Many thanks to Qarl Linden who - in comments to my previous post regarding the 2nd anniversary of the Big Prim Problem - suggested that Linden Lab might compromise and consider making scalable megaprims available on Estate land. To that end, I asked my JIRA-savvy friend Dirk Talamasca to create such a proposal for us, thereby enabling everyone to have their say on this potential new feature... and HERE it is. Please go vote!
To vote on a JIRA issue, log in with your first and last Second Life names, enter your Second Life password - don't worry, the JIRA belongs to Second Life - and then look in the left hand column for voting options.
Two years ago today, the Not Possible IRL group read Michael Linden's post, The Big Prim Problem, in dismay. Be sure to read that post if you have no idea what I am talking about.
A great deal has happened in two years, including a tiny window during which a number of creators were able to take advantage of a wee exploit and make many huge prims in different sizes, but none of them scalable.
While we would still like to have scalable megas with which to create, our priorities have moved to other areas, with the top one being better IP protection of virtual creations.
In any event, since that fateful day, October 12, 2007, this blog has kept a vigil of sorts. We published many posts about great content that would not exist were it not for megas, and we still care. And we still want scalable megas. In fact, I cannot imagine most of my favorite content in Second Life without them. What creations never existed because we don't have scalable prims? I suppose we will never know.
In the meantime, scalable huge prims are not a problem on OpenSims, and hardly an issue on Blue Mars were prims don't even exist. Why hasn't Linden Lab allowed them? Why?
I thought you might enjoy reading an old post that Douglas Story prepared for you, many many moons ago, and below you'll find links to just some of our old posts. This blogpost was published long before we'd figured out how to resize pics on Blogger. Sadly, ignore the slurls for the Man Angel at Black Swan and DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism, as this content is no longer on the grid.
Also, Juria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light is currently located at the "new" Chakryn Forest, the old Chakryn Forest is still there, Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point was returned to her one day by mistake and she has since had to rebuild or recreate it, prim by prim, and the FlowerBall has been relocated to Cetus Island. I'll post slurls to these things shortly.
How time flies!
~*~
Without Megaprims...
Originally published October 20, 2007
this post by Douglas Story
Without megaprims...Light Waves' Man Angel would have disappeared. photo by Finny Yates. slurl
Ah, the power of them three little dots! I refer to the ellipse... Useful in this case because we were all ready to write a scorching propaganda piece with the theme, "Without Megaprims... All This Great Shit Will Go Away!" But now with things looking up on that front (latest word is that the all-powerful Lindens are leaning toward keeping megaprims) I only have to change the part after the ellipse to "...All This Great Shit WOULD Have Gone Away! And What A Damned Shame That Would Have Been!!!" Hmmmm...the first title was snappier though, you have to admit.
Without megaprims...DanCoyote Antonelli's Hyperformalism would have disappeared. slurl
Without megaprims...Rezzable's Greenies' Home would have disappeared. slurl
Without megaprims...the irritatingly prolificJuria Yoshikawa's Liquid Light would have disappeared.
I make something new about every seven months. With Juria, it's about every two minutes. I find this annoying. slurl
Without megaprims...Sabine Stonebender's Zero Point would have disappeared. slurl
You'll find a lot of shots here that include Bettina's booty in them. The author wishes to point out that most of the pictures here were taken by Bettina herself. Any booty issues should be taken up with the management.
Without megaprims...The International Spaceflight Museum would have disappeared. slurl
The thing is...the artists and builders who use megaprims tend to be the most creative, charming, and well-dressed avatars who bring us joy in SL. How lucky we are to have them!
Without megaprims...Douglas Story, Aldomanutio Abruzzo & Desdemona Enfield's FlowerBall would have disappeared. slurl
Without megaprims...Artoo Magneto's anyMOTIONwould have disappeared. slurl
Without megaprims...Gazira Babeli's 'Gaz of the Desert' would not have been possible.
I don't like most of the machinima I've seen. This is 23 minutes of spell-binding, slow-cut magic. See it. slurl
Without megaprims... Cube Inada's Alien Flying Circuswould have disappeared. slurl
Without megaprims...Earth Primbee's Inspire Space Park would have disappeared. slurl
Yes, it's true that I took this shot myself. But you'll notice - there's no booty. My pictures are entirely booty-free.
(photo by Wellington Bahram) slurl Without megaprims we would not have Bettina's forest home - Chakryn - by Andrek Lowell,
I'm sure we've missed many wonderful items (I'm sure you'll point them out, gentle readers) but I think we made our point here. The loss of megaprims would be a cheapening, deadening blow to the fields of imagination and creativity that Second Life opens up to people. We hope that this wonderful creative tool remains open to us, for both our creative impulses and for those who appreciate same.
Yoo hoo! Linden Labs? Paging Mr. Michael Linden... Please give the waiting (second) world a favorable answer, and soon!
With barely any content to speak of, no currency, audio, media, or voice, and a User Interface that allows for limited communication and camera movements, it’s not hard to understand why Blue Mars has its detractors. Despite all of its early Beta deficiencies, however, there are compelling reasons to believe that it holds great promise for current and future aficionados of 3D immersive environments.
Most Second Life residents I’ve spoken with don’t know quite what to make of Blue Mars, but none appear to believe that it will supplant or even displace their virtual world, though I do sense a modicum of concerned solidarity and defensiveness. There’s this Capulet-Montague thingy going on… like, if you so much as praise one aspect of Blue Mars it’s a form of treason or something. Personally, I subscribe to the Romeo and Juliet canon: “Can’t we all just get along?” Or am I misquoting?
Conventional wisdom would indicate that Second Life, which – ironically – could be called a mature virtual world by comparison, with its entrenched communities, tons of content and hundreds (thousands?) of events a week, is here to stay… but Blue Mars, in its infancy, has not yet begun to demonstrate its gravitas. It will take time, money, and a growing community of dedicated developers and residents.
Would you feed this little bitty baby vitamins or Kryptonite?
In development
Every time I have a chance to speak with Jim Sink, recently named CEO of Avatar Reality, the company that owns Blue Mars, I come away feeling energized and hopeful for this budding platform. In a recent conversation, I asked him what they were concentrating on at the moment. “In order to create a vibrant virtual world community, we need to have outstanding content and we need to attract extraordinary developers. In a coming release, we’ll be offering the ability to create clothing, and we’re providing new uploading tools, too,” he explained.
Meet Blue Mars’ Ruth. Yes, these are default avatars created by unfashionistas at Avatar Reality, with a little fiddling I did around the eyes within the Face Customization editor. Please hurry up fashion designers, and make me something I want to wear
“At present, most of our energy is focused on laying the groundwork to prepare Blue Mars as a development platform. Of course, things like the UI are exceptionally important – we know how important this is to the community – and we’ve already begun to implement changes based on users’ feedback. There’s no shortage of things we need to do.”
Money makes the world go around (especially if you can cash in/cash out)
And one of the things that Blue Mars plans to do soon is launch the Blue Mars currency and, as Jim puts it, “the fundamentals of the economy.” I wondered out loud how musicians who depend on tips would make out in Blue Mars since only developers can cash out. To this, Jim had some very good news: “All developers will be able to cash out and anyone can become a developer, but Blue Mars requires more information and needs to know a lot more about you if you are going to be moving money in and out of the platform.“
Location, Location, Location (and putting a price on things)
Another impending feature will reside on the web-based Developer MyPages: Soon developers will have the ability to upload blocks of shops, set prices to items – including ready-to-use residences, clothing and stuff, and also real estate. Land! This is cool, but here I am going to dig my heels in the ground hard… there ain’t NO way I’m going to have a cookie-cutter home. Not here, not there, not anywhere. I once lived in a development and had the bad habit of driving right by my home because it was indistinguishable from all the others on the block. This just isn’t my thing. I don’t do it in real life, and I sure as heck am not going to do it in my virtual life. Yes, I’m that neighbor that annoys everyone by painting her house purple.
Blue Mars Betti in the kitchen? No, no, no! This isn't the kind of cooking I plan to do
Web to Blue Mars and back
Blue Mars has every expectation that they will be unveiling new MyPage web pages for end-users, too, from which they can edit their in-world profile, and purchase Blues, among other things.
Repeat after me: It’s a PLATFORM
Many of us, myself included, have been calling Blue Mars “a virtual world,” when it is actually a platform for many virtual worlds, and a staging area for all kinds of new – to me - talented people. For developers, entrepreneurs, artists it is a next-gen technological solution from which you can build your environments. For end users (the jury is still out on what we are going to be called… Residents? Martians? Colonists?) it is intended to be a destination offering rich diversity and choices.
These gorgeous photos of coming new content courtesy of Richard H. Childers, president of Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE), one of the first City developers on Blue Mars
“Scurvy-inducing 3D”
Jim Sink recently tweeted, and of course, I looked, “CryEngine isn't just for realism. Check out this amazing work that would look right at home in Blue Mars.”
Games… yes! Blue Mars is flinging its doors open to members of the thriving Crytek modders community, inviting them to create their own games and content. A recent scrumptious example is Monkey Island 2, in which free-lancing 3D artist Hannes Appell first demonstrated how, with a little “voodoo,” he could enhance the gorgeous hand painted 2D concept art with a basic camera projection. Those pirates sure are mean to little froggies.
He then went on to demonstrate – just for fun - how original Monkey Island 2 backgrounds can look and feel in a modern 3d game engine, by building the sets with Maya and then exporting them into Cryengine's Sandbox editor.
Hannes is a Bavarian and now lives in Germany where he will soon graduate from the Institute for Animation & Visual Effects of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. If LucasArts doesn’t hire him after this little “experiment,” someone sure will. This video has only been posted on YouTube for 19 days and already it’s had 329,000 views and the comments beg him to “MAKE A REAL MOD OUT OF IT.” A little Blue Mars, Hannes?
Role Playing
I’m also like a stuttering deer caught in the headlights when it comes to Role Playing, but were I an elf, Trekkie, furry, or inclined to hang out in locations that attempt to accurately portray a historical era, such as Second Life’s Roman Forum or the 1920’s Berlin Project, Blue Mars’ built-in ability to control incoming content such as how an avatar looks or dresses would make suspension of belief considerably more intense.
Photo courtesy of VSE, a Blue Mars City developer
Architecture and design
I like the way h3oworldz, a CryEngine modder group, used the platform to demonstrate how valuable a "3D realtime walkthrough" a structure or set can be to demo environmental effects and scale. They would likely be interested in hearing about DB Bailey from Second Life and his success at using a virtual world to demonstrate a real life structure to ultimately sell a real life project.
VAM United is a German group working on a science fiction movie project using the CryEngine2 game engine. They’ve created this proof-of-concept as they prepare to produce a feature-length machinima based on a “loved and acclaimed” book. I highly recommend that you watch it here for better quality, but here is the YouTube version for you non-clickers:
What will the work of the likes of Lyric Lundquist or Lainy Voom or Colemarie Soleil look like, shot in Blue Mars?
Look at this one. Tell me, with a straight face, that you can't make use of these graphics and physics to create your vids...
The members of the Not Possible IRL group held two meetings and shared many thoughtful notecards and IMs today expressly to discuss Rezzable's BuilderBot, and reach a consensus. The conclusions are as follows:
The overwhelming majority of those who participated in today’s two meetings agree that Rezzable’s BuilderBot appears to be a useful – even important - tool for serious/professional creators and contractors.
NPIRLers denounced the death threats expressed in comments on Rezzable’s blog and expressed concern about the sanity of the people posting them, as well as the safety of the Rezzable employees.
We were reminded that Second Life® residents have been asking for viewer-side back- up tools for years, and statements made by Philip Linden on April 16th during Rob Linden's Open Source Viewer office hours were recalled:
[14:30] Philip Linden: on assets... i definitely think we need explicit perms for off-grid to make it OK to move content to other grids. [14:30] Philip Linden: NOT ok to copy stuff otherwise. [14:30] Philip Linden: And I'd say we'll act as much as possible to protect folks rights in that.
[14:32] Philip Linden: full perms doesn't mean off-grid, because the creators may well not have understood the implications.
Members concurred that most content creators in Second Life are at little risk of having their creations ripped by BuilderBot, largely because it is much easier to use a CopyBot instead of devoting hours to ripping a sim, importing it to one’s OpenSim, and then using a CopyBot to put it back into Second Life.
Numerous members noted that Linden Lab did not anticipate or think through many of the issues we are dealing with today and that Second Life sits on and is as vulnerable as any digital content is on the Internet. It was remarked that even before the viewer went Open Source, it was not too difficult to hack the cache. Moreover, content is moving off of Linden servers and “joining the cloud.” How ownership is handled in the cloud needs to be determined now and the solutions to these issues, within the context of Second Life’s current infrastructure, are legal, not technical.
A number of members suggested that Rezzable should code in an ownership check, and that including a pay method and a license key associated with each copy of an item created by the tool might be a reasonable way to track copies. “If (Rezzable) could find a way, others will too, but at least they will have the legacy of doing the right thing.”
On Saturday, artist and creator Hern Worsley logged into Second Life® and joined 7 others for an in-world class on Autodesk Maya that he deemed “really excellent.” It was to be the first of three sessions for which he paid a total of $L16,200.
Maya is a powerful and expensive ($4,995 US dollars for the Unlimited version) and - by most accounts – intimidating software package given its robust and multi-layered/complex nature. It is considered by most creators I know to be the rockstar program for creating and exporting sculpted objects.
Importantly, the courses are focused on developing content for Second Life. “It was my first real experience with education in SL and it is exactly what I needed,” explained Hern. “The prices are not terribly expensive but reassuringly not cheap, if you know what I mean,” he added.
The courses are provided by Xenius Revere who worked with metaverse developer Electric Sheep for 1 ½ years as their resident Maya expert and also taught Maya for 3 ½ years at the University of Buffalo, NY.
Xenius, photographed by Xenius
Xenius has founded Xeniversity (teleport directly to their headquarters from here).
A tree at Xeniversity
At this point, Xeniversity offers two courses: Maya 101- An introduction to Maya modelling for Second Life at $L5,400 per two-hour session and $L16,200 for the full course; and Maya 102 – An intro to Maya texturing for Second Life at $L10,800 per two-hour session and $L32,400 for the full course.
Xenius shared that he built a business model that supports his costs plus allows for expansion. Also in development, a course on scripting for Second Life artists. “If you pro-rate out the cost of taking a class in a state university, versus Xeniversity, you are getting an incredible deal. Plus, all sessions are geared directly for Second Life content creation,” he said and added, “Second Life is a messy aggregation of a whole bunch of tools.”
“I think it does help if you’ve had some experience already with Maya. It is about technique and seeing someone doing it makes everything much easier. It is so obvious when you see it done, but you’d never get there so quickly by trial and error, and it’s like getting access to all the secrets,” continued Hern. “I’m very cautious about new things. I kind of need my hand held.”
Classes are conducted in-world, in voice and via the 2.0 web.
By the time each Thursday rolls around, I'm frantically trying to catch up with all the first-rate landmarks and notecards and emails I've received, rich with hot tips on new and undiscovered content and ideas that just might be worth sharing with the 2,600 members of my Second Life® groups Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL.
I send at least one in-world notice a week - usually late on Fridays - featuring some 3 to 20 items that I've culled from hundreds of these suggestions, and I'm often asked what my selection criteria is. In addition to intriguing building tips, info on other virtual worlds, and advocacy for the rights of content creators in Second Life, my main focus is on creations that are Not Possible in Real Life.
Are my selections opinionated, discriminating and highly subjective? Yes, they are. There are many other ways to discover information and calendar listings on the topics relevant to your particular interests in Second Life, so this is my personal attempt to provide you with a distillation of what I think is cool, trendsetting and even groundbreaking, always within the context of Not Possible IRL.
Am I an academic, schooled in the arts? I am not. Jay Newt of Brooklyn is Watching once called me a theme park mistress and I can subscribe to that. Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL are not art groups, and for that matter, this blog is not an art blog. They do feature and include art, but that is not all we are about.
That said, what follows is an attempt to describe virtual content that is Not Possible in Real Life or NPIRL. These guidelines were drafted with only prim and/or script-based content in mind, as I don’t believe – but I’d like for you to prove me wrong - that there is such a thing as NPIRL music. How that music is generated, however, can definitely be NPIRL (Komuso Tokugawa and Dizzy Banjo, I’m looking at you!).
Theatre and live performances often enable suspension of disbelief via real-time special effects and situations (think DanCoyote Antonelli’s ZeroG SkyDancers, CARP's Metropolis, Gazira’s Hammering the Void, and Grace McDunnough’s Musimmersion, for example).
Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) CONTENT (architecture, art, landscaping) is a generous combination of the following:
* Surreal, fantastical
* Indulges our sense of make-believe (can do strange, wonderful and surprising things; makes us laugh)
* Can fundamentally affect our behavior, perception and even our self-perception
* Physically impossible in Real Life, or could only be created at enormous/unrealistic expense (defies the laws of gravity and physics in general)
* Immersive
* It almost goes without saying that NPIRL creations in virtual worlds are three-dimensional. While photography and other 2D images may portray NPIRL content, they are difficult to render in-world and for this reason, I enjoy them best on the web. I am an avid user of both Flickr and Koinup, where so many of you post images taken in virtual worlds. I wish more machinimators would join the Not Possible IRL YouTube group, though their group management tools there are very poor.
NPIRL FASHION is garment-based and not a biological part of the avatar. In addition to clothing the avatar, it might do strange and wonderful things, or make us do strange and wonderful things. It can defy the laws of physics or expose the avatar’s body to extreme heat or cold or exploding particles or sharp things. It might include elements (such as clouds, or sunshine, or snakes, for instance) that could never be used in Real Life.
NPIRL AVATARS are fantastical, surreal, or funny, or surprising, but they all have one thing in common: They are definitely Not Possible in Real Life. They aren't human, or dogs, cats, horses, etc., unless they are exceptionally unusual (a unicorn, for example). While nekos, faeries and elves are NPIRL, their appendages must look integrated, credible and not like props.
I want to especially thank the members of my working group Not Possible IRL for their guidance and inspiration, and the extreme explorers and content creators of the vibrant Impossible IRL community who have sent in priceless tips and ideas. All this is possible because we've pooled our efforts and share an intense appreciation for the 3D platform. I adore you!
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.
I've decided to expand this concept to ALL digital creations. I'm going to need your help to get the word out. Bloggers, website creators, media, tech geeks and geekas... Will you help me? Please contact me at bettinatizzy (at) gmail dot com and we'll mobilize together!
~*~
German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian translations of this information are available here
Dear fellow Residents of Second Life®:
About three weeks ago, virtual artist Vanfarel Kupfer died. Had he not left copies of most of his work (no trans, no mod) with his virtual girl friend, Native Aeon, his only legacy would be what is currently rezzed today.
Avatars in Second Life devote thousands of hours to creating content, and all that work is LOST when they die. Yes, even if they backed up that work by giving it to an alt. Even if they gave their account password to someone. When you die and unless you have taken appropriate measures, no one, not even Linden Lab, can legally access your work. It is simply lost forever.
According to Linden Lab, the correct and only procedure for "willing" one's creations - or for that matter, any Second Life assets - is indicated here.
I propose that we mark this day, May 18th, as Will your Work Day, to encourage content creators to consider their situation and act on it annually.
The goal would be to celebrate Van's art and remind people to either give copies of their work to one or more avatars (not their alts) whom they trust, or add them to their Real Life will.
Also beginning today and for one week - and working with his beloved Native Aeon - Vanfarel Kupfer's work will be exhibited at four locations: his former home sim, EnLuminaria, the Crescent Moon Museum, the Blackwater Gallery, and Chakryn Forest. Understandably, Native is still very much in mourning over her loss, and when I asked her how I could help, she stated that her greatest wish is that Vanfarel's work become known throughout the grid. So be it. Native: Sachez que nous sommes de tout coeur à vos côtés.
Please share this message with your fellow residents and help to get the word out. You will find numerous translations of this letter here, prepared by the following individuals who generously volunteered their time: Lano Ling, Osiris LeShelle, elros Tuominen, Tonjampae Amat and Gore Suntzu. Tell your community in your own way, in your own words.
I leave you with the colorful, dreamy work of Vanfarel Kupfer in a video by Jurin Juran. May he rest in peace.
Here's to enduring great virtual content! Bettina
The art of Vanfarel Kupfer, as part of Will your Work Day Machinima by Jurin Juran
He's been a Resident of Second Life® for nearly six years (rezzed on July 21, 2003), so it's saying something when virtual architect, builder and podcaster Lordfly Digeridoo takes such pleasure in playing with dynamic shadows, expected to hit our optional viewer any day now. Just look at him cut a rug!
Lordfly: "Dynamic per-pixel shadows, spotlights, and the ability to project textures onto arbitrary surfaces"
Want to do a little Alpha-testing yourself? Pick up KirstenLee Cinquetti's S17 viewer sporting a very thoughtful single-click installation feature for the non-nerds amongst us, but have a look at her blogpostand the ensuing discussion in comments before you tinker under the hood.
"So what, in your view, are the pros and cons of dynamic shadows?" I asked Lordfly, and this is what he said:
Pros: More realistic depiction of the simulation allows less uncanny-valley moments (brain automatically searches for depth and shading cues, adding this in greatly enhances realism), graphics engine takes another step towards keeping up with other major engines (we're now finally at Unreal Tournament... 2004).
Cons: More forum drama, people ragequitting over no support on their 5-year old laptops, content creator confusion over whether to build for the lowest common denominator or not (hint: baked shadows look fine, generally, even with dynamic shadows over them).
If you read this blog with any regularity, I trust that you are already quite familiar with Bryn Oh's stunning sculptural and narrative work and especially her sim, Immersiva (teleport directly from here), as well as her Condos in Heaven installation, which I blogged about last year. Nevertheless, prepare to shine a new light on the subject.
This is the second video in what is to become a weekly documentary-style series produced by the Virtual Build Archive, a joint project of Gala Charron (Tamara Russell) and Lainy Voom (Trace Sanderson).
Lainy shared with me yesterday that this is Gala Charron's first machinima in Second Life® (can you believe it?)! She explained, "The VBA started because we both love exploring Second Life and wanted to keep a visual record within some kind of framework. It will hopefully become a mix of regular builds and some art installations. It makes me sad when builds are no longer there. We want to create something permanent from something transient and (are) also trying to communicate something that is beautiful and inspiring, especially sometimes to non-Second Lifers who complain that there is nothing going on in Second Life and say that it is an ugly place!"
The pair's stated aim is to publish a new machinima every Monday "to document, through film and narrative, some of the most beautiful builds within the virtual world of Second Life. We hope, over time, to build the site from a small acorn into quite an extensive catalogue of in-world created content. Both Gala and Lainy will take it in turns to create a video of an inspiring build and present it on the archive site."
Avatar AM Radio unveiled The Red and the Wild to the public yesterday. It is the first such art installation at the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, a hybrid art and design studio at Ball State University funded by the Lilly Endowment. AM is a narrative artist who uses prims, Second Life®’s basic in-world creation tools, to paint moody settings that are awash in nostalgia for a time when objects of wood and metal were shaped and crafted in a workshop or barn, and not in some faraway factory in Taiwan. A keen observer of nature, his Plein Air scenes are hyper-real, and always unmistakably American… the wheat fields of Illinois near his current home, and the vast expanses of the Northeast. Those who know, however, realize that there are surreal secrets and surprises tucked away in every AM Radio build.
...
It seems like forever ago; it seems like only yesterday. Matthew Kiddomen, then a member of our working group (NPIRL) and someone who left the grid for good soon after, sent me an IM some 20 months ago inviting me to come at once. “You must see this. It’s incredible,” he said.
It was up in the sky above the IBM sandbox… a wheat field, an old rusty train, a table set with an odd assortment of objects including a violin, some grapes, and a sketch book. Also a quaint garage, an old fashioned gasoline pump, and a shadowbox recreation of Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Marat. There, too, was the creator of all this, a rather surprised but nevertheless congenial and very tall gentleman by the name of AM Radio, sporting a long black coat and top hat.
He had bits of straw about him and the air of a chimney sweep. Within five minutes there were many of us there. I recall that I teleportedPavigLok and OrhallaZander, among others. We peppered this man with questions and he answered them all quite obligingly. Yes, he’d created this about a year ago. Yes, it had been up in the sky all that time and no, he owned no land.
Today, even if you are only a minor explorer in Second Life, odds are good that you have ventured onto at least one installation created by AM Radio. You probably own a set of sticks that he has given you. Perhaps you also have one of his dragonflies.
AM and I spent an hour conversing on Saturday, looking back at all that has transpired, and how it has influenced his thinking behind the creation of his newest: The Red and the Wild.
So much has happened to you in the past couple of years.
AM Radio: Huge learning experience. Often people will see me and say, "Oh, you're a person." And I have gotten used to it, but AM Radio really sort of became a brand. People think it’s a bunch of people building. So I have learned a lot, you know, managing that. It really is a careful process. So there is the learning aspect, but really in the last couple years I think the most important thing, the most meaningful thing for me has been the idea that we can participate in these virtual world activities, and have a real impact on the real world… and sometimes it is only vaguely related. Showing up at a concert in Second Life, and someone in Africa gets a cow.
Not long after he rezzedThe Far Away at Dreamworld, AM Radio began to sell plots of wheat to benefit Heifer International with 100% of the proceeds. Heifer is 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. It is best known for allowing people to "purchase" cows ($500US a piece) and other livestock. Today and just 20 months later, the sales of AM’s wheat have raised enough to buy a REAL herd of cows: $7,300 or nearly 15 cows.
Is there any way to know how your fundraising efforts have specifically benefited anyone?
AM Radio: Not specifically, not like the Adopt-a-Child programs you see on late night television. We like the cow metaphor Heifer uses. You know that $500 US is equal to a cow, or $120 a goat, but even then it’s impossible to say. Even if you knew you bought an actual cow because that cow’s milk is bought by other people in that town, trade occurs and neighbors converse, enemies begin to see advantages to understanding their neighbor. It's exponential.
Saturday was World Malaria Day. I recall that you did some fundraising for nets. Have you continued that effort?
AM Radio: Nothingbutnets.net - In 2008 I sold an off-road vehicle and the Lindens from those sales went to Nothingbutnets. That's a great program. Literally one net potentially saves one, or even two lives. For just $10 USD? I mean… come on, how better to spend ten bucks? Two Big Mac meals, or a teenager in Africa has anti-malaria nets at night to sleep in.
Is that vehicle still for sale?
AM Radio: That vehicle is not. You know, that was another thing I learned. Growth can be unpredictable. I had a very kind sim owner offer three sims, plus Princeton, and NMC and everything got complex really quickly, so I went back to my roots with the charity work, focusing on Heifer.
Sometimes it is best to keep the message as simple as possible, is it not?
AM Radio: Yes, exactly. Splitting off was requiring management at levels I am not ready for yet. I need help!
He went on to create The Quiet for Princeton University and Husk for the New Media Consortium (NMC). Then came The Refuge and the Expansion for just one week, a sim-wide version of the wheat field, and today that same installation is three sims large, under the patronage of art collector Alexandar Vargas. Since then, AM has conjured two other acclaimed sims: Beneath the Tree that Died for the University of Kentucky and Waiting for You.
Time-lapse machinima by AM Radio: "This is about 200 minutes of time lapse captured with FRAPS. A visitor with a powerful face-light visits about half way into filming and briefly lights up the center." Music is Artemis
If people wanted to help you, what could they do?
AM Radio: Right now, the easiest thing to do is get the word out. Often people apologize to me, especially at music events hosted on the sims. They say, sorry, “I can't donate right now.” And I totally hear that. But one of the great things about Second Life is that participation alone adds to the momentum. Showing up and being excited inspires those who do have the ability to donate.
How has your view of art in a virtual scenario changed in the past two years?
AM Radio: That Virtual Worlds is a valid art medium. It went from “Oh, this is neat.” To, “Wow, something is happening here,” to “Wow, it's in the New York Times.”
Is this a confirmation? Or did you believe it was less than that before? And how about how you approach your art? Has that changed in any way?
AM Radio: I don't think I thought any less of the medium. I think I paused more on the perception of Second Life by its own users and the Real Life public, and yes, (it) absolutely changed my art process. I think in my Real Life art, I have always been drawn to organic subjects. The fields, the trees, but there was a frustration, having been born in the mid-seventies, and really growing up in a very plasticized and prepackaged, processed world... sunlight, for our generation, is something seen through Plexiglass windows, and my art is a reaction against that. It's looking for more… for the organic. So it was an attempt to tear down the fakery, all that plastic in impossible colors, and awful rugs, and terrible media, like television, but in Second Life, there's almost an acceptance that much of this generation has already been living virtual. Everything is controlled, and marketed, from the music to food, to the computers the cool kids use. And now, here I am in a virtual world, trying to create the organic. I think it is still a search, but almost feels like…(pause) …a responsibility.
The wearable HUD at The Red and the Wild plays a tone and guides your camera to a specific angle when you touch a specific number - Photographs courtesy of NewdollNikolaidis
AM Radio: You know my critics like to peck that I am too close to (Andrew) Wyeth, but why not? Why can't we bring that here? Why can't we make sure we don't forget where we are, that this is all those plasticized windows filtering our sunlight. I can't help but think... you and I both spend so much time in world. How has all this changed your own sense of place? The ability to create your own environment and live in it, and share it?
AM Radio: Let me be careful how I answer that. I don't want to dissuade criticism of my work... but my work is deeply personal. What you see is so much a part of me; these are symbols of my life and events, and my emotions. Yates said “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...” My sense of space here, I suppose, has become a more elastic version of real life. You know I can place out what I want and I can share things, but people can visit and bring their own emotional baggage, and see what they want, and expand my own understanding of my own memories. It's like having hundreds of people analyzing your dreams and posting their thoughts about them on Flickr... thousands of them.
You mean... that they can affect your own understanding of your creations?
AM Radio: Yes. Some artists…
…prefer not to read the reviews of their works, for whatever reasons. I take it this is not the case with you. How much of what you read/hear/discuss about your work are you absorbing? Is it malleable? Vulnerable?
AM Radio: I think I try to read as much as I can. I think I often do go off on tangents on builds, and I sometimes forget about the bigger picture and mission of Second Life. It's easy when you have access to a sim to just cover the sky when Windlight isn't really jiving with what I am trying to do, but I still find myself challenged by this specific limitation to not be able to easily share settings. What I did was try to make a build that allowed you to easily remove my tinting. You can lower your draw distance a bit and return to the default sky, for example, and also it is a tinting, so the Windlight bleeds through, allowing for the user to work with their list of presets in ways they haven't seen them work before.
sensations by Thea Denja - Taken at "The Red and the Wild"
Your works, all of them, seem to hearken to days - we can only speculate - of your childhood. What we do know is that most people don't live like that anymore. The train that was rusty in The Far Away is new and more of a concept at The Red and the Wild. Are we entering a new era?
AM Radio: Maybe more toy-like at The Red and The Wild. The new sim is inspired by elements of my boyhood. The house itself figured centrally in my life. The other houses I have built were more abstract memories of houses. This one is nearly accurate. In fact, it is odd to see people walking on its porch and not feel like they're trespassing somehow.
AM Radio's train at The Red and the Wild
What age were you?
AM Radio: Oh, I must have been about ten. Does the red abstract burst have a name? Care to explain it?
AM Radio: The sim has the same name (The Red and the Wild). I had been fooling with prims in an abstract way. I had started doing that way back; you might remember the boxes on The Far Away: The Way the Air moves.
I think abstraction fails in a vacuum. I think an abstract painting looks far more interesting when a lady wearing a Packers jacket is fumbling through a museum looking at them, wondering if she should know more.
AM Radio: There is a dialog between the abstract and the real that occurs in any abstract art, and I have had a really difficult time accepting abstract art in virtual worlds because that dialog is often missing. I think (that dialog... that ether for a relationship) most often works when the artist interrupts the abstraction with some inclusion of the avatar... with most avatars based on a very real human form. So, I have been really leery about using Abstraction in Second Life. I use it a lot in Real Life in my collage work. You can find some of those real life works on the new sim.
AM Radio: I had been thinking about these large shapes and not really understanding how I might get away with using them, and be able to explain myself to an art critic, or press, and I was really kind of at a dead end with it, but a friend from Atlanta, a very talented music, film, and 3d artist, sent some music he had been working on. One of the tracks included samples from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. At one point in the movie, and in Capote's Novella, Holly, the main character describes her anxieties and her fears as “the mean reds,” and immediately I thought of this large shape, these looming things in our lives that seem to want to tear us down. At the same time, these looming things, these anxieties, inspire us to become who we are, how we behave, how we react to things, how we present our avatar, how we define our virtual spaces.
In fact, in the movie, Holly has created an entire virtual world for herself. Her escape is the commoditized world where money defines what's real, and I thought “Wow, this is really relevant to virtual worlds.” Later in the movie and in the novella, Holly says... "But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll just end up looking at the sky," and suddenly my thoughts on injecting abstract shapes made sense.
I had the courage to say that this abstraction means something, that here is a symbol of something, that we have these abstract parts of ourselves, these fears, these wild things we try to bury, and without them, we don't become who we are. The Red and the Wild really is a comment on that relationship that abstraction and realism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they rely on one another to even exist. In the end Holly, of course, realizes she's living in a self constructed world, and immediately begins to redefine it.
Teleport to The Red and the Wild directly from here.
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AM Radio's project, "The Space Between Those Trees," is a finalist for the Linden Prize, which will be awarded to one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD for "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."
Join us in our quest to discover the best of Virtual Worlds
Experience - first-hand - the creations, ideas and innovations that are pushing the boundaries of what is real. No, we're not in Kansas anymore! Virtual worlds are where all the disciplines of art and technology combine to make for the most compelling and exciting adventure imaginable.
Blogger Bettina Tizzy
NPIRL founder - Madly, wildly embracing the impossible made possible in Virtual Worlds.
Blogger Alpha Auer
"I need a new clockwork brain!... Indeed, maybe two?"
Show me, I'll show you...
A central goal for us is to collect and distill what's really happening out there and pare down your options to the essence of what's cool, trendsetting and even groundbreaking, always within the context of Not Possible IRL. This is not intended as a calendar of events and our selections are, by necessity, subjective and opinionated. To learn more about the criteria for what is NPIRL, click here. If you'd like to share a landmark, notecard or hot tip of any nature with us, kindly share it with us in-world. We try to always credit the finder, too.
A great place to rez your art and have it critiqued by art critics.
A Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations Commonly Used in this Blog
Cam - The act of zooming and panning one's viewer (camera)
FLART - Flat art in a 3D world (more often than not, imported Real Life paintings and still photography)
HUD (Heads-Up Display) - A visual display of preset options as part of the user interface (UI)
In-world - Being inside or "online" in a virtual world
IRL - In real life
Landmark (LM) - An "address" and shortcut that enables a Second Life® resident to teleport to another place
Linden - An employee of Linden Lab™, the company that owns Second Life®
Linden Lab (LL) - The company that owns Second Life®
Linden or $L - Currency in Second Life®
Mega prim - A very large and useful prim that is not endorsed by Linden Lab, and not scaleable
NPIRL - Not possible in real life
NPISL - Not possible in Second Life®
PIRL - Possible in real life
Prim or Primitive - A 3D object that is manipulated and used as a basic building and creation material
Rez - The action of creation in a virtual world; also the birthdate of an avatar/account
Sim - A simulator and virtual region hosted by a single server CPU
SLT (Second Life® Time) - Local time within Second Life®, which also happens to be Pacific Standard Time because Linden Lab is located in San Francisco, CA
TP or Teleport - Moving from one location to another in a virtual world
Windlight - Sky, water and atmospheric lighting effects in Second Life®
