Buckminster Fuller would have approved

On Werner Kurosawa, geodesic domes, and Green Phosphor’s novel work in Second Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Years ago, a friend of mine who owned a large manufacturing centre sought to enclose the entire building complex within a geodesic dome, modelled after architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller’s lattice shell structures. His goal was not merely an aesthetic one, for it is said that such domes maximize efficiency in energy use for both heating and cooling, while being structurally strong. Fuller’s maxim: “Doing more with less.” That was my first introduction to the futurist, and I’ve admired many of his ideas ever since. As an irrelevant but nonetheless fascinating aside, virtual world residents who find their schedules unbearably stretched may take an interest in the fact that Fuller practiced Polyphasic sleeping for two years: only two hours a day via very short naps at regular intervals.


Fuller and Shoji Sadao’s U.S. Pavilion at the ’67 Expo in Montreal – Image courtesy of David Gomez Rosado


Fuller and Shoji Sadao dreamed of placing a climate-controlled geodesic dome over Manhattan – Photo courtesy of NeutralSurface

Buckminster Fuller’s domes were the first thing I thought of when I rezzed at Green Phosphor’s new facility in Second Life®, which is surrounded by an immense – even by SL standards – webbed rotating sphere. The effect is both elegant and highly dramatic.


If you click to enlarge, you will see that the spec at approximately the middle of this image is me, standing on a platform above the dome

Werner Kurosawa, the virtual architect

Created by Belgian architect Werner Kurosawa (aka Werner van Dermeersch), Green Phosphor is among the most handsome and livable virtual corporate campuses that I know of.



It was so not a surprise then when I visited Werner’s website and discovered various videos on Buckminster Fuller and links to the organization that bear the maverick’s name.

“Of course it is a tribute to him because he surpasses the ordinary, which every architect should do to have the right to use the title of architect. On the other hand, it was for my friend and client Tom Barman – lead singer of the Belgian group Deus - who used the “image” of Bucky as a reference to me when he wrote the song “The Architect” in their latest CD (look for the tape recorder on the bottom right).

In addition to his architectural work, Werner creates art installations, “from big to small.” From time to time he collaborates with his friend and composer Serge Verstockt on contemporary classical music and he also teaches Master classes in Art in Antwerp.

His Second Life name, of course, alludes to two of the greatest film directors of all time. He described a scene in Werner Herzog’s latest film, where an upside down image of a waterfall is seen in a drop of rain clinging to a leaf. He loves all films by Akira Kurosawa, but “Ikuru holds a special place in my heart.”

When Werner gets real, his predilections range from the university that Kasua Sejima built in Lausanne, the Lemoine house in Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas – there’s also a great video about it here, via Gizmodo - which he believes to have been a milestone at that time, and the pyramid of Cheops in Giza.

Given the environmental advantages to the Green Phosphor dome, I expected Werner to answer affirmatively when asked if he considered ecological issues when building virtually. I was mistaken. “I consider environmental issues in Real Life. We would have to stop using computers and the Internet if we were to consider environmental issues in Second Life,” he said.

Most of the people in his life - including his Real Life clients - think he’s wasting his time in Second Life, “but I believe there is a big future ahead for the 3D Internet.”

Certainly the Real Life company Green Phosphor thinks so. “We produce the leading tool for visualizing data within virtual worlds,” said Ben Lindquist, the company’s CEO. “While our tool works in Second Life, Sun's Wonderland, and soon in Forterra's OLIVE, we have only one headquarters - the virtual headquarters that Werner Kurosawa built for us in Second Life.”

In this video, Lindquist explains how the company is using patent-pending technology to implement a virtual laboratory that has the potential of reducing the time and cost spent on drug development by up to 50%.



“I met Ben Lindquist at Brooklyn is Watching. I saw him building his first Graphs there and found them intriguing. When Green Phosphor rented half of the sim and put a prefab house there, I proposed that I would make a unique workplace in exchange for knowledge and a steady place to experiment next to BiW,” explained Werner.





Lindquist seems pleased with the arrangement: “The space that Werner created for us makes me happy when I move around in it; its design is clean yet comfortable; curvy yet solid. He took into consideration how the water in Second Life interacts with surfaces; reflections play upon the virtual cement and the view out into the rest of the sim is always interesting, thanks to the phantom prim structure Werner created to rotate around the entire island.”





So successful, in my view, was Werner’s rendering of Green Phosphor’s look and brand in Second Life, that I asked him if he’d collaborated with the company’s advertising or PR agency to bring it about. “No, but Ben has a nice father, Mark Lindquist, a famous sculptor whom I sometimes meet in Second Life and we have a lot of fun!” replied Werner.


Werner Kurosawa

Still, the people in Werner’s Real Life have a hard time understanding what he finds so compelling about virtual worlds. “People aren’t used to navigating in 3D and run around like flatlanders. I have the same experience with my work in Real Life when the scale gets really big or something is out of the ordinary,” he mused.

And Werner has been known to work on a very grand scale.


In Second Life: Werner's Twisted Tetrahedron Tower - 3,500m high


In Real Life: Werner's Lightwall installation: 1,2 km across and 16km high. Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

“They have difficulty grasping what is going on and it takes a long time for them to really see it. They aren’t used to flying around or even disconnecting what they are seeing from their bodies, especially when their view gets out of the XY plane. They get disoriented,” he continued.




Z Apartments at Saturn - Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

Werner explained how, soon after he graduated, he created some installations with plans and models and televised video of those models. “While they couldn’t read the plans and most could not read the models, everyone accepted television as ”real” (which it wasn’t). Perspective drawings where read correctly even when they weren’t drawn right.”

He is primarily interested in perception and perspective: “You have to keep in mind that the view you see in Second Life is calculated as a projection on a 2D surface of a “3D” world based on the same perspective model that was once made 500 years ago with a steady horizon at 1.65m high seen with one static eye. And we know that it isn’t “reality” but until now our society and products are based on that. We have two eyes moving in a moving head on a moving body.”

Werner freely admits that he was disgusted with Second Life after one or two hours the day he rezzed back in January of 2007. Some of his students had recommended it saying that it would really be his thing. He explained: “It was ugly. It had a much lower resolution than the 3D game engines I had used a lot before to do performances. The first engine I hacked was Duke Nukem back in1993. You had to pay for everything, and most avatars didn’t make contact with each other and those who did weren’t interesting at all. I returned many months later and it was more the social community that kept me going and finally introduced it as a tool. I was using the Unreal Engine 3 at that time with a lot more possibilities for 3D rendering.”




Hyperbolic Space - Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

“Then, by meeting some very interesting people from all over the globe, I found I had a reason to stay inside. People started to ask me to sell them things I had made, which was more trouble than it was worth, so I always give my creations away. To this day I haven’t spent a penny in SL. And when you are creative and curious, you can find enough tools to make things yourself or trade with others. I do try to script my own things. SL gave me the need to program, which is also a new evolution in architecture with all the generative architecture going on. I try to learn with a lot of trial and a lot of error, but I do a lot of copy and paste from existing pieces of code wandering on the net. I see it as a tool and my experience with programmers is that they can program but that doesn’t mean they have ideas on what to create.”

So what does Werner wish that he could do the most that he cannot? Turns out he’d like to fly in Real Life... just like he does in Second Life.

You can visit Green Phosphor by teleporting directly from here.

Visualizing God: A virtual art show

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

In "Human Destiny," Le Comte Du Nouy wrote, "Any effort to visualize God reveals a surprising childishness. We can no more conceive Him than we can conceive an electron. Yet many people do not believe in God simply because they cannot visualize him." In fact, many Christians feel that images dishonor God because he is invisible. "No images drawn from visible things will enrich our worship of him," said Gordon R. Lewis.

Be it God, Yahweh, Adonai, Allah, Lord, Elohim or Baal, every faith has its rules and designations and many won't even utter His name. Most Christians prefer, instead, to focus their paint brushes and chisels on Jesus since the story goes that he became incarnate and walked among us. John of Damascus wrote, "The Son is the image alive, natural and perfectly similar of the invisible God; he carries in himself the Father, and is identical with him in everything, except for this single fact, that he derives from him as from his [primary] cause."

This thinking becomes particularly interesting and gets mightily challenged when sacred images are considered from the Not Possible IRL (in virtual worlds) perspective.

When LogLady Loon - founder of Freak Show - named her newest collective "GodArt: My faith, between sacred and profane," I'm sure she knew what she was doing. The woman is inciting us again to explore, with art, our deepest beliefs, and this after her Pornosophy and Freaks vs Beauty Paranoia shows. She asks, "Tell me what you believe."



Given my ongoing interest in 3D art, which I view as the ultimate expression of what is possible in virtual worlds, and my disinterest in waiting what seems like an eternity for 2D images to render in-world, I'd abstained in the past from getting involved with Freak Show which is overwhelming about photography, but I find the GodArt theme irresistible.

I'd like to encourage land owners to help sponsor the show and provide as many prims as possible, thereby enabling more artists to present their works three-dimensionally.

For these reasons, Not Possible IRL has become a sponsor of the GodArt show, joining ItaliaSL, ModaSL, Avatrait, BadGirls magazine and Poetik for the first time, as a supporter of Freak Show.

The deadline to enter is Monday, August 31st, and only one work is allowed per participant. For more information, please refer here.

Keystone Bouchard, building community with prims

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

If I were to commission the design of a building - whether commercial or residential - I would vastly prefer the opportunity to walk in and around it before brick and mortar were employed, over looking at CAD animations and illustrations, a flat screen, or even a 3D printout. Wouldn't you? It is such an inexpensive step and so basic to our senses (including common sense!). Using virtual worlds to bring blueprints to life is not only possible but a daily reality in Second Life®.

To me, it looks like the body of an acoustic guitar, or maybe a key hole, or perhaps it is a musical note. When I met with him just hours before the Metanomics studio he had created was about to have its public debut, I completely forgot to ask Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud) if he had implemented Feng Shui techniques in the design. My guess is that he did, whether he is aware of it or not. The thing just flows.



Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are very new to Second Life, then you know that the secret sauce over at Metanomics - the talk show that explores the serious uses of virtual worlds – is its community of suits and geeks who are there to mobilize mostly biz and tech ideas through conversation, together with the occasional sprinkling of left brainers, a smattering of educators and hard-core scientists, and a dash of memes. It’s a hale and hearty concoction.


Le Corbusier defined architecture as the “magnificent play of volumes brought together under light”

Keystone and I had been chatting for well over an hour, with just one interruption (he had to step away from the computer to say goodbye to his grandmother who was visiting his Real Life home – a real family man!), when it occurred to him to share with me that he’d been notified minutes before our meeting that his Studio Wikitecture, which he co-founded along with Theory Shaw (aka Ryan Schultz), had just won the Linden Prize: $10,000 USD for developing an “innovative in-world project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world.” And that should give you an inkling of the kind of fellow we’re talking about here.



Fast facts about Keystone Bouchard

• Architect, urban planner and artist; Master of Architecture, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.Co-founder of Crescendo Design, a residential design studio located in Madison, Wisconsin (Real Life)
• Creator of Autodesk Island, the virtual U.S. House of Representatives, Linden Lab’s Virtual Headquarters, a build-out for a TED conference event, and many other edifices and islands. (Second Life)
• Co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, an open group composed of a diverse range of individuals from varying disciplines, interested in exploring the application of an open-source paradigm to the design and production of both real and virtual architecture and urban planning. (Virtual worlds)

Early Keystone Bouchard video, dating back to January 2007

• Founder of the ARCH Network, a community resource for architecture and virtual worlds, including consultation, training, virtual design, BIM/CAD model import, and hosted Virtual Project Spaces.
• He created the Reflexive Architecture installation, where I first discovered and fell head over heels for virtual architecture.

This photo by Keystone Bouchard

Keystone began the design process for the Metanomics building in February, and it had its unveiling on May 6, 2009. Here is the transcript of our conversation just before the opening.

Would you say that this was the most complex project you've taken on?

Keystone Bouchard: It wasn't terribly complicated from a functional perspective, since the intended use of the space was very clear. As far as complexity, I would say the Linden Lab HQ 4-sim project I worked on in 2007 while I was working with Clear Ink was quite a bit more so - given the magnitude of different program elements it had to accommodate, and the functional goals were much more difficult to quantify.



The biggest difference, I think, was in openness. The Linden Lab headquarters had to remain confidential, and it was harder to gain access or feedback from most of the people who would actually be using it, whereas with Metanomics, I was able to more fully engage the community of people who will actually end up using this space. Everyone was invited to stop by at any time and provide feedback. I think the incorporation of that feedback ended up making it a much stronger design than I could have come up with on my own

Who was on the Metanomics team to create this space?

Keystone Bouchard: Discord Schism, Metaverse Engineer, and Dusan Writer were the main collaborators. I was responsible for conceptual design, Dusan designed the set, Metaverse Engineer did all of the landscaping and various detail elements, and Discord Schism built out the event partner hub and other detail elements. Joel Savard was the Project Manager. I also did 99% of the construction on the main building shell and most of the texturing.

What was the plan?

Keystone Bouchard: My brief was to provide an event space for Metanomics that would span 2 regions - the set on one (to help resolve lag issues), and audience on the other, and also to provide space to display additional content - material from past shows - and design for the site to scale over time, with additional buildings to be added later. My goal was to design something that everyone could feel comfortable with, and to invite community wide feedback throughout the design process. We had regular community forums, where we solicited feedback, and presented the design's progress.

One of the things I observed before starting this project was that Metanomics can be as much about the back-chat as it is about the show itself. So many people expressing so many different ideas and opinions, yet, they're all coming together at that moment - around this show. I wanted to design something that was a visual metaphor for the coming together of ideas – the coming together of the community - so, the early conceptual designs were very literal. There were lots of building pieces coming together from all different angles - to create the auditorium.

In the final manifestation, that visual metaphor was represented with structural columns, while earlier on it had been more literal. It became a much more subtle expression, as though there are many individual pieces that are working together. None of them could visually support the structure alone.



How was this experience different from designing in Real Life, other than taking backchats into consideration (although nowadays twitter IS the equivalent of backchat in Real Life)?

Keystone Bouchard: It was much easier to express the idea here. In Real Life - conveying a design is a very abstract experience. You're sharing 2D plans, or sketches, and trying to imagine what it will look like - and trying to help the client imagine what it will be like, so, you're always trying to build a portal into that dimension - and show them that world - like from the outside looking in.

That’s similar to how it went down for DB Bailey (aka David Denton, AIA, in Real Life) and his Egyptian client recently. Once the client saw it in Second Life, it was something palpable. He could walk around it. He had a sense of perspective. In Real Life, the best you can do is create an illustration - which is static - and it is only one view. Animations (via CAD) get closer, but they're time consuming and expensive and still very prescriptive. The viewer has no control, and creating that illustration is an 'event.'

So how does the experience compare directly with CAD?

Keystone Bouchard: You decide, at some moment in time, to take a look at what the design will actually look like; whereas here, it’s always there… constantly. You're always in real-time 3D. There's never a moment when you have to stop and say, “Ok, let’s look at it in 3D.” It’s always 3D.

How often do those moments come up in a Real Life situation?

Keystone Bouchard: That's the other part of it. The client only gets to see your progress at bi-weekly meetings. Here, the client can make an appearance at any given moment. And that is just the design process. Some designers might consider that unnerving - but I find it to be invaluable. I like sharing the burden! If I'm stuck on something, I love being able to bounce ideas off of people. It becomes much more efficient because I’m not working in some direction for two weeks and then showing it to the client.

At what point in the design process did you introduce the stretched canvas texture? Did you originally think in terms of canvas? I'm reminded of Franklin Lloyd Wright and also Paul Klee. It seems organic, like a skin.

Keystone Bouchard: Yes, I've always been a fan of the idea of translucent marble that is cut so thin that light can permeate. It is possible to do in real life, but incredibly expensive. The idea with the outer shell was for it to be 'skinnable.' This is just one possible solution, but I hope in the future that it can be re-skinned with other textures: perhaps dynamic, maybe reflexive, or maybe (it) changes color based on concurrency or the mood of the community - like a visual display.

Or seasonal?

Keystone Bouchard: Yes, maybe something about the upcoming show; maybe competitions to design the best skin. Whatever the result, the goal was to make it very flexible.

What was the stickiest point?

Keystone Bouchard: Scale. It is still a challenge. I think the seats are too far away from the set, for example, because I wanted it to feel intimate, yet, it has to accommodate a large and growing audience.

Is that for purposes of the studio cameras? What percentage of the design discussions took the camera into account?

Keystone Bouchard: Camera had a lot to do with it. I was told 'no alpha' early on. I designed an inner shell where the camera is, for the lion's share of the show - with no alpha - so I could get away with having an alpha outer shell.

The spiraling swirls above the building...

Keystone Bouchard: NPIRL ;-) (Not Possible IRL). At one point, the idea was for the build to start very “Real Life” at the base - where it meets the ground - as though there were already this kind of historical archeology - and building over the top of that as it rises in the Z-axis, it becomes increasingly NPRIL. The idea of NPRIL came up dozens of times in design iterations. At one point, I was talking to Scope Cleaver (another virtual architect) about this. I pinged him often during the course of design development, and he said, “Wouldn't it be cool if the building were actually rising up out of the ground - as though the community were a kind of current - and this building was picking up on that, and crystallizing around it?” A brilliant idea, but as I thought about it, it’s more like something that zips around and orbits.

Later in the conversation I learned of Studio Wikitecture's Linden Prize win, and of course, I had to ask about it.

Keystone Bouchard: When we first started brainstorming the idea of applying principles of open source, and Wikipedia-style collaboration to architecture and the built environment, we knew that Second Life was exactly what we needed to make this work. The ability to customize and program elements within this platform was huge. We were able to build the Wiki-tree here, using this platform, and do lots of unique things with it, like being able to tie it in with a website. The diversity and size of the community is requisite in collaboration like this. Also, prims - believe it or not, prims! - are an important part of why Wikitecture works in Second Life. They're granular, so individual parts of the design can be modified, and the building tools are easy to learn.

That's why Second Life became a platform for experimenting with an augmented form of architectural collaboration that I sincerely believe could be an improved design methodology - and a more effective means of harnessing the collective wisdom of communities - the people who actually use architecture and the built environment. Buildings are just too big, and too complicated for a single firm or individual to fully comprehend and, ultimately, the urban fabric is a lot like one vast operating system upon which we run our lives. Linux was developed by many, many people - maybe architecture can be, too.

How radical is this thinking in the architectural community today?

Keystone Bouchard: O'Reilly called it 'Radical Collaboration' - so - I guess it is radical.

There is no other platform that offers this combination of features - the simple building tools, the immersive, realtime, multi-user experience - the ability to program a technology plug-in into it - and more - because of the fact that this combination doesn't really exist in other software applications. There isn't anything quite like it.

About a year ago... at least that is how I recall it... you seemed to be going through a period of real disenchantment with Second Life and virtual worlds. I felt as though you were... disengaging. Is this true and what happened that changed that?

Keystone Bouchard: When I started using Second Life, I was most impressed by what I assumed it was 'about to become' - not necessarily for what it was. I saw it as a tool. A platform. I knew an environment like this could be powerful in architectural and AEC practice, and I couldn't wait until X, Y and Z feature were implemented. I kept saying, “Imagine what this will be like in a few years!” After two years, it started to feel like nothing had changed and nothing was really getting any better, but that's when a kind of transition occurred and I started to think of it more like a place than a tool. It was then when I began to appreciate it for what it is - not for what I hope it will someday be. I think the fact that it has this 'real life' association - the land, the sky, the human avatars - is why we get disappointed with it when it isn't Real Life. We're comparing it with the physical world, when it really is a place, a context, and an environment all its own.

You can teleport to the Metanomics building directly from here.

See also:

• New York Times, T-Magazine: "Original Sim" by Sam Lubell - Dec. 2008
• Architectural Record, "Wikitecture: From clicks to bricks, avatars to architects" by David Sokol - Oct. 2008
• Business Week, SmallBiz: "Business, and Startups, in Second Life" - Aug. 2008
• NPIRL: The Impossible Made Possible: A Panel on the Future of Architecture
• NPIRL: Reflexive Architecture by Keystone Bouchard at 2nd Live
• NPIRL: Wikisonic to get Real at the Tech Virtual Museum
• NPIRL: Winner of the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Network's Founders Award
• New World Notes: Top Ten Art Installations of Second Life
• Keystone Bouchard’s Flickr stream
• Studio Wikitecture Flickr stream

The quirky avatars of Lime Breen

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

When I think of animation, three things immediately come to mind: Disney characters, Japanese anime, and the Simpsons. Japan, by the way, just announced that it is investing 11.7 billion yen on the creation of a new "shrine" to anime in Tokyo.

I can't think of a species of avatar that I haven't seen in Second Life®, but on the whole, animation-style avatars seem to be in short supply. That's just one reason why I love to stare at Lime Breen whenever our paths cross.


Lime Breen, as photographed by Lime Breen

Lime hails from New Jersey and works as a web/flash designer, but in Second Life, Lime makes avatars. Idiosyncratic, quirky, cartoony and wildly exaggerated, these avatars are... cute.


"Janette"


Lime's "Noodle" was a special commission to do a Gorillaz band member

No shop yet, but Lime does take individual commissions for avatar creations. Plans include the addition of optional facial expressions.

Somebody... Give this woman a sim-wide show

Desert Rose: Spiral Threads #12, 1,000 prims


Posted by Bettina Tizzy
All photography and machinima by Suzanne Graves

I have an uncle who handily wins the prize for geekiest person in my personal sphere. The man has two interests in life and one of them is math. One Christmas years ago, as we all gathered round the tree for our gift exchange, my uncle showed up with a manila folder. When his turn came around, he explained that he'd spent the past several months creating art using math equations in his spare time and we could each choose one of his art pieces as our gift. This was my first exposure to the concept of fractals, and I've been indebted to him ever since. Oh, I know... it was such a dorky thing to do (and he is a dork!), but the fact remains, I love geek art.

I figure it has been two years now since I first became aware of an ardent explorer and photographer in Second Life by the name of Suzanne Graves. It must be about a year now since she hung up her traveling hat and began playing with scripts and prims. Random rotations, random locations, generative builds, animated textures, and more. Math-inspired art.

I'm here to tell you that this woman hasn't wasted a moment. Since her Slinky piece and Wireflower back in July, 2008 to date, Suzanne has discovered many more new tricks for making prims behave in arrestingly beautiful ways.

And now she is capturing these kinetic forms in her own machinima...


Viewable temporarily - along with two other sculptures by Suzanne - at Ars Simulacra. Teleport directly from here.
Music (c) Bertycox, Album: Synesthetism on jamendo.com

Suzanne calls this sculpture Sphere Balls as a play on words. "The spheres seem to be dancing at the ball," she explained. The piece, which she created quite by accident, consists of three similar sets of black and red spheres containing 200 spheres each that rotate in different directions simultaneously. Each of the three sets are positioned on an invisible/virtual bigger sphere, following a 3D curve on that big sphere.

"The size of each small sphere depends on the curvature of the 3D curve at its location. You may notice that the spheres on the top are smaller. Each "big" set is completed by (and linked to) an invisible prim, which is positioned at the center of the big virtual sphere, and this invisible prim responds to start and stop commands. I could add more commands such as changing the rotation direction, for instance," she added.

"The three sets of 200 spheres are concentric (their invisible prims have the same location), and the set in the middle rotates in an opposite direction relative to the outer and inner sets."

Because Suzanne's work is prim-heavy and script intense, it isn't easily displayed. In fact, I'm often frustrated because I don't know which sim or sandbox she is working in so that I can go and peek. I think it is time someone hosted a sim-wide show of her work. Don't you? Take a look...


Gold Box Sets


Spiral Threads #01


Spiral Threads #06

You can see more of Suzanne's work on her Flickr stream.

Reach smeech... Second Life won't cut it with Nielsen yet, but it is POWERFUL in other ways

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I was Twittering just now, and up came a twitter from a favorite follow of mine, Chimera Cosmos (aka @LDinSTL_Chimera), that read: "Yes! RT @metaMeerkat: inSL: @cybergrrloh says if one does not talk Second Life® when talking socialmedia, one misses an opportunity for REACH."

While I didn't attend @cybergrrloh's presentation - and I'm sure she provided many compelling ideas - I don't think for a nanosecond that Second Life is a tool worthy of consideration for advertising and marketing, not even exponentially... yet. However, I do believe in the power of the platform. Let me give you an excellent and very recent example:

DB Bailey (aka David Denton, AIA, in Real Life) is an architect in both worlds. I've blogged about his very virtual, very Not Possible IRL buildings many times here.


DB Bailey in front of a building he created for Stanford University

Not long ago, DB teleported me to a shopping mall he had created in Second Life. Given that I focus primarily on quality content in virtual worlds that would Not be Possible in Real Life, this was unusual, but it turned out to be a worthwhile trip. It seems that DB had been working with a potential Egyptian client, and the two had gone back and forth for two years... but DB had not been able to secure that client's buy-in on the project. One day, out of frustration or a creative burst... who knows, DB logged into Second Life and recreated his proposed shopping mall down to the plants. "I'm surprised how fast I did it," he shared with me.


Photo courtesy of The Arch Network

What happened next will underscore the point I am trying to make. The virtual platform of Second Life - where user-created content is possible - is mostly untapped and extremely powerful: DB showed the virtual and three-dimensional shopping mall to his client, and within three days he was on his way to Egypt to work on the Real Life project. He's there now. You can read about it here.

My Twitter handle is: @Bettinatizzy

How can we explain what you are missing?

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Avatars often grapple with how to demonstrate what it is that appeals to us so much about art, architecture and fashion in Second Life®, to people who will not or cannot log in. It's a dilemma akin to sharing a new color or flavor, because the immersive qualities of the 3D experience cannot be conveyed in words or even via film, given its flatness. So we take photographs. We create machinima. And we talk and talk and blog and twitter. Still, you are left out until you decide to take the plunge and devote sufficient time to learn how to move your camera and your avatar around.

I recently spent a pleasant hour chatting with a journalist about my own appraisal of content creation in virtual worlds, and while I'm an evangelist and like to think myself persuasive, I was unable to secure his interest in joining me to have a look with his own eyes. Still, we'll keep trying, and experienced early adopters that we are (remember when we tried to tell you about something called the Internet?), we know we will win in the end.

In the meantime, despite its 2 dimensional limitations, we'll blog about the experience with you however we can, sharing machinima like this stunner by artist Lyric Lundquist...

Be sure to click the HD button for higher quality transmission


... or Sepp Schimmer's inaugural video, featuring Bryn Oh's Immersiva and GutterBlood Spoonhammer's Error sims.*

Be sure to click the HD button for higher quality transmission


* A sim is a simulator and virtual region hosted by a single server CPU. You real-life folks call it an "island."

Hasta la vista...

The Animated Canvas: An installation by Feathers Boa

Posted by Alpha Auer

Feathers Boa's installation entitled the Animated Canvas places us in an environment built out of Real Life artist's supplies, large enough to create a space for us to wander around in: Eraser gum steps lead us into a real life studio painting class, complete with paint splattered chairs, the walls and the floor of which have been created out of stretched canvases, drafting templates and painter's palettes. Turn around and you can cross a bent letter stencil bridge into a gallery made up of ornate but empty painting frames, the entry to which is flanked by two huge inkwells. Placed between the frames however are stretched canvas "paintings" consisting largely (but not entirely) of processed and indeed some layered Second Life® photographs - and I have to admit that some of these are what I liked best about the overall installation. There is a finesse, an observation of craftsmanship, composition and harmony of color in these that I found rather sadly lacking in the overall installation. And even more importantly, there is a definite preponderance of mood and narrative in the paintings; again to me, not present in the 3 dimensional work.





I know from personal experience how very challenging it is to create "3D mood" when working in an environment devoid of the intrinsic "moodmakers" of 3D, i.e., shadows and directional lighting; as Second Life to date still is. However, hard as this may be, it is more than obvious when looking at her paintings that Ms. Boa has the talent, the stamina, as well as the professional expertise to accomplish this and I for one, will certainly be looking forward for her paintings to come alive as 3 dimensional objects in the future.



Feathers Boa's installation, which incidentally can also be participated in through the acquisition of an avatar which turns you into a canvas painting created by Ms. Boa, can be seen at New Carleon, to where you can teleport to directly from here.

Voodoo Shilton melts clocks in a 3D world

I just bet that more than a few of you have stopped to think how much Salvador Dali would have enjoyed Second Life®...

There's Gary Kohime and Izikael Novi who were inspired by his Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) to create their own Unconsious Crucifixion - Dark Night of the Soul for the Garden of NPIRL Delights last spring.

Now Voodoo Shilton's rendition of Dali's "La Persistencia de Memoria" [1931] (The Persistence of Memory) is visitable by teleporting directly from here.



Says Voodoo, "I've long been a fan of surrealist artists (M. C. Escher and Salvador Dali in particular) and thought a Second Life interpretation of Dali's classic was long overdue. For me the melting watches are a metaphor for the relativity of time and space, a relatively new concept at the time of Dali's work. The artwork as a dream allegory combines new understandings of the universe with the mystical personal experience of the individual. It was a landmark, mind-broadening artwork for its time that asks us to reconsider assumptions about reality and existence."

Oh! Thanks to Voodoo, I realized last night that Dali placed a poseball in his painting. It's right there, I swear!

3D doodling with Vlad

NPIRL florist, sculpty master, and video artist Vlad Bjornson is hosting an interactive 3D doodling session and is inviting content creators to come build together on a chosen theme. He's calling it Collabricate. This could become a weekly event, folks!

You'll certainly be in good company. Here's a great vid he created in October of last year: his Top Ten Second Life® building tips.



Vlad's spreading the event over the course of two days to give more people a chance to get in-world and participate: this Saturday, August 30th between 11am and 1pm SLT and Sunday, August 31st between 5 and 7pm SLT.

Got any brainstorms, suggestions or questions? Visit his Shiny Life blog and let him know.

Suzanne Graves' exploding art

I'd come to know Suzanne Graves as an avid explorer and photographer, but recently she took up scripting and her art evolved from there.

Here are two examples that she showed me in a sandbox on Saturday.



On her blog she states, "I’ve always been fascinated by 3D math surfaces. You just pick some equation, and see what it produces. Change a parameter or two, and you have something different. I have spent hours and nights with Matlab or Mathematica doing this.

What a nerd.

When I started Second Life, I was expecting to be able to import math surfaces directly using 3D files. I was expecting to be able to build incredibly fun stuff. Then I discovered there were only… prims.

Argh. I don’t want to pile up cubes. But I can write programs which do that."

The Museum of the Globe - 2D gets 3D

Last year, Hidenori Watanave, a Japanese architect in Real Life with an active Second Life®, sat on a jury for something called the Digital Design Competition 2007, and the Grand Prix winner - with a 2D submission - was Museum of the Globe, by Atelier Ten Architects, a Japanese metaverse developer and web services company, not to be confused with the prestigious global environmental design firm Atelier Ten .



In June, TeaCup, the Japanese free blogging service division of the publicly traded Internet services and web hosting company GMO, provided technical assistance in collaboration with Atelier Ten to take the 2D design and realize it in 3D. The actual construction was realized by Ichiro Furse of Atelier Ten Architects.





Hideroni will be presenting this at the International Electronic Langauge Festival FILE 2008 in Sao Paulo, and at SIGGRAPH2008 in Los Angeles, in August.

I asked Hyperformalist DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley) for his opinion of the sim-wide installation.

DanCoyote Antonelli: This is pure Hyperformalism. It is messy in a unique way, but it keeps its overall shape well. It is in between my cubic and cylindrical arrays and Seifert Surface's spore. It is not dirty enough data for me in total, but I think it is a wonderous thing, in some ways related to the shatter sphere.


Seifert Surface's "Spore" - photo by Bjorlyn Loon

How do you mean "dirty enough?"
Dancoyote Antonelli: I mean the data is perturbed in a way attributable to the artist's hand. There is such a thing to me as "too far removed from the work..." - too distant, and the piece slips out of my range of interest and becomes a photograph of some data and not art. Some imperfection must make it a human work I think. I love the little trees below, too. They reflect well in the water.

Teleport directly from here

Divine Madcow Cosmos' divinations

Madcow Cosmos is industrious, yes. He uses prims with wild abandon, yes. Since he upgraded his computer a few weeks ago, this Canadian chef-by-day - creator-by-night's work has soared. His texture work! His elegant touches using glow!

Madcow likes to work against a theme. This time: the entire Tarot deck... major arcana, minor arcana, the works. While he is loosely basing himself on the Rider-Waite deck, he has realized his own metaphorical interpretations and, while he is just about halfway through (there are 78 cards), multi-sim gallery owner Alexander Vargas couldn't wait. He has generously provided Madcow with two sims to exhibit the 40-some completed pieces, and to complement them, he has added a notecard to each one explaining the significance of that card.

Even more exciting... Alexander is awaiting delivery of yet another sim, by which time Madcow will have more cards completed... and... when the full deck is ready, Madcow is looking for ways to do scripted Tarot spreads and readings.

Molly Montale - who believes that this is "the most impressive prim work in Second Life®" - has just finished photographing a number of these pieces, and I liked her work so much that I prefer her captures to my own. Thank you, Molly!


The High Priestess


The Three of Swords


The Ten of Swords


The Knight of Pentacles


The Fool

Teleport directly from here.

See also:
* Madcow's Cosmos' "Heterotroph" at the Garden
* It's a Madcow (Cosmos) Madhouse!
* Catastrophe! Spacejunk falls from the sky!
* Dear Colgate-Palmolive
* Madcow Cosmos gets orbital
* No red noses here
* Madcow Cosmos silly-wonderful Prey Unit - a photographic challenge

Madcow Cosmos' "Heterotroph" at the Garden

Visible from almost any point in the Garden of NPIRL Delights, Madcow Cosmos' "Heterotroph" is, in his words, "A vision of hell based on the act of consumption. Nothing is returned, nothing created; only violence and consumption rule the day. A heterotroph is an organism that feeds off of another, or its byproducts (so both herbivores and carnivores), as opposed to an autotroph which produces its own energy from the environment (photosynthesis for example)."



In Real Life, Madcow is a chef in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Initially drawn by the simple-to-use creation tools, Second Life® fulfilled his life-long desire to make three dimensional virtual art.


Nebulosus Severine's jewel-like "CM Pauluh" can also be seen in this photograph

While he hasn't had any formal training in 3D rendering software, or other artistic background aside from the culinary, he enjoys working with art of almost any nature on an amateur level.



Madcow says that the inspiration for much of his art comes from "an overactive imagination and a love of science, fantasy, and myths."



When not "hopelessly distracted building," Madcow enjoys helping others build and "petting the cats that are walking across (my) keyboard." He invites you to enjoy his work by climbing on it, photographing it, or "performing any act upon it that won't get you banned (and arguably a few that might)."

One of the sections of the piece gives out a freebie avatar. Teleport directly from here.

Now THAT's a piece a hardware!

Via Allie Zigulis, I just learned that starting mid-April, 3Dconnexion’s 3D mice will be supported by Second Life, giving users a slew of new abilities. 3Dconnexion is a Logitech company, by the way.