Music in the Park

If you ever kindasorta feel guilty about 'wasting' time in SL, the cure is - go to a baseball game, and you'll suddenly feel your Second Life is a whirlwind of useful learning and productive experience. Me n my alt went to see the Hoos play the Tarheels, in front of a record crowd of four thousand; what can I say, there was a lot of lag, quite a bit of singing and swearing, and an infinity of broken peanut shells. Is it true, by the way, that boiled peanuts are good in coca-cola, or is that just one of those outrageous lies people tell? The game seemed to last several lifetimes. There was a twitchy pitcher, and a lot of foul balls, and one ball went out of the park and we heard it hit someone's car, which was when we were glad we walked. We were less glad when we had to walk home again. There was lots of shouting, and a certain amount of sunburn, grrrr gotta remember to put sunscreen on those shoulders...

Anyway the 'Hoos beat the Tarheels right at the end, in something involving a lot of running and bases and a homer apparently. I was not taking notes, but I did film a little, though not when they did the YMCA thing with their arms, which was actually the best bit, after the icecream.

After several non-refundable hours I was mercifully released from the grip of bball, and headed over to Two Fish where Rose Borchowski is hosting Oberon Onmura's new piece, Transition Zone. Pastel coloured panels rise from a platform, accompanied by soothing, magical music. You can watch them as they transition through space and shades, and if you touch one, it remembers your name and floats away...

An exquisite experience. I had SL hooked up to the plasma TV and stereo, to show a friend what it's all about, and there couldn't be a better way to introduce someone to the Life. Oberon's work simply beamed out of the screen, captivating us.
We then moved over to another big event this weekend, MayFair at the beautiful French Quarter. After the huge success of the Benefit concert for cypress Rosewood, (hope he's 100% drier these days, btw) which presented many of SL's topline musicians in half hour sets, Symbiotic's Votslav Hax and BobbiJo Johnson organized a piano sampler along the same lines, and it was wonderful.

The park setting for this piano concert in the French Quarter shows SL as a real-atable space, and  for a first-time visitor to Second Life, it made a superb contrast to Transition Zone. For some mysterious reason my inworld no-lag streak keeps going, so that made it all look twice as nice, but the MayFair event was really all about the sound, the amazing sound of almost a dozen different pianos, each saying the same thing in different accents. Mayfair kicked off  with the brilliant Zachh Cale, (in the photo at the top of this post)  grr because of the baseball I missed him at the  French Quarter but I caught him singing Cole Porter in a marked manner over at the Mango Yacht Club - what a voice, I love it. The MayFair lineup included some great musicians I'd not heard play before, like Kyle Beltran,  Horatio Allen and Thwip Zifer  seen here at his distinctive blue piano, they all rocked.
Ankhari Holder, Phoe Nix, Bluemonk Rau and Hathead Rickenbacker followed each other almost seamlessly. Each half-hour set was filled with a different energy, and the changing styles and voices made my friend ask - why did you not show me this before? Cylindrian Rutabaga ended the event with great charm, but I have to say it was Tip Corbett's bravura performance that swept us away, that huge piano sound filling the whole house. I may have to move into the metaverse permanently; surrounded by all this talent, one can't help joining in with that song - "I don't care if I never get back..."

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.

Cypress Rosewood Relief Benefit

Not a fan of cut-n-paste posts, as you know, but this is an exception.

Votslav Hax: Over the past weekend Cypress Rosewood lost his home and  shop to the devastating  floods in Nashville Tennessee. Friends of Cypress have responded and are calling  for a benefit held this Friday. Please note times we hope you  can  stop by and  give some support to one of SL's beloved musicians.
    Friday  May 7 Mardi Gras Park   Johin's French Quarter
      All times SLT

•     2:30pm    Zachh Cale
•     3:00        Bluemonk Rau
•     3:30        Moondoggirl Moomintoog
•     4:00        Frets Nirvana  
•     4:30        Von Johin
•     5:00        Anek Fuchs
•     5:30        Gina Stella
•     6:00        Skye Galaxy
•     6:30        Kolor Fall
•     7:00        Joaquin Gustav  
•     7:30        Arman Finesmith  
•     8:00        Senjata Witt

 Take off your AO, put on your unscripted hair and shoes, and come to listen, share, and contribute to the fund.

Built Wright

It was Rowan Derryth of Prim Perfect who suggested I go over to the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum and meet up with Bacchus Ireto, the Curator and a fine builder in his own ...right. OK that's the only one, I promise.

Perhaps like me you think of Wright as an architect of the 1930's or 40's but in reality he was born not long after the end of the Civil War, in the period in which the Suez Canal was completed, and Dickens was on tour, Garibaldi was marching on Rome, and America was out buying Alaska. Wright's mother wanted him to be an architect, and in his autobiography he cites Froebel blocks (a sort of knobless precursor to Lego), pictures of cathedrals on the nursery wall, and summers spent toiling on his uncle's farm - but also taking the time to study the lie of the land - among his strongest influences. Well, the two semesters of civil engineering at U Wisconsin probably didn't hurt. He had a boatload of wives and partners, and lived through many personal storms (including the chilling Taliesin incident) and built homes, theatres, and cathedrals to God and Mammon not only across the Midwest, but from New York to California, even spending a few years in Japan.  He founded a school for architects, the Taliesin Fellowship, which favoured the hands-on approach to building (and probably contributed to his creative longevity) and wrote numerous books and papers. Fallingwater his most celebrated private residence is from 1936, and he was in his 80's when he designed the Guggenheim on Fifth Avenue.

There's way more to be said, and the FLWVM Welcome Center fills in the rest with elegance and vivacity. Even a few minutes in this Artful suite, bright with stained glass and redwood just like Wright's houses, are enough to get an idea of the scope of his creativity through photos and notecards.
I asked Bacchus where the name of the sim 'Usonia' came from.
Bacchus Ireto: Usonia is an acronym for the United States of North America; no one is entirely sure where Wright found it, it seems the author Samuel Butler first used it in the early 1900s and Wright appropriated it to describe the architecture he was building in the 1930s as liveable for modern Americans. We had a 'Usonian buildoff' back in February with about14 amateur and 12 pro builders competing, and you can see some of the entries here on the sim.
Afterwards, I noticed I was standing next to this huge 'Usonian Principles' board ... will the humiliation never end? No, don't answer that one. There is a huge amount of information here so take it up to the cafe on the third floor and have a read over a brew. While you're up there, take a moment to admire the theatre which is based on the interior of Wright's Unity Temple, in Chicago. They hold seminars here.

Bacchus Ireto: When our group was formed last summer, the mission from the beginning was educational.  In this gallery and the one above it are the permanent exhibit to introduce visitors to Wright and his architecture. The sim existed on rented land to begin with, but when we moved to our own sim, we rebuilt the museum buildings. A team of builders worked together on the sim design and physical plant, and how to display the houses to the best advantage. We've tried to show how each house fits into Wright's career, and the museum sponsors build offs throughout the year, geared to a specific style related to Wright in some way. He was quite a character, but aside from that, he is part of a school of architects that tried to develop what they thought of as a purely American architectural style, instead of relying on the past, or European influences and I find his homes true works of art in themselves. I'm a history student in RL, but in SL I build. At the beginning I was pretty inept, I learned by tearing apart prefabs. I commissioned a FLW house to live in and invited Frey over to see it, which is how I came to be curator here.

He's too modest. Bacchus' reconstruction of the first Usonian house, the Herbert Jacobs Residence from 1935, has just been approved for the sim. The FLWVM is the virtual worlds licensee for the RL Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation which must approve the builds that are placed here so standards are very high. I wondered if the group think Wright would have liked or used SL?

Bacchus Ireto: We've had discussions on that. Wright pushed the technology of the time, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. I think he would be frustrated by SL's building limitations sometimes: but unlike some architects, who really were more theoretical and rarely built things, Wright meant his houses to be lived in, and as you know, building in SL has some things you have to adapt to allow for cam controls and things. I think he would have been interested in the freedom of SL - but he was a funny person though, hard to predict his reaction.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum CEO is Frey Bravin, a web developer in RL, a builder in SL, and a lifelong Wright fan.
Frey Bravin: I first got interested in Wright's work when I was around 5 years old. We were out driving one day and passed by the Gregor Afleck house in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It was the most amazing, beautiful house that I had ever seen in my short life; there was something about the house, how it just blended into the woods around it and became a part of them. It gave me an interest and a love of architecture that I have had to this day. I've driven past that house thousands of times and I never fail to look at it and smile every time I see it. I've been working on a SL version of the Affleck house for some time now but I'm way too picky and will not be happy with it untill I get it just right.

OK that time it was him not me.

The sim creates that magical 'been there' feel -  the best of virtual tourism, hey - you can sit on the roof, stumble through the kitchen, even fly across the terraces, and nobody tells you off!
Frey Bravin: Yes, that was the main objective here, to try and expose Wright's work that otherwise may have never had a chance to see it. We currently have seven houses on display but we plan on expand that to about 24 and rotate them, and we currently have three in production.  I've been really lucky with collaborators. We have had a lot of really good people want to be a part of this. It takes a big commitment and you have to be able to work as a team. The first person to join me was Rosie Oldrich right after I first started and she is now the Assistant Director We have a great partnership with the Builders Brewery, a group founded by Supremius Maximus and his partner Sensuous Maximus. They've been major supporters of the museum and a godsend to us. They run classes and events to encourage intelligent design on their sim, and collaborate with our projects, so its worked out very well for us all.
Sim Builders Brewery sounds wonderful, and I thought about TPing over, but their charter says 'no cursing' so I don't think they'd let me in. At least not this morning. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, or should that be among the prairies... sim Usonia is laid out in chronological order, and is a gallery of bravura building talent - many of SL's most prestigious names have lent their skills to making this project happen. It is amazing how relatively easy it is to cam inside the structures and I wondered if there was some kind of magic cheating with proportions, or if the houses are really that avie friendly.

 Frey Bravin: To some extent they really are just that friendly. Fallingwater in RL is a really small dwelling, interior-wise, so probably is the hardest to navigate for avatars. We try to build as close to the real scale as possible, using the original plans, so you can really get a true feel for the house.  I have a pretty good collection of books by and about Wright,  but I think my favorite is the Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide which deals with every biulding that he did, and the unbuilt designs also. If I had all the prims and the time necessary, I would love to make the unbuilt Arizona State Capitol Building that he designed.

Drop in at Usonia for the art, for the culture, and for their Friday Fling, from 6-9 pm SLT, or - as pictured here - be there on Sunday between 12-2 pm SLT for 80's music at the Breeze.

Desy Akina: Poesia a Puuiki

Venerdì 30 aprile, a Tanalois su sim Puuiki si è tenuto il secondo incontro di lettura di poesie del quale era protagonista Desy Akina.

Come successe per Daco Monday, è stata proposta una selezione di componimenti scelti dall' autore accompagnati da una colonna sonora che, nel caso di Daco era una chitarra, nella serata dedicata a Desy è stata un' arpa.

Il proposito di queste serate è quello di introdurre nuovi autori nel panorama della letteratura emergente qui su Second Life e, di conseguenza, dare un maggior respiro al concetto di arte e compenetrazione tra Real Life e Second Life.

Sostanzialmente il maggior interesse del gruppo di lavoro è quello di cercare di dare sfumature vere ed umane a questo mondo fatto di pixel; cercare la voce dell' anima anche qui, cercare la voce vera dei sentimenti e la verità dei gesti.

L' obiettivo è importante, e molti hanno dei lavori in corso "sui generis" ma riteniamo che, a prescinedere dalla elevata qualità del lavoro di chi sta gia percorrendo questo sentiero, lo spazio concesso non sia mai abbastanza anche, e soprattutto in un' ottica di integrazione tra mondo digitale e mondo reale, infatti non sempre si è disponibili al log-in e spesso e volentieri, pur essendo interessati ad un dato evento, questo sfugge.

Ma l' intento non è quello di fermarsi alla riproposizione, è di andare oltre e di accogliere anche chi, magari, è alla prima esperienza di esposizione ed in questo contesto abbiamo inteso introdurre una forma di conversazione con l' autore tesa a capire i moventi e le ispirazioni che hanno condotto all' esperienza.

Tornando all'evento dedicato a Desy, si è trattato di una raccolta dedicata al mondo femminile nella sua interezza.

Un simposio di immagini di sentimenti e di situazioni vere vissute e scritte prima da dentro.

Nel dipanarsi della serata, e ad ogni intervento, si è a delineato il profilo del mondo femminile; per dare una immagine chiara e pertinente, è stato un po' come guardare il cielo notturno e unendo le stelle del percorso di Desy è uscito un profilo di donna che rischiara la notte buia combattendo quella idea ritornata in auge di una donna sacrificabile sull' altare del progresso con un enorme perdita di contenuto e di vita.

E' stato un percorso emozionale completo che ha spaziato dalla luminosità dei sorrisi, fino ai più amari pianti degli abbandoni passando per un punto di vista dettagliatissimo dell' interpretare la vita al femminile.

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?

Frets and Family

Questa volta ho scritto anche in italiano - o almeno una specie d'italiano spero più o meno comprensibile sei pregato di scorrere in giù...

In 1933, when he was 9, Chet Atkins traded an old pistol and some chores for a guitar, and never looked back. A country boy born in Union County, Tennessee, Chet suffered from severe asthma; for all the restrictions that put on his life, it did not prevent him from becoming obsessed with music, listening and above all playing everywhere, including the restroom at his high school - for the 'good acoustics'! He went on to create the 'Nashville Sound', cutting over a hundred albums, winning 14 Grammys, and surrounding himself with talent and music all his life. He produced records for stars like Elvis Presley, Perry Como and Connie Smith, and influenced guitar players from Les Paul and Clint Black to Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton; Duane Eddy once said Atkins 'influenced anybody who picked up a guitar' - listen to Malaguena from 1955 to understand why.

A Chet Atkins 'arts park' would be Frets Nirvana's choice, when I asked him who he'd most like to see imported into Second Life. He had another interesting suggestion too.
Frets Nirvana: What is really really needed is something to educate people in SL on the difference between music actually being played live with no backing tracks whatsoever and people who play with backing tracks. It is very easy to fool ppl in SL by pre-recording what you do and just punching a button. So how about a site that specializes in featuring artists in SL that everything is live and not memorex!

Frets has been in SL for about a year now, and he has spent that time building an impressive following among music lovers. The first place he played was over at lynsey Fleury's lovely sim Woodstock, and he still holds regular gigs there, as well as at well-known venues like Molaskey's Pub and The Cove. He's amazed by the range of creativity in the metaverse, but quickly came to realize that, with the ease of communication, both by TP and in IM, and what with the twenty four hour global audience, it would be very easy to wear one's self out by doing too much. He has learnt to pace himself and focus on the thing he does best and enjoys most, that is, performing, planning and networking in Second Life. He loves the opportunities for 'virtual touring' that Second Life affords - he can get out and about to dozens of venues, and still be available at home for all those honey-dos in his own corner of RL paradise.  Frets plays a lot of well-known hits that show off his fingerpicking style, like The House of the Rising Sun, Susie Q, and, just for fun, Bob Dylan's Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat, but he throws some of his own songs in the mix, too, which you can hear on his site - I asked him to pick two favourites.
Frets Nirvana: I'd have to say Holler Stomp - I love it because I wrote it one night when our pet rabbits were hopping all over the place while I was playing.  They are my audience when I am not playing in SL, and they love music! The other one is Ordinary Bourgeois Egalitarian Blues - Love it because it speaks out on several topics that are on my mind nowadays and it has the Frets "groove" ... which is very important to me!

Frets Nirvana: I tried a little building just to see what it was about when I first came into SL, but I am here primarily to make music and to work on original material, so I try not to get too sidetracked into other things. One thing I worked on - with a lot of help from some good people - was to get Fret's avatar to look kind of  like I do in RL. (look in the Italian bit to see if he did a good job. ) I am myself here, and I love meeting new people - I always love it when fans friend me, and I'm lucky enough to have some good close friends who are like family, BobbiJo Johnson and Votslav Hax of Symbotic, not to mention fellow musician, Von Johin. It means a lot to have people like that in my corner, and to meet new friends from around the world.

This week Frets Nirvana, theUS Military Veterans Group and Symbiotic Productions will be holding their third Benefit concert for the Wounded Warriors project. Cumulatively the last two benefits have raised over 112,000 Lindens for the Wounded Warriors project.  Maximillian Kleene, Craig Lyons and PonDman Haalan will be joining Frets onstage on Patriot Island from 5 -9PM SLT on Saturday 25 April.
Frets Nirvana: I've been supporting this great cause a couple of years.  I am not a veteran but I am a concerned patriot!   My father was a WWII vet and the greatest man I have ever known.  I recognize that  the world is a dangerous place and they continue to make sacrifices that we cannot even imagine to allow us the freedoms we have. Many soldiers suffer traumatic brain injuries, amputations, and severe burns.  Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) provides services and programs to help them back to civilian life.

All'età di nove anni, Chet Atkins un ragazzo dal Tennessee ha scambiato una vecchia pistola e la promessa di fare alcuni lavori in casa per una chitarra. Da quel giorno nel lontano 1933, è cominciato un viaggio musicale straordinario durato più di sessant'anni attraverso un centinaio di album, 14 premi Grammy e innumerevoli collaborazioni con i grandi della chitarra, da Les Paul a Elvis Presley a George Harrison a Eric Clapton. Il nome di Chet Atkins è stato il primo a venire in mente a Frets Nirvana  quando gli ho chiesto quale dei suoi eroi vorrebbe vedere importato in SL. Atkins ha inventato il 'Nashville style', un modo molto particolare di suonare la chitarra ed è l'eroe musicale di un 'grande' di SL, chitarrista del Tennessee anche lui, Frets Nirvana. In SL da poco meno di un'anno, Frets è seguito da un pubblico entusiasta, e suona cover di Bob Dylan, insieme a canzoni come The House of the Rising Sun e Susie Q. Si esibisce in tutto il metaverso in locali come lo splendido Woodstock, di lynsey Fleury, ma anche a Molaskey's Pub e The Cove. Ha scelto di creare un avatar che gli assomiglia, come si vede in questa foto.

Frets Nirvana: Mi hanno colpito due cose qui nel metaverso: primo - ci sono talmente tante cose da fare qui! Tutto è istantaneo, dai IM al teletrasporto, e questo mondo è in orario continuato - è facile esaggerare e perdere la testa correndo dietro troppe cose. Io sono qui per fare musica, voglio suonare e anche scrivere canzoni originali. Per fare bene queste cose, bisogna avere le idee chiare. All'inizio ho fatto un po' di building e ho viaggiato un po alle land più famose, giusto per capire di che si trattava, ma poi mi sono concentro sulla mia musica, e i fans. Mi piace moltisismo parlare con loro, ho già una lista di contatti formidabile! Ma ho anche degli amici real qui in Second Life e credo anche questo sia un bene: BobbiJo Johnson e Votslav Hax, del gruppo Symbiotic, insieme a il mio grande amico il musicista Von Johin. Le amicizie sono molto importanti per me, il senso di comunità, poter condividere le esperienze, la musica, le serate insieme - per me è questo che conta, siamo una grande famiglia. Penso sia anche importante che il pubblico capisca cosa significa suonare 'live' - molti musicisti utilizzano delle registrazioni per migliorare la performance... e fingono di fare tutto in diretta. Amo esibirmi in locali creati con cura, non troppo grandi, è brutto quando il pubblico si perda in un ambiente troppo vasto, ma se è troppo piccolo anche questo ha i suoi svantaggi.
Questo sabato alle ore 5 -9PM SLT a Patriot Island Frets e i suoi amici Maximillian Kleene, Craig Lyons e PonDman Haalan prenderanno parte in un concerto a favore del progetto Wounded Warriors, ossia guerrieri feriti, un'opera di beneficenza che aiuta i soldati feriti in guerra a ritrrovare una vita normale e tranquilla a casa. Il concerto si tiene ogni mese e finora hanno raccolto oltre 112.000 linden.
Frets Nirvana:  Io non ho fatto il soldato ma mio padre ha preso parte nella seconda guerra mondiale ed era l'uomo più nobile che io abbia mia conosciuto. La guerra è una cosa terribile, e il mondo è diventato un posto molto pericoloso, e ogni giorno i soldati mettono in gioco le loro proprie vite per proteggere le libertà che noi prendiamo per scontato.  Tantissimi soldati rimagono feriti - lesioni cerebrali, ustioni e amputazioni - e questi giovani hanno bisogno del nostro aiuto per poter ritornare alla vita normale. Sono fiero di potere fare qualcosa per assistere questi individui corraggiosi, e spero che volete anche voi partecipare.

What a lot of fun

Last night the Place to Be was Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe over at the Treet TV studios!! It's recorded  every Sunday night at 6 SLT, Paisley has a really nice Australian voice which, when the audio stream goes funny, turns into a very genteel gargle on all the high notes, the leitmotif of an exceptional show. Lotsnlots of lag, and I turned everything way down low, straying unintentionally into wireframe for a full 5 minutes and crashing like Button several times, but it was way worth it to be in the audience for the show that featured three SLelebrities (is that a word?) including SCOTTIUS POLKE!!!

I showed up in my Lunamaruna tee, and sat behind Zachh Cale, of project Z. I tried to kick Zachh's chair, but couldn't reach. Dex Colclough sat beside him, sporting a fab furry avatar, and we talked bubble pipes for a while, and the lovely Lyric Wilburg and Scottius' collaborating angel Kimba Sideways were there.

Paisley's show is like real TV - actually, they're more organized and professional than the recordings of  real life TV shows I've attended, it's impressive stuff. First up was some lady from a place called Chillbo, talking about living in a nice place. "It's nice to live in a nice place," she confided.  I didn't really follow the whole thing, because there was a talking fridge in the aisle. I thought it was a safe, but then he IM'd me 'Touch my door', and when I did, the door opened and there was a carton of orange juice, eggs milk and some fruit inside. So I am pretty sure it was a girl fridge, despite being called Eli. 

The next guest was Avatar Quinzet talking dulcimers. He played some as well, but I was in full crash /pleeeeze stop animating my avatar mode by then, and only heard enough of the music to get that he's good. The crashing was embarrassing especially because the fridge said the guy sitting next to me was some kind of Big Deal builder who makes the weather, and who was probably wishing the whole time he could turn me into a pillar of salt, just so I'd freaking stay still a moment. Avatar made a leaden comment about playing the song Avatar using his avie called Avatar. Someone in the audience shouted 'Bullshit' which seemed harsh but fair, and then suddenly it was OTTER TIME!!!!!

He looked sooo cute on the couch! Paisley showed some of his RL assemblage art, and he talked intelligently about his unconscious Steampunk influences, sculpty making, the collaborative process, the Avalon Art district and his project Z installations, the mushROOM and SL's greatest ever floating village with fish, LUNAMARUNA!

N-otter place to be missed! Tp to project Z today!

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.