Short and sweet

I was checking out the talent at PiRatsthe other day and wow! some of the art was super nice also.   I'm fairly certain that's not low tar. Eventually I got chatting to Dulcis Taurog. We were pretty in pink, it was like an explosion in a peppermint factory, I liked it. She has a show on at another Pirats gallery, called Linkers.
Dulcis Taurog: I make these completely within SL. I make odd objects, color them, then use different lighting and water settings to get the effects. The wave pattern? it's based on a Japanese textile wave pattern i made it for this show, because of the water theme in this gallery. I don't do any art work in RL, I'm self taught in SL, and found my own techniques here. I wanted to make art, and had little opportunity. Then I started to make things here, and found I could make 'painting' like pictures. I just pursued that then, people liked them, and I have even had the chance to exhibit here! I started out wanting to make Japanese houses, gardens and tea bowls. I've always wished I could do paintings like the ink landscapes of Japan and China and I also love the colorful expression in abstract paintings, so I've tried to capture some of all that.
She showed me her abstract art, and explained her process.

Dulcis Taurog: I usually start with an idea, more like an effect I want to try, or I see a painting I want to try to get the feel of here. I think of how I could use the techniques available here to get an effect, but the end result is usually far off my original idea, but still something I like. The biggest drawback to my art in SL is probably the limit on resolution, and my art is only inworld, I've nothing in RL, but I don't mind that so much. The best thing is that I can show people from all over the world, that many like it, and that here I can be an artist. It's also fun that I have developed techniques using refraction and reflection to obtain a paint-like effect. It's tedious in ways, I've shown people and most don't care for it.  But I can show you, right here if you like, it would take about 10 minutes.

She did. Here's her secret... You simply rez a cube into water, preferably somewhere with a nice current or turbulence. Put your preferred texture on the top side and lower the prim until it's below water. Set your camera so you're looking down on the picture. Then you make sure your graphics preference is good or better, and go to world -   sun -   water settings and then mess about with all the sliders to your heart's content. It's a lot of fun and you may make your own masterpiece! I think it's nice that she wants to share her method with others, too. On a personal note, yes, those are very big boots.

Today, though, today was another story. Sometimes you don't have time, but you should make time, and you won't be sorry. Sometimes.

Simeon Beresford and the others were all over at Bookstacks doing the poetry thing, and wow Leslye Writer was there! She snuck an original piece past Simeon; she didn't know the Saturday session is really only for published favourites, who today included Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ogden Nash, and most striking of all, Simeon's reading of Langston Hughes' Daybreak in Alabama in his distinctive Welsh accent.   The piece Leslye read she calls 104, I call it 170 times, it narrates a fragment of life seen through the windshield of  repetition: driving, domesticity, and those places on the way that are visibly unseen - but enough! get her to read it to you, it's much better that way.
I wanted to know more about her life.

Leslye Writer: Listening and writing........that is what I do. I rezzed in 2007, and wandered 'lonely as a cloud' for a few days until I found the writing community. Inksters was my first group. I remained silent and almost invisible as I listened to the Second Life poets and writers until the day I felt courageous enough to read one of my poems. Now I will read to anyone who will listen but I don't have a very expansive body of work for the over ten year old age group. Most of my life I have written for children. I only recently started writing poems for my peers.
Leslye is also interested in Second Life Photography, and will soon open an exhibition of photographs she has taken of SL writers performing at readings over the past three years. If you'd like to see her current show, Pathfinders, it's on over at Da Vinci Isle. She also introduced another amazing piece by W Somerset Maugham the first 'chapter' (it's more like a prose poem) of The Trembling of a Leaf called The Pacific.
Have a read.

Quick Lit

I am part of all that I have met...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

What a fab day in SL... there was a mind-bending session at Tuna Oddfellow's regular mindbendathon, - I gots me a free hat, too - then it was off to Bookstacks to be part of the audience at Kghia Gherardi and Simeon Beresford's fascinating podcast about publishing - they interviewed the RL team who run Jackson Street Publishing. It is also available on Radio Riel, as you probably know, so you can listen from the comfort of your own octopus. After the show, I went to another favourite haunt of mine, the inworld studio of  Patrick Faith, in SL Kolor Fall. He has a new dancing primmobile that allows you to float purposefully around the canyon and waterways of his beautiful wilderness at KolorFalls, and he let me take a test ride: no pictures, I was showing my knickers in an unseemly manner. Oh well, what the heck, you've no doubt seen worse. If you've not been to  KolorFalls and its sister sim Kolor
yet, well, you should go, but I'd have to say pants are a must. To take the ride, click on one of the cubes rising from the water near the waterfall, also look around carefully and you'll find little gifties by Kolor, 'drawable' earrings, that you'll love.

More about Tuna and his magic music mixes in a future post, this man's Got Talent (and a million bucks...) Other adventures followed, but one of my best 'discoveries' of the day was the new Inksters website, they have abandoned Blogger for the much more swanky Wordpress site Virtual Literary Salon - stunning photos supply the visual imagery intended to cue literary inspiration ! Even if you aren't able to join in the writing competitions, you'll love their photos, they made me realize for the nth time how many places I've not yet been inworld...

wow so many more parts to be part of... and so little Sunday in which to do it!

In and about

"Merciful heavens! I should be terrified at the very idea of living here."
"You would have thought so, wouldn't you?" said Dr Emilius Browne. "I am, by nature, a little bit of a coward, but then I pondered, as I often do; in the perverse nature of things, this diabolical object is probably the best friend I ever had. It's enabled me for the first time in my life to live like a king. Shall we go in?"

Mary Norton: Bedknobs and Broomsticks

More of that later.

TechSoup Digital Storytelling Event is for non-profits who want to get their message out there via Second Life, and digital media in general. It's an initiative with support from many household names like YouTube, Flickr, Adobe and Youth Radio, so this is serious stuff...here's their blurb:

“Every organization has a story to tell. But yours doesn’t have to be a bland, corporate-sounding video or canned sound bite. Even with limited resources, time, or skills, your nonprofit can tell a compelling story that captures the importance and impact of your cause — and we’ve got an event that will show you how!”
OK I realize I should have mentioned all this before not after the main event, but TechSoup isn't over yet! At Nonprofit Commons I met up with In Kenzo, an inworld consultant to TechSoup, and asked what it was all about.

In Kenzo: TechSoup started hosting nonprofit meetings back when I first started building here back in 2006. This community has been the most stable I have been a part of in my years here. They empower hundreds of nonprofits in SL and thousands more through discounted software and technology tools. So I help them with mixed reality events including the Digital Storytelling Challenge and webinars starting next week. We'll be here 9/30 with an introduction to digital storytelling as it is used well by our partners and leaders in both business and nonprofit sectors. Then on 10/1 at 9AM we come back to do a one hour how-to-guide for nonprofits looking to create their stories for video or photo essay on the web. The challenge begins and groups will have nearly 3 weeks to produce a short piece, to be screened at the TechSoup Global Headquarters in San Francisco on 10/21 at 7PM. We'll have a mixed reality party that night to show the winners and share our stories together.

If you're curious to know more about In Kenzo there's a machinima blog well worth a look: this Green Fairy has creativity to spare!

And if you want to rub virtual shoulders with all kinds of silicon socialites, and make your mark in the world of Good Causes, put the 21st in your diary - better still, get creative, make the most of the extraordinary help on offer, and put your non-profit on the map!
OOO spooky... over at the haunted reading room at Milk Wood Library, on Fridays, you can hear Emz Mazie (in RL Emerian Rich) read a chapter from her new book about vampires, Night's Knights. There is a picture of her looking appropriately vampirish in the Italian bit, which may or may not be finished when you toodle down there to check. I am semi on strike, waiting for someone to pass me filthy lucre via the 'happy readers' section on your left, you see. If you missed the first instalments of Emz's book, you can catch up at www.vamp.mevio.com.
Emz Mazie: My group Quills has a little hangout on Book Island. They record their podcast there every other week,and recently had a Wicked Women Writers challenge. Emz and 4 other RL women writers were on live to chat about books, the writing process, and being an author in SL, and you can listen to what Quills has to offer at. It's been a while since I TP'd over to West of Ireland, and so I took the opportunity to drop in on their reading room to hear Caledonia Hightower reading Mary Norton's classic The Magic Bedknob (you may know it better as the film starring Angela Lansbury Bedknobs and Broomsticks). I love WOI because the the sim is designed to be both pleasing and low lag, and it is a great place to hear live books, other readers include WOI luminaries such as Derry McMahon and Elder Priestman who often do two-hand narrations. The sim supports a very good RL cause, providing activities to help Irish communities integrate in a spirit of tolerance and friendship, so show your Linden love if you stop by.

Wow was it really almost a week ago? On Sunday last Merlino Mayo kindly reminded me that they were re-showing Metropolis over at sim Benvolio. By Metropolis, I don't mean simply an inworld cinematic showing of the 1927 Fritz Lang film, but a fantastic 3D re-enactment of the film using avatar actors including Debbie Trilling, MillaMilla Noel, Efrantirse Morane, Josina Burgess and Velazquez Bonetto. It was all very cleverly done. You sit down and then, along with the camera closeups visible from each seat, the whole audience is moved around the sim so they become part of the action. There are all kinds of flames, and people looking pretty angry, and a huge robot. No, I have no idea what the film is about, I am a total ignoramus, but I bet you know it, and it was great to look at. Even more impressive when you stop to think about all the TPs, animations and poses the actors had to manipulate in what appears a seamless performance. It was amazing! I could see why Merlino had been to see the show five times, I definitely would like to go again myself. Check the group notices and the blog to learn when they'll next be doing their thing.

Metropolis is the second project of its kind by the CARP team (they did Pink Floyd's The Wall My photos are, well, you're better off going to the diabolus/CARP collection at Flickr. The one-hour event is the result of months of rehearsal, building, and scriptmaking, a true labour of love for the first full length Science Fiction film. I spoke to Velazquez Bonetto about the project after the show.

Velazquez Bonetto: The whole idea to bring Metropolis into SL was Debbie Trilling's, but we have all contributed. My group provides the space on our sim. It's called The Art Space Diabolus and was founded in SL on the 24th june 2007 by Caravaggio Bonetto, Josina Burgess and myself for Experimental Cybernetic Art. Windy Lane made the scenery, Sca Shilova built the robot and the animations for it. Also, Nnoiz Papp composed the music, Josina Burgess created all the characters, making botht the avatars and their costumes. I'm an industry designer and a computer scientist in RL, so SL is a nice game for me, and I contributed by rebuilding the whole Metropolis, and writing programs and scripts, and setting the stages. To see more about the group and their avant-garde aspirations for avatar art, go to the diabolus website and wallow in world wild webbery, and there are loads of machinima on Youtube too...

∻∼∾⊰⊱∾∼∻

TechSoup! Un minestrone di tecnologia, in questo caso attrezzi, consigli, consulenze gratuite per chiunque abbia un ente non a scopo di lucro e lo vuole pubblicizzare. Con la partecipazione di ditte.com RL quale YouTube, Flickr, Adobe, TechSoup ha lanciato un concorso e una serie di webinar (seminari via web) partendo dal ragionamento che ogni causa per trovare nuovi sostenitori deve sapersi 'raccontare'... catturare l'immaginazione di possibili nuovi aderenti. Questa iniziativa accavalla il reale e il virtuale, posita SL come organo potentissimo di informazione e di attivismo. A Nonprofit Commons troverai molte informazioni su questa iniziativa che si conclude il 21 ottobre. Qui nella foto vedi In Kenzo, in SL dal 2006, una consulente per il gruppo, TechSoup che lei definisce uno dei più seri e validi in SL.

In Kenzo: Io do una mano con questi eventi mixed reality. Sono qui per la Digital Storytelling Challenge, in cui è stato lanciato la sfida di inventare il modo più efficace e avvincente di raccontare la passione e l'importanza del proprio gruppo. Oggigiorno il pubblico viene bombardato da messaggi, pubblicità, notizie e novità, e non è facile trasmettere in poche istanti un messaggio importante. Vogliamo aiutare la gente a commmunicare in modo vivace e memorabile, e alla fine di questo corso, ci sarà una grande festa sia in SL, qui al Non Profits, sia a San francisco, alla sede centrale di TechSoup, per premiare il filmato, la 'storia' più avvincente.... se vuoi migliorare il tuo inglese in un ambiente accogliente e tranquillo dove spesso appaiono fate e folletti, questo può essere il sim per te, il West of Ireland, sim ad opera di beneficenza che aiuta ragazzi nordirlandesi cattolici e protestanti a convivere e conoscersi meglio. Se ci fai un salto, sarai accolto con entusiasmo e buon umore da Derry Macmahon e Elder Priestman owners e builders della biblioteca. Legge ogni settimana la brava Caledonia Hightower una puntata del libro Il Magico Pomo d’Ottone di Mary Norton poi divenuto un film Disney.

Degna di SL, questa scena dal film Pomi d'ottone e manici di scopa in cui la buon vecchia Miss Price con un tocco di magia brittanica respinge le forze nazistiche.

Non solo folletti simpatici in Second Life... ci sono anche degli spiriti assai più malvagi. Come le forze del male nel nuovissimo libro di Emz Mazie, I cavallieri della notte, o in inglese il più linguisticamente contorto Night's Knights. L'autrice ci ha letto il primo capitolo nella stanza incantata di Milk Wood Library. un appuntamento ogni venerdi sera, per l'orario, puoi consultare le notice di Virtual Writers o Bookstacks. Se hai perso qualche puntata. puoi anche ascoltare l'archivio a www.vamp.mevio.com.

Emz ha un gruppo chiamato Quills (Calami). Hanno uno spazio su Book Island, e questa settimana ci saranno 5 scrittrici che parleranno sull'argomento: Autrici Peccaminose... informati sul gruppo Quills inworld.Una settimana fa, mi ha segnalato Merlino Mayo una performance del gruppo CARP a sim Benvolio hanno fatto un performance del film Metropolis uno dei primi film fantscienza, una produzione incredibile, per le prestazioni degli attori Debbie Trilling, MillaMilla Noel, Efrantirse Morane, Josina Burgess e Velazquez Bonetto, per le scene, le animations, il robot.....ecco le mie foto, ma meglio andare a Flickr oppure direttamente al loro sito diabolus ... io devo uscire in real... a dopo...

Leaves in the Stacks

It may happen that we do not want the most beautiful form, but one of our own designing.

Shirley Hibberd.

Simeon Beresford and Kghia Gherardi started Bookstacks about a year and a half ago, and bought sim Awen at the end of last year. I asked Kghia ("call me K") what had brought her - and keeps her - inworld.

Kghia Gherardi: I think people who become part of a community are more likely to stay in SL. I came in a couple of years ago, thanks to the book-trading website Bookmooch. It was an opportunity to talk about books with other readers, and that initial meeting evolved in time to our Book Lover's Sunday Socials, here at Bookstacks on sim Awen. Simeon and I met inworld at a gathering of book lovers. This is my favorite place in SL, Simeon built the pub: I don’t build anything that takes more than 1 prim, but I wanted a nice place in which to curl up with a book. The Guild of UK Writers(SL) has one island here. We’ve partnered with them, which means we can reach a broader audience, but timing is a challenge. For example, for Off the Shelf, the producer lives in Hawaii. She and Simeon are 10 hours apart. But it's worth it! Off the Shelf is a half-hour Arts talk-show, made in collaboration with Radio Riel and the Second Life Literary Foundation, and goes out every two weeks on Sundays at 1.00pm SLT. Upcoming guests include poet Manx Wharton, and Explorer Dastardly who uses SL to tell the story of her mother's experiences as a survivor of the Shoah, Book Island's very own Selina Greene and author and podcaster Mark Eller. I really like the main reading room at Bookstacks, it feels like the lobby of an old-fashioned hotel, and it was here a few weeks back that I enjoyed Simeon's reading of MR James ghost story: his lilting Welsh accent carried it off perfectly. I asked Kghia how easy it is to organize events like that.

Kghia Gherardi: That reading was part of Horror Fest - which involved a solid 15 hours of programming, not including all the time involved in planning and organizing it. As you can imagine, this is a labor of love, we don't charge our public. There seems to be concern about multiple events being offered at the same time. I see it as positive. We can team up with other groups to offer a huge variety of activities in SL, so readers and writers from all over the world can choose what really interests them. This Japanese book, for example, is on loan to us from the library at Amatsu Shima. We are scheduling a reading by the librarian there, Pomona Writer. The library is part of the Alexandrian Free Library network, which you may have heard of if you know the Caledon Library, directed by JJ Drinkwater. Since my interest is in 19th century English and American literature, the Caledon connection is a natural fit. Last year JJ and I coordinated a Jane Austen discussion in conjunction with the PBS airing of movies based on her novels. I have a new discussion series starting there in April called Whitman Weekly, where we'll be looking at sections of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Join Bookstacks for regular notices, and to find out more!
Interestingly, Whitman self-published his first volume of 12 poems: the title is an ironic pun on a derogatory term used by publishers for minor works - 'grass'. He wanted his book to be pocket-sized, since that would "tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air, I am nearly always successful with the reader in the open air." The slim first volume grew into a mighty 35 book collection containing some of the most enduring classics of 19th century American verse.
Kghia Gherardi: If I were to make an Art park, as you call it, I'd pick Walt Whitman. It would be some place with a large expanse of grass to lay on; but in reality, Whitman loved all aspects of America. His poems catalog the urban and the rural, the sophisticated and the simple. He would have embraced all of Second Life, accepted it all, and celebrated it.

Succede che la forma che desideriamo non sia quella più bella, ma quella fatta apposta per noi

Shirley Hibberd.

Il segreto di una felice e lunga seconda vita? Trovarsi una communità idonea e servirla, secondo bibliotecaia e owner di Bookstacks Isle, Kghia Gherardi. In SL da oltre due anni, lei ha trovato SL attraverso il sito Bookmooch (disponibile anche in italiano!) Da quegli incontri con altri amanti della letteratura del '800 è nato il suo gruppo Bookstacks, e dal 2008 anche un luogo d'incontro su sim Awen. Qui vedi il pub, creato da Simeon Beresford. Insieme a Kghia, Simeon gestisce e organizza moltissimi eventi in SL; Simeon è anche un lettore bravissimo, l'ho sentito un paio di settimane fa durante il Horror Fest, nella parte inglese vedrai una foto di lui, mentre ci leggeva un racconto di M R James maestro della ghost story. Ha l'accento gallese perfettamente addatto al racconto. Il gruppo non era grandissimo, ma la stanza era comoda e di sentiva proprio come se ci fossimo radunati in un vecchio albergo inglese, tutti intorno al camino, mentre uno degli ospiti ci intratteneva con una storia come si faceva una volta, prima della TV e la radio, prima dell'internet.Kghia Gherardi: Quando sono arrivata in SL, non c'era molta scelta per chi come me voleva una seconda vita letteraria. Oggi in Sl la scelta è vasta, diversa, e sempre in evoluzione. Per alcuni questo pare un problema, visto che il pubblico è limitato, vuol dire che siamo in concorrenza tra di noi, ma io preferisco vedere l'ampliata scelta come un'occasione di servire il pubblico con più 'piatti' - nel nostro pub diamo spazio ad altri gruppi letterari di fare pubblicità. Questo per noi è un lavoro fatto col cuore, non a scopo di lucro. Per organizzare le 15 ore di eventi per Horror Fest, ad esempio, ci sono voluti molti giorni e la cooperazione di molti volontari. Attraverso l'Alexandrian Free Library, (una rete di biblioteche reali e virtuali) abbiamo legami anche con il sim giapponese Amatsu Shima (vuole dire isola divina) - ci hanno prestato questo prezioso libro, e fra qualche settimana la direttrice della loro biblioteca Pomona Writer verrà a Bookstacks a fare una presentazione. Come per tutti, a volte crea difficoltà la questione del fuso orario: io e Simeon ci troviamo su continenti diversi, e ci siamo 'alleati' con il Guild of UK Writers (SL), un gruppo basato in Europa... e per la nostra nuova iniziativa, un programma sull'Arte in SL che va in onda via podcast, non ti dico! Il produttore si trova nelle Hawaii, Simeon in Inghilterra - una differenza d'orario di dieci ore!

Il nuovo programma di Simeon e Kghia si chiama Off The Shelf, va in onda ogni 2 settimane, su Radio Riel, (domenica ore 13.00 SLT) : è un'ottimo esempio dello spirito di cooperazione di cui parlava Kghia. Tra i collaboratori UK Guild of Writers, Radio Riel, e il Second Life Literary Foundation.
Kghia in RL ha un Master's in letteratura americana e inglese del '800, naturalmente si sente un forte legame con la biblioteca Caledon Library, diretto da JJ Drinkwater. L'anno scorso hanno organizzato una serie di serate all'insegna di Jane Austen a coincidere con la serie di film basati sui romanzi della nota autrice messi in onda sul canale televisivo americano PBS. Ad aprile, Kghia organizza incontri settimanali per parlare delle poesie di Walt Whitman. Fatto interessante: questa sua prima collezione di dodici poesie Whitman l'ha pubblicata a proprie spese. Il nome Foglie d'erba è un gioco di parole: 'erba' era la definizione spregiativa data alle opere minori dalle case editrici. Whitman volle che il suo libro dalla copertina verde fosse dalle dimensioni tascabili, poiché "inducesse alla gente di portarmi con loro e di leggermi quando escono all'aria aperta. Ho quasi sempre più fortuna con il lettore all'aria aperta." Quelle 12 poesie sono divenute trentacinque libri - classici della letteratura americana, letti in tutto il mondo.
Kghia Gherardi: Se dovessi io creare un Parco d'Arte come lo definisci tu, farei un'omaggio a Walt Whitman. Sarebbe un prato immenso, una prateria, dove ci si potrebbe stendere; ma in realtà Whitman amò ogni aspetto dell'America. Le sue poesie sono inni alla vita delle grandi città e quella della campagna, il sofisticato e il semplice. Avrebbe accolto tutto di Second Life, l'avrebbe accettata in ogni suo aspetto, e l'avrebbe cantata.