. "To be really effective, the length should be between thirty seconds and a minute and a half," he said. "That's enough to get the story across, and keep the viewer interested." That seemed way too short. I mean, most music videos last about three minutes, the length of a song. I dismissed him as a harsh know-it-all.

Turns out, he is quite right.

Chasing the light: Thoth Jantzen

It's a simple idea: take images and sound and make them more than the sum of their parts. Well,
OK, it's a little more complicated than that. There is all that scripting and prim-pinching hoodoo. Thoth Jantzen has been chasing this idea of turning out a different kind of 3D entertainment, prizing open the flat rectangle of a music video on Youtube or Vimeo and expanding it in every direction so that your avatar, ears and eyes become swallowed up in the moment. 

When you think of a kaleidoscopic or psychedelic dance environment, you think Tuna, and there's none better. This is something different. Dancing is part of it, but there is a different sort of narrative to Thoth's builds. It's a restless process of refinement, tweaking, and expansion over the past few years, starting with the Cosmique series - you can see the third incarnation,  Cosmique III, on Open Habitat.

Arts Parks

Cercando or questo et or quel loco opaco,

quivi in più d'una lingua e in più d'un stile

rivi traea sin dal gorgoneo laco.

 Satire, Ariosto

It was Giuditta Broome's idea to start Arts Parks, back in early 2008. She came to the group with the notion that virtual worlds offer the opportunity to expand on a real life phenomenon, the literary park, and illustrated what she meant by showing us two places not far from her home, Parco Pirandello and Parco Salvatore Quasimodo. The parks aren't just museums to two Nobel prize winning writers; they go further than simply ... pickling their poetry, as it were.

The poetry of E Millay and Michelle Babii's photos

Built Wright

It was Rowan Derryth of Prim Perfect who suggested I go over to the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum and meet up with Bacchus Ireto, the Curator and a fine builder in his own ...right. OK that's the only one, I promise.

Perhaps like me you think of Wright as an architect of the 1930's or 40's but in reality he was born not long after the end of the Civil War, in the period in which the Suez Canal was completed, and Dickens was on tour, Garibaldi was marching on Rome, and America was out buying Alaska. Wright's mother wanted him to be an architect, and in his autobiography he cites Froebel blocks (a sort of knobless precursor to Lego), pictures of cathedrals on the nursery wall, and summers spent toiling on his uncle's farm - but also taking the time to study the lie of the land - among his strongest influences. Well, the two semesters of civil engineering at U Wisconsin probably didn't hurt. He had a boatload of wives and partners, and lived through many personal storms (including the chilling Taliesin incident) and built homes, theatres, and cathedrals to God and Mammon not only across the Midwest, but from New York to California, even spending a few years in Japan.  He founded a school for architects, the Taliesin Fellowship, which favoured the hands-on approach to building (and probably contributed to his creative longevity) and wrote numerous books and papers. Fallingwater his most celebrated private residence is from 1936, and he was in his 80's when he designed the Guggenheim on Fifth Avenue.

There's way more to be said, and the FLWVM Welcome Center fills in the rest with elegance and vivacity. Even a few minutes in this Artful suite, bright with stained glass and redwood just like Wright's houses, are enough to get an idea of the scope of his creativity through photos and notecards.
I asked Bacchus where the name of the sim 'Usonia' came from.
Bacchus Ireto: Usonia is an acronym for the United States of North America; no one is entirely sure where Wright found it, it seems the author Samuel Butler first used it in the early 1900s and Wright appropriated it to describe the architecture he was building in the 1930s as liveable for modern Americans. We had a 'Usonian buildoff' back in February with about14 amateur and 12 pro builders competing, and you can see some of the entries here on the sim.
Afterwards, I noticed I was standing next to this huge 'Usonian Principles' board ... will the humiliation never end? No, don't answer that one. There is a huge amount of information here so take it up to the cafe on the third floor and have a read over a brew. While you're up there, take a moment to admire the theatre which is based on the interior of Wright's Unity Temple, in Chicago. They hold seminars here.

Bacchus Ireto: When our group was formed last summer, the mission from the beginning was educational.  In this gallery and the one above it are the permanent exhibit to introduce visitors to Wright and his architecture. The sim existed on rented land to begin with, but when we moved to our own sim, we rebuilt the museum buildings. A team of builders worked together on the sim design and physical plant, and how to display the houses to the best advantage. We've tried to show how each house fits into Wright's career, and the museum sponsors build offs throughout the year, geared to a specific style related to Wright in some way. He was quite a character, but aside from that, he is part of a school of architects that tried to develop what they thought of as a purely American architectural style, instead of relying on the past, or European influences and I find his homes true works of art in themselves. I'm a history student in RL, but in SL I build. At the beginning I was pretty inept, I learned by tearing apart prefabs. I commissioned a FLW house to live in and invited Frey over to see it, which is how I came to be curator here.

He's too modest. Bacchus' reconstruction of the first Usonian house, the Herbert Jacobs Residence from 1935, has just been approved for the sim. The FLWVM is the virtual worlds licensee for the RL Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation which must approve the builds that are placed here so standards are very high. I wondered if the group think Wright would have liked or used SL?

Bacchus Ireto: We've had discussions on that. Wright pushed the technology of the time, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. I think he would be frustrated by SL's building limitations sometimes: but unlike some architects, who really were more theoretical and rarely built things, Wright meant his houses to be lived in, and as you know, building in SL has some things you have to adapt to allow for cam controls and things. I think he would have been interested in the freedom of SL - but he was a funny person though, hard to predict his reaction.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum CEO is Frey Bravin, a web developer in RL, a builder in SL, and a lifelong Wright fan.
Frey Bravin: I first got interested in Wright's work when I was around 5 years old. We were out driving one day and passed by the Gregor Afleck house in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It was the most amazing, beautiful house that I had ever seen in my short life; there was something about the house, how it just blended into the woods around it and became a part of them. It gave me an interest and a love of architecture that I have had to this day. I've driven past that house thousands of times and I never fail to look at it and smile every time I see it. I've been working on a SL version of the Affleck house for some time now but I'm way too picky and will not be happy with it untill I get it just right.

OK that time it was him not me.

The sim creates that magical 'been there' feel -  the best of virtual tourism, hey - you can sit on the roof, stumble through the kitchen, even fly across the terraces, and nobody tells you off!
Frey Bravin: Yes, that was the main objective here, to try and expose Wright's work that otherwise may have never had a chance to see it. We currently have seven houses on display but we plan on expand that to about 24 and rotate them, and we currently have three in production.  I've been really lucky with collaborators. We have had a lot of really good people want to be a part of this. It takes a big commitment and you have to be able to work as a team. The first person to join me was Rosie Oldrich right after I first started and she is now the Assistant Director We have a great partnership with the Builders Brewery, a group founded by Supremius Maximus and his partner Sensuous Maximus. They've been major supporters of the museum and a godsend to us. They run classes and events to encourage intelligent design on their sim, and collaborate with our projects, so its worked out very well for us all.
Sim Builders Brewery sounds wonderful, and I thought about TPing over, but their charter says 'no cursing' so I don't think they'd let me in. At least not this morning. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, or should that be among the prairies... sim Usonia is laid out in chronological order, and is a gallery of bravura building talent - many of SL's most prestigious names have lent their skills to making this project happen. It is amazing how relatively easy it is to cam inside the structures and I wondered if there was some kind of magic cheating with proportions, or if the houses are really that avie friendly.

 Frey Bravin: To some extent they really are just that friendly. Fallingwater in RL is a really small dwelling, interior-wise, so probably is the hardest to navigate for avatars. We try to build as close to the real scale as possible, using the original plans, so you can really get a true feel for the house.  I have a pretty good collection of books by and about Wright,  but I think my favorite is the Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide which deals with every biulding that he did, and the unbuilt designs also. If I had all the prims and the time necessary, I would love to make the unbuilt Arizona State Capitol Building that he designed.

Drop in at Usonia for the art, for the culture, and for their Friday Fling, from 6-9 pm SLT, or - as pictured here - be there on Sunday between 12-2 pm SLT for 80's music at the Breeze.