Free nOObs for all! Art Laxness releases new versions including mix-and-match heads

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Musician, fine artist and 3d-modeler Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) is releasing five full-perm sculpted prim Noobs into the wild today, as well as a pack of interchangeable and amusing modifiable heads: Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Maid Marian, and a couple of your more basic noobs (read: blank expressions). Also included: Noob textures so that you may export and modify them to your own specifications. These are mostly derivatives of a project for the British Council that Art worked on as lead artist for metaverse developer, The Magicians.

According to Kim Anubis (aka Kimberly Rufer-Bach), who heads up The Magicians, Art made a test model of a default “newbie” avatar’s head – the first Noob model, before making the Bard’s head. “Then he made a giant head with four faces and topped it off with The Magicians’ top hat! Next, he created the first complete Noob in Appearance Mode pose before he went on to create the Away Noob which you’re familiar. Since then, he’s created other Noobs and Noob parts, many of which are in the Noob Pack.”



Several months ago, the AFK Noob was copybotted and then offered full perm on Xstreet. I asked Art how he felt about this and he provided a surprising response:

“The copybotting incident has made me think about how copyright works and I have come to some fairly extreme conclusions. Over here in the UK, there are trailers before DVDs which ask "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" which then, of course, leads onto not stealing films. But that’s not really how it is, is it? The actual question is: If you saw a nice car in the street and you could take a copy of it without taking anything away from the owner, would you? If everyone in the world could have a nice car for nothing should we restrict that? What if I viewed the noob model I made as I view music? Everyone in the world has "illegal" music. Obama gave an iPod full of music to the Queen: ILLEGAL. Walle gave a tune to Eve: ILLEGAL."

Art continued: "Let’s take this to a different extreme: How many people will die needlessly because of patents on medical drugs keeping the prices of those drugs high? The answer is an awful lot. The counter argument is that if the drugs companies can't make money out of what they do, then they won’t do it, but that sounds to me like a problem with society rather than an argument (in favor of) an obsolete business model. It strikes me that if everyone could build on each other’s advancements, rather than hoarding things to themselves, then humanity would get further faster. Artists and companies need to be rewarded for their output so they can keep producing, but a new business model is needed, as the current one is f**ed and is holding the world back. I'll throw the Clockwork Quartet out there as an example (his steampunk band). We're giving away all of our music for free. We intend to make our money off merchandise and gigs.”

You can pick up your own Noob pack at Abracadabra (teleport directly from here), and at British Council Isle in Teen Second Life (teleport directly from here).

Graham Stanley, manager of the British Council's Learn English Second Life for Teens project added, “Amongst other things, we are using the Noobs to give out clues on our language learning quests for learners of English. They have to ask the right question to get the right answer.”


See also: The most complex sculpture in any world, real or virtual?

Attitude adjustment with the help of a little steam

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I thought I'd take a moment out of our busy virtual lives to celebrate a couple of individuals who inspire us in Real Life with their steampunk approach to architecture and life even, and also to alert you to the existence of the Clockwork Quartet, a musical group in the UK that isn't really a quartet at all but rather a thirteen-piece band featuring an odd assortment of instruments, including a musical saw and a double kit composed of old typewriters, scrap metal, metronomes, clocks and other found objects.

The Clockwork Quartet is of particular interest to us since one of our own, NPIRLer and Second Life®r Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) is a member, performing on the 5-string banjo. For your information, it was Art who created the charming (and sadly copybotted) prim newbie that so many of you - including myself - have enjoyed placing in highly irregular situations.

~*~

Then there is dedicated Burner and steampunk creator, Tom Sepe, with his steam-powered Whirlygig Emoto, among many other things. Drop in to Second Life and say hi to us sometime, Tom. I've a few people I'd love to introduce you to, including some of your fellow Burners.



~*~

Lastly but hardly leastly, David Trautrimas, is a Canadian artist who disassembles old kitchen mixers, hole punchers, waffle irons, staplers, vacuum cleaners, coffee machines and other household objects, photographs the parts, and then puts them back together digitally, into what he calls “Habitat Machines.” Can you say "Brazil?"


Oil can residence, 2008


The Typewriter Factory, 2008




Sprinkler house, 2008


Electric razor cooperative, 2008

Many thanks to David Trautrimas who graciously allowed us to reproduce his photographs here.

The most complex sculpture in any world, real or virtual?

Mystery, beauty, superlatives and controversy have punctuated the short life of Black Swan, a region in Second Life® that, at its birth, was famously the stage for Starax's return to the metaverse as Light Waves after a much lamented 15 month disappearance. The discovery of Black Swan in mid-September, 2007 revealed graceful prim-light sculpty sculptures placed spectacularly along the periphery of a watery aquamarine basin, and Light Waves did it all using less than 4,000 prims.

Now, and since July 16th of this year, this inherently dramatic simulator has become the site of what must surely be the most complex sculpture in the history of virtual worlds...



I am not talking about the fact that it is airborne, or the size of it, but because Noobility is nothing short of a play that is taking place before your eyes in real-time... a 3D, immersive and silent play. It tells a powerful and highly theatrical story that transpires over the course of an hour, and then recycles again, and again, in automated fashion. The only thing that's missing is the popcorn.

I did some research to learn if any other art installation, real or virtual, had ever accomplished this, but the only thing I could come up with, that even came close (and while delightful, it is certainly not "art"), was the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland, and even that doesn't run one hour long, destroy itself completely and recreate itself anew, while its spectators are able to move around it and in it freely at any time.

We had already seen a variation of the sculpture - The Sky is Falling - also by Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), at the Garden of NPIRL Delights. 1,500 prims "in a pattern based, in part, on a process that turns up in nature a lot: 'growing' new objects around an axis at an angle of 2pi/Phi from the previous one, where Phi is the golden ratio," he explained.

Seifert, a postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer living in Austin, has been featured on these pages many times in the past with his math-inspired art - and the adulation he inspires in many of the grid's leading content creators is well deserved - but this new installation, realized together with his Real Life brother, Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) - a Brighton, UK-based prop master for film and theatre in Real Life - is way, way over the top.


Credits:
* Concept and storyline: Seifert Surface and Art Laxness
* Sculpties: Art Laxness
* Scripting: Seifert Surface
* Video: Bettina Tizzy
* Music - Awaiting the Attack: composed by David Flavin, ASCAP and Roland Rudzitis, ASCAP

The technical aspects of Noobility, as the kinetic sculpture is now known, are without precedent. To give you some idea, there are 2,552 active scripts... fewer than ten are listeners, and almost everything is collision-activated. Three sensor prims inject scripts that make the falling phantom prims drop.

I met with Seifert and Art at Noobility to learn more from the two masterminds.


A 17-sculpty-prim noob meets his creator. Art Laxness' avatar is a basic prim

What were some of the pranks you pulled when you were kids?
Art Laxness: Henry (Seifert) would never go for pranks. He's been a grown up since the age of 10. :P
Seifert Surface: We did build those tripwire traps. Well, trip string, but nobody ever went through them unaware.
Art Laxness: Elaborate Rube Goldberg things to shoot stuff at people...

How old were you at the time?
Seifert Surface: Err. 10?
Art Laxness: ... dunno first used a band saw when I was 8... liberal parents. There were bits and bobs, like that board game... ninjas! And we made that wrestling ring. And the bows and arrows? Then there was the scooter race course we built in the workshop, and the play dough head where you cheesegrated the end of my finger...
Seifert Surface: Oh, yes. :)

Where did you grow up?
Seifert Surface: Manchester, UK. We lived in a place that was half our Dad's business (workshop) and half house.
Art Laxness: His company makes strings for Renaissance instruments and repairs them, too.
Seifert Surface: Used to be lots of people around, making instruments...
Art Laxness:... and having early music jams.

How'd it happen that you decided to collaborate on Noobility?
Art Laxness: Henry happened to be (coming) 'round in Brighton. I had the making-fake-AVs idea rattling around for a while.

Did you develop the storyline first?
Seifert Surface: No, it all came together at once. I decided really very late that we were going to rerez the whole structure anew each time, and then the question of what prims it would rerez came up.
Art Laxness: Kinda how I find making art works... the making instigates the concepts and vice versa.
Seifert Surface: ... and we already had these noobs, so the concept of the noob god, Giganoob, came up naturally.


The noob, or the avatar most male users are wearing when they make their first appearance in Second Life®, has the perpetual countenance of a young and innocent simpleton. His facial features aren't fully realized and his clothing could be described as "generic basic." Interestingly, it seems that the noob avatar we all know and recognize today will soon be history. Second Life is introducing much more elaborate "starter kits"


The noobs' nincompoopish look is magnified when he is "afk," (away from keyboard), which newbies often do since they generally don't know anyone upon arrival in-world. This hilarious capture taken at a USC MacArthur Foundation event by Wellington Bahram

When did you come up with the noobs, Art?
Art Laxness: Pretty much as soon as sculpties came out... avatars were, until that point, unique. You couldn't reproduce them.

Did you hear that they've gotten rid of Ruth?
Art Laxness: Yes, we now have the cloud.

I think the guy noob looks so much better than Ruth.
Seifert Surface: We'd always wanted to go for the male avatar rather than Ruth anyway.
Art Laxness: Wonder how that would fit into our mythology ;)
Seifert Surface: He's quite a bit creepier looking.
Art Laxness: Yeah, the noob we used here was my first experience of Second Life. When I signed up, all of my informative experience was wearing that skin. I wore it around the Ivory Tower of Primitives.



Interesting way to put it.
Seifert Surface: Will has a degree in fine art. He can reel all that stuff off for hours.

Art also works with The Magicians, a metaverse development company led by Kim Anubis (aka Kimberly Rufer-Bach), and while their current project is quite Possible in Real Life (PIRL), it's a stunner.

A different way to spend a holiday... You were working off Art's router?
Seifert Surface: We decided quite a bit of what we were going to do before I was in England. Then, pretty much the whole time I was there (2 and a half weeks), we were working on it. (Worked off of ) Art's wifi. Yeah, my Mac on the kitchen table, Art's computer on the other table. Back door out onto a view of the sea.
Art Laxness: Was fairly intense. I have a lovely large kitchen here with my computer in it.
Seifert Surface: Art's latest Real Life project...
Art Laxness: I sculpt fine art and also make props for film and theatre in Real Life. (Art showed me a photograph of Cate Blanchett in the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for which he had sculpted some of her armor). (It) was a lovely project. Prop making is fun but the pay isn't great and the hours suck.

Are you unionized? I have an old school friend who is in a prop masters union here (US), and boy, do they have it locked in! The last time I looked, they only had nine members.
Art Laxness: Nope, all freelance, and there's way more people (who) want to do it than there are jobs.

While we'd been chatting, Noobility was pressing on in its automated fashion.

Uh oh, here comes NOOB GOD.
Art Laxness: Apocalypse time
Seifert Surface: Giganoob giveth and Giganoob taketh away.

I love the flexis.
Seifert Surface: Nice bit of incongruity. I might have spent the longest on that kind.
Art Laxness: I was unsure of them at first but yes, glad they're in.


Here and there, when things really get going, a flexi pyramid begins to spin on its own axis

It's a masterful touch. How many flexis are there?
Seifert Surface: The number changes. There are a couple of factors: which pyramids are special, and how many of each is determined each time it rezzes.
Art Laxness: Giganoob decides.
Seifert Surface: There are prime numbers and integers modulo those primes involved.
Lol
Seifert Surface: He does actually... there's one part which is random. Giganoob decides on a random seed for the whole pattern, which is a number between, er, 1 and 90000, I think. That one number determines the colours, the positions and numbers of special pyramids... everything. One of the tricky things is that, when you rez something, you can pass the rezzed thing a single number for initial data, so what people often do is use that number to set up a listener and then use the listener to transfer extra data, but there are 1500 pyramids (here).



... would lag us to death.
Seifert Surface: Right. It probably wouldn't be that bad, actually, but yes, it's bad form. So, the Giganoob rezzes a pyramid, and it knows which of the 1500 (prims) it is, and it knows the seed number (between 1 and 90000). From those two bits of information, it can work out everything else, and it is because it is all mathematical and procedurally generated that we can get away with that. The blue glowing things are just going out there to deliver the actual prim. When they get out there, they rez the appropriate type of pyramid.

The veins in the pyramids are new in this installation.
Seifert Surface: Art's department.
Art Laxness: Inspired by Aztec-ness and my housemate playing the WII Zelda game.
Seifert Surface: Oh man, did you know the texturing is entirely different when a prim is flexi? I had to convert Art's texture using a python script to get it to look right. You can see a tiny flicker on the texture when it comes back from flipping twice... Little bits of imperfection... le sigh.

What else about the scripts here is different from what you've seen in Second Life before?
Seifert Surface: Hmmm. There are a couple of things that are a bit different. All the vanilla pyramids (the stable ones)... none of them have any scripts in them, again, for lag purposes, and nothing has a listener in it.

Vanilla... like the one I'm flying over?
Seifert Surface: Yep, vanilla as opposed to more interesting flavours. Not a reference to the colour. Just that it doesn't try to kill you.
Art Laxness: Check the (prim) description to see what flavour each is.
Seifert Surface: In order to make the things fall, it needs a script in there, so it's all done with the use of a function called llLoadScriptPin which loads scripts into existing prims. It's not used much, although I got the idea from Jeffrey Gomez, who used a similar thing for his Primmies game.
Art Laxness: Seif assures me its all very clever.
Seifert Surface: Quite a bit of hackery to get it to work :) I guess having the rezzing be part of the artwork is kind of new in Second Life. Seeing things built by script is one of the most awesome sights in Second Life, I always think, but it's usually only the builders who see it.
Art Laxness: I get to see that aspect of Seif's stuff and (it) is as good as the final thing.
Seifert Surface: Well, you rez your thing using Cadroe Murphy's Tools. Then you've got your nice big circular platform, and you're done. Visitors later on might figure out that it had to be built by script, but they won't see it building.


Among other things, Seifert Surface created the winning logo for the Not Possible IRL group

Did you fill out that NPIRL survey on IP protection, Seifert?
Seifert Surface: Errr, I think so, but it is not something that I'm terribly concerned with. Scripts are in far less danger of getting nicked.

Unfortunately, what did get nicked was Art's prim-based noob. It was copybotted and free full-mod noobs became available - even via SL Exchange - all over the grid a few weeks ago. While Art filed a DMCA, he has not had a response from Linden Lab.

Well, I mention it because the biggest concern of the participants was the protection of their scripts, by far. Meaning... that they serve one purpose and you don't repurpose them?
Seifert Surface: Yes, and even then, I don't sell much in-world for L$. Most of my things are one-offs. Nobody is going to steal Noobility and set it up somewhere, even if they could. Well, I guess they might, but specific commissions for a client would be a little obvious.

Have you tossed any scripts into the open source bin?
Seifert Surface: I have a couple on the Wiki. There's a fractal tree generator, and another one for making arbitrary parametric surfaces from triangles.
Art Laxness: You should get the door script you made for me out there... doesn't sound like much, but if you regularly make doors, it is serious stuff.

Are you mathematically inclined, Art?
Art Laxness: I enjoy maths but not to the level Seif does. (He) is a mathematician who does art; I'm an artist who does math. I see math as more of a means to an end... which results in Seif explaining stuff to me so I get what is going on while I need to. Then I promptly forget it all.
Seifert Surface: That works :)
Art Laxness: ... and hey, if I ever need to know again, I've always got Seif right (here).

Art, what program are you using to make your sculpties?
Art Laxness: I think I used most in this project: Maya, Wings, Blender. It involved lots of trying-things-out.
Seifert Surface: ... and we used Glintercept to get models of the noobs to build the sculpties around.

But working with all this software seems so foreign to your Real Life work, and crafting with objects.
Art Laxness: Not at all. I'm into making 3D objects in every medium I can get my hands on. Any sculptor who isn't into 3D software is really limiting themselves, and as 3D printing becomes more accessible, the fields are going to merge. I mean, consider prop making in 10 years time when I could just print out Cate Blanchett's armour.


Teleport directly to Black Swan from here. To access the sim, you must pay $199L and wear the attachment you are provided with.

See also:

More on Seifert Surface:
- Summer Noob Games ;-)
- Mathematical Sunday with Seifert Surface
- It's blooming sculpties at Seifert Surface's "XYZ" sim
- Turning the page on 2007 in virtual worlds - What happened and what's next
- This just in! The future of huge prims is looking good
- Not Possible IRL field trips with Seifert Surface

More on Black Swan and Starax/Light Waves:
- Baby found at Black Swan
- For the dude who worked so hard on it in the first place
- Rezzable Productions: The slippery slope of turning art into a revenue stream
- It's easy. No, it's magical.
- Light Waves' 'Night Dreaming' statue comes alive

Summer Noob Games ;-)

Starring role and scripting: Seifert Surface
Noobs: Created by Art Laxness
Location: Suffugium, by Lex Neva/The Squidsoft Collective
Music: "Shopping Spree," composed by Peter Calandra, BMI and Scott P Schreer, BMI
Video: Bettina Tizzy

New sculpture at Black Swan packs a wallop - You aren't going to want to miss this one

There is something new and so important at Rezzable Productions' Black Swan sim that most everyone in Second Life® will want to see it, and yes, I am aware that Rezzable is charging a $199L admission fee. All the same, I suspect that you will forget your objections and pony up.

The last time Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman ) and his younger brother Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) collaborated together on a project in Second Life, they created an animated series of bots that spell out YMCA with their "arms." That was back in November, 2005.

Seifert - an Austin-based postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer - just got back from Brighton, UK where he was visiting his brother Art, a fine art sculptor and prop designer for theatre and film. Together, they collaborated to create a kinetic, story telling sculpture in Second Life that cycles every hour. I'll get back to you with more on the technical aspects of this sculpture soon, but for now, here is a taste.



Credits:
* Concept and storyline: Seifert Surface and Art Laxness
* Sculpties: Art Laxness
* Scripting: Seifert Surface
* Video: Bettina Tizzy
* Music - Awaiting the Attack: composed by David Flavin, ASCAP and Roland Rudzitis, ASCAP

Teleport directly to Black Swan from here.