Andrek Lowell's new Bentham Forest... will creep you out

Photographers are going to have a field day at Bentham. There simply isn't a Windlight preset that it doesn't look great in. It's those light rays...

This is one scary forest. I got so spooked at times, while walking around taking pics, that I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. In the interest of full disclosure, its creator, the hobbit Andrek Lowell, is a dear friend and also the creator of my own sim, Chakryn Forest.


The mushroom forest

"I hate this place," said Andrek, while we were standing in one particularly creepy area surrounded by glowing red eyes in the darkness. "It gets to me big time. Scared of my own creations... yeesh."


Andrek Lowell

A few weeks ago, Lauren Bentham commissioned Andrek to create Bentham Forest on a Homestead sim in Second Life®. She would later add several elements of her own, including the elder mushrooms, a shack and the lighted path to it, as well as sculptures by Pumpkin Tripsa and trees with eyes by lonetorus Habilis. Andrek included four of his super entertaining quests, as well as forest-appropriate gifts for visitors.


Dark passageway

What was your assignment?

Andrek Lowell: My assignment was to create a dark haunted forest. Her wording for it was a "dark version of Chakryn." My first reaction was, "eh..." mainly because Chakryn, light or dark, is still Chakryn, so I decided to go with a more themed version. I designed this project as a game for the mind. I tried my best to portray the feeling of unease, and dread, if not outright fear.

Did you spook yourself?

Andrek Lowell: Several times. I can barely stand going into a couple of the installations. I tweak and then port right the heck out.



The whole thing is 2,404 prims!

Andrek Lowell: About 400 - 600 of those aren't mine.

Did you do all in 3ds?

Andrek Lowell: All of this is done in Max yep, 'cept for the sounds. I did those using Audacity.

What is your favorite part?

Andrek Lowell: I particularly like the mushroom forest. I've been wanting to do something like that for a while. Other than that, I love the crystal caves. Um... there isn't much of this sim I don't like really.


Andrek Lowell standing in the crystal cave

How many quests are there? Are they difficult?

Andrek Lowell: I created four quests, using scripts by Desdemona Enfield. Two of them are pretty easy. Only one of them gives location hints. Hopefully they won't be as easy as Chakryn quests are. Two of the quests have three items to find, one has four items, and the last has five items. The quests feature items created by Lauren, as rewards for completion. I've also hidden five crates of goodies: small elements of the forest.

So, how much fun was this?

Andrek Lowell: It was hard to stop working, and I forgot to eat today, =).


The elder mushrooms - with the faces - are by the sim's owner, Lauren Bentham

What kind of forest would you like to make next?

Andrek Lowell: I want to make a new Chakryn Forest on Blue Mars, and also I've very much wanted to make mushrooms for a while. My hope is to one day create a hyper fantasy forest, where the rules of nature apply loosely, like they sorta do here: Giant things, odd things, lights that don't make sense but look neat, basically a fairy tale... large mushrooms, glittering trees, but with a warm, joyful, colorful setting.

Teleport to Bentham Forest directly from here.

See also:

• Andrek Lowell's Shadowaine Fell
• Chakryn Forest presents new works by Glyph Graves
• Chakryn Forest: Virtual nature by Andrek Lowell, or the real reason I still have a Second Life

How to view this forest: Do not count on seeing everything by camming or using your Space Navigator. Many smaller sculpties will not render. Turn up your sounds (not your music). The sounds alone are worth the trip! Look for the dark passageway, the crystal cave, the wicked red eyes...

Andrek Lowell's Shadowaine Fell

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Hobbit Andrek Lowell has created an idyllic and pastoral forest for Gorean Dugan McCallen, featuring his new sun rays, which I'd call Not Possible IRL (NPIRL) because they are almost like clouds of light. We've been given permission to visit, but keep in mind that it is a no fly zone and that you have to go by the coordinates to find it. Totally worth it. Whatever your feelings may be about the Gorean culture, please respect the people there in the name of gorgeous prims; teleport directly from here and then walk to 33, 224, 21.





You can see the same new sun rays at my home sim, Chakryn Forest, (teleport directly from here).

At the root of the matter...

In every culture around the globe, the tree is weighted with heavy symbolism. For some, it is the synthesis of heaven, earth and water. For others, it can symbolize life, the feminine principle, the matrix and knowledge.

AM Radio continues to confound us with his radio-driven mysteries, but the centerpiece this time is yet another tree, albeit a dead one. His "Beneath the tree that died" installation was created using traditional prims (teleport directly from here).




This photo of the telegram than can be found on the table, by AM Radio. Please click to see large

Thanks to sculpties and megaprims, trees and most botanicals in Second Life® resemble their Real Life counterparts more while costing just a few prims.


Cel Edelman's 48 prim trees (each) are still very much alive (teleport directly from here)



Strawberry Holiday's trees that use particle systems for leaves have been delighting us for several months now, but none has come closer to the organic beauty of her new 26 prim Oakey Tree, available here.

Says Strawberry, "Trees and other natural objects offer a portal from the place in your brain that requires the concrete, reality of every day life to a virtual reality where anything can happen. Words can fall like leaves and headlines can wave in the wind like grass."

Chakryn Forest presents... new works by Glyph Graves

Australian artist Glyph Graves' show, featuring his newest kinetic sculptures throughout Chakryn Forest, will continue to run through October 6. He describes his work as an interplay between structure and texture, as well as the normal digital tools of graphic and 3D modeling programs.


Music: Narayanam, performed by Suchita Parte
Video: Bettina Tizzy

Start at the Stone heads (teleport directly from here). Turn your stream off and your sound up. As you walk along the path, elements of rock greet you... first with trepidation, then with the joy of having you in their midst and finally, sorrow as you depart.

Listen to a song of cello and kalimba. It is for you that they make the song.

Each head has a set of different notes. Each head will play a different note depending on its distance from you. Together they make a song celebrating your proximity.

Now... turn your stream back on and wander the sim for many discoveries.

Chakryn Forest is the creation of Andrek Lowell.

It's a Pillflower World, after all

Douglas Story likes flowers. A lot. He photographs real flowers and then manipulates those images in striking ways to come up with memorable art installations such as the acclaimed FlowerBall and DynaFleur. In fact, I've learned that when he gets a bee in his bonnet about flowers, we are - inevitably - going to get the full story. That said, I was not in the least bit surprised when he alerted me to an upcoming show he was especially fascinated with. "What is it called, Douglas?," I asked. "Pillflower World," came the answer. Yep.

Douglas is a regular contributor to this blog.



by Douglas Story

Back in December of 2007, I saw a group notice for a gallery show in Second Life® that had the Real Life component of the image from SL being projected onto a screen in the gallery. Me being the show-off that I am, I donned a bizarre avatar and went by the gallery, and made the acquaintance of the artist, Nar Duell.

It turns out that Nar’s Real Life operator is an artist working out of Toronto named Lynne Heller. She sent me to her website and I was Pretty Effing Impressed. Among other things, I loved the sensuality of the scans of the dying blossoms, not to mention the wit and of her colorful pillflowers.

A couple weeks later, Nar was talking to me about bringing the Pillflower concept in-world, and how she could do that. I gave her a few comments, but mostly....I pointed Nar to my friend and partner-in-crime, Desdemona Enfield for her scripting expertise.

Together they have created something remarkable: a world of seemingly happy, jolly flowers and snow play, all encased in a sim-spanning, dynamic, swirling snow globe. I very much like the fun, whimsical sense of it all - especially so because there's a dark undercurrent in that the pretty flowers are made of pills - and that imagery conjures up so many associations with unhappiness and illness. Nar says it better than I do in her artist’s statement. On the pillflowers themselves:

“Soothing pastel shades of the medicinals belie their power and effect on the human body and our drug dependant culture. Alluring and candy-like, the pillflowers visually signify that ‘all is right’ with the world, or at the very least, can be made so instantaneously.”

On the subject of snow globes, she says:

“Snow globes, universal signifiers of all things kitsch, are trusty souvenirs of travel and exotica. In Pillflower World the snow globe becomes a metaphor for the conflation of locale, space, culture and even time. Snow globes are ubiquitous and generic. Tropical scenes share cold weather precipitation right along with the North Pole.”



Lynne had been asked to show her work in a Real Life gallery in Australia (details below.) She approached them about including a Second Life element, and they got very excited --- so Nar put together this installation in-world. There’s a great deal for the curious and/or playful avatar to do once there: you can take a 'toboggan' tour of the world, observe the breathing flowers that creepily turn to track you as you pass, experience psychedelic effects on your avatar and view when touching the flowers, take a bath, play a pillflower guessing game, watch dandelions grow, jump on a trampoline, roll around in the snow, sled down a hill, and fly up through the snowflakes. The snowflakes are scanned from actual images of snow crystals, and are scripted to swirl in a wide vortex.



I was especially tickled that the intro to the piece is a toboggan ride.


Here, Desdemona gives me the tour

The toboggan ride is fast, and is scripted with changes in speed and acceleration, complete with swooshing sound effects. What a good idea! (Okay okay, if you must know, I suggested the sound effects.)

For those of you down under who might like to attend in meatspace, the piece will be shown at the Australian National University, Canberra, September 22 – October 3, 2008, where the images from Second Life will be projected on a big screen in the gallery.

For those wishing to attend the show with real snow outside, it will be in a more frigid venue at the Red Head Gallery, Toronto, Canada, December 3 - 20, 2008.

To add to the gallery displays, Lynne has made a mural of Nar’s adventures in comic book form, which she has had printed very big: 4 feet by 40 feet. A few excerpts follow:




I never did talk her into getting an AO, as you can see.



You’ll note in the dialog in the above image that Des gets a teeny bit obtuse. Desdemona is a literate, articulate, and witty conversationalist normally, but when she gets on a technical tear, as above, well… hang on to your synapses. I asked her to briefly describe her contributions to this project, and she replied as follows:

[16:15] Desdemona Enfield: Scripting features include script behavior controlled by the end user using extensive configuration parameters, centralized administration of replicated objects, dynamically scheduled timer event processing to reduce region loads, runtime administrative control using nested dialog interaction, use of particle effects for snow vortex and pillflower meadows, detailed, extensible inter-prim chat protocols for use in administering objects and journaling visitor presence, coordination of multiple avatar sensors by a centralized controller, precision prim rotations based on ....
[16:15] Douglas Story: (laughing) well, I asked!

[16:16] Desdemona Enfield: ... exact solutions to rotational algebra problems, coordinated flexi control with orientation independent cyclic forces.

Did you get all that? Any questions? Well… ask Des! I’m just the reporter.

The opening reception will be held Saturday, September 13th from 10am to 2pm SLT. Teleport directly from here.


The artist would like to express special thanks to Larry Pixel of the New Media Consortium for the generous loan of the sim on which the art is displayed.

Despite the demise of Virtual Parks & Recreation Services, virtual nature is flourishing

Several months ago and after years of hard work, Master Ranger Higbee Protagonist made the difficult decision to close the Virtual Parks & Recreation Service group because he needed to focus on his Real Life. The news was alarming and many of us - including his dedicated group officers Princess Ivory and Bjorlyn Loon - were fearful for the future of pixelated flora given the ever-booming business of shopping malls and ad farms throughout the grid.

Several discoveries in the past few weeks, however, have allayed my concerns. It seems that new pixelated trees and forests are bursting everywhere, thanks in great measure to the contributions of Kriss Lehmann and his gorgeous Straylight/Botanical (it's hard to find a sim these days that doesn't have a few of his trees), the ever-prolific Julia Hathor and her exquisite fantasy flowers and plants and birds and trees, among many other items (note to self: you really, really need to do a blogpost on Julia and her work!) and, of course, Andrek Lowell and his deep forests, including my own Chakryn Forest.

I shared vroum Short's surreal VeGeTaL PLaNeT with you yesterday, and today I learned about kyota Spitteler's Mermaid Temple and Fairy Forest via Rawnie Lane, who clearly has a penchant for the outdoors. Teleport directly from here.


flowerfield by Rawnie Lane


Giant waterlily by Rawnie Lane

I also take pleasure in visiting explorer and fashion designer Amerie Spitteler's Flickr stream, because I invariably find a new bit of forest or garden there. It was through Amerie that I discovered her Hollow Forest, where I have had an enchanting time snapping pics. Teleport directly from here.


Hollow Forest

I suspect that what has happened here is that the intensive efforts to green the grid by the Virtual Parks & Recreation Service group have begun to pay serious dividends, and for that I'm relieved and grateful.

VeGeTaL PLaNet

Via Tayzia Abattoir, owner of the Crescent Moon Museum and curator of the NMC's Aho Gallery, we learned of vroum Short's VeGeTaL PLaNeT. While vroum hasn't been in Second Life® more than a handful of months, his use of scripts to execute imaginative kinetic sculptures (not shown here) is noteworthy.

vroum's abstract virtual nature is reminiscent of sea kelp and is also kinetic.




Teleport directly from here.

Chakryn Forest - Virtual nature by Andrek Lowell, or the real reason I still have a Second Life

Chakryn Wolves, as photographed by Lano Ling at Chakryn Forest. Lano is posing here with Beolas Whitfield who calls his friend a "photopainter"

Life's not just for Paradise,
or places out of time,
for there's something even stranger yet,
that wont fit in a rhyme.
Just when I thought I'd seen it all,
and whilst sitting on a hill,
I saw, quite all around me,
the final Cosmic thrill
Paradise on Earth (The Consummatum Incarnate), by Dick Richardson


Music: Narayanam, performed by Suchita Parte
Video: Bettina Tizzy

"Get a first life," the cynics say. We know, of course, that The Cynics haven't tried Second Life®, or maybe they just dipped their Ruthy toes in our virtual world for a fleeting moment and bolted at the first lag.

I was almost A Cynic. Even with the initial unpleasantness behind me, the spectre of living two lives inside the same 24 hours terrorized me, and that is precisely what was on my mind as I stood in an elven sandbox, toying with a few helpless prims like brussel sprouts on my childhood dinner plate. It hadn't taken me long to understand that, in Second Life, the builder is King, and looking at my feeble work made me feel doomed and without purpose. I am not a builder, you see. Today, I can cobble a few things together, and I know the steps, but the magic is not in my fingers or my brain, hence the reverence I feel for those who have it.

The comely Elvenmoor sandbox of those days was already a favorite place of mine, and noobs like me were still allowed to mingle and rez alongside the prim sorcerers. I recall that a friend urged me to come and see something on the far end, and that is when I saw it...


The very first Chakryn Forest, as discovered in a sandbox on February 22, 2007

It was the lushest, greenest virtual forest that I had ever laid eyes on and it simply beckoned further exploration. Such a pretty thing! We soon discovered that once in the forest, we were transported to a secret place with no end. I later understood that its creator, a hobbit who would become one of my dearest friends, Andrek Lowell, had made the outside walls transparent. You could see into the forest but not out of it.

Finding a place to permanently rez that forest and build a community around it became the instant purpose of my Second Life. There are so many stories...

Today, four locations and five iterations later (including the introduction of sculpties and Andrek's ingenious idea of adding sun rays), Chakryn Forest is still my home and now sits on its own void sim thanks to the hospitality of my good friend and OpenSim guru, thomtrance Otoole.


The second Chakryn Forest no longer exists. Here is the third, now known as Silvanus and belonging to Kirk Nabob, as photographed by Wellington Bahram


The third Chakryn Forest (now known as Silvanus Forest), as photographed by Moon Over Belgium

Here is a lovely video of Silvanus (then Chakryn) by Chriz Palen, also featuring one of those glimmering, sunny "swirly" prim abuse sculptures by Gore Suntzu that I had rezzed there.



He made it with 1,400 prims
I think it especially notable that Andrek created the new sim-wide Chakryn Forest, open to the public since July 15th, with just 1,400 prims, complete with caves, an underwater forest feature, tunnels and many hidden secrets that no one - to my knowledge - has discovered yet.


This dreamy photo of Chakryn Forest today, by Maxiums1id

I asked Andrek how many more prims he would have needed to create Chakryn, were it not for huge prims. Between the trees, foliage, "mountain bits," waterfall, sun rays and grass, he felt he'd need ...

Andrek Lowell: Each tree would of probably cost 10 prims, and in the end, not even come close to matching the detail. The foliage... well over 1,000. The waterfall... around the 100 - 300 range, and of course, not nearly the detail. Grass... another 90 prims, light rays... another 20, and it would also be a pain. And then there are the 256m mega prims that make up the mountain top, river cliff, and waterfall wall...


I've looked at forests in other virtual worlds such as The Endless Forest, where all is flat and no nightime falls and water is still and lifeless...

It is true that I understand my own Second Life to be a mind-altering privilege, so rich with startling and radical opportunities around nearly every corner that I am in a perpetual state of excitement. But in the end, it is Chakryn Forest that I must come home to. It is my lifeline and my greatest source of serenity.

Teleport to Chakryn Forest from here.
Teleport to Silvanus Forest from here.


See also:

The Chakryn Forest and Silvanus Forest Flickr group

Other forests by Andrek Lowell, as photographed by Moon Over Belgium:
* Ile des Amis
* Greenbrier Wood

Other videos that feature Silvanus Forest:
* Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey - A ten-part HBO film
* "Chameleon" by Brigitte Kungler
* "Chakryn Forest," by Morris Vig
* Fenix et Gala by Eiko Ivory

Eshi's flower gets a permanent home

Eshi Otawara had been building a new sim every day, and then wiping that slate clean to start anew, day after day. It was all part of what she called her One Hour Sim Project, facilitated by one willing Dirk Talamasca who handed the keys of his sim over to her. When asked about it, she referred to the mandala, and how these creations were not about permanence or material holdings. Rather, the entire exercise was a meditation of sorts for her, and we were just bystanders. To that end, she had no intention of keeping these works in inventory.



But then she made that towering flower with clusters of the most exuberant white petals tinged with pink...



...the closest thing to a sacred place I have ever come across in pixelated form, and literally hundreds of Second Life®'s residents cried out and begged her not to destroy it.


So powerful is the effect of this build that I perceive it to be almost fragrant. It gives me serenity and excites my creativity all at once. It is a dream I didn't know I longed for, but once found, want to hold close

In my short virtual life, I have only seen that level of excitement over the discovery of Light Waves' Black Swan sim, and AM Radio's The Far Away, but then we weren't fearing for that content's ongoing existence.

And then... that scribe and thinking man's thinker, Dusan Writer stepped in, and persuaded Eshi to sell him this masterpiece.

He wrote me a simple note this morning that made my heart glad, "I have placed Eshi's flower on Remedy. There is a sign at the landing point where you can teleport into the flower."

Dusan... thank you.

Teleport to Eshi's flower directly from here.

The month we won't forget
The month of July has been extraordinary where Eshi is concerned. She helped inaugurate CodeBastard Redgrave's larger-than-life Rouge sim, which she created. She built a private space for me at Chakryn Forest. By my count, she completely built out a new sim every day for twelve days! She created customized, signature clothing for the Black Swan sim, put together one of my favorite outfits ever in Second Life, "Chocolat"... and then that amazing girl auctioned off her celebrated Fishook dress to benefit the Relay for Life fundraiser, and pulled in $460,000L, or approximately $1,700US for one outfit, thanks to a bidding war that ensued between two friends and business partners.

See also:
* Eshi's Desperado
* #9
* Eshi Otawara's one hour sim project is blossoming
* Eshi's One Hour Sim Project Flick Pool

Strawberry Holiday's "Throes of Rapture" - A sneak peek

Working only with 550 prims and textures by dozzydolly Biziou, Strawberry Holiday has mounted a show that is both electrifying and painterly.

She began the enterprise by asking herself "what does heaven look like?"


Strawberry puts the finishing touches on 'heaven'

"Throes of Rapture" opens today at 1pm SLT at AngelGate, as part of a collective show (teleport directly from here).



Production credits are as follows:
Strawberry Holiday - Prim Design and scripting
Dozzydolly Biziou - Textures
Moongold Munro - Sound
Carbon Chaffe - Scripting
Egidius Eel - Production Photographer
WendyofNeverland Fussbudget - Project Administrator

3star Tyne's Creeping Frog Princess

Kermit the Frog always makes me smile, but I like him best when he sings, "Someday we'll find it, that NPIRL connection... the builders, the dreamers, and me." Oh, wait... I'm the one who sings that! Figure I'm going to get some ribbitin' for that one... :) Eh!

Speaking of frogs, 3star Tyne, designer of several breathtaking outfits for women who embrace the Not Possible IRL mantra - including the much celebrated Glass House Mary outfit - brightened my morning today when she shared her newest creation with me... the Creeping Frog Princess ensemble.


Photo by 3star Tyne

I tried the gown on myself and found it to be ultra feminine and diaphanous, featuring a soft floral print, and a crown of flowers, too. Upon closer inspection, I realized that I had 3D green frogs leaping off my arm and chest and waist. Virtual jewelry and virtual nature!



You may be wondering to yourself, "how is this Not Possible IRL?" Glad you asked! I guarantee that I would not be standing still long enough to have a photograph taken if this were happening in Real Life.

You can find this outfit and many other lovelies at 3star's shop, which you can teleport to directly from here.