The Excellent I

What, then, shall we do?

John Cage

          What, then, does Machinima in Second Life do?

          Iono Allen makes machinima. He gained fame as a noob, with A Question Of Honour, in which long-time friend and colleague Larkworthy Antfarm also appears. It was shortlisted for an exhibition at MOMA, no less. The cinematic power of the film's unspoken story is even more remarkable since Allen had never made machinima before coming into Second Life. You will find 44 original uploads on his YouTube channel, with his latest short, Passion, notably available in full only on Vimeo, but more of that later.

Second Life Machinima is not fan-mod or art-mod, to borrow Rebecca Cannon's terms; it doesn't sit with the taxonomy of mainstream machinima with its professionally built sets and scripted or meta-scripted quests. It's quite easy to make a slick looking short when you have a game like Halo as a backdrop, and quite another thing with the homegrown props and lag of Second Life.

Role PLEA

          Maybe this is what we need. No more raging against the absurdity of institutions and form-filling-in in a virtual world. Maybe we should all just step away from competitions and workshops and discussions. And by we I mean you, naturally, because that's the kind of crap you get caught up in while the rest of us are building the future in open sim where you don't have to compose a proposal and send it to a committee just to get a few paltry prims to play with for free.

            Anyway, no point in pointing this out, you guys are trapped inside your own egos and won't be helped, and it's fun to visit the mad house once in a while though god knows I'd never want to live there again.
          Surely of all the screwed up activities SL has to offer, role playing is pretty high up there, whether it's playing traffic warden or pretending to be Scandinavian. So naturally, when a RP sim is thrust in your face as

Head Cases: Cherry Manga's Insanity

...the fatality of the big Clock playing with our lives

 Cherry Manga

For those of us who have had to deal with problems of the mind, from depression, to brain tumors, to senility, questions of what is real or unreal, what constitutes the real self are deep and substantial questions.

          It is a shame that discussion in SL about what shapes and what truly represents the self has been largely hijacked by vapid women and pervy men (often with matching Lolas Tangas). For those of us who deal on a daily basis with mental problems from depression to cancer to alzheimer's via a host of other conditions, physical and psychic, such piffle is annoying, unhelpful. Yet the need to communicate these howlingly large questions remain. What are we, if not our memories? Which of our many states of mind is the true one? Does such a thing exist?

Singularity

This post was written and photographed entirely on location at Immersiva

What viewer do you use?

This laptop has LL3, Exodus, Kokua, Cool, Phoenix, Imprudence, and Singularity. Imprudence was such a great viewer for visiting open sim, very stable, comfortingly familiar UI, but of course like Phoenix, it can't see mesh. Anyone who loved Imprudence naturally gravitated to Kokua, but that bloody UI is exhausting.

Big Wizness

If you haven't seen a hoodron, try going over to sim Clive it's the SL home from home of the Great Geometrist Wizard Gynoid.

Today, she was trying to figure out how to lip-sync in a movie. Turns out, lip sync-ing works just fine in opensim, also, by the way, Wiz, OSGrid's dan banner confirmed it, so probably it's just fine on InWorldz too. The details of Wizzy's lip syncing adventure will emerge soon. Neat, to see her in SL. The SL her has USB hair and an inability to use the letter 'f'.

Nine Lives: Coppelia's first year

          The art group Coppelia turns one this week, and they are celebrating the anniversary with an art show from 6-8pm SLT on Friday 28th February.
           Art groups are quite fascinating. Not the big message-board ones, but the guild type, where everyone's an artist. Some are free-for alls, with a mix of genuine innovators and wannabes whose talent is mostly for gallery politics. Then there are the B-List cooperatives where nobody is very good but nobody minds, because dancing and gossip are regularly available. At odds with the B-list are the pretentious collectives for 'premier artists', the kind of elitist BS that third rate academics love. You can see where they are coming from - all of us want to escape from mediocrity, but as the Anglo-Saxon proverb says, 'He that

The Art of Blogging ... Art

Writing about art in Second Life can be a lot of fun. You get to have proper conversations with interesting. passionate people... also quite a few twits, but you knew that already. What makes for a better blog, when it comes to blogging art in Second Life? Here are the reactions of a handful of people who know a bit about it, from different perspectives.
Apmel posts notices, reviews, and (what he probably would hate to see called) understated social comment. His blog is regularly updated, sometimes several times a day, often in Swedish, never without purpose. What would be his philosophy on blogging about art - well, not just the art but the people who make it, buy  it, and blether about it? Appropriately, his answer was a link to his blog.

Apmel: his blog is scary good.

          Let's get this out of the way before we go any further: the 'Dear Diary' style: "I got an IM, and..." "I always think...", "I was invited by my good friend Kewlkid Namedrop..." I, I, I....unless you're describing your illness or your solo trek up Everest, mentioning yourself 10 times in the first paragraph makes you sound like a raging egomaniac, not a hip young thing, or the voice of authority. We know that you were IM'd/invited/present at an event, and heck, we kind of guessed that your blog contains things you think and opine. Be warm and personal, but get straight down to the bit we care about, the art and the events.

Method and Madness

Kenya's Feed A Smile is a great charity and Kiana the maddest pea of them all is trying to raise money for them in Second Life. The MadPea crew have set up a charity auction in a park at  Mad City among the wildly beautiful New York sims. The auction starts February 15th and runs through February 23rd.

The idea is that you bid on people offering goods or services or, in the case of the celebs, maybe just 'to spend time' with them. And there are some pretty well-known names up there, all the way from Bryn Oh to Drax. (OK you're expecting some comment like :"I would pay good money to have Drax pass 24 hours without spamming about himself and that bloody Fluffee", right? You're out of luck. This is 'don't mention the Drax' week. Thank God it's Thursday.)

Convivial Pursuit

You will still be here tomorrow, Though your dreams may not.

    Cat Stevens

           Back in the golden age of SL, there were so many Italian sims it would take you months to visit them all; an immensely varied galaxy of  nostalgia and extravagant architecture, vibrant communities packed with dance and drama, passion, imprecision, and boundless enthusiasm. Many of those luminous points have gone out, while those that survive cluster together for company, almost orbiting in systems, let us say solar systems, like sim Solaris, which is home to Arte Libera, Pyramid Cafe, as well as the Torno Kohime Foundation, or to put it another way Tanalois, run by  run by Aloisio Congrejo and Tani Thor.             

           Pol Jarvinen is there now, with a new show, Chasing Butterflies. No running around with delicate nets though. At first glance, you might mistake the build for a sort of zoo, or aviary. There are painted pine livestock cages at the entrance, the kind of thing they used fifty years ago when it was still okay to scoop animals out of their habitat and drag them off to some civilized country to be stared at. But these boxes don't contain lemurs or parrots. They have butterflies in them; ghostly, enormous and (thanks to the alpha bug) not entirely inside the boxes, either. Spooky.

Life is but a Dream

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

Traditional       

 Noke Yuitza had some good news. Even in IM, her merry enthusiasm was infectious. It was the perfect melding of SL and real life. The birth of a new life. It is a very beautiful story, let me tell you it because it is attached in a certain way to this installation. They met in one of my classes some years ago here in SL; they are from different countries, Germany and Sweden, and I introduced them. I met them in RL too. They started to going out in RL and now they are together and with a baby!!

Wear it well: Kikas Babenco

          Here's Kikas Babenco, coming to you from sunny Portugal, with impeccable English, learnt 'with the Beatles' and via many, many books. She teaches graphic arts and introduction to multimedia in real life.

           In Second Life you'll most likely know her from the joint performances – or better 'Adventures' - with her RL and SL partner Marmaduke Arado. For Kikas, art is about questioning the world around us, but from a positive point of view. She's all about hope, and good companionship, and... well, let her tell you.

The Missing

What makes Hopper an enduring and endearing figure in 20th century art has been hacked to death by writers, almost from his first encounter with fame, age 40, when his soon-to-be-wife, Jo Nivison, convinced him to show some watercolours at the Brooklyn Museum.

What makes Hop On Hop Oh, the installation at Solace Island, so interesting is that the builder, Saveme Oh, is in every way the opposite of what we have been taught to think of, when we think of Edward Hopper: flamboyant, to Hopper's repression; anti-establishment, to Hopper's conservatism; manically social, to Hopper's sense of solitude.

Hopper's early life resonates with the typical Second Life; it is one of lopsided aspirations, fragmented advantage, finally glued together by glorious good luck. His talent was obvious from a young age, and was encouraged by his parents who set him up with trips abroad, and the kind of solid education in the field that most aspiring artists would be delighted to receive.

Pictures of Tani

The autumn has arrived here, and as the evenings draw in, so returns the desire to be somewhere warm, in every sense. What could be better then, than an attractive photo show, surrounded by kind and witty people, on a beautiful romantic parcel, Sorrento on sim Chefchaouen.

Tani Thor's photos are a great mixture of gentle landscapes and lively abstracts, I particularly loved this one, Altalena, and 'Tempio', taken on Japan Kansai.

Double Tour

Tournicoton, the French art Gallery on sim Metaversel, is closing this week, closing its doors for good. It's just too expensive, says Mariaka Nishi, who cofounded the artistic venue back in 2007 alongside her RL partner, Naastik Rau. To mark the end of an era, and to let people know that she's still fervently involved in VW art, she has organized one last show, Welcoming Woman, set for this Tuesday evening, French time (that's 12.30 SLT on September 25th). It's going to be a double event, held in Voice, held on both SL and Francogrid - the sims have the same name, Metaversel. Here's Mariaka, FG version, busy preparing the Francogrid side of the double show.

Why this departure from Second Life? It's just too expensive, in that it's about 290 euros a month to run a sim, so that even with a bit of help from others, it's just not worth it, especially as now they get less and less use out of it, as they spend more and more time on the beautiful, stable, and vibrant Francogrid. She has also allowed her son Louka free range, on an adjoining sim,

Fair Play

In an hour or so, there's fun and dancing at the State Fair - wait, no, no pigs or pies competing, not this time, it's the Virtual State Fair Art Gallery run by Thynka Little and, in a lesser, none-of-my-business kind of a way, DFox Spitteler. Going by the IMs. Voting ends at 8 pm SLT  tonight.

The competition is interesting, not so much by the standard of  the art on show, which is nice - the theme is weather in SL, most people have gone with rain, or tornadoes - wow - but even more so for the fact that the organizers actively encourage, in the Notecard, the use of the dreaded Friend's Vote (though they draw the line at bots and groups).
It may seem a bit naughty, getting your friends over, but it's a nice way of meeting new people, and being hit

Bananas by Moonlight

Earlier this summer,with her install 'Destruction', Asmita Duranaya challenged artists and builders to come up with a modern fable.

The result, or at least the top of the iceberg, from a creative point of view, was unveiled last night at Space4Art in the form of the winning entry, 'Fleeting Captivities' by Lilia Artis and Haveit Neox.

 This lovely construct is a 3D interpretation of their charming morality tale which exudes all the best values of Second Life, impossible climactic conditions, bridges over infinity, and unexpected friendships in the face of adversity. It's a must read, and if you do nothing else, TP over to and pick up a copy. But no, hang around a little longer on the sim, and try out Asmita's Destruction word-game-with-a-message. Looks like sinister fun.
 Center stage is the build by Haveit and Lilia, who took their tale and fitted it into quite literally a 'space for art'. last night was the dance-filled vernissage, and Lilia read the story out in both German and English. She has a clear, bright delightful reading voice. It was like a sort of bizarro crap mariner event, put it that way.

Wor(l)ds together: Noke Yuiza

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. 

I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. 

All those... moments will be lost... in time, like tears... in rain. 

Time to die."

'Roy Batty', Blade Runner

Noke Yuiza has been busy in SL. You may have seen her latest build, showcased at the Brera sim, and you won't be blamed if you think that she's all about the stage. It comes as no surprise to find that in her real life she has been both dancer and choreographer, and, perhaps most significantly, as a set painter in the theater. You probably saw her interesting take on Hoffmann's The Sandman, hosted at Arte Libera a while back.

Noke's build takes to new heights the extreme conflation of real and virtual realities that's been the hallmark of Imparafacile Runo's work in SL / RL. Impa, as you know, has been running learning and cultural schemes in SL for ages. His group Libriamo Tutti is pure reality overlap. His able and talented team organize meetings where a RL audience, meeting in libraries in towns across Lombardy, can listen, see and participate alongside SL residents in literary evenings where books are discussed, read aloud, explained, and generally celebrated. Impa's longstanding friendship with Professor Giampiero Moioli of Milan's Brera Academy of Art, and a close collaboration with Simba Schumann, led to a recent RL seminar in which students were able to make a virtual field trip to three installations on the Brera sim. Each build is based on a literary work close to the artist's heart.

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.

A little night

Maybe next year

Stephen Sondheim

A dark, stormy night, too hot to think, much too hot to seek out crowds, or feign interest in upcoming birthday parties, is the best time to visit Carnevil. 

RaggedyMortis Haystack delivers a detailed, sinister atmosphere in a surprisingly small space, nay-saying the current mantra that you need a whole sim to make your point. Free bits by the likes of Arcadia Asylum and Chicanery Turnbull add to the awesome gruesome.


But if Carnevil exudes quiet cleverness, the quietness itself delivers something disturbing. What happened here, in this empty garden? Signs that might be omens greet the unhappy wanderer. Stains, glowing grass, a shrunken head in the pool. That kind of thing. Add a rubber duck or two, and you've got a metaphor for SL9B. But like, with some class.
Ought there to be clowns? You can't be sure they're not already here, phantasms of grunge existing at a slightly different resolution, just beyond what your viewer can see, a sort of spiritual mesh.

Carnevil is SL art at its best: well-crafted, avatar-relevant items curated with imagination. It's a perfect showcase for a  commercial venture (including Meat 'n' More in the Haunted Farm next door, and Pinkmares House) that leave you reaching for more, not reaching for Mute.

Wait. Did you hear that?

Wales-scape

The eye, or rather the mind, 

is never long delighted with 

that which it surveys without effort

Humphry Repton, Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening

The LEA is like a raw onion: sure, it's juicy and multi-layered, but prolonged contact makes some people emit hot air, or tears, or both.
Open a window, escape from poseurs and schoolyard politics, and jump into the magical world of June Clavenham and Luke Vemo.
They live far apart. Luke is in England, June in Uruguay. They met on a rooftop sandbox, years ago. He made popcorn appear.