The Impossible Made Possible - A Panel on the Future of Architecture

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Most Real Life architects who join Second Life® do so because they are seeking a new tool. In the beginning, there is much confusion as they acquaint themselves with the interface and become a part of one or more communities.

And then they begin to build recreations of Real Life buildings.

And then...

This Friday and on the occasion of Second Life's sixth birthday, hear the stories of seasoned Real Life architects who arrived in the metaverse to explore the possibilities and discovered that their path was not at all what they expected to be. Walk through a visual history of their trajectory, as they explain how one thing lead to another, culminating with them learning that the impossible is possible in virtual worlds. Cut short your own learning curve and advance your understanding of how virtual architecture can - and already is - richly benefiting Real Life architecture.


Event chair DB Bailey landed an important commercial contract thanks to his work in virtual worlds. Seen here in front of a building he created in Second Life for Stanford University

WHEN: Friday, June 26, 2009, 10am SLT - 90 minutes
WHERE: Cetus Gallery District, teleport directly from here

PANELISTS:

* DB Bailey (aka David Denton), Architect, urban planner and artist, event chair
* Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud), Architect, urban planner and artist
* Lou Tones, multi-media producer and founder of Green Islands
* Bettina Tizzy - Introduction from the founder of the Not Possible IRL group

DB Bailey is designing a Real Life project (for Cairo, Egypt) in Second Life. He will be giving a tour of the commercial building and discussing the meaningfulness of this venue for architectural design in the future.

DB Bailey and Keystone Bouchard have both gone full circle in Second Life, starting off in Second Life by recreating Real Life architecture as do most when first starting to build virtually. Then they both discovered the truest potential of this technology: to produce environments they would never have conceived in Real Life.


Multi-award winner and the creator of Reflexive Architecture, Keystone Bouchard has benefited Real Life with his virtual work in ways he never could have imagined

DB, Keystone and Lou Tones are all seeing the wall between the two worlds disappear as Second Life becomes more of a tool - but not how they originally expected it to be - in their Real Life work.

Lou has been observing for many years the evolution of the virtual world. He will discuss the ecological advantages of Second Life and the importance of Real Life buildings designed in Second Life.

Feel free to contact Bettina Tizzy should you have any questions. Please be punctual as the presentation will get underway at precisely 10am SLT/PDT.

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

the sad intangible who grieve and yearn... Urban Spectre

Posted by Alpha Auer

I have searched for an artist's statement both inside the construct as well as online, particularly on the artist's own website, but have not been able to find one, from which I infer that DB Bailey is leaving the viewer open to come to his/her own conclusions...



So, why is it that when I enter this remarkable structure of DB Bailey's, currently rezed at the Cetus Institute, I am immediately transported into a certain kind of architectural space that I cannot help but love? The opulent lobbies of the commercial enterprises of the 1930's, epitomized of course, inside the Chrysler Building, but countless other breathtakingly beautiful samples of the genre abound throughout Northern America and to a lesser extent in other parts of the world as well. This connection is perpetuated by groupings of masterfully integrated photographs, which too hearken back to that period. And then, the very title "Urban Spectre" as well as the line "the sad intangible who grieve and yearn", placed prominently on the entry level seem to somehow further the association.



It is an era long gone and the remnants of it may well have turned into urban specters since it seems to me that that not only is the era gone but also the entire mindset that surrounded it: These magnificent shrines to mammon were created during the Great Depression. And yet, to judge by the output of its popular culture (such as the Hollywood movie), the period between the two great wars was still one of staunch, unquestioning belief in capitalism, in enterprise, in human endeavor. Do we still believe in these things today with the same optimism and naivete in the way in which our grandparents did back then? Has the whole gilding not been quite severely tarnished in the interim? Do we still believe in a golden future where healthy maidens will dance in a frieze and yet others soar into a golden sky of everlasting affluence?



And sure enough, once we reach the upper levels of the structure, the dancing maidens are replaced by plaintive, sad hands reaching out into the sky... Not to mention that on the level just below them we have the sudden appearance of a quizzical "contemporary" full on portrait, one which to me is quite clearly no longer the glorified face of eternal trust and optimism.

Urban Spectre asks a question. An uneasy question to which the artist does not provide an answer. And in the end, for me, this is what the true artistic process should do: Ask uneasy questions to which there are no easy answers, indeed maybe no answers at all.

You can view Urban Spectre, which has also benefited from the input of Desdemona Enfield, Douglas Story and Dizzy Banjo, at the Cetus Institute by teleporting directly from here.

Note: Although, from what I could gather from comments online, there seems to have been a sound installation with this work, sadly, I missed it: I was there for a very long time but heard nothing.

And finally, there is one small criticism that I feel compelled to make, especially given how very deeply I was impressed by the work. The red typography with which the creators of the piece were credited: Not to put too fine a point on it, this is clumsy. I was so taken by Urban Spectre that in this particular case this typographic mishap has not stopped me from thoroughly becoming immersed in the work. Thankfully it stands somewhat out of harms way, at the very top of the building - but it is very much there nonetheless. I am not sure if a considerable number of artists in Second Life® realize how gravely distracting, indeed obstructive, these big and often completely incongruous typographic additions, usually rendered in strong primary colors for enhanced visibility, are to their work? Wouldn't it be much better to put a notecard with the title and credits of the piece in a small, well designed notecard dispenser, placed at the entrance of the installation?
;-)

Garden freebies to die for... and yes, you have to go to heaven or hell for 'em

UPDATE - June 24, 2008: The Garden of NPIRL Delights has closed. Thanks to everyone who created it and to those who visited it, and special thanks to RightasRain Rimbaud and his team at Rezzable Productions for sponsoring it.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights will end on June 23rd, and several of the very gifted content creators have decided that their work should not disappear. Just look at what they are giving away! Hurry hurry!


DB Bailey's Purgatorio (Take everything home!) - slurl
Photograph by Ka Rasmuson


Eladrienne Laval & Kheph777 Enoch's Tower of Industrial Judgement (Steampunk Bosch Wings) - slurl
Photograph by Alpha Auer


Tezcatlipoca Bisiani's Laberinto de Mictlan (You get the prize - the puzzle box and the postcard!) - slurl


Bryn Oh's Steamgarden (Several items from her build! If you put the structure on your land, send her an IM and she will come and place the beetle and the carousel on it) - slurl


four Yip's Elevator Angels (everything! - touch the panels at the entrance to choose) - slurl
Photograph by Azwaldo Villota


Alpha Auer's The NPIRL Garden of Delights Public Baths- (Her monochromatic and health-inducing jellyfish!) slurl


Madcow Cosmos' Heterotroph (avatars) - slurl


Yoa Ogee's Happy Humans! (avatars) - slurl


Yeti Bing's Perfect Universal Companionship (avatar) - slurl
This video by Crap Mariner


Gore Suntzu's "Tame a Thorn" sculpture : (This beauty could be yours!) - slurl

Striking ways to present flat art in virtual worlds

DB Bailey has designed an installation for an exhibit of photographs by Paul L. Gabbert that portray dancers of various tribes from Papua, New Guinea at the 50th anniversary of the annual Goroka cultural show, where participants dance and sing.

While I generally cannot be bothered with images of Real Life art within Second Life, DB Bailey has created such a lush and compelling oasis for these photographs, that I took the time to study the faces of the dancers and learn more about the event... and was reminded that tribal beauty in our world is ancient and fragile, and its preservation is more important than ever.





The frames in this area simply wouldn't be possible in Real Life...



Adjacent to the entrance of the photography exhibit is one of DB's newest sculptures... (teleport directly from here).

DB Bailey... freshly discovered and rocking the metaverse

The moment I laid eyes on DB Bailey's Bomb Factory, I felt dizzy... intoxicated actually. Teleport directly from here.



I just told you about DB's Lotus on Tuesday... and then he shows me this. Now he has me wondering where his canvas began and where it will end. The diversity! It staggers the mind.

It has been said that architecture is the mother of all arts because it combines drawing and painting and sculpture, along with an indepth knowledge of materials and a sense of space. It helps to know that DB is an architect in real life. He's only been in Second Life since early February of this year, but if you look at his website, you will understand that this man was destined to flourish in our 3D environment.



Self doubts danced in my head... had I become this excited over a build that no one else would appreciate? Last night I gave the landmark to AM Radio, one of the builders I most admire... a true tastemaker... and asked his opinion. Within minutes I got his reply via IM: "This is stunning." Minutes later he added, "it is now my favorite build in Second Life." So it wasn't just me...

Through a rain-stained window pane...



It hasn't been but a few weeks since Douglas Story teleported me here to DB's land, which he calls Blinker Hall, and what appears to be his idea of what a meeting space should be. There's a great deal more below.



Cross the street or teleport to see even more of his work.



I think it is safe to say that DB has already become a dominant figure in the realm of content creation. He certainly is rocking my metaverse.