X rated

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.

Virtual Faith

Clouds of myst'ry pourin'

Confusion on the ground,

Good men through the ages

Tried to find the sun...

Creedence Clearwater Revival,  Who'll Stop The Rain

This week on the piece of grass next to the Omega snowglobe at PiRats you can see Totem, the new installation by Kolor Fall. The heart of this piece is a painting Kolor did last Saturday, look here to see it coming together.

 Kolor's experimenting with oils rather than his usual acrylics here, mixing his own colours and, in this case, has tried stand oil, perfect for keeping those whites white as well as reducing drying time. There's a figure towards the centre of the painting, and below two more, locked, it seems, in an endless embrace. Inworld, Kolor's imported the picture and then set it up on two prims in such a way as to create depth of field, the particles standing out in the foreground just as they do on the RL painting. More than that, he has expanded the concept into the familiar surroundings of his virtual playground, placing sections of the texture on columns and blocks and bubbles, filling the space with his own cello composition, over-arched by a strange dark forceful shape, reflected in the PiRats sea.

Is this our world, in the painting? Is that us, lost in the embrace of equals, surveyed from some hazy and unelaborated higher ground? Is that a tunnel, or perhaps a throat, an ascent among the chords, or a descent into the language of myth, the lowest form of truth? Trapped in the lag of PiRats, it's easy to see ourselves as primitive beings, victims of the mysterious whims of virtual weather - lag, and missing attachments, region restarts and distorted textures - and the power of the pantheon of Lindens who may or may not be directing our lives. Are they our totem? Not in the wooden pole sense, but in the anthropological sense, a non-human entity watching over the global clan. Should we believe in them? There are better blogs on the subject, no doubt, so I'll just take a page out of  Lévi Strauss' book and give you a field example: A woman told me the other day she felt she was living a charmed life in SL: several land deals had worked out in her favour,  she'd received some L$ from an unexpected source, and then a long-time griefer had suddenly disappeared from circulation. "I'm beginning to believe I have a Guardian Linden," she said, quite seriously.

Absurd, of course... or is it? The name itself is dense with signifying function. For unclubbable me, they never cross my mind; but two camps make their voices heard - those who see in Linden an almost malefic force, to be endured rather than appreciated, and those who read 'knowing a Linden' as a badge of pride. For the latter, does Kolor's opportunity to write an original piece of music for the opening of M Linden's art show place him high on that vague staircase between the watcher and the couple below? And vice versa? Does the totem choose and exclude? Are not all avatars equal, or are they only equal to their potential?
Is that going too far? In the language of California's Wintu tribe, there are five 'kinds' of knowledge: knowledge obtained through the eyes, or through other physical experience, knowledge reached through inference, or through deduction, and knowledge gained by hearsay. In a world made up of light and shadow, and the whispering grapevines of blogs and forums, the totem hangs in the hearsay, cord in hand, capable of pulling the plug on us all at any minute. Or is the Grid the totem, at turns dispassionate and spiteful, spectacularly open and then painfully narrow, freezing and freeing according to the rules of magic, not science? Among these forces, there are men and women, tinkerers and engineers, who have know how. Is the totem the knowhow itself?

I put it to Kolor that he is a shaman, manipulating the totem but not in control of it.
Kolor Fall: I'm not sure what to make of it myself. I for sure don't control it, I guess I "guide" it. This is running on a equation that I just slightly modified. I didn't place any of the prims ... aside from the invisible ones that are in the center of it. It moved the prims itself -  keeps on moving them actually ... a bit too much I think.
Certainly the version of Totem on sim Kolor is easier on the eye. It has a desolate quality that suggests it is far less visited than the PiRats sim; the construction has the advantage of being in its own element, not sandwiched between the other  exhibits, and here Kolor has added an extra feature.

Kolor Fall: Pirats is the same number of prims I think ... but there is no animal in the Pirats one; actually I think this would be cooler with less prims. Oh .. that's the totem animal, I guess... who knows? It's fun,  not so scary.
A personal totem, perhaps? Is the totem the viewer itself, the idiosyncratic gaze? At Pirats, a full sim is a captive audience, seeing and being seen, sharing lag and laughter, a source of satisfaction and performance anxiety for the artists and organizers; but when it comes to Totem, this audience in this setting is unlikely to observe the big picture. Yet they come and look. The instinct for huddling together, even in a world of effortless communication, remains one of the strongest forces at work. Can you see it? A constellation of far-flung illuminated screens, bright eyes and minds drawn to the warmth of shared praise, inventing and swapping accolades to glue themselves above and among each other, straying from the prosaic into the magical to find a frame of reference,  tumbling down the steps of emotion and intellect, drama and invention, concrete acts and rites, staging an epic tale on a platform as wide as the world. Do you believe that anybody is watching?

Night Fall

The Outdoors is by definition great, as is running about and the sound of childish shouting on the grass, and  misty hills in the distance, strawberries and birdsong; it's all great, and spring is entirely here, and there is so much to do, but at the end of the day nothing beats a bit of adult entertainment, full of smooth and unhurried wonder, allowing the mind to unwind into the night. The opportunity to do so at Kolor comes only occasionally, and last night was one of those magical hours, drawn together by a performance by Kolor Fall, cypress Rosewood and Skye Galaxy.
They are genuine fans of each other, and it shows - not only in their enthusiasm for working together, but in their refreshing lack of pretentiousness. Several years ago Kolor Fall, who's a RL painter and cellist, came across a live performance by cypress Rosewood. At the time Kolor was a newbie who 'didn't even understand streaming' but he knew he'd found something good. A simple IM to cypress (Tony Gerber in RL) at the end of the concert was the beginning of a firm friendship enriched by creative collaboration which, since January, has found definition in once-monthly concerts on sim Kolor. To those who know these men's otherworldly approach to their art it will come as no surprise that the overarching theme of these performances has been The Planets, with names like  Red Lashes of Mars and the Clouds of Jupiter and Europa under ice, seen here in Stretch Mayo's wonderful machinima.

In late 2009,cypress heard Skye Galaxy and  instantly became a fan. He tries never to miss one of Skye's concerts, and they play together whenever they get the opportunity. Skye and cypress are separated by a generation and thousands of miles, but there is a synchronicity in sound, and a profound mutual admiration and respect that draws them to each other and a growing audience to both. A dual stream with a life of its own, their performances have become some of the most well attended and critically acclaimed in SL.

Imagine a quantum state, by which we mean the mathematical description of an aspect of the known behaviour between matter and energy. When the relationship between two or more such matter-energy systems - existing perhaps thousands of miles apart, or perhaps on completely different planes - is so deeply intertwined that one cannot be described without fully describing the others, you have a quantum entanglement, the property that lies at the centre of the famous thought experiment developed by Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky at Princeton just before the war.

cypress Rosewood: When Kolor mentioned to me he'd been working on an installation based on the idea of quantum entanglement, I thought the concept was perfect for this month's concert, because it captures what I feel about my and Skye's performances.
The physical distances between the three artists melt away long before the concert, as Kolor hones his new sound theory and the visual elements of the tone poem, in the myriad forms possible through scripts and effects, all working not from a preconceived formula but responding directly to his voice and movement as he speaks and draws the word of the moment. Spontaneous but far from unprepared, the creative process for the concert at Kolor is best described as 'open'; collaborators and cronies hang and chat in voice, no-one is made to feel like an outsider, as Kolor tries out his drawing scripts and tinkers with transparency levels and hues, all the time asking how they seem to everyone else. The pre-show music was Kolor playing the cello, but you wouldn't hear him crowing about it. His easygoing manner and disarming modesty are matched by  cypress' warm voice and that articulate enthusiasm which only years of rich experience can produce.

Kolor Fall: There's a lot of long stories with no point to them told here, and people just hanging out... that was the last setup ... and those two messing around while i was trying to do the build. A lot goes into the building, but the scripts and the artwork always gets recycled into other projects, although in this case, at tonight's concert we'll be using the work I've been preparing for a 2-3000 prim install which is going up at PiRats in the near future.

The concert proper, which started just after 8 pm SLT, was at Kolor Studio with midnight set for optimum awesomeness. If you plan to attend next month  be sure to show up early, with as few running scripts as possible - take stuff off before you arrive, because once the lag sets in you may find it difficult. Don't wait for an invite - these are not precious people handing out exclusive invitations to their coterie - the simplest way to be sure not to miss it is to join cypress' group inworld, and wait for the LM or put www. cypressrosewood.com in your favourites!

I got so engrossed I didn't take any good photos, this is one by Laurenza Republic, (here's her Flickr photostream!!) and check cyp's website for the machinima when it comes out, as well as checking all the usual suspects' sources.
 Plumes of light responded to the moving music, an effect something like the fountains of the Bellagio, Kolor said he was going for - along with dancing bubbles, like the dancing cubes at his famous waterfall, made for an enchanting effect. Kolor turns off scripts on the sim and runs everything from its twin, but crashes and slowness are likely to dent the experience for anyone who doesn't have a gaming graphics card - but don't let that stop you, even if your visual experience isn't state of the art, the music and the atmosphere these three men create will transport you.
What will they do next? More magic, I have no doubt.

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!

Evora Story

If you had to sum up your Second Life in a single word, I wonder, what would it be? For Thirza, it is simply Evora. Everything that matters in her existence started and ended here, among these pixels. It has gone through myriad changes of fortune, and now jupyter Lecker has turned it into Castle Tale. I am utterly and unashamedly, foolishly in love with it, the narrow stairs and the mysterious rooms and passages, the balconies, the windows, the mist and the shadows. And the dragon. Jupyter's work is matched only by his generosity of spirit, and he has allowed us to fill the castle with some of my favourite artists, curated by Lion Igaly. On show are pieces by Aloisio Congrejo, Cristian Rexi, Feathers Boa, Igor Ballyhoo, Katy60it Cyberstar, Kicca Igaly, Kolor Fall, La Baroque, Lion Igaly, Lookatmy Back, nessuno Myoo, Shellina Winkler, Solkide Auer, Tani Thor, and Zhora Maynard. Personally, I prefer to explore the rooms slowly; the castle's bliss is the wanton difficulty of moving about the labyrinth, making discoveries as you go, taking your time. If you need to speed things up, however, you can click on the names above to go directly to a piece by each artist. You'll find a full list of LMs available onsite, which is helpful if you get lost or stuck... again thank you Lion for making this invaluable notecard. The credit for the show goes entirely to the generous creativity of all the artists, the amazing hard work of Lion Igaly and the dark talent of my beloved jupyter Lecker. We now have a .ning sister site, where you can find an absurd number of pictures of Evora, as well as the blog and other stuff, but it would be sweet if you came over to see the castle for yourself. The current artwork will be on display until January 15th. UNA FRASE PER DESCRIVERE LA TUA SECONDA VITA: quale ti viene in mente? La storia di Thirza la si può raccontare in una sola parola, Evora. Tutto per lei è nato qui - il bene e il male - , e ora, Evora è Castle Tale, opera del builder jupyter Lecker. Un castello difficile, misterioso, all'antica, un labirinto avvolto in ricordi sussurati, textures cupe di una bellezza fredda, pieno di giochi di ombra e luce, immerso nella nebbia eterna. L'adoro, specialmente il drago.Ora Evora è anche mostra d'arte. Curatore Lion Igaly ha organizzato l'esposizione di artisti meravigliosi quale Aloisio Congrejo, Cristian Rexi, Feathers Boa, Igor Ballyhoo, Katy60it Cyberstar, Kicca Igaly, Kolor Fall, La Baroque, Lion Igaly, Lookatmy Back, nessuno Myoo, Shellina Winkler, Solkide Auer, Tani Thor, and Zhora Maynard. Hanno abbellito i cortili e gli stanzoni con foto dipinti poesie e sculture. Se hai il tempo, il modo più suggestivo di visitare Castle Tale è a piedi, navigando per le scale anguste. Cliccando sui nomi qui sopra ti porterà subito alle opere principali, ma nel cortile troverai una dettagliatissima nota con LM in ordine alfabetico (grazie Lion!) molto utile se ti perdi nei sotteranei... ti invito anche a visitare il nuovo sito ning di ArtsParks, dove troverai una quantità assurda di foto di Evora, ma anche machinima, musica e forse qualche nuovo amico... ti aspetto.

Assisi as pie

RL Assisi is a beautiful hilltop town, full of light and fresh air and tourists. Religious, artistic historical, it brings in the crowds every year, all year, enchanted by the idea of 13th century mysticism, values of peace and love, and an escape from the materialism that pervades every age. The Basilica of San Francesco was finished in around 1280, and is probably best known for the frescoes of Giotto and Cimabue, the Godfathers of Italian painting. Hundreds were left homeless and the church was horribly damaged by a series of earthquakes in September 1997, when much of the timpano, the curving roof of the nave, collapsed onto the floor together with its priceless artwork. It turns out, previous anti-seismic 'improvements' - metal braces in the vault - increased the weightload on the fragile roof and actually made the disaster worse than it might otherwise have been. A phenomenal amount of work went in to making Assisi SL, but RL Assisi is tech savvy in its own way. The mayor of the city, Claudio Ricci, regularly and 'openly' comes into SL, and has in the past used it as a forum in which his constituents can approach him with questions. SL Assisi is pretty much a relic too, since it was built in ye olde 2007. That was the year SL exploded onto Italian consciousness, a time when lots of politicians, entrepreneurs and social thinkers came inworld bringing with them hopeful adherents of every kind. Much of the progressive spirit turned out to be either too pedestrian or too rarefied to survive the rigors of 'real' Second Life, but from that classic italianate fizzle, some quality remains... tee hee, I won't put that in the Italian bit, but it makes Assisi Sl even more interesting for its stamina, especially when you sit down and watch the footage of the earthquake, and start to grasp what the restoration process has involved.

I brought artist Kolor Fall to see Assisi with me, he looks like the Silver Surfer's beefier, brighter brother, he also has a better sense of humour. If you haven't seen Kolor's 'hands on' art, go over to his sim/studio and see/hear the new Lashes of Earth installation... among the magical elements, there are free 'drawable' earrings to be had. Must be worn to be believed.
The inworld Assisi build can be credited to, among others, quozar Winx, Sarg Bjornson, Whinge Languish and Oliver Wombat. There's a little Youtube machinima about the build also. I wanted to know how SL Assisi came about, so I talked to Simone Brunozzi...

Simone Brunozzi: I was born and grew up at Assisi and I've always been in love with the idea of love and brotherhood as expressed by St Francis, even though I consider myself an agnostic. I felt that SL would be a good way to bring Assisi to the many people who have never seen it in person. This is not a 'take' on Assisi, it was my intention to make something as close to reality as possible. There were a lot of technical difficulties to overcome: first of all, we had to keep the whole build to under 15000 prims, the presence at one time or another of as many as 90 people, and the fact we were trying to re-create a huge and irregular building complex. It took five people five months to put the whole thing together. We included a HUD in the build because, obviously, SL is open 24/7 and we can't always be present to give people the tour. My favourite part of the build? I'd have to say the upper Basilica. From both an artistic and architectural point of view, it's a masterpiece without equal.
At $L300 the HUD is way too expensive for my travel budget but if you are thinking of investing in it, you can get a preview by going to the Assisi blog. The sim may seem slightly underused; Simone told me he has no events planned - but he's a busy man, working as an 'evangelist' for Amazon in Luxembourg - a job he got through an inworld job fair, no less! Getting the job couldn't have been easier or less serendipitous. If you can read Italian or are willing to brave the hilarity of the translator, go and check out the adventure of his life clicking here.

Sembra quasi superfluo parlare con te di Assisi, una delle città più belle d'Italia, località di pace, di arte, di fede, di turismo. RL Assisi è San Francesco, è tradizione, è speranza, ma anche metaversalmente evoluta... il sindaco Claudio Ricci, si è fatto un ufficio e un avatar in SL - mi dicono una riproduzione fedelissimo della sua persona - per poter meglio communicare con i cittadini della sua città. Anche Assisi SL si può definire un monumento venerabile, esiste nel metaverso dal 2007... una sopravvivenza notevole. L'edificio virtuale è di un gruppo di collaboratori tra i quali quozar Winx, Sarg Bjornson, Whinge Languish e Oliver Wombat. Troverai qui una Youtube machinima francescana... ho chiesto a Simone Brunozzi l'owner di SL Assisi, quali erano le motivazioni dietro questo bellissmo build.
Simone Brunozzi: Sono nato e cresciuto ad Assisi e sono sempre stato innamorato delle idee di pace e fratellanza di San Francesco, nonostante mi consideri tuttora un agnostico. Ho pensato che SL potesse essere un modo per far conoscere Assisi alle tante persone che non l'hanno mai vista dal vivo. Lo scopo della Basilica di San Francesco di Assisi in SL è proporre alle persone una rappresentazione realistica, non una interpretazione. Le sfide tecniche sono state molteplici: il numero di prim inferiore ai 15.000, la presenza in alcuni momenti di oltre 80-90 persone, la riproduzione fedele di un edificio molto irregolare e gigantesco. Cinque persone in gamba per cinque mesi, questo è stato il costo dell'operazione. Il HUD serve come una sorta di visita guidata interattiva, utile perchè SL viene usato 24 ore al giorno, e noi non potevamo rimanere online sempre, per questo motivo abbiamo pensato di creare un HUD. La mia parte preferita del build? Sicuramente la Basilica superiore, che dal punto di vista pittorico ed architettonico è un gioiello ineguagliabile.

A $L300 il HUD, in vendita in piazza e in varie parti della basilica, è un pochino caro per chi girovaga in SL senza reddito, anche se il prezzo equivale solo a un euro, per 'vedere prima di comprare', basta andare al Assisi blog.

Eventi ad Assisi in questo periodo sono pochi anche perché Simone è molto occupato. Lavora a Lussemburgo come 'evangelista della tecnologia' per Amazon, e questo bel lavoro l'ha trovato proprio qui in Second Life... per sapere come ha fatto, vai a leggere la sua storia, cliccando qui. Ho fatto il giro della basilica con il grande artista Kolor Fall, è stato per me un privilegio fargli conoscere le opere di Giotto e Cimabue... ha messo un po per capire che non si trattava si San Francisco, ma poi il boy, con l'avatar da Silver Surfer dopato con forti steroidi e dotato di un ferocissimo sense of humor, per non parlare del suo canale YouTube, ha rezzato e ha potuto godere appieno questo pezzo d'antiquariato virtuale. Se non hai ancora visitato il sim di Kolor, non è da perdere l'ultima istallazione Ciglie del mondo su sim Kolor - ci sono anche i suoi originalissimi orecchini scripted gratuiti!