Ahmad Hosho asks..."Am I real or fiction?"

This photograph is by Ahmad Hosho (aka on Flickr: donhosho), who has been running a series on the theme "Am I real or fiction?"

He asks, "To where virtual worlds are taking us.. will we loose our life one day and stay in Second Life®? Will it be more advanced... are we going to live inside our fiction.. or will our fiction lives inside us?"

Meanwhile, Thema Felix is conducting a poll regarding our relationship with our avatars.

See also:
* New World Notes: The case for making avatars unrealistic
* New World Notes: Would you give your avatar a more Realistic shape?

Ahmad accomplished this image by painting over a photograph taken in Second Life. He coupled his talent and skills with Photoshop, artrage, coral painter, and NurLaila.

Sachiko Kodama - Real Life inspires...

Via artist Nebulosus Severine, I learned about artist/physicist, Sachiko Kodama.




Better quality and other films of her work available here

Funny thing is... I live about five minutes from this gallery.

I half expect to run into the Little Prince here

Several months ago, Amalthea Blanc wrote to tell me that she had discovered the cutest merchandise ever, and she was right.

Now and as of this morning, Yuyu Flores and Sasaya Kayo have given that adorable merchandise a store to match. They just opened a dedicated sim for Happy Mood.




These are the same people who brought us much joy at the SLB5 event.



Congratulations yuyu and sasaya!

Teleport directly from here, or you can shop directly on SLEX.

The Chasm between loneliness and solitude - Nebulosus Severine and her sim prompt self-awareness

Chasm, the dramatic new mostly black & white sim that is available for just one more week, is an unconvential virtual experience for the visitor who is encouraged to go there alone.

Its creator, New England artist Nebulosus Severine (aka CM Pauluh), asks that you download and install two custom Windlight presets to round out a journey that involves music, light and loneliness. Or is it solitude?

Beyond the obvious aspects (terraforming, textures and prims) of the sparce but eminently theatrical installation offered there, Chasm is, for me, the antithesis of the virtual experience that is marketed to us. Indeed, I cannot recall another time or place in Second Life® when solitary exploration has been emphasized, yet most of us spend a good deal of our time alone. I certainly do. I asked Nebulosus about this and more.

What do you want the visitor to take away after visiting Chasm?
Nebulosus Severine: I intended Chasm to be a challenging but (hopefully) rewarding experience. Some of the technical requirements needed to view it (the Windlight preset, for example) might deter some viewers who don't want to bother taking the extra effort, but I don't create art for those kinds of people. I want my art to be provocative - not necessarily in a controversial way, but to have emotional and intellectual impact on the audience.

I built 'Chasm' to underscore the feelings of isolation and desolation I have often experienced; I know I can't possibly be the only person to have felt like this, so I am hoping others will be able to relate to it as well.

How important is the spectator/visitor to you when you create your art?
Nebulosus Severine: A lot of my art is very personal, thus I hope that my art connects with the viewer on an individual, emotional level. I often have trouble relating to people directly, so art is a way for me to reach out to them, and a way for me to deal with my feelings, as well. A lot of my art is meant to be challenging -- not the kind of thing you go and have a look at for 5 minutes, but something to ponder, something that will have an impact.



For most, the Second Life® experience is a social one to be shared in the company of others. It is certainly always promoted as a social experience... What are your thoughts on being alone in Second Life?
Nebulosus Severine: I think the same could be said of First Life; humans, or at least the majority, are largely social creatures. There are those of us who, whether in Second Life or First Life, spend a majority of their free time alone; and while in a broad sense those people can be described as introverted, the experience is different for everyone who falls into that category. Personally, I regard my solitude with some ambivalence.

I am not that great at conveying my thoughts and feelings verbally (visual communication is much, much easier for me), thus I often rely on the words of others to describe how I feel in writing. A quote by Paul Johannes Tillich simply and accurately states what my reclusive nature means to me: "Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone, and the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."


Before you teleport, download Nebulosus' essential and custom preset for this visit here. Follow Nebulosus' installation instructions provided here. Then, teleport directly from here.

Go there alone

For one week only, Chasm - a dark and challenging new sim developed by Nebulosus Severine - invites introspective exploration.

Before you teleport, download Nebulosus' essential and custom preset for this visit here. Follow Nebulosus' installation instructions provided here. Then, teleport directly from here.

A hint: Navigation is key to understanding Chasm. Pay attention to the clues.

Special thanks to Dirkthecow Writer and HERD for the use of their sim.

Gary Hazlitt reminds us that "this is not a game"

Via FutureLab, I've just discovered this video by one of our own: NPIRLer, metaverse developer, marketer, musician, and film maker (among other things), Aussie Gary Hazlitt (aka Gary Hayes).

In it, Gary tours over 50 social virtual worlds in the "current metaverse." As he points out, there are "300 million frequenting or registering for the non-game based worlds and millions of new investments in 2nd and 3rd generation services."



Of the virtual worlds featured here, I have only been to Second Life®, There, HiPiHi, Spore, and Lively.

Kaneva
YoVille
RocketOn
Prototerra
Gaia Online
HiPiHi
Google's Lively
Habbo Hotel
Laguna Beach (vMTV)
Whyville
Twinity
Cyworld
Football Superstars
Weblin
IMVU
Second Life®
Club Penguin
Active Worlds
vSide
A Tale in the Desert
Barbie Online
Amazing Worlds
Webkinz
Worlds.com
Spore
Exit Reality
SpineWorld
Stardoll
The Manor
There.com
Vastpark
Qwaq
PS3Home (Sony Playstation)
GoSupermodel
Grockit (Live interactive learning)
Croquet, peer-based messaging protocol, now building Cobalt (open source and multi-platform metaverse browser)
Metaplace
Coke Studios - There.com
Dreamville (Now appears to be defunct)
Dubit
Mokitown (MobileKids)
Moove
Muse - No longer exists?
The Palace
Playdo
Sora City - Defunct
Voodoo Chat - Animated graphics-based chat
TowerChat
DigitalSpace Traveler
Virtual Ibiza

If you see great virtual content being developed by residents of any of these worlds, would you please let us know? Especially if it is Not Possible IRL (NPIRL).

Interestingly, while Vivaty is not featured in Gary's video, nor on this list, I was running a search for virtual worlds on Google, and Vivaty trumped Lively in the ad section on the right hand column. Heh.

See also:
* Gary Hazlitt's "Hide and Seek"
* Gary's machinima "Second Spring," featuring DanCoyote Antonelli's ZeroG SkyDancers
* Karma in Second Life (Thursday's Fictions)
* Fireside chat with Gary Hazlitt (my interview with him before he joined NPIRL)
* Dancing with Angels machinima by Gary Hazlitt
* Whitenoise travels from Second Life to Google's Lively
* Your name in virtual worlds is your brand
* Feel like straying into a new metaverse? (HiPiHi)
* Someday, a galaxy of metaverses
* AngryBeth Shortbreak talks about Twinity

Introducing Jordan Giant

good night. by Jordan Giant

Jordan Giant is a graphic designer from the Baltic region who likes Post Rock. I urge you to visit her Flickr stream.


ironman. by Jordan Giant


save me. by Jordan Giant


follow. by Jordan Giant


not here. by Jordan Giant

Suzanne Graves' exploding art

I'd come to know Suzanne Graves as an avid explorer and photographer, but recently she took up scripting and her art evolved from there.

Here are two examples that she showed me in a sandbox on Saturday.



On her blog she states, "I’ve always been fascinated by 3D math surfaces. You just pick some equation, and see what it produces. Change a parameter or two, and you have something different. I have spent hours and nights with Matlab or Mathematica doing this.

What a nerd.

When I started Second Life, I was expecting to be able to import math surfaces directly using 3D files. I was expecting to be able to build incredibly fun stuff. Then I discovered there were only… prims.

Argh. I don’t want to pile up cubes. But I can write programs which do that."

Transformer fashion

Here is yet another approach to fashion that virtual world designers can expand on... and easily surpass.

Thinking differently

On her Flickr stream, photographer and furniture maker Gina Glimmer posted a photograph along with this text:

"Last night I finally saw the light for this NPIRL table. I had been thinking of a 'water table' before but suddenly the idea came up to use flexible table legs which blow in the wind :) Btw, these are 32 solid gold table legs ;-)"


This photograph by Gina Glimmer

Gina's shop can be visited by teleporting directly from here.

AM Radio and Miki Gymnast collaborate - Two distinct art languages converse

Today, the Alexandar Gallery marked the opening of The Refuge and the Expansion - a new show spanning two sims - featuring several works we are familiar with and some new things (and great freebies, I might add) by AM Radio (teleport directly from here), and yet a third sim which brings together AM Radio and Miki Gymnast's art in a project that embodies two disciplines and provides us with poetic opposites.


This photograph by AM Radio

We relate to AM and Miki's work in such different ways. His painterly and hyper-real and immersive situations as can be seen at The Far Away, The Quiet and Husk, are so much more than recreations of objects we know and recognize. Rather, he invites us to look through his eyes and gives us emotional and cultural reference points. Chocked full of hidden metaphors, his fields and landscapes invite us to walk through memories, which are not necessarily his own. He is a visual narrator. If you follow his Flickr stream, you will see an actual story unfold that integrates all of his work.

In contrast, Miki is best known for her sharp eye with respect to geometric shapes that spill out of the traditional frame and are often quite Not Possible IRL. Her installations are generated via intricate scripting work and inspired by mathematics, featuring mostly colorful panes of glass in complex, undulating and soaring structures.

The result of their collaboration: a smokey-colored Klein Bottle sits in a tilled field, surrounded by mega prim walls that define the lighting and mood of the scene, (teleport directly from here).




"From a purely academic standpoint, art is a communication and all communication is grounded in some vocabulary," said AM. "I believe that the best abstract art is shown in a context."

What was your interest in placing abstract art here?
AM Radio: It is a contrast, and as a realist I think people tend to write me off somewhat. 'Oh well, AM won't be interested in this or that,' and I don't get an invite or an LM, when in fact, I am very intersted in abstract work. After seven years of art school, I understand the concepts, theory and talent that goes into the work.

"For example, here we have a tilled field and a sky and a horizon... it implies things like gravity and space as we experience them in Real Life," said AM. "When you put something like what Miki does in this space, it literally shows you - as a dialog - all of the rules its breaking. It forces you to think about what the piece is really doing. Like an abstract work seen in Real Life, the context is our personal experiences, the baggage we bring everywhere we go. When you present such a work in a vacuum, the dialog is more muted and guess work... like two people speaking foreign languages, attempting to speak with simple signs."


AM Radio's walls do speak

You've been extra particular about the light qualities here... the walls disinvite play with Windlight...
AM Radio: There are a few points there. First, mega prims are indispensible. The second, we need to be able to share Windlight settings and thirdly, look at the result if both are allowed.

If I understand you correctly, you are giving us a Windlight preset in-world by creating these walls.
AM Radio: I wish I could share this as a windlight setting, but I cannot. For now, the compromise is a megaprim.


Miki Gymnast

"I want to see this in Real Life," said Miki, "a farm in the mid-west, with such a sphere."

A Master Scripter in addition to being an artist, she explained that the Klein Bottle is a sphere with no outside and no inside. The Klein, in fact, is a one-sided surface - like the Möbius band - but is even more complex since it is closed and has no border and neither an enclosed interior nor exterior. While it is possible in Real Life, it is costly and complicated to produce.


Alexandar Vargas... a patron of the arts

The expansive three sim exhibit was made possible thanks to the generosity of Alexandar Vargas, the owner of the Alexandar Gallery. While several of his sims are dedicated to a permanent display of sculptures in a garden setting, he is taking a more active role in hosting very large installations, such as Madcow Cosmos' recent Tarot deck. I met with him yesterday at The Refuge and the Expansion to learn more.


Alexandar Vargas and AM Radio

What is your opinion of this show?
Alexandar Vargas: I have never seen such talents as AM and Miki. AM is probably the one artist here in Second Life® that has really touched me with his work. The fields he has here take me back home, since I grew up in northern Tennessee and drove through the midwest a lot... lived in Nebraska for a while, too.

You have been an empowering force to artists. How did this happen and when did you get started?
Alexandar Vargas: Probably in January. I received Light Waves' Ballerina as a gift, and began collecting art since then. I decided to place it on Welsh Bay. I think that (virtual) art is as impressive as Real Life art.

Back in January, Alexandar had two sims which he used as his home, but then he began to voraciously acquire art...
Alexandar Vargas: Once I ran out of prims, I moved off my home estate and then took over my brother's sim. He and I both own the Cove... it was the first sim we purchased.

Was it hard to find great art? Or was it hard to choose between the immense selection?
Alexandar Vargas: It was neither difficult to find, nor difficult to choose it. It was more of an issue of having room for it.

And then you got a third sim?
Alexandar Vargas: Yes, each time I ran out of room, I got a new sim. When other artists approached me and I saw art I wasn't aware of... that floored me, to be honest.

How many sims do you have now?
Alexandar Vargas: God... um, six I think, that I use for art. I really enjoy it. Lots of times, I just walk through the sims when I can't sleep. It is important to let others know about virtual art. It is just as valuable and beautiful as art in Real Life, and it is a shame when some don't think so.