Eternity in an hour

Posted by Bettina Tizzy, with contributions by many

We struggled over the name for it. It is one of his best works ever and despite its short life, it couldn't remain nameless.

Charlene Trudeau, owner of the land it will sit on for the next 30 days, suggested that this enormous creation by Spiral Walcher looked like a nebula, an atom, an exploding star, a galaxy and a solar system all at the same time. She then quoted the poet William Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Charlene Trudeau: "Eternity in an hour." I think that's what I'd call it.


Infinity by Sleeves Rhode

Temporary creations in Second Life® often leave me with a tinge of melancholy. I can love them, but only for a very short while. Such has been the case with many of Miki Gymnast and Eshi Otawara's installations, as well as Chasm by Nebulosus Severine, to mention just a few. These were works that took my breath away and then... disappeared forever.

For one month only, the newest creation by that King of Glow, Spiral Walcher, will pulse brightly and then, like all stars, it will die.


Machinima by artist Nebulosus Severine

While many believe this to be made of particles, it is actually all-prims. Take a look for yourself by teleporting directly from here.

Declare war against the enemies of peace: VOTE and wear the "World is for Obama" top hat - It's free

Disclaimer: I am not representing the opinions of the members of the Not Possible IRL group, although I believe that many share my views.

It's time to take America back from the enemies of peace, the environment, human rights, our civil rights, women's rights, universal health care, education, space exploration and science in general, among other things. The global economy is in a shambles thanks to their greed, and our children and elderly will be among the first to pay the price. I've had it with these eight miserable years under the Republican administration and I'm not going to take it anymore.

The world wants and needs for the United States to be in the control of a saner, smarter, kinder government. Americans and foreigners... unite!

Obama is a chance for hope. Want to know more? Here's how he stands on the issues.

I commissioned this NPIRL creation by one of my favorite virtual milliners, Spiral Walcher, and am making it available to you as a freebie: teleport directly from here.



To set the world gently spinning, type this in chat: 1/11 start
To stop the world from spinning, type this in chat: 1/11 stop
Many thanks to Pol McLaglen for his script work.

Five Tips: How to visit the Garden of NPIRL Delights

The most frequent comment I hear from visitors to the Garden of NPIRL Delights is that they are "overwhelmed." I understand this. Four sims filled with the works of over 110 content creators - many of them quite complex - can have that effect. I worked alongside the artists for weeks, and I am still discovering new things. The good news is that there are several fantastic tools to make this easier for you.

If I were to take you by the hand and show you the Garden myself, here is how I would do it:

1) Arrival and Preparation: Take the HUD and Info
Teleport to the Garden from here. Beatrix Newt created a tranquil path at the entrance to the Garden with signage that invites you to "take" the HUD and info offered there. Please do!



2) Take the Tour
Just to your right as you exit the pathway, you will see the Tour area. Hop on the gorgeous Fleur de Lys-shaped vehicle, especially created for the Garden by famed vehicle maker (and founder/owner of the Ivory Tower of Prims), Lumiere Noir. The Fleur de Lys was scripted by Darek Deluca, the creator of XIDD Particles and Gadgets and the fabulous Particle Theatre, as well as a four layer installation at 3000m above the Garden that spans all four sims.



And off you go!



The ride is surprisingly smooth and pleasant, especially considering that you are crossing four sims.



You'll fly over many installations you might not have known about, otherwise.



There are many wonders in the sky. Having seen them, you will be able to plan your visits with a better idea of what is in store for you.



3) Wear the HUD
They said it couldn't be done. Really! Many expert coders warned me that we were going down the path of disaster, but Master Scripter Miki Gymnast pulled it off.

Look in your inventory for a folder called "Garden of NPIRL Delights Info" and inside it for the NPIRL Garden Tour HUD. "Wear" it. It will look like this but only fill a tiny spot on the lower left-hand corner of your screen.



"Touch" it with your mouse, and it will pull up a Second Life® teleport map. Choose "teleport," and you will find yourself at one of the installations at the Garden. And get this... the HUD will remember where you have been and take you to new places each time. Once you are wearing the HUD, you will be able to teleport to all these places directly from any spot on the grid, too.



4) Nifty Landmark-Ready Notecards
Loved the work of a particular artist and want to go back? Easy! Thanks to my SL brother, Corporate Jay, and in the same folder where you Garden HUD resides, you have four notecards, one for each sim. Open them... and voila!


Click to see large

Obviously, the notecards don't have to be stretched so large on your screen, but thought you might like to see their content.

5) Walk down the green glowy paths
That King of Glow, Spiral Walcher, spent many hours arranging his official Garden path throughout the four sims to ensure that you had ready access to every single installation on the ground.


Here we are, in the wee hours of the morning, welcoming our first guests to the Garden. That green glowy path will lead you to many adventures and surprises.

Along the paths, you will find local teleporters to the sky builds, too.

As you can see, many people contributed countless hours of their time, and industrial quantities of their knowledge and good ideas to make your visit to the Garden a happy one. I can't even begin to thank each one of them enough.

An object that is really an event: The Garden of NPIRL Delights promotional triptych

The triptych created by the Rezzable Productions team to promote their joint effort with us, the Not Possible in Real Life group, is simply without equal in the promotional category.


Click to see large (pretty crazy stuff here)

The 4-sim, 2-month build festival - Garden of NPIRL Delights - is getting underway, but there is still LOTS of room for more builders. FOUR sims, people! If you own or manage a sandbox, would you consider rezzing this 24-prim baby there? It will autoadjust depending on the stage of the festival, so you may leave it rezzed.

What do I mean when I call it an event? Check this out...



The freebies alone... a pair of wings, a halo, and a lightning bolt that you can zap... um... others with, are top retail quality.



The festival is open to all builders and building begins tomorrow. The sims will open to the public on May 14th. We are very interested in discovering unknown builders, in helping intermediate builders along (there will be tutorials and all sorts of events once the festival opens to the public), and group collaborations, too.

Several of the grid's most talented creators made this explosive (literally) promo for the festival... It really is more of an event than an object. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like a copy of it.

Credits:
Hieronymus Bosch: Painting
Ordinal Malaprop: All scripting and building
Spiral Walcher: Flowers and lightning bolt
Kaelie Candour: Wings
Madcow Cosmos: Devils
Vint Falken: Several textures
RightasRain Rimbaud: Project Director

He's the King of Glow, that Spiral Walcher. Now there is Kings Rezzable, too: The Tunnel of Light

A month after Windlight First Look was re-introduced (November 14, 2007), I stopped by AM Radio's The Far Away for a visit, and low and behold, there was this fellow doing some unusual stuff with the glow rendering feature. His name was Spiral Walcher.



At that time, I was way more interested in the whimsical hat that was perched a top his white bald head, but I would soon swoon over his new neon creations. It turns out that he was using only one texture - a dot - on his prims, and then infusing it with glow rendering and rotating the heck out of it. Less than a month later, Spiral had created The Electric Forest (teleport directly from here).



Last night, press and bloggers in Second Life previewed Spiral Walcher's new sim - Kings Rezzable: Tunnel of Light - courtesy of RightasRain Rimbaud's Rezzable Productions (Teleport directly from here). I met up with Spiral to get the skinny... erm... the shiny.



Spiral Walcher: This is basically an expansion of the Electric Forest. There are elements in each area that refer to it, stemming from my desire to create something organic, rather than architectural, which is where I had concentrated my efforts in the past.



Bettina Tizzy: Why do you suppose you are so captivated with glow?

Spiral Walcher: It adds a whole new twist on things. It can really make the things pop. It also adds new depth and layers.


Spiral's latest hat now features the planets you'll find at Kings Rezzable

Bettina Tizzy: You went from teeny prims to big BIG prims... from your hats to this. What about size? Does size matter?

Spiral Walcher: I started making furniture. mostly because it was easy and good to learn with. I went on to very large scale builds... things like castles, and eventually I began to learn tiny prims for various reason... mostly because it really teaches you prim manipulation on a very detailed level. The hats spawned from that, but overall, size doesn't matter. I've made things in tiny spaces and things with a whole sim.



Bettina Tizzy: Does anything glow in your Real Life?

Spiral Walcher: Just my computer monitor at night... working on my tan as usual. I wish I could work with neon and lights in Real Life, but I don't have the equipment or the know-how.



Spiral Walcher: After I stumbled upon my type of Windlight building, I began to wonder what the world would look like with this type of glow. I saw it in my head and thanks to Rezzable, was able to make it happen.


Additional credits:
Scripting: Ordinal Malaprop
Exploding sun particle effects: Jopsy Pendragon
Planet textures: Ponk Bing

A few tips...
+ Start your visit off by touching the paper boat.
+ Be sure to touch the trees, the dragonflies, the frogs... for some fun surprises
+ After you've finished the initial ride, you can revisit the areas you most enjoyed by utilizing the local teleporters.

Second Lifers' love of wheat translates to *four* real cows - To celebrate, AM Radio announces a writing competition

On September 22, 2007, AM Radio set out some plots of wheat for sale on the land where his own, much celebrated virtual wheat field in Second Life sits, known as The Far Away. Teleport directly from here.

Now AM Radio has announced that he is sponsoring The Far Away Writing Competition. Participants are invited to write a story or poem, and then post it in the description field of their photograph to the Wheat Field Flickr group. Only one entry per Flickr account is permissible, and all entries must be received by March 7, 2008.



There will be one Grand Prize consisting of $10,000L, one Eton American Red Cross FR250 radio (a real one), and featured placement of the winning submission on The Far Away (with the winning entrant's permission) for 8 weeks. Rules can be found directly at the Far Away.

All this is in celebration of an important milestone. From day one, AM has taken all proceeds from every sale and forwarded them to Heifer International, an organization that works to end hunger and poverty by providing livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of people who struggle daily for dependable sources of food and income.



Today and 250 generous donors later, these sales of virtual wheat have raised very real money - $2,000US in fact - and enough for Heifer to purchase four cows.



What is it about the Far Away that moves us so and compels us to return again and again? It is hard for me to put it into words.



On paper, it sounds conventional: a field of wheat, grey skies, a rusty old train, a table... but in our pixelated reality it is a comforting riddle that has gripped the imagination of thousands of its visitors.

Strawberry Holiday put it this way, "The Far Away is my favorite place in Second Life. I go there almost every day - usually once when I first log in by myself... and once before I go to bed with Wendy. It calms me.... not just because it's an amazing build, but because I see the time and effort AM puts into it. There's always something new to discover. Tonight, Blueberries! And I always meet really great people there... or bump into friends. It's become my place of peace in Second life, like coming home."

For Darkle Sands, "the Far Away is not just some 'SL Build.' It's a piece of art. AM is an artist and prims are his paint. Everything in the Far Away makes you feel immersed, and the placement off unusual things in the landscape really makes it very abstract. To date it still rates in my top favorite places to be in Second Life." Spiral Walcher agrees with Darkle, and adds: "It is the perfect example of when reality meets virtual reality."

Whenever I stop by the Far Away, I hope to find a gentle person and frequent visitor there by the name of Hitomi Mokusei. I asked her via email how the Far Away makes her feel, and her reply came easily and eloquently: In the Far Away there is a feeling of peace, safety and constancy, but it is touched with an underlying emotional resonance that permeates everything in it... a tinge of nostalgic longing for what once was but is now gone. It is not a static place. Not all is revealed on the surface. Exploring it in more depth reveals secrets, that can fire the imagination... touch the heart... or make one think in a new way."

What does it mean to you and how do you feel there?


Life is bittersweet. Less than five months ago, I received an urgent IM from dedicated adventurer and NPIRLer Matthew Kidomen, alerting me to his discovery of a most extraordinary build in the sky above a sandbox. That finding turned out to be momentous, and the build was called The Far Away. Two days ago, Matthew wrote to say that he is leaving Second Life to do other things. I can never thank you enough, Matthew. "May good luck be your friend in whatever you do and may trouble be always a stranger to you."

A vacation postcard - visiting Spiral Walcher

Dropped in to take a peek at what Spiral Walcher is up to... it's blue!



No landmark yet, but he's got his own, brand new Rezzable sim.

Spiral Walcher introduces "the new neon"

I live for those IMs... unexpected, urgent, and magical on the other end of the subsequent teleport to something surprising and new. I received a couple of those messages this past week from Spiral Walcher, who's incredible top hats were featured here not even a month ago. Spiral is yet another terrific content creator AM Radio has introduced me to.

Just look at what he is doing... playing with Windlight and textures! I've sent a few samples to Torley Linden as I think these are shining examples of the pluses of Windlight, but haven't heard back yet. Please someone, show Torley this!

They are rezzed in a sandbox in the sky over IBM 6. Still, 2D photography doesn't do them justice. They move and shimmer and change in much the way many particles do. You simply have to go and see them for yourself. First teleport here and then look for these coordinates: 171, 106, 101. Then fly up... looking for a black box in the sky.





This is a floor... again, 2D stills do not do it justice.



It all started with his experimentation with this box and a couple of others.





Then, just yesterday, Spiral TP'ed me to this... an electric forest! Teleport directly from here.



I'd say this is the beginning of an important new technique, wouldn't you?

Little but good - Spiral Walcher's wearable environments

Spiral Walcher is doing some interesting things. You've all seen AM Radio's wheat field. Here's a new take on it, with UFO's and aliens actively abducting the table grapes.



This is inside something... hmmm



... and so is this familiar wheat field scene...



All of this and so much more is taking place on and inside three top hats.



Let's hope Spi will be putting these on the market soon.



I can't get enough of them. More, Spi, please more!

12/20/07 addendum: And here's the latest one.