Pyramid Scheme

Last Thursday was the first opening of the new artistic season at Piramide, the Italian gallery based on the Indire sim, and overseen by gallerista and fearsome firework maker, Lion Igaly. The gallery is bigger than ever this year (thanks LL for bigger prims!) and Lion has made that extra leeway work for him. 

Lion Igaly: It's a fairly united group, we've been together for several years now; mostly Italians, but we also have the Italo-american Nino Vichan, from New York, who's been with the group since the beginning of 2010. His work is very nice, and has real feeling to it.

I liked this one, his other piece about pregnant women in jail is a bit alarming, but you can't help admire the attention to detail. He's among the eleven artists belonging to the Orions Tale group, chosen to contribute  works - a total of twentyone pieces, including art by nessuno Myoo, who has two pieces...

... the intricately made (if unsnappily named) In the game of life we are as leaves in the wind...

... and the charming The Angel of Electric Waves. 

Collaborator and cpf Kicca Igaly has her microscope on show, it was originally built for a Cancer Research event.

It's a lot like the effort made to inspire the art students from Milan's Brera Academy last year, over on Imparafacile Island. Nothing here is made using original sculpties, and the scripts are all off-the-peg, and you mightn't be blamed for thinking you could run most of this stuff up yourself, given a couple more hours of leisure during the working day.  But that's kind of the point. It's no coincidence that those trees you see in the distance mark the edge of the Indire sandbox, where many of these artists rezzed their first prims.

Lion Igaly: I chose the works that seem most appropriate to the mission of Piramide. They're all artistic builds made entirely in Second Life; we sometimes have photographers, although this year there are none. I'm particularly interested in showing the public what it's possible to make, using the means available to everyone in this virtual world. I want to show the people working in the sand box next door what we're doing in terms of artistic scope, to encourage them to take up a career in art here in SL.

In the end, for sheer fun value, it's got to be Aloisio Congrejo's Flying inside colors. Walk into it and see what happens. 

Then think about what you can make, and do it.

Three Parts Mask

Magical mask performance by the Odyssey group today over at Roxelo Babenco's  Museo del Metaverso Art Space  on Moya's sim, where the ongoing Art & Poetry show moves into its second week.

There were other artists on show, but I could only sneak into SL for a few minutes - in time to catch the outstanding performance by Jo Ellsmere, Pyewacket Kazyanenko, and Kai Steamer.

Three avatars, identical in size and movement, yet in startlingly different attire, moved across the stage to other-worldly music, asking us the eternal question - how many masks do we wear? Also -

A History of Gothick

Ahora que se quien soy

No puedes dejarme

Respira en mi y hazme real

Traeme a la vida

Bring Me To Life, Evanescence

If virtual artists were drinks, what would they be? Bryn Oh is the Coca-Cola of Second Life, obviously; Soror Nishi is a Long Island Green Tea, Oberon Onmura would be the shape of the place where the glass once stood, but what about the rest?
Silene Christen would be a rich, discreet Ribera del Duero, from a small yet renowned vineyard nestled beneath the walls of a forbidding castle, kissed by moonlight; and if, fair to say, not every offering is memorable, there are there are enough good vintages to keep you curious.

Not that Silene is an obscure artist, by any means. In RL her work has received recognition in museums and private collections across Murcia; in SL she's won a clutch of prizes from the

Floral Tribute

That 'avatar identity' stuff is largely pretentious twaddle, but I always think you can tell quite a bit from somebody's eyes. Writer and collector Maeve Eiren's are a limpid green, and speak of sometimes melancholy thoughtfulness wrapped in glassy strength.

You may remember her Celtic-themed sim, Skellig Medb, a storytelling land; when the sim had served its purpose she left the mainland, washing up on the 'focused and sane' shores of the Avalon Art region, where she enjoys the sense of community, the good services, and the people. Here at her parcel,  Croi Amhain she has a glassy greenhouse in a leafy suburb.  It's a different life, and she enjoys interacting with people on neighbouring parcels, and speaks with enthusiasm of the new project which will allow Avalon rsidents to show their private art collections in the Town Hall. Rowan Derryth's the chick with more info about that.

I never come to Avalon, so I was a bit laggy, but a few minutes fixed that. And the textures are worth the wait. Maeve has arranged the plants in a very conventional setting - a Victorian-style conservatory, complete with sprinkler system. Even though, of course,

Crash, Bang: Mapping a Trollop

It's a big crash, and it's quite serious.

LUMINATRIX, Smack the Pony

What's a bod about? In our search for happiness, love, and success, what are we making of ourselves? Corporeal or corporate? which matters?  Crash Bang Trollop is the new build by Maya Paris, opening this afternoon at MetaLES.

It's a mad, bad, hilarious-to-know exploration of the prodding and primping that is so important in our commercial, superficial world. In addition to the Zap suit, there are seven

Ground Control

I'm feeling very still

Space Oddity

Rare, not to be able to sleep, or maybe I just missed the bus tonight, and so why not take up Oberon Onmura's Facebook invitation to check out his new/old install,    Slow Chaos.

FB said I'd find it at the LEA Self-Curated Gallery. The good people at SLURL.com very kindly saw fit to open SL in Phoenix, my first Phoenix outing in months (I heart Imprudence), so I found myself wearing boots, sandals, and about thirteen different prim skirts, not to mention two different sets of hair.
But it's bikini weather.

Having always been a bit of a LEAgnostic, it was interesting to

'tricks of the light

Time to dance and be delighted, at Betty Tureaud's new build at Danish Visions. OMG how gorgeous does she look.

The theme this time is The Matrix, and as you can see it's inspired by those little boxy QR Codes that you see everywhere these days.
These particular ones were captured,

Moving pictures

Why film Second Life? 

I asked a bunch of people.

There's more than one reason. I'd just been to the spectacular RL Museo del Cinema,  which is why movies were on my mind, but it seems that everybody's at it, independently and via SL groups as undiverse as the Phantasmagoria and the UWA, the LEA and the SL Machinima Guild. Fuschia was at romy Nader's new build, so she's up first.

Fuschia Nightfire: I think every kind of art has its place, but machinima tells a story more than just a picture. It's also great for recording installations. Imagine if you wanted to record this build. Taking photos just wouldn't portray it.  I've only been making machinima for about a year, but I enjoy it - here's my Youtube channel if you want to look.

She's not wrong about the photo, is she? check out the spooky-cool dancing for yourself at MetaLES.

Obviously, machinima is great for porn, snarky remarks, tributes, tutorials, and

Rock Paper

Do you know there is a whole world, 

in books, newspapers, articles, drawings and paper-all ...

romy Nayar

It was Saturday night, and time to become a Papermakis spy.
The Papermakis are shy, party-loving paper-based creations by romy Nayar, a Paris-based artist. Her partner Ux Hax  helped with the scripting.  You may remember Ux from last year's Barcelona/Buenas Aires event Geometry of Sound with Maria Grot. The install is still up on another part of this hugely popular, Lady-friendly MetaLES sim,co-owned by Ux and Lanjran Choche, specializing  in performance and interactive art by women. Here's the group's blog, with lots of machinima - don't miss romy's own blog too, or the group's install Nanobosque, made for the cancer-battling Istituto Catalan de Nanotecnologia.

But today we're strictly black white and read all over, with the Papermakis.
Thanks to the magic of SL, now we mere avatars can be

Take It Easy

Don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy

We met, not on his sim Imparafacile Island, but in a real-life Tavola Calda, on the outskirts of Milan. Tell no-one. His avatar's name means 'easy learning'. An IT instructor in schools and colleges in Lombardy, Imparafacile Runo - Impa for short, and Gio' dalla Bona in RL, is boundlessly enthusiastic for his inworld schemes -but as we all know, when it  comes to keeping up a vigorous interest in virtual culture, you need more than enthusiasm; it's all about staying power. As he sat down to a plate of vitello tonnato (I went for the Caprese), Impa told me about the idea behind his Island.
Imparafacile Runo: The important thing is to take small steps, and form a solid basis for our work. We have hosted many different kinds of shows over the past years, from educational seminars to art shows, e-learning courses, poetry readings, and social gatherings. Just a few weeks ago, we had a hugely successful immersive art event called IONOI (in English, I/Us), filmed by Christower Dae.

Italians have a schizophrenic attitude towards the internet.  Even among the younger people, it seems like half

'Round Paris

 If Montmartre and Harlem don't spring immediately to your mind as naturally twinned neighbourhoods, then I have one word for you - Jazz. Virtual Harlem is one of the oldest sims you're ever going to walk on. Originally made by the advanced technology center at the University of Missouri-Columbia as part of Bryan Mnemonic's  dissertation on 20th century African American literature, it transferred into SL back in 2005, originally by Pleiades Consulting, and the current incarnation is by Mick Huet. 

Bryan Mnemonic: Jazz was introduced to Paris by African American troops who fought in WWI under the French flag. Some of them stayed in Paris after the war and were employed at cabarets in Montmartre. The sims are mostly used for my teaching, projects with students researching the period or individuals within the period, and educational events. There is also a lively artist community being constructed on Montmartre, mainly led by Indea Vahlor in SL. She and her other colleagues have created exhibits, and there are jazz and poetry events held at various locations on both Harlem and Montmartre. For the past 6 years, I've had a partnership with the Sorbonne, and in November I'll be back in Paris, coordinating with students, who occasionally add authentic content to either Montmartre or Harlem.

Speaking of authentic content, you may have noticed that Chrome Underwood has been around a little less lately. That's because he's in the middle of writing a memoir of artist Mick Brady, including

Heart and Soul

Thirza has a little crush on Chrome, ever since she felt his connection between jazz and art and Paris, where she currently resides, but don't worry, with Camille in the mix, there can be no harm, and no foul. There may be more posts about art, Parisian and virtual, but not tonight. Since I can't write anything Ess Elly, and since he won't mind sharing, here's a letter to him from the city. 


Hello Chrome

It was a long day of walking, and some Metro. I'm always torn about the Metro. Something sinful about moving through the city without seeing it. Somehow, the train is less alarming than the bus, why is that? You'd think jumping on a train and disappearing down a dark tunnel would be more daunting, but I'm always afraid to get on the wrong bus, even though I'd be able to see perfectly where I am going. 

End result is a lot of walking, which is like a watercolour wash. It changes the city. When you're here for a reason, for a meeting, for another person's agenda, the city breaks down into a set of places and times, and the gap between them is so much dark matter. But just walking, you become as light as a piece of litter, carried on the breeze, on a par with the smallnesses happening around you, the moving van, with its box-elevator, bringing packing cases down from a 5th floor balcony, the drunk fumbling for his car keys, or the dog tied to a railing while his master finishes his expresso. A stocky man and his wife, in their fifties, stand inside a public toilette, the curved door slowly closing on their anxious bemused faces, as they search for porcelain, or a partition. I am too light to take a photo, which is a shame, but maybe not. Instants like these get crushed by being memorialized - it would be like taking a picture of a dream. 

My goal is the Pompidou, yes, but first to the obvious, just to make sure it is still there: the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe. It is a different Paris,  the Champs Elysees part, venal and in the right light slightly absurd, like 5th avenue's older sister in the mold of Hyacinth Bucket. 

Snaking around all that Hausmann architecture, to the Grand Palais, I try to think what Chrome would make of all this, I think he wouldn't like it. I think he would still be on the Metro, not on a train, exactly, but wandering the tunnels, soaking up the music, like the 8 piece Polish band playing at le Chatelet, or the Spanish guitar at Roosevelt, or the thin girl with the fluting, voice on the steps at the Trocadero, offering a rather pathetic 'thank you' to every passerby. Chrome would love the eternal twilight, the glow of the tiles under a rainless roof, and the virtual breeze when a distant train blasts up to a platform far below. I think Chrome would be happy to stay down there, marvelling at French ingenuity in positioning each singer just out of earshot of the next, endlessly curious to hear the next one play. 

The Musee d'Orsay has that Disney-Dachau quality; middle-class, middle-aged middle Americans lined up obediently with only a vague idea of what awaits. The Orsay is like every arty postcard you've ever seen: lovely yet obvious Renoirs, Monets, Gauguins, Seurats, as familiar and disconcerting as if you walked into a room of your own possessions. The virtual has overtaken the real, in 2D art. Once, you had to go in person to gaze on Van Gogh's self-portrait, because an engraving or photograph just wouldn't do it justice. I don't think that's true any more. The poster in the entrance, ten feet high, is no different than the 'real' canvas just down the hall.  Perhaps if you could touch it... 

On and on, unspooling footsteps. Even without four inch heels, I stumble a lot on cobblestones and intersections, heading North over the river via the love-locked Passerelle, past the ghastly Louvre, and the rue de Rivoli, to the quartier de l'Horloge, which, apart from the glorious mess of the Pompidou, and Foucault's pendulum at S Martin, has nothing going for it, and seems quite happy that way. 

I love it.

I put on the radio, which, together with sunglasses, make a good line of defence for a woman wandering alone, and suddenly, gloriously, the city jumps into focus. 

A mere chance of the dial brought me  Here to the sound of John Coltrane playing Body and Soul. Now the sound of the traffic is lit up with purpose,  and the random faces of the people in the bars are knitting together, and the swaying, surging pedestrians are a troupe of performers, acting out the city. And I wish, in a wave of sadness, that Chrome were here to hear it too, until I realize that, of course, he already has.

Thirza

Her Final Boa

The curtain is coming down on a stellar SL career. Feathers Boa is such a strong, vibrant, beautiful person with a wonderful future ahead of her; in order to fulfil that potential, she is saying goodbye, and retiring from SL.
We were all three of us crying a bit, Feathers, Explorer Dastardly and me, (silly girlz) as she started setting up her Last Ever Show at the Feathers Bay Gallery on sim Esterhal.

Feathers Boa: I am too busy in RL, I have no time for SL these days. I will fill this gallery space up, and my last day here will be June 29, the date my SL bill comes.
If you're a bit shocked that the LEA or some similar

Pythonesque

It made Newbab a little mad, but, well, that's not cucumber-grade serious. 

It's my first and last notice in the group. And before you say (although strangely, nobody is saying this) that it's harsh and unfair on poor old Chuck, firstly because he's far from being the only offender, and secondly because he did send out an apology, via ... Group Notice, I know all that. And sure, other names spring to mind; Vaneeesa somebody or other, a person called Monroe, who I think is a gallery owner, then of course, there's the spamalicious

X rated

It is stormy here.
Kolor Fall sent a gift in the night. I thought he'd forgotten about me, since I'm hardly ever in SL, but he hadn't. I opened the simple granite column on the roof, the only part of my house that I use these days.

The build starts with a spark, and then unfolds.

That's beautiful in itself, but once open, it's hard to take your eyes off these silent, spinning creatures.
 After Y is part of the gorgeous Puddles of Light build, currently under construction on sim KolorFall. The new build, which opens this ...fall (how appropriate) is out of this world, but this small taste has a solemn, living grace that outdoes any photo or machinima. Machinima is great, but it's someone else's viewpoint, and no substitute for your own vision, your idiosyncratic camera movements, the serenity of waiting on your own time, in your own moment, for the flock of after Y's to move again.

Facebook

There's something of the Anne Frank about being an avatar in Facebook, don't you think? You're there, you function, fight, write and love, but for how long? The login page of Second Life actively encourages us all to join the FB community - but FB policy does not permit  'fake' accounts, and every now and then, people send out dire warnings of an impending avatar cull. And we all know what happened to SaveMe.
A few weeks back, Georg Jannick

Betty's Boxes

Sitting in front of a computer is a sin, on days like these. Everything non-virtual presses its case, urging one to think outside the box, to get out of the room. The Great Outside, where my experimental pineapple bed has nothing to do with furniture, or prim count. Further outside, where mockingbirds mob a burly crow, the timid hydrangea opens one flower at a time, and the evenings are made for long, honeysuckle-scented walks to the pub amid fireflies in the sweet heat that will soon melt into oppression.

But then there's Betty Tureaud. Her build, The Box at Danish Visions, is like a fruit salad for the eyes. I went to see it with Karllos Decosta, who has recently fixed and updated the links in the ArtsParks sidebar. If you have some suggestions of unsung and interesting places that should be in the list, let him or me know and we'll see what we can do. (But no shops, vampire related crap, or obvious places like Bryn Oh installations.) Meanwhile, back in the box...
Karllos Decosta: There are many aspects of Betty’s art that you can explore: the political side, like her Arab Spring work at Kelly Yap Artist Gallery, her little robots, the use of search engines to structure our experience of ourselves and the world, following the ideas of the theorist Lev Manovich about the database as a new symbolic form. Other artists explore topics like identity issues or interactivity. I think Betty wants to explore the immersive possibilities of virtual worlds. So the big size suits that. The cube work is the best I have seen this year. As you walk, light goes through the cubes. I always liked huge spots of color, and I like how the colors change as you walk. I keeping coming back here, it's a beautiful work, it reminds me of Paul Klee, with his controlled and subtle chamber music style that you can see in a painting like Flora on the Sand. Both Klee and Kandinsky were accomplished musicians. Maybe Betty will surprise us by taking an electric guitar out of her sleeve and entertaining us, setting everybody in a mood of luxury, calm and pleasure.

  I'm all for that. And of course, Betty's famous for her Facebook collection of Danish Girl vocalists, including The Asteroids, Louise, and many more.

  Just then, Betty tp'd over to the sim to chat. She looked chic in her asian maiden outfit. We asked how long it took her to construct this huge, bewildering place.

Screen Saviour

He's mad for movies. Madmaninc Zapatero came into SL to sell computers, fell in with the Steampunk crowd, and ended up living his dream, owning his own movie palace, the Phantasmagoria Theater.  He started out with P.T. Barnum's American Museum, but he quickly moved from a 'phantasmagoria' or magic lantern show to showing full length films through blip.tv.
As GoldenWillow Resident, Maddie Mhia, Trilby Minotaur, and the rest of the crowd milled around the grand lobby, getting their popcorn, I asked Mad what is up with film in SL.

 MadManinc Zapatero: I love movies. I love talking and watching and showing movies to people. Movies are a social experience, and if your friends are across the globe, now you can sit down watch a movie together. Plus, it beats pretending to dance to music I don't like.

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.

Not Just Anybody

When I was younger, so much younger than today...

Help

How is it that even in SL you can choose your friends, but not your family, I thought, when my brother started shouting stuff about "un orgy room da niubbio". He is a much-married, howling combo of Arthur Daley, Scarface, and  the Cable Guy, for whom factual reality is a movable feast, and trouble a companion never more than one step to the rear. We have absolutely nothing in common, except for everything: we are the last survivors of a once vibrant family. Those first fatal days  in Second Life have cemented us together in a childhood shared, and the memories of those places and people are a sticking post in the heart.

Like you, I was moderately intrigued to know what constitutes a 'newbie' orgy room, but, being busy with something else at the time, was kind of glad when we moved into the standard Third Act, the familiar 'no, you better not threaten me' stage. One of his 'becauses' rang false, however. Surely I'd read somewhere that they don't have mentors any more in SL. And this proves he really is my brother, because if any random dude made similar wild statements, I'd simply mute him. But sibling rivalry demanded that I bring living proof of his BS to his door. 

I took time out to consult my favourite Knower of Things Linden, Wizard Gynoid. She rolled her eyes and passed a link to the Alphaville Herald, written some 6 months ago. I shook a triumphant sisterly fist in the air, but Wizzy's reaction was more reflective. Poor noobs - what happens to them now when they have questions? We packed some sandwiches, Wizzy got out her 'Noob Assistance' folder, and we TP'd over to Help Island to see what went on.

The noise is the first thing that hits you; Help Island Plaza was full of people. There was a big fight going on in Chat about Viewer choice, and the term 'smart ass' was being passed around pretty freely. 

Wizard Gynoid: Part of the reason they did away with the mentors is because they all argued, lots of ego problems.

Among the 'patients' - not all of them noobs, strictly speaking - were a woman who was ruthed, a guy inquiring about megaprims, and somebody who spoke only spanish. Wizzy found herself a newbie with a texture/money problem, but I was curious about the helpers, and asked Lisa Lowe what was going on there. After all, didn't the Mentor program get nuked by LL?