Machinimaxed out

Sounds like you poor bastards stuck in SL have been having a bad week. Sorry to hear it. You really should try Open Sim. It's like Cloud Party only without the lameness and the capitalist imperative.

woo. Cloud Party. I may have to sit down.

Judging time for Machinima UWA!! 
Funky, impossible, varied, sumptuous, distubing, crafty, vivacious, studied, memorable. Those are the ingredients one yearns for. And there's plenty of it this year - yum!!!
Having just watched all 51 entries, how to choose a top 10?
Everyone starts out with full marks. You lose points for the following no-no's:
What does this film convey to someone who's unfamiliar with SL? We may be used to the sight of cheesy avatars, cheapo clothes and clunky poses but it really doesn't fit the theme here: the excellence that places like UWA foster. Nor does a low frame rate, and crackly or corny audio content. Luckily, the quality is really high, this year. No points for ma-cringe-ma.
The ideal machinima makes its point in 3 minutes or less. The ones that are 10, 15 or even 30 minutes long are acts of clueless arrogance. Brevity is the soul of wisdom. Because, whatever you write in the comments, people are just going to skip ahead through your exaggeratedly soulful headshots.
Voice overs are bad, unless you're a poet with a lovely voice. Hypatia and Karima both come out brilliantly, while most of the others sound like middle aged school teachers. Unwise. Those penguins are plain annoying for content and quality. Kill them.
If you've not arrested our attention in the first 5 seconds, you didn't do it right. Don't ask your friends, you know they're going to lie to you. This batch of beauties include many that have you riveted from the start, not always an easy task with such an ethereal subject matter.
Big fancy logos followed by low production values are self defeating. You're not Lion's Gate or Pixar, and your ludicrous logo invites us to draw an unflattering comparison.
Quotable quotes that stay on the screen forever lose their thrust. (OK, most of them are ghastly truisms that lost their thrust before appearing on the screen.) The average person can read 5-6 words a second. In the aeons it takes for your quote to fade off the screen, the audience thinking: 'Should'a spent less time coming up with that fancy logo at the beginning, and more time in the editing suite.'
Machinima that are just about you, and not about the theme, get a zero, also, I'm creeped out by child avatars in any context, and Papyrus font.
There are dozens of judges in this competition, and as happened last year, my top 10 won't make a dent in the actual final result. So this is a suggestion of what you should see, if you don't have the 7 hours necessary to watch them all through to the bitter end.
Bear in mind, THERE'S A CASH PRIZE FOR THE MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC whose top 10 is closest to the Judge's overall list. So this should at least get you started!!
Don't forget to turn up at the UWA on August 6th at 6am SLT to see which, if any, get the big prize. I hope it's you.
Tutsy Navarathna 's The Last Syllable of Recorded Time
Tikaf Viper's Run Ram
Arrow Inglewood's  ?
Lala Larix's  The 3rd Eye
and not really 'on theme' in a spiritual way, but the best businesslike,lively tour through the whole thing, capturing the spirit of the event in every way, is this little number by jjccc:

Back to the beach for me.

Here be dragons

  It's an accepted paradox that Travel writing is best done by people who don't know much about their subject. Oh sure, they get the names of the major attractions right, and explain the money and describe that nice little souk where few tourists ever go. But the better you get to know a country or culture, the more you find yourself hesitating, qualifying your description of it. The ideal travel writer breezes in, gets an idea and has the gall to share it, unashamed of their status as an outsider. Take the Orient - the name itself betrays a point of view: it's only 'East' or even 'Far East' from a European perspective. Even the seasoned visitor, with both work and leisure experience in Asia, finds themselves hard put to give more than a glimpse of  what is a vast and ever-changing enigma. Yet that glimpse can be hugely entertaining.

 Part of the UWA Sky Series, Between Orient and Occident is a three part installation that expounds on Central European (as opposed to the Anglo-American, TV and film based) perceptions of Asia. It's well worth exploring, as much for what it tells us about what the east is "like" as what it tells us about the three artists Asmita Duranjaya, ChapTer Kronfeld and Louly Loon. Louly wasn't able to be with us, on the day, but her art is so cool, she's bound to have a whole post to herself before long.
The visit starts at a pyramid, where Magic Doors give access to each section of the build.
ChapTer Kronfeld's take on the orient is dark, masculine, intuitive. He embraces the unknowingness of the Westerner, presented with the concept of the East.

A sense of oppressive uncertainty plays against luminous panels, points of reference that turn out to be phantom prims that you're meant to walk to, and then through. It's a confusing and almost maddeningly disorienting place. ChapTer led the way through passages. Following his strong, capable avatar made it feel a lot safer, but in the end, it was time to step alone into the darkness.

ChapTer Kronfeld: It is my strong way to find the theme of Orient.  The last few meters you must go alone, Thirza - your destination is to go to the light. You will find it's a good feeling in the stomach!

The reward fo all that uncertainty is a powerful open space, a vast contrasting web of lines that suggest skyscrapers, lines of communication, bloodlines, and so much more.
ChapTer Kronfeld: Here you can walk into the spider's web...

ChapTer's intensely masculine build is beautifully contrasted by Louly Loon's build, which takes its inspiration from the Italian opera Madama Butterfly. Three delicate sets follow the three acts of the opera. The theatrical effect exactly captures the stylized presentation of Japanese stereotypes in Puccini's opera.

This is not Japan, it is a dream of Japan; a dream of a world of death and love, loss and honour that cannot be said to no longer exist, since it was always a fiction built of indestructible truths outside the realms of the real. Pure feeling. Pure beauty.

Asmita Duranjaya is a tireless creator and performer in SL, and it comes as no surprise that her build is both didactic and energetic. Don't miss the word game she has set up to help visitors get the most out of the educational side of the install - there's a very cute gift up for grabs if you complete the puzzle and find the secret room!

Analyzing five aspects of the Orient, Asmita gets her audience thinking about the sensations of the physical world, and the way it is changing; the intersection of different languages and cultures, and the healing power of spirituality. Years of experience, as well as five months of discussion, research and building have gone into this install, and it shows.

The Tale Tower is particularly charming; take a moment to read the storybooks and be a part of the picture while you read!.

Striking also Urban Standardization a room full of shapes and noise that captures the trope of eastern cities as wildly crowded and increasingly samey.

Asmita Duranjaya: The sound is very important it is about the standardization of metropolitan centers - a blending of the appearance of Orient and Occident. Everywhere you look you see the same brands. there is a loss of individual shape but has also its own aesthetics. Each has its own beauty. That is the urban rhythm - its own true culture, or rather, a melting pot, a hybrid or transculture.

Move around the build to enjoy sensations of colour and shape, healing and meditation. It's easy to see why visitors have been known to spend hours in pursuit of the sights and sensations of the build.

Congratulations to Asmita and her team - including the talented Virtual Instrument Players, who performed for the Grand Opening - for providing a wonderful window onto their world.

Keeping it Wheel

In four years of observing the artier parts of SL, despite the vast differences in ability, style, politics and approach of the artists here, it seems fair to say that the 99% put themselves first. There's spectacular variety - everything from screaming egotism, to strategic caution, to friendly reciprocity both inworld and in me-fest blogs- but self is the underlying theme. It's the way of the world, and fair enough, but every now and again it's nice to meet somebody in the 1%, a capable and talented artist who is keeping it real; who, quietly and without fanfare for herself, works to promote art in Second Life. 

That's FreeWee Ling. 

What's in a name: Freewee is not chinese, and people often conflate it to Freewing, which she rather likes, but you have to look at the whole name, the big picture, to understand. it says a lot about her. There's a lot to like. Here's her story
FreeWee Ling: When I first came to SL, I was just bouncing around, experiencing everything. It was a bit of sensory overload, and way too much angst, at first. I decided I needed new friends, creatives doing positive things.  I did a search for artists communities, and the first thing that came up alphabetically was Artemisia. I came here and met  Zephyre Zabelin. She was a wonderfully creative and generous person, who people who interested her and invited them to live here. She gave me a really nice parcel with about 2K prims. I was blown away; I know how much it costs. We became good friends, and, when she had to leave SL for personal reasons, she gave me the sim. Of course then I had to figure out how to pay for it. I had a gallery here with changing exhibitions, and a core group of residents who helped pay the tier. I just charged them my cost.  Eventually that all just couldn't be sustained anymore. I'm not good at recruiting, and people were having to leave for various reasons. So now it's just me and fiona Blaylock. Fiona rents half the sim and I'm spread out over the other half.

Her extensive lab is laid out on multiple levels. Little here is what she considers 'finished' - art is always a work in progress. In that spirit of moving with the times, she recently got hold of one of the LEA sims; it's a 5 month 'lease' with the possibility of renewal. Characteristically, she's not taken it on for herself, but rather, with a project in mind to support art in general. Freewee has documented all 850+ entries from the last year, taking a phenomenal 443 pictures of the October round alone.

FreeWee Ling: I thought it was important to record what was done. Art is so ephemeral here. We need something to look back on and laugh at how seriously we took it all.  My art? lol.. I don't really call it art. It's more experimentation. That's why I call this my laboratory.  I've always had an affinity for all the arts. I grew up visiting art museums and going to concerts and plays and dance performances.  I work professionally in support of arts and cultural organizations. Mostly using technology. I don't have that great physical dexterity. I can't be a musician, so I became a musicologist in RL. With art, it's the same thing. I have a good eye, but not such a good hand. So I use technology to help me.

 FreeWee Ling: The avocado It was a gestalt of several things I was working on learning back then. I usually do my own scripting. I'm not an expert, but I can usually figure out how to do what I want.Particles, animated textures. Sound triggers. There are sensors in the floor. When you walk around they trigger the lightning and thunder.  It;s fairly simple looking, but it used a lot of different skills. It was a good learning experience.  I like the glowing portal. So that's a good example of an early piece.

FreeWee Ling: The hardest things I've made don't exist anymore. I led a team of about 20 artists in the Caerleon group in a collaborative project, and I built a rather large museum building for that, which I demolished at the end of the show. There's a cool video of the demolition on my website. It was spectacular, and led to my UWA full sim installation all about creative demolition, called Angry Gods.
The ambitious and complex Angry Gods build was an intense, and intensely satisfying experience. The sim was only available for a month, and it took her two weeks to put together the installation, the result of weeks of prep work.  To work so very hard, only to have the install on show for two weeks really drove home the ephemeral nature of SL.

FreeWee Ling: Taking things down is the hard part. I do a lot of documentation. At UWA, I've taken nearly 3K photographs of the entries there over the last year.

This is her contribution to the Caerleon show ARCANA. Each artist got one of the cards from the pack, or 'Major Arcana', and FreeWee chose to turn her assignment, The Magician, into a diorama, with poses and a camera controller to frame the image, meaning that visitors can become part of the artwork. It was a great success and she has had lots of people send her photos of self inside the build. Avatar as art is, of course, central to her work and there's a whole wall of reminders at the Lab. As for dioramas...



FreeWee Ling: This one is probably one of my faves. From my series of pulp fiction book covers and vintage ads.  I made the outfit and the pose and everything,. I also have a wearable version of the spaceman,, heehee.I have a whole series.  Oh they're all based on real illustrations. Part of what makes all this experimental is that I'm often playing with ideas from other artists. Much of my stuff is derivative. I can often tell you specifically who influenced what. You should see my Barbarella!

I did!
Collaboration is key, for FreeWee, and she's grateful for the opportunities that have come her way.
FreeWee Ling: Thanks to Sabrinaa Nightfire,  I was brought in on the Interactive collaboration led by Artistide Despres, and the Caerleon group . Then I was working on the Identity Museum project with Sabrinaa, who was the team leader for that. When she became ill, it fell to me to complete it. It was a huge project and Sabrinaa would have done it much better. It was really a tribute to her.
One thing led to another.
FreeWee Ling: I had submitted work several times last year to the UWA competition.  I would always hang around the gallery and look at the stuff seriously, and I'd engage JayJay in conversations about it. I have pretty strong opinions, but I can usually back them up. Although JayJay doesn't have an art background, and had not, at that time, spent so much time looking at things in SL, I really respected that he was willing to engage and learn, and he does have a good sense about things. He came to see the Caerleon museum. We had over 2K unique visitors to that show. Some time later, when Quadrapop decided she didn't want to be curator at UWA anymore, JayJay asked me if I'd be willing to do it. The timing was perfect. Working for UWA was not only a really cool job, but it allowed me to keep my sim. I was on the verge of losing Artemisia, and was looking for someone to take it over. I've been really blessed and honored to work with so many amazing artists there.

If you've voted at UWA recently, you'll have noticed the more streamlined voting system, which has been a great leap forward both for the general public, and behind the scenes.
 FreeWee Ling: The old system was a horror story. It was insanely difficult to keep up. By some miracle GeeJAnn Blackadder showed up and offered us a system she was developing as a commercial product. At no cost to us. We were her beta testers. And it was amazing. She made several changes that we wanted early on and it has worked flawlessly for us. I'm a strong supporter of the People's Choice process to get people to come engage in the art.  I sponsored the awards during the first year out of my own pocket on behalf of the Artemisia community. It's been a great opportunity. I had a paper about it published in a Russian conference proceeding. And JayJay is looking into finding a publisher for the complete exhibition catalog of all 858 entries.

FreeWee with winning art: Daco Monday's fata danzante in the foreground.

In a way, she's UWA's 'fairy godmother', helping make it all happen behind the scenes, together with her boss Jayjay Zifanwe. Living on almost exactly on opposite sides of the world, 12 hours apart, works better than you'd think, as they both manage to be online around 9-12 morning and evening. That's handy because there's a lot to discuss, as you can imagine, with so many different things going on at any given time.
FreeWee Ling: What happens every month is JayJay takes the pieces from the deposit box and puts things out, and I make adjustments. The November round had 99 entries, many of them were large, and the gallery was packed to the gills. After the awards each month, the winners get transferred over here to the Winthrop sim Winners Platforms. So most of this stuff has accumulated over the last year. But since the Grand Finale round has a separate category for nonscripted, I made this floor for that.

Iono Allen and UWA's JayJay Zifanwe 

Having been on the jury for this year's UWA Machinima competition, I got a little taste of how much work FreeWee must have to do. Just watching all the videos and keeping track of the best ones took time. The winning machinima didn't make my top 10, there was such variety and originality. As the crowd faded away at the grand Prizegiving ceremony, I asked these two handsome devils what FreeWee's work means for the art community.
 Iono Allen: It is very simple: without people like her, or Jayjay and others, who take from their time to organize things, SL wouldn't be what it is. I know I would not come anymore, a big lot of my machinimas have their source directly or indirectly at the UWA so - without these people? no machinimas! or at least, or not so much.
Jayjay Zifanwe: FreeWee has been absolutely amazing. The time and thought she gives to each of the artworks is unmatched. The UWA 3D Open Art Challenge wouldnt be what it is without her. She is the 'silent sentinel'... who made it all happen !

FreeWee Ling:  The future for FreeWee? Well, the UWA monthly challenges are over, but I still have the gallery. I'm planning to have some theme shows, I'll be announcing something for December.  But I think the future is going to be mobile. Gridhopping.  I like physics. The other grids are not good for the kind of work I do.They're supposed to be getting a hot physics engine in Inworldz. When they do it could be a game changer. I'm expecting virtual and real worlds to start merging. Augmented reality - I'll see you on the street with an overlay of your avatar. We won't be tied to our desktops or to any single grid. I like to think big :)

Better Angles

Gosh it's late but just a reminder to vote at the  UWA. You have a couple more days. The art is the usual astonishing mixed bag. There is a stagecoach that looks like it's going 70 miles an hour across the prairie, and there's an amusing Witches Cauldron which I voted for, and Oona Eiren has a nice piece, so Oona-ish you can tell her stuff right away. I love that.

UWA always looks like an architectual salvage depot. Nothing has any relation to anything else. 

Wizzy's hoodron is called a Morphometric shape. It was this guy Tomkin Euler who gave her the idea. he likes to make things, but not educate people. Anyway that's what he told me but he called me Ms Ember which always makes me suspicious. 

Wizzy says equilateral triangles are special. Go into wireframe and you''ll see, she said. we're all made of triangels. No, I mean triangles, don't I? Or do I. It's very late.

U Wiz A

Mighty is geometry. Joined with art, it is irresistible.

Euripides

Last month, soror nishi filled UWA's Virtlantis sim with an incredible, and much blogged-about build, Transubstantiation. It was a beautiful sight, and showed just what can be done when an artist is allowed to expand an idea to sim-sized proportions.

This month it's the turn of Wizard Gynoid to spread her geometry out before us. The UWA's JJ Zifanwe is closing the sim for reasons of cost, but with classic Antipodean good humour, rather than doing a lot of hand-wringing about the decision to downsize, he's taken the opportunity to give some of SL's best loved artists the opportunity to make the sim go out with a bang.

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.

Arbor virtualis: the trees of soror Nishi

A certuni gli alberi

non dicono nulla

Ma pochi possono sentire 

il canto della corteccia

Sentiero, Thomas di Blasi

From nut to ember, trees warm, shelter, and  feed body and imagination alike. Like us, they stand with their heads in the clouds, their feet trapped in this earth, shaped by storms but forever reaching out to the wider world; like us they know times of plenty and of loss.  In their ancient, productive silence can be read all the knowledge of the world, into their form, a bridge between worlds. 

If we could go to a Gloucestershire valley right now, I'd show you a coppice of Linden trees that is two thousand years old, where there is the scent of the sap, and the light dances through rich broad greenery.
But we can't.
Which leads one to think: what about trees in Second Life? At places like Straylight, the technique of tree making has become so advanced that the standard SL Pine looks pathetic, except perhaps in old forests like Kahruvel. Yet not even in the new, picture perfect Cap Estel can you smell the sawdust, or hear the busy rush of wind against leaves, or suddenly spot a squirrel on a tree trunk, suspended thirty feet in the air, grey against grey. But this is not that world. What is needed is another route to the vertical highway. Shouldn't the metaverse have its own true woodlands?

soror Nishi says yes. The daughter of a flower seller, she has during her life turned her hand to both farming and architecture, and loves to paint, but rather than using SL as commercial outlet for her RL pictures, she prefers to bring together all these interests in 3D compositions.

 Using large, high-quality scans of textures in crayon, watercolour and oil, and Gimp and Blender, her flora virtua exotica originates from a taoist approach to the subject.
soror Nishi: If you don't understand the patterns then you can't really build a tree. I've seen plenty of unconvincing trees here in SL. If you don't look, you dont see, and if you don't see, you can't learn the patterns.
Soror's trees are like her - bright, bold, whimsical, fun, and beautiful.

She has created two-prim beech trees, and woods that run to the many thousands. She made the Norse tree Yggdrasil at The Companion, Frigg Ragu's folklore sim, currently under reconstruction. In her version, the monumental tree of doom that connects the underworld to our realm and to the heavens above floats in serene glory, the roots caressing the weight of the world below.

Playwright and lover of all things Irish Maeve Eirin filled her Celtic storytelling mountain, Skellig Medb, with soror's trees, including a stand of the Tree Sisters, with their distinctive red canopies. 
Mythical woods grow best among poems as lovely as trees, when the quality is right. Before importing a texture, one should consider whether it is good enough to hang on the wall in RL. If not, then it will disappoint on the screen.
 In the garden she has created beneath the UWA gallery, we talked about the panoply of bricoleurs and engineers to be found in the creative community of Second Life.

Taoist practice is working with the ordinary acts of life without any fabrication, how does that work here? We spoke of Levi Strauss, and I asked: If you understand the bricoleur as a hobbyist, a tinkerer with existing material, and an engineer as a pioneer who strives to understand how things work and get beyond the limits, in whatever field that might be, do both groups have their place in the metaverse?  Have SL quality standards gone up over the past few years, have limits been significantly overcome? (You know, just general chit chat.)

soror Nishi: Well, when it comes to textures, lazy is easy. Quality it isn't always top of people's list. I would like 2048x2048 for large prims, but we have had no new tools for years. Technique is important, in fact technique may be responsible for style. But without emotion there's no reaching the audience or pleasing oneself, and the funny thing is that it has nothing to do with textures. Is it a question of heart or head? I think both have to be present, I think probably it's more about synthesis - good art, anyway. I feel strongly it should stand on its own, without pages of explanations and theory it used to be called 'post-creative intellectualisation" but, having said that, people do like to be told what to think...

Soror's latest build is, of course, the IBM-sponsored Tree of Trees. It rises from a serene pool of of swirling greenery, illuminated by emerald particles. 

(Gosh did I say Emerald? Sorry.)

A forest of stumpy, almost fossilized topiary forms the rootstock and trunk of a massive community of trees, its nebulous crown lost in the region's clouds.

 Up here, the delicate white and blue canopies of goddess trees fan out over little islands of greenery, where orchids grow, protected by Doris the Dragon and her companion. The triumph of the tree as a village, a home for the diverse; resting, growing, flowing upwards together. 

A family tree.

Doing the Math: Wizard Gynoid

oggi anche in italiano, se ti va di leggere.

I try to live my daydreams

Garrett Lisi

Wizard Gynoid came into SL three years ago after reading a news story about the opening of the Swedish Embassy in Second Life. That totally intrigued her - how could a country be opening an embassy in a video game? The first thing she discovered was how friendly people are here. After about a month, it finally struck her - the good 3D software program she'd dreamed of for years was here, and totally free! Fascinated by esoteric sacred geometry, which she had mostly been working on in her head or on paper, she set out to build Metatron's Cube.

We met at her workspace in New Caerleon, which is full of bright colours and blocks. Wintermute Renfold stopped by, looking all Na'vi; he asked me if I was a bot, and then engaged Wizzy in some cyberpunk chat I didn't follow, not having artificial intelligence and all. Here in the photo you can see 'Synchronicity,' submitted to this month's UWA competition.

Wizard Gynoid: I wouldn't say that I am a scholar, but I have studied Western esoteric tradition extensively, and was always good at geometry and mathematics - I aced my college calculus classes. My very first structure was quite complex. I wanted to make my own interpretation of Metatron's Cube, and I've since done a 3D version of what I think is the "classical" approach to it. In ancient times geometry and what we call the sciences were known and preserved by orders held together by initiations of silence. I have been fascinated by the way geometry was taught and passed down through the millenia. The Jewish tradition holds that only when an adult male has proved his worth by having a family and prospering, can he BEGIN to learn the esoteric knowledge. Traditionally I suppose, it was done in the dirt with a stick - well, here we have something that has never existed before, the ability to visualize what is in our heads by simply rezzing it, and making it come to life. That thrills me and I made some machinima of my work. 

Many builders are shy about sharing their work-in-progress, and I wondered what made Wizzy film her process.

Wizard Gynoid‧: I was proud of it I guess. I was trying to communicate something new using this new medium of expression. This is Wizzy's Workshop and this is my original temple. It was originally located on one of the outlying islands, high in the sky - at the time I had it enclosed in a huge box, because I was under the impression that I could keep out intruders. It wasn't long before I realized that there were ways of gaining access to the inside of buildings.

Yeah, that happened to me once. *draws veil*  The temple is aligned at an angle on the surface of the platform. Wizzy built it on the morning of the summer solstice of 2007 and on that morning she aligned the temple to the rising of SL's sun, a tradition you find from Stonehenge to Luxor and beyond. Interestingly, the alignment is now off, just as it is with ancient Egyptian temples. The reason? When SL upgraded to Havok 4, they changed the physics of the sun, but the temple remains aligned to the old rising of the sun, and she won't change it. Sacred geometry, tradition, communication, and memory all at work here, as you can see. I cheated a little bit with the east angle to get the photo down in the Italian bit.
Wizard Gynoid‧: I am trying to demonstrate how there are multiple dimensions of reality. There are four dimensions of reality inside my cube. There is an infinite regression involved, so the notion of infinity is involved as well. The merkaba is one of what we call the duals of the Platonic Solids. It is made up of two tetrahedra and is the most complex and beautiful geometric object known, with all the characteristics of classical sacred geometry. The Golden Ratio is encoded throughout its structure.

The first version was ground-breaking, and made her name in SL. It comprised an amazing 1500 prims, and Wizzy had help with the scripting from Glyph Graves, so that different elements within the structure lit up at different times.

Wizard Gynoid: I became "that E8 person." hehe.  Garrett Lisi the theoretical physicist, whose somewhat radical "Theory of Everything" uses the geometry of the E8 to predict the appearance of sub-atomic particles,  came into Second Life to see my E8 Polytope, and guided me to learn more. I created yet another "rotation" of the E8 with about 3000 prims. The best way to try to describe my work is to show it to you, in person, so you can fly around it, into it and experience it firsthand. That is what SL is good for. Xenophile Neurocam gave the E8 space on the Butler College sim,but when Xeno lost that sim I was looking for a home again. Meanwhile, I had been experimenting with the open sims. Reaction Grid is dedicated to education, and they kindly offered me two regions, and I now have 90,000 prims to play with in ways that are Impossible in Second Life. There is no longer the ten meter limit on the size of a prim, so no need for megaprims. On the Wizzy sim, I went to work to create a very detailed immaculate reproduction of the E8 Polytope in its most elegant rotation, and in March an episode of  Designing Worlds was filmed there. The object is 6,672 prims and is 200 meters in diameter. You can fly through the center of the 3d object, and a 2D version demonstrates how the 3D object casts its 2D "shadow" together, that's about 13,000 prims.
You can see the whole thing in a photo in the Italian part, but the shadow looks like this. As you can see it resembles those spirograph drawings that fascinated us as kids. If you'd like to go in person, it's not complicated to get to RG, and in fact, in Wizzy's picks, she gives step by step directions on how to get there to see her two regions.
Wizard Gynoid: The ultimate goal is to lobby Linden Lab to develop and release a portal that will easily go to the open sims, like Reaction Grid. Technically it is possible, there were successful teleports from SL to OSGRID during tests last year, and I am optimistic. I don't think that Linden Lab is threatened by the open sims. M Linden said recently that he is very supportive of the open sims so I have high hopes that he will encourage the development of intra-grid teleporting. Btw, M Linden and I go waaay back. hehe! When he was a noob, he came to my Rezzable Visions sim and bought several of my creations for display at his office in Linden Land - and they are still there on his own sim "M Squared"
... this is her M Linden dummy, complimenting her victory...

Despite moving in such exalted circles (and squares and other polyhedrons) Wizzy still felt the thrill of getting an honourable mention at this month's UWA prize. The feeling was mutual.

Jayjay Zifanwe: The piece by the Wizard Gynoid was breathtaking. I had for a long time wanted to include something of hers - however, prims were always a problem as the competition allowed for only 100 when Wizzy can do 500,000 just as easily. This was the perfect vehicle for her work. Let me add that we're really proud to announce this week that Dr Gary Zabel (Georg Janick - SL), University of Masachusetts will be joining the judging panel for the Grand Prize of the UWA 3D Art & Design in September 2010. The panel has been growing throughout this first year, other members include Frolic Mills, Sasun Steinbeck  Wil Dreadlow,  Lowell Cremorne, White Lebed, M Linden, Lanai Jarrico,  Pat Insoo,  Mal Burns,  Apollo Manga, Koinup Burt aka Pierluigi Casolari, and they'll look at 1st and  2nd prize recipients from across the year and choose an overall winner.

Namedropper.
Wizard Gynoid: My piece at UWA is a logical development of this E8 theme. I took a cross section of the E8, an orthogonal projection of one of the axes. It is a remarkable thing, so symmetrical and orderly, very elegant, and I looked for a way to bring it to life and that is what it does, it comes to life and pulsates with energy. I am very happy with the way that turned out. My next problem is... how do i top that?

Wizzy has an entire tradition - a literary geometry if you will - written into her work But who would she pick for a literary build in Second Life?
Wizard Gynoid: Well, qabalah is an old literary tradition, but I also love cyberpunk, as you heard, so I would choose William Gibson  and Neal Stephenson, who coined the term "metaverse" and set the stage for Second Life with a book called "Snowcrash". I met someone who had a William Gibson Neuromancer parcel at Burning Life and made friends with her. It was excellent, it tried to bring to life aspects of the book -. imagery that was only words became more real through her interpretation of it. I placed one of my own objects there, that I had made for fun: there is a scene in the book where a character has the platonic solids orbiting around his head. This is my homage to Neuromancer and William Gibson.

La geometria è la passione di Wizard Gynoid, e i mondi virtuali le hanno dato la possiblità di esprimerla in modi impossibili in RL. La geometria, la matematica, e in particolare le analisi differenziale - all'università Wizzy ha sempre preso voti altissimi in queste materie, e in seguito ha studiato le tradizioni esoteriche, come quelle egiziane e ebraiche. Incantata dall'elegante precisione dei solidi platonici - le forme che si vedono come un'aureola intorno alla sua testa in questo foto - era particolarmente affascinata dal cosidetto cubo dell'arcangelo Metatron - a volte conosciuto come Thoth - una forma mistica chiamata anche Merkaba o fiore della vita. Anche se non conosci questa tradizione,  il nome l'avrai sentito in SL, si chiama così la land di Aquila Faulds e Laragrace Rau dove infatti promuovono le pratiche culturali e spirituali legati a questo simbolo. 

Wizard Gynoid: Nei tempi antichi, la conoscenza e la magia erano tutta una. Questa conoscenza  fu occultata, custodita dai sacerdoti, celato dietro riti. Si tramandava la conoscenza solo agli uomini che si erano dimostrati maturi, sposati con figli e attività avviate, e poi usando un bastone si tracciavano le segrete geometriche nella sabbia. Oggi invece è possibile far conoscere a tutti queste meraviglie tramite il mondo virtuale. Si possono esprimere e insegnare in un modo impensabile in passato. Io ho voluto creare il cubo di Metatron, non solo nella sua forma classica, ma anche seguendo una mia interpretazione. Per me è stato molto emozionante vedere in 3D una forma geometrica che avevo spesso disegnato in 2D e anche sognato, e ho voluto fare varie  machinima purché il pubblico potesse comprendere l'importanza della struttura e anche come  l'ho creata. Importantissimo per me sfruttare questo potente strumento per esprimere delle idee fondamentali. 

Nel suo studio Wizzy's Workshop ha creato un tempio e qui troverai il Merkaba. Il tempio Wizzy l'ha creato nel 'lontano' 2007 e l'aveva rezzato la mattina del solstizio vernale, disponendolo in modo che il sole sorgesse tra le colonne. Oggi invece, non sorge più il sole in quel quadrante - un aggiornamento della piattaforma di SL ha cambiato la fisica del sole virtuale (per ricreare l'aurora in questa foto ho dovuto spostare l'est... un po di magia mia). Ma Wizzy ha voluto lasciare il suo tempio dov'era, com'era, un po' come gli antichi templi dell'Egitto.
Wizard Gynoid: Con il mio merkaba volevo dimostrare che ci sono più mondi. Dentro ci sono quattro dimentioni e infinite regressioni. Eà la forma più complessa e bella della geometria, ed è una forma matematica e anche sacra. 
La costruzione del E8 l'ha resa famosa, con l'aiuto di Glyph Graves ha fatto in modo che alcune parti si illuminavano, rendendo la complessità ancor più comprensibile al pubblico.Il fisico RL Garrett Lisi è entrato in SL per vederla e hanno lavorato insieme sul progetto creando una forma ancora più sofisticata, di ben 3000 prim! Qui in SL i fans della geometria vedono finalmente avverarsi il sogno di poter volare attraverso e tutto intorno a queste forme intricate.
Trovare 'casa' per Wizzy però è sempre stata difficile. Le sue strutture sono enormi, a volte troppo grandi per SL, e dopo soggiorni a Rezzable, Butler College e altri luoghi, infine, è stata invitata ad occupare due regioni in ReactionGrid, un mondo parallelo al Second Life. Con 90.000 prim a disposizione, può finamente realizzare i progetti enormi che ha in mente.Ha realizzato questa versione del E8 Polytope,  come vedi c'è al centro un tunnel che permette all'osservatore di entrare dentro ' e ha messo anche il 2D 'ombra' coloratissima della struttura, visibile nella parte inglese ' due strutture per un totale di  13.000 prim. Una bellissima puntata di Designing Worlds ne è stata dedicata.

Wizard Gynoid: Visitare Reactiongrid non è difficilissimo, ma fra poco sarà ancora più facile, credo che i Linden  creeranno dei portali tra Second Life e gli altri mondi virtuali. Io conosco abbastanza bene M Linden, quando era newbie, ha comprato alcune opere mie, e le ha ancora sul suo sim, una persona molto colta che ama l'arte. 
Quando M Linden ha visto l'ultimissima proposta (premiato anche al UWA questo mese) l' ha rimpita di complimenti, e Wizzy per scherzo ho creato un bot M Linden con un tag : 'Wow this is brilliant, Wizzy' - vedi nella parte inglese. Non si prende troppo sul serio, e nonostante tutti gli elogi ricevuti, era sinceramente toccata quando  'Synchronicity' (praticamente una 'fetta' dell'E8) ha vinto. 
Anche JJ Zifanwe, il direttore del UWA, ne è entusiasta. 
Jayjay Zifanwe: L'opera di Wizard Gynoid toglie il fiato. E' da parecchio che desidero vedere un suo pezzo qui a UWA, il problema era sempre la quantità di prim - qui il limite è 100 e la sua arte spesse ne richiede molte migliaia. Quest'opera invece è perfetto. Vorrei cogliere l'occasione per annunciare che il direttore di Caerleon, Dr Gary Zabel (Georg Janick - SL), University of Masachusetts si unirà alla giuria per il Gran Premio UWA 3D Art and Design a settembre 2010. Insieme a lui, Frolic Mills, Sasun Steinbeck  Wil Dreadlow,  Lowell Cremorne, White Lebed, M Linden, Lanai Jarrico,  Pat Insoo,  Mal Burns,  Apollo Manga, Koinup Burt aka Pierluigi Casolari sceglieranno un vincitore per il gran premio da tutti color che hanno ricevuto premi mensili (1° e 2° premio) durante l'anno.
A Wizzy invece un'ultima domanda, se dovesse creare un sim per uno scrittore a lei particolarmente car, chi sceglierebbe?
Wizard Gynoid: Mi piace William Gibson  e Neal Stephenson, l'inventore della parola 'metaverso'. Ho visto un build per Gibson a Burning life, mi piaceva moltissimo vedere un'originale interpretazione del suo libro Neuromancer. Nel libro uno dei personaggi porta un'aureola con i solidi paltonici, e ho voluto creare una mia versione in ommagio al grande scrittore.