Dream Girl: Kiana Writer

...that's about levels after levels after levels of puzzles and monsters

Kiana Writer

It's 2007. At La Cittadella, two newbs observe the line of people waiting to camp at the Discoteca.
Newb One: What this place needs is something to do, kinda like WoW-lite, an hour-long mini quest, along the lines of a disaster movie. Like The Poseidon Adventure. Look at all these people queuing to camp! Suppose 10 of them paid, idk, 20L to play. They'd be the cast of the story facing hazards and obstacles; along the way, 8 of them 'die'. The two who make it out alive get 50L. They meet new friends, have fun, and we make some money.
Newb Two: It's an idea. Do you know anyone who could script something like that? Or build it? Or find the land to do it on? Or deal with the complaints from disgruntled players?
Newb One: Um, no, no, no and no.
New Two: I thought not. Let's go dancing.
         He was right. I hadn't got any of those skills. But around the same time, across the grid and in Finland, Kiana Writer was taking a broadly similar notion and turning it into a dream come true. Not the Poseidon Adventure, but the Harvey Hunt.
Kiana Writer: It took me a while to figure out this place and what was possible here. I was a cop at a race track, then a host at Dance Island. It used to crash nonstop and you'd have to wait a long time to get back online but people would still do it and not whine so much. I started writing for magazines and exploring a lot, and I wondered why there weren't things to do that I enjoy. Point and click adventure games for example. I wanted to try something. A friend and I brought out Where the Hell is Harvey Wayne on Feb 22nd, 2008. I used the connections of the sim owners I had written about and placed a lot of posters around.

          They funded the cypher-driven hunt by charging the venues involved, so they didn't put RL money into the game at all. On the back of that success they then set up a Survivor-type game with two tribes competing for a prize. After a while, though, Kiana's partner got fed up with all the whining and quit, after ejecting all the members and flattening the land. Even that setback didn't dampen Kiana's spirit. She determined to carry on alone. Alone, up to a point. She set up a hunt by herself, but soon others were volunteering themselves and their friends to get involved. The Zodiac Killer was the next venture, and soon it was called MadPea, and Kiana found herself surrounded by a team, many of whom who have come to be like family. So many personalities, so many ideas. Does she have to be tough?

Mind the Gap

In 975, the mind of many a Wessex nobleman was exercised by the increasing wealth and influence of the Benedictine monasteries and a quarrel between the great lords Aelfthere and Aethelwine. Civil War was in the air. St Dunstan, who had been himself a monk and later Abbot of Glastonbury and was now Archbishop of Canterbury, had allied himself closely with Edgar of Wessex and indeed it was Dunstan who devised the coronation ceremony (still essentially used to this day) full of mystical imperialism, which moved other monarchs of Britain to pledge allegiance to Edgar, King of the West Saxons. The achievement was short-lived. After only two years Edgar died, leaving his teenage son Edward (born, some say, of an illicit relationship with Aethelflaed, the 'White Duck', cloistered away in the nunnery at nearby Shaftesbury) to take the throne. 

The succession was anathema to Edward's stepmother Aelfthrith who naturally favored her own boy, Ethelred, later to prove himself 'Unready' (meaning 'without good advice'). For the next three years Aelfthrith plotted Edward's downfall. And so it was that in 975 AD after a reign of little more than a thousand days, King Edward, not yet seventeen, was lured under mysterious circumstances to the castle at Corfe, a Saxon word meaning 'gap', and there met his death.

It is a place of ghosts.

Method and Madness

Kenya's Feed A Smile is a great charity and Kiana the maddest pea of them all is trying to raise money for them in Second Life. The MadPea crew have set up a charity auction in a park at  Mad City among the wildly beautiful New York sims. The auction starts February 15th and runs through February 23rd.

The idea is that you bid on people offering goods or services or, in the case of the celebs, maybe just 'to spend time' with them. And there are some pretty well-known names up there, all the way from Bryn Oh to Drax. (OK you're expecting some comment like :"I would pay good money to have Drax pass 24 hours without spamming about himself and that bloody Fluffee", right? You're out of luck. This is 'don't mention the Drax' week. Thank God it's Thursday.)

Wear it well: Kikas Babenco

          Here's Kikas Babenco, coming to you from sunny Portugal, with impeccable English, learnt 'with the Beatles' and via many, many books. She teaches graphic arts and introduction to multimedia in real life.

           In Second Life you'll most likely know her from the joint performances – or better 'Adventures' - with her RL and SL partner Marmaduke Arado. For Kikas, art is about questioning the world around us, but from a positive point of view. She's all about hope, and good companionship, and... well, let her tell you.

The Vanishing

You've a couple more weeks to see Fuschia Nightfire's 'Not Everything Is Plain Black & White' on sim MetaLES.

That 'Not' is a marvellous paradox in this sparkling concoction of night and day, town and country, earth and sky, protagonist, victim and observer. Fuscia's RL professionalism glows in the clarity of her brief notecard, which gives her visitors credit for using their own imagination. No windy exposition here, Fuschia knows how to vanish into her work, and yet be ever present. It's a level of skill very very few artists in SL have the confidence, or the competence, to achieve.

Contradicting artistic conventions from the word go, the landing point is the free Gift Shop. Jump through the floor, and you're confronted by a shivering cityscape, and tunnels that are lines of promise going nowhere.

Many immersive builds include very specific costumes - sometimes complete avatars, but Fuschia takes the broader approach of the consummate artist by supplying black and white skins and clothes for those who wish to mix and match and invent their own greyscale fantasy. In my perverse blue state of mind, Fuschia's rainstorm hat seemed a propos. Fully interactive, you can add your photos to the build's Flickr Group, and the pictures there show many vistiors vanishing into the art in the most exquisite way.
For a more moving approach, here's Spiral Silverstar's vid of the build, but check out Fuschia's own film, and another nice machinima by Praxisfield Resident

The lunar-like sim is scattered with wonderful sculptures.

 Some confront head on the tension between light and darkness, while others invite a more subtle inquiry into our personal nuances, posing the eternal question of poses, for example.

Perhaps the most powerful element is out on the ice. A tiny gallery coolly explicates the vernissage experience; you mingle with two dimensional characters with shadowy nothing-names, contemplating a black canvas, becoming - what? Part of the art? Or part of the limnal experience, somewhere between showing and being shown? As always, choice of conclusion is left to the viewer.
Clever work. If  art is perception, then this is our vanishing point, to which we submit, and which, in turn, reflects us all.

Fuschia Nightfire's build 'Not Everything Is Plain Black & White' remains on sim MetaLES until February 20th.

Calendar girl

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!

Moving pictures

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

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.

Whoot

There's no getting away from it, you can always recognize a Caerleon build. No matter who is in charge of the construction, or whether you're in SL or reactiongrid, they suggest the study of an absent-minded professor, a mess of precious manuscripts and useful equations jumbled about the place. The cardigan and pipe tobacco imagery fade, though, when you get down to the individual sections of the build, and the new show Identity is no exception. A work in progress for about a year, it will be up through the month of October, starting this Saturday.

Marshalled by the talented Freewee Ling, many fine artists have become involved with the project, I'm sure you can find a copy-n-paste to give you all eighteen names. Best of all, check out Botgirl's manly blog on the subject - OK, don't actually read the whole press release, it's like War and Peace, but there's a video presentation, Woot! It's a great introduction to the show, as well as a fine example of why voice morphing wins hands down as the creepiest idea LL ever came up with.