Rock Paper

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!