Sinuous, pink (my fave color), ALIVE, and hilarious, Adam Ramona's Proud Flesh installation at Burning Life 2009 is a triumph.
Kindly click the lower right hand corner to view this "Large"
Adam Ramona is the artist Adam Nash in Real Life, living in Melbourne, Australia. We've blogged about his work manytimes. His notecard at the installation reads:
This work is an attempt at a little evolving audiovisual environment. Each wind-responsive square tube fleshy flower will spawn a single seed when walked through by an avatar. The seed rises. If it collides with one of the geometric "clouds" randomly moving above, the cloud spawns a single shard. The shard releases a single raindrop. The raindrop falls. If it hits one of the square tube fleshy flowers, the square tube fleshy flower will spawn more seeds and so on. This symbiotic loop creates an ever-changing audiovisual environment. It's not really evolving, since evolution implies adaptation. In that sense, the failure of this work is perhaps a testament to the limited nature of the environment within which it exists, which itself is perhaps a testament to the failure of us all to comprehend evolution or its consequences.
What does it mean to be in the world? We are flesh, and we are proud. We name that which we do not understand. We are evolving, but judging by our current state, we have a very long way to go. As Alain Badiou puts it: "The contemporary world is thus doubly hostile to truth procedures. This hostility betrays itself through nominal occlusions: where the name of a truth procedure should obtain, another, which represses it, holds sway. The name 'culture' comes to obliterate that of 'art'. The word 'technology' obliterates the word 'science'. The word 'management' obliterates the word politics. The word 'sexuality' obliterates love. The 'culutre-technology-management-sexuality' system, which has the immense merit of being homogenous to the market, all of whose terms designate a category of commercial presentation, constitutes the modern nominal occlusion of the 'art-scinece-politics-love' system, which identifies truth procedures typologically."
Adam Nash (Adam Ramona), Melbourne, Australia, 2009.
http://squaretangle.com http://www.acva.net.au
Reference: Alain Badiou, St Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford University Press, 2003. P.12.
Forgive me, dear readers, if I congratulate myself again and again for luring Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) into becoming my co-blogger here. Sometimes she writes and I don't. Sometimes I write alone for weeks. Somehow, this blog doesn't get overly lonely. And oh, the things she creates! She amuses me; she fills me with awe.
On this occasion, and for Burning Life 2009, the Tower and the Quest was built by Alpha Auer, the story and animations were created by Frigg Ragu, and these sumptuous avatars by Grapho Fullstop. And guess who Grapho is?
Me, as the Fool
The five sets of avatars are based on the Tarot of Marseilles. They are free and available in both female and male versions. They come with their own animation overriders by Frigg! Wear them and pose, using the delightful poses sprinkled throughout the Tower. Visitors are encouraged to interact with the build and each other, creating their own interpretations and mythologies.
The rest of these images were taken by Alpha herself.
The Hermit
Temperance
The Chariot
The notecard at the installation reads:
Upon arriving you will receive a full avatar for each of the following characters which you can obtain from 5 spheres placed around a circle at the entry location: These are "The Fool", "The Hermit", "The Chariot", "Temperance" and "The Moon" with skin, clothes and attached poses/animations. These characters are based on the “Tarot of Marseilles”. Each character has their own stage/sphere which progress vertically as the platforms of the tower – but you are free to use the entire installation as you want, of course. In addition to the poses and animations attached to the avatars, you will find poses and animation placed around and inside the installation. Walk/fly around, try the poses and animations to create your own photostory. Use all of your senses, because there are details in the spheres and sounds to enrich your imagination.
A story usually contains the following elements: A character (protagonist), a place (which you now have), a problem and an antagonist. The spheres are detailed, the poses and animations have titles – all this is provided to inspire you to create a story.
Tarot are packs of cards found all the way back to the fifteenth century. Historically Tarot has been played for divination purposes. The “Tarot of Marseilles” is one standard pattern design of the card. Within our context it is not so much the divination usage that is interesting, but rather the design and folkloristic associations the cards give. The 5 specific characters chosen for this project form a narration. The fool is regarded as the storyteller/the creator, while the hermit is the protagonist, whose actions are represented by the Chariot, while Temperance is needed in “getting the story into balance after the action” and the Moon is the end of the story.
Take photographs of your stories and creations and show us the results! If you post your pictures at FLICKR, we would appreciate it if you tag the pictures with: “The tower and the quest”, “alpha.tribe” and “Poses for prose and poetry” - in this way we will be able to find your pictures and admire and be inspired by your creations, and thus get ideas for new narrative installations.
Alpha Auer, aka. Elif Ayiter is a totally irreverent, mischievous, politically incorrect, frivolous, fashion victim avatar in Second Life@. She is the CEO of the virtual fashion enterprise alpha.tribe as well as the builder and owner of Syncretia and Syncretia Annex. During less frivolous moments she has also been known to blog for the NPIRL blog of Second Life@. http://www.alphaauer.com/ http://syncretia.wordpress.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpha_auer/ http://alphatribe.tumblr.com/
Elif Ayiter, aka. Alpha Auer is a designer and researcher specializing in the development and implementation of hybrid educational methodologies between art&design and computer science teaching full time at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests include data visualization and the development of Kinesthetic/Somatic/Biological interfaces for the metaverse; both in collaboration with teams of computer scientists. She has presented creative as well as research output at conferences including Siggraph, Consciousness Reframed, Creativity and Cognition, ISEA, ICALT, Computational Aesthetics (Eurographics) and Cyberworlds. Elif is also the chief editor of the forthcoming journal Metaverse Creativity with Intellect Journals, UK and is currently studying for a doctoral degree at the Planetary Collegium, CAiiA hub, at the University of Plymouth with Roy Ascott. http://www.citrinitas.com/
Frigg Ragu aka. Heidi Dahlsveen (Norway) is a storyteller, author and assistant professor at the University College of Oslo. Her main field and interest is to perform stories for all kind of people and she has lived as a storyteller since 1996. She has been performing, telling and teaching internationally in countries like Bulgary, Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, USA and Wales. At the University College of Oslo she is responsible for three kinds of storytelling studies. In Second life her main interest has been how to create poses as a narrative element. She has received support from Norwegian Arts Council to research performing arts and create performance in Second life.
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!
She is the mistress of sad art, of robotic art, of mystery and melancholy, all in a virtual space, but when you talk with her, there's a bit of jocularity, of no-nonsense to Bryn Oh that's light and engaging. In conversation yesterday, the Canadian artist got to speaking about Second Life's building blocks. "I kind of like prims. It's fun to just use them. It's like Lego."
As the discussion progressed, we got on the topic of weather and how cold it can get up north. Like -30. It didn't occur to me to clarify this at the time, but I hope she was referring to Fahrenheit and not Celsius degrees. Brrr. "Snow was my very first toy, before Legos," she explained. What did she make? "Oh, snow homes, people, and often underground tunnels, which are nice and warm inside."
Years later, Bryn is still making tunnels and secret places that can only be negotiated via camming - that act of zooming and panning one's viewer (camera) down nooks and crevices. What they lead to is often the very heart of the matter, the answer, or partial answer to the question that the installation poses, for there is always a story, a conundrum, and a sequence of events in her art that need to be discovered to comprehend the whole. She is a virtual storyteller.
Vessel's Dream is such a creation. "They will only be able to go through a few rooms before they cannot continue with their avatar," advised Bryn. "At this point they must switch to holding down Ctrl and Alt (at the same time), and using the left mouse button. With all three held down, you can now change the angle and enter the tunnel. They then let go of the left mouse button, move it over a new target and hold it down again. Letting go, they can zoom forward using the scroll wheel. It's a bit like spiderman moving like this. Again they must click on things, as many parts of the build can be activated," she instructed.
Vessel's Dream has not yet been made public, but like all of Bryn's works, it appears to be an advancement over her last. Now her machinima is helping her to tell the stories, always aided by her Machine Poetry, which one discovers here and there, like messages in a bottle, lonely and cast away on old parchment paper: Histories of sentimental, often persecuted and ill-fated angels and robots.
Machinima by Bryn Oh
Here are just some of the blogposts we've done about Bryn and her work in Second Life:
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...
In the garden of Jung's country home in Bollingen stands a large cube-shaped stone inscribed by his own hand with magical and alchemical symbols. In his last revelatory dream prior to his death, Jung saw a huge round stone engraved with the words "And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness". - THE GNOSIS ARCHIVE by Stephan A. Hoeller
British virtual landscape artist soror Nishi believes that the prim, that basic building tool in Second Life, is akin to prima materia (primal matter), a term used by alchemists to describe the seed of life. Prima materia was originally called Microcosmos to signify the small world from which heaven, earth, fire, water, and all manifestations of life are derived, including birth, death, creation, and even the resurrection. With this in mind, what could be more deserving of a temple, worship, and even a religion in Second Life than the crown of virtual creation... the plywood prim? To that end, she has created a temple and forest to that divine source of life and death: The Temple of the Prim.
The Temple of the Prim as photographed by Lem Skall
On her blog, soror discusses the term Increatum, wherein she describes prima materia as "fertilizing and giving birth to itself," and goes on to draw parallels between it and the basic prim.
Last Friday in conversation, soror explained: “This has been on my mind for well over a year. (The prim) makes itself and therefore is like a god. Gods need temples and the prim is self-replicating like the old gods. I think there's not really much in Prima Materia. It is just empty, but it reflects the psyche. According to Jung, when people speculate about the unknowable, they say more about their own psyche than they do about the unknowable, so the prim is a bit like a mirror."
soror's signature cracked-egg trees are made with prims, as is everything in Second Life
soror went on to say, "Jung was the first (only) person to take alchemy seriously as a description of the transformation of the individual from "normal" to enlightened. He saw a direct link between the "way you make gold from prima materia' and the process of "individuation" (his word). All the chemical processes that the alchemists describe are anthropomorphic, like Mercury is a person… kings and queens. It's all like a fairy story, with characters dying, etc. These relate to dreams: Archetypes (his word) and the land of dreams... is... (should be) SL...?”
"The Prim worship thingy is magic, and magic is what Synchronicity is (also a Jung word). Jung would LOVE SL," shared soror.
Looking down into the Temple of the Prim
soror Nishi: "I came to Jung through my interest in geometry and the Axiom of Maria: One becomes two, two becomes three...etc. Maria was an old alchemist. Alchemists believed that whereas Christ had redeemed man, no one has redeemed matter, and they saw the search for the Philosophers Stone (the Self) to be an aim higher than Christianity. I got interested in geometry as a sort of universal truth. I was fascinated that it transcends language, in my teens that is."
Alchemists were challenged not only with the vagaries of their science, but also with the ongoing tribulations of securing funding for their incredibly expensive practice. These early scientists resorted to creating a narrative using anthropomorphic symbols to describe chemical reaction processes more impressively and make them comprehensible to the layperson. What they fabricated was nothing short of mythology, imbued with allegories, metaphors and archetypes steeped with rich personalities.
Hundreds of years later and in his early 30s, the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, began working on a manuscript bound in red leather that would contain illustrations and calligraphy by his own hand. In this document – considered the Holy Grail of the Unconscious - he explored his theories on archetypes, collective unconscious (the mystery of the universally unknown), and individuation, or the process of transforming one’s psyche by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious. Each of his archetypes represent an aspect of our deepest, and highest (or darkest), self.
At times, soror's landscaping is reminiscent of Asian paintings
Soror’s Temple of the Prim is also a tribute to Carl Jung, which is especially fitting given the publication this month of that manuscript that he worked on for 16 years. Locked in a bank vault all this time, the Red Book has only been seen by a few people.
Now the Ruben Museum in New York will be displaying the original book in conjunction with a series of events called the Red Book Dialogues, wherein “personalities from many different walks of life will be paired on stage with a psychoanalyst and invited to respond to and interpret a folio from Jung's Red Book as a starting point for a wide ranging conversation.” Those guests include musician and artist David Byrne, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, director John Boorman, and philosopher Cornel West.
The Temple of the Prim is on temporary display thanks to Mab MacMoragh's sponsorship and can be visited by teleporting directly from here.
This is a shoutout to the man who created my favorite animation in Second Life... the unsung hero responsible for "lifting" avatars and sending more of us soaring than the Page Up button.
Last night I was reviewing an art installation that incorporated the animation - it's a perennial hit with artists - and suddenly it dawned on me: I had no idea who had made it. Shame on me! I rustled up my inventory and right clicked SkybornFly: Creator: YuzienBorn Janus. I'd never heard of him. Had you? Why, I'll bet that any Second Life resident reading this blog has one in his or her pantry. I hastened to contact him presto fasto.
Animators in Second Life strive so hard to emulate the graceful movements of real professional dancers through precision motion capture, but the animation I adore and would miss the most is my trans/copy SkybornFly. I know I've had it since January 2008 because I remember handing out copies of it like there was no tomorrow at Komuso Tokugawa and MoShang Zhao's fabulous realtime jam and prototype event: SynaesthAsia, captured here by Osprey Therian. You can see us using the SkybornFly beginning at 3:17 into this video or by clicking here:
YuzienBorn Janus got back to me today and I peppered him with questions:
I do believe this was the first "not possible IRL" animation on the grid. What possessed you to create such a wonder?
YuzienBorn: First? No. I saw a couple prior to mine. They were robotic, and lacked any human motion. You might have seen the zen-like hovering pose? If not, perhaps you have seen that straight up in the air 4m legs splayed thing that strippers still use. I feel I could claim the first *fluid* NPIRL anim.
It was my love of SL's electronic music culture that posessed me to make the skyborn animations. While there were many for dancing, for better or for worse, there weren't any that were really suited to a good downtempo or ambient sets (like Ribe Oh, or Transient Zeluco's). So avatars either danced (while showing appreciation, they looked silly), or just stood or sat there.
When did you create this animation?
YuzienBorn: Oh, my. I havent the slightest idea. If my inventory is correct, I made it exactly two years ago yesterday. Wow =)
Why did you decide to make it copy/trans? (Had he set it for sale, surely he'd be a virtual tycoon today!)
YuzienBorn: A combination of self-serving publicity, and self-serving competitive spirit: trying to out-do the other high-end developers that had released free products to the public. I also wanted to give a little something to the people, but that's prolly just because I was having an insecure moment and wanted attention. All selfish reasons ;)
How did you make it?
YuzienBorn: Poser.
Have you created other animations?
YuzienBorn: Yes. Aside from the boring sitting animations I made for my furniture products, I made one I adore: The animation I made for my Pika-shoes (pikachu on your feet) took me 10 hours and syncs perfectly with the song that plays. It is deliciously retarded. There are some clips of it near the beginning of this video that 2ndThoughts Brando and I made about our little electronic SL subculture.
Side Note: In view of Linden Lab's bullying this week of a crown jewel in virtual education - and an organization that has made them look good time and again - I've decided to never add a damn registered mark after the words "Second Life" again. If they want to take down this blog, so be it. TYRANTS!!
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®
