Go to your happy place, courtesy of Yoa Ogee

Yoa Ogee always takes me to my happy place. And that is precisely the reaction he is after. You see, Yoa founded and heads up the organization World's Greatest Smile.

Yoa Ogee: Peace is what I have been most interested in all my life. The World's Greatest Smile is an international peace project dedicated to friendly communication, and is supported by 14 Nobel Laureates, as well as many other people from 131 countries. The goal is to motivate people to communicate in a more friendly and effective way and to give them the resources to do so. We develop games for children, too, to teach them teamwork in a playful way.

So committed is he to this goal, that 100% of the proceeds from the sales of all his fantastic avatars goes directly into the coffers of this organization.

For the Garden of NPIRL Delights, Yoa created an installation he calls Happy Humans!


Yoa's birds have strong feet

Yoa Ogee: It is a big birdhouse... and all the birds in and around the house have only one thing in mind: “Oh, the human rights are so great, it must be wonderful to be a human... it is our mission to tell everybody more about that! Sooooo happy humans...!“


These birds perch in most unusual places


Aviation school

Yoa Ogee: The birds must be prepared for this mission, so they have a newbie/newbird area in the house. There the young birds can learn more about the human rights. And, of course, an aviation school, a few nests with baby birds and more...


Be happy!

Don't forget to pick up the three freebie avatars at this installation, too (teleport directly from here).

Toast in Limbo

A late entry by Zora Spoonhammer - also known for her spectacular Sculpty Earth - to the Garden of NPIRL Delights, asks: "When toast falls to the floor it exists in a special limbo for five seconds where any fate is possible. Will it succumb to evil and become wasted food at six seconds or become a heavenly snack before then? For those five seconds, it exists here, in this limbo of toast."

The city that glows

If you are a fan of Flash Gordon, then you know that all the action takes place on Planet Mongo, a kingdom ruled by the evil Ming the Merciless. And if you follow the story in the newest Flash Gordon series produced by the SciFi Channel, then you are also aware that Mongo was once an exquisite blue and green planet until a tragic accident caused a poisonous gas to be released into the atmosphere that very nearly destroyed it.

There is a person among us who knows all these things about Flash Gordon and more. So ingrained is his affection for the science fiction hero and his planet, in fact, that he has envisioned and fashioned his own Mongo in Second Life®: a glowy, art deco-ish extravaganza of a place.

It is hard to believe that we visited it just five months ago (teleport directly from here)... it is quite, quite different.



Some people are devoted learners and lucky for us, some are devoted teachers, but Lumiere Noir, creator of the Ivory Tower of Prims, happens to be both. Lumiere also has a predilection for things kitsch and camp, and he absolutely, unqualifiably delights in all things Flash Gordon, especially the 80s movie.

Combine all his passion with incandescent opalescent glow, toss in the architecture of a genie's bottle, erect a modernized Chrysler Building, recreate the sweeping stairways of a 30's movie and voila! Planet Mongo!




And it's a shopping mall! Lumiere's Planet Mongo was destined to become a retail venue for his vehicles, furniture by Red Randt (including the best bookshelves I've ever seen on the grid), and some upcoming surprises by Avi Arrow.




Larry Pixel, CEO of the New Media Consortium has this to say about Lumiere Noir: (He) represents the best of Second Life -- he communicates an excitement around the possible, is engaged in continuous exploration of it, and shares everything he learns selflessly. I wish more of the residents of Second Life understood its ethos as well as Lumiere. He is one of those rare people who make Second Life a better place simply because they are part of it.

Don't say hello

I don't respond to IMs that begin with a simple "hi" or "hello" or "good morning." Well, I do when those salutations are from the four or five people within my tightest inner circle. This doesn't mean that I don't like or don't want to hear from folks, and there are a number of people I love hearing from... but if you have been in Second Life® a while, and if you interact with a lot of people, you will have accrued a friends list that is so long that you have no idea how many people are there. All the IMs get to be too much, you know?

On the other hand, I appreciate it when people take the time to write me a nice fat IM in which they say hello and they tell me why they are contacting me, giving me all the particulars... all in that same opening IM. That's good stuff.

A notecard is even better!

Nowadays, I like it even more when people send me an email. That way, they aren't interrupting my conversations or my train of thought, but they are still giving me an opportunity to prepare a thoughtful response.

I see this as plain good manners.

If you are new to Second Life, then you probably don't understand this yet, but if you have ever been hit by ten IMs within the span of two minutes, then it is my guess that you will be able to relate to this. For me, managing how I communicate with others has become a matter of utmost importance.

I don't want to "hide" from you. I want my friends to be able to see when I am in world, but I really have gotten to the point where social chatter is not what I do. I know, I know... how antisocial of me! Why would I want a Second Life then?

Ah, that's the subject of another blogpost.

What do you think, and how do you handle this?

Elevator Angels

Alpha Auer is becoming a regular and very welcome blogger here, as she continues to explore the Garden of NPIRL Delights and relate what she sees there. Alpha's eye is an educated one. She is both a professor in graphic design and art/computer science, as well as a PhD candidate. She is also the creator of a favorite sim of mine: Syncretia.


by Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter)

Setting out to create an artwork composed almost entirely of floral patterns is a challenge: just one step too far, one petal too many, one color off-sync and you rush past terms such as "pastoral" and "romantic," and end up in that most dreaded of all artistic wastelands... the land of "cute." The word "beautiful" has also become a “no” word, as has the word "soft." True, there are a number of highly acclaimed women's gender art pieces out there that use objects associated with the feminine, such as floral patterns, fabrics and the like, in order to adopt a critical stance vis a vis gender imposed roles and society.



four Yip's installation, Elevator Angels (teleport directly from here), is remarkable in that she has not shied away from what is beautiful, soft, romantic and feminine. And furthermore she has not attached any socially critical implications to these either. They proclaim to be exactly what they are, and are proud to stand in their own right. Lush overlays of flowers encircle a wonderful tree hung with avatar photographs.



That tree immediately reminded me of a thing called the wish tree that exists in many cultures, including mine... or used to exist anyway... all replaced by Tarot parlors and Reiki outlets residing in suburban Istanbul shopping malls these days, I’m afraid. Essentially, this was a tree upon which you would hang a picture of the thing that was your heart’s desire and then it was believed that your desire would materialize.



When I spoke to four (who incidentally, is every bit as delightful as her work is) I mentioned the “wish tree” to her. Much as she liked the idea it was new to her. She told me that her tree was actually an avatar family tree: you hang your picture there to join an avatar family line. Somehow the “wish tree” and this idea of creating an avatar genealogy have ended up converging in my mind. After all, isn’t our biggest wish in Second Life just that? To become part of an avatar family?

Elevator Angels reminds me of William Morris’ investigations in textile design. His bewilderingly complex formations of flowers upon flowers also found reflection in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly those by Morris himself and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Now, it may not be terribly fashionable to say this but I am increasingly drawn to the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Pre-Raphaelites in recent years. There is something to be said about nature and beauty and I do not think that we have the nerve to say it quite in the same way that Morris and his friends said it back then. They seem to be the last ones who have pulled it off, too... that adulation of beauty, of natural form.

And now along comes Second Life®, ebullient with flowers. A very good sign this, I would say… However, sadly one is also compelled to add that all too often Second Life flowers don't manage to stay on the right side of the fence between what is “artistic” and what is “cute,” unlike four Yip’s installation which stays firmly planted on the side that William Morris seems to have also resided on: she stays there through the grace of elegance; through warm, soft, loving narrative manifest in deep, multi-faceted metaphors, and ultimately through a beauty that rests itself upon strong visual principles such as color harmonies, balance, focus, direction and motion.

Inside the mind of Crap Mariner: At the Garden

Crap Mariner cracks me up. As GoSpeed Racer said recently, "He is a true comic genius with a flare for the bizarre, the weird, and the obscure. Crap can tell a story with as little as one picture."

Crap has his own installation at the Garden of NPIRL Delights, but he has devoted more time to exploring the Garden and seeing what others had done there than anyone else I know. Here are just a few of the many, many videos that Crap has created. I suggest you pull up a chair, and take a tour through his stream for a glimpse into this man's head, and the Garden, too!

Truthseeker Young's "The Singularapture is Near"

by Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter)


I liked this tremendously the first time that I saw it and every time I revisit it seems to grow on me more, takes me further and deeper into a story and what is even more a truly remarkable ambience. I just stand there and watch and listen.



The sound effects of The Singularapture is Near are possibly amongst the subtlest and most accomplished I have yet heard in Second Life®. It is astounding how the random grinds and creaks in conjunction with natural sounds such as those of crickets, add to what to me seems to be the most powerful feature of the piece: its integration with the terrain. I would almost tend to see Truthseeker Young's " installation in the category of land(scape) art, so closely connected is the piece to the land that it has been rezzed upon.

One of the big challenges of building in Second Life is integrating what you create with the earth that it stands upon, mostly because of the absence of shadows but also because of the very structural nature of Second Life’s terrain. In fact, outside of AM Radio’s wheat field, The Far Away, I do not really recall seeing anything else out there (my own abysmal ineptitude in this regard is duly noted) that has managed to accomplish this feat quite so dramatically.



The "organic matter" that makes up the bulk of the piece has been (deliberately) constructed out of highly inorganic content, but nonetheless manages to clutch onto its little hill so fiercely that you not only hear the grinding of its roots but almost see them digging in as you stand there and watch.

And then, of course, comes the central lightning tower/tree that is connected to the peripheral husks through huge metallic worms that really seem to slither atop the virtual soil. And the husks each have their own organic/inorganic story to tell. Each one different. Nothing really moves (sure things sway, but then, so does everything else in Second Life!) but everything seems to be on the move, to be changing location and to grow in front of your very eyes. Yes, you somehow do not look at this piece - you watch it and quite carefully at that...



"The Singularapture is Near" has its own story, no doubt. But like all art that ultimately manages to draws me in, it allows me to make up my own story as well. I love it and I would recommend it to anyone who has not yet seen it or been near it to go go go before it is too late.

Teleport directly to The Singularapture is Near from here.

Geek heaven: A wiz-bang geo-coded map - and a news source, too

Corro Moseley's (aka David Burden; rez: September 11, 2004) Google Earth API has been applied in interesting ways in the past, but now he has teamed up with Ian Pahute (aka Ian Upton; rez: October 30, 2006) to create a geo-coded map within Second Life® that enables you to explore a scaled 3D version of Birmingham, UK in-world, access geo-tagged BBC and CNN World News, and more.

I recently spent an entertaining and informative half-hour in the company of Pavig Lok and LittleToe Bartlett playing with this toy, and the verdict is... this is very cool, indeed.

Teleport directly from here. The first thing you have to do is activate your media player, and all becomes apparent.


It is a news source: touch the geocoded red pins at different locations on the world map and it opens a web page to live news from CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera about that place or from that place


Walk through a flat map of Birmingham, UK


...then, walk through a 3D (Google Earth) map of Birmingham


Stand amidst several panoramic views of areas of Birmingham


The brain of this enterprise is this Map Controller: You can control Google Earth by touching the icons, command the hub cover settings and fog wall by clicking the controls, zoom in and out, reset to World View, toggle satellite and map views...

In addition, you can participate in a quiz, issue text chat commands to find cities, and even add your own geo-coded RSS feeds for map pin visualisation.

Didn't I tell you this was geeky? Cool geeky.

Kudos, Studio Wikitecture - Winner of the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Network Challenge's Founders Award

Our very own Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchard) continues to trailblaze. He and his team at Studio Wikitecture - a group he co-founded on the principles of Web 2.0-based architectural collaboration methodologies - have taken the Open Architecture Network's Founders Award for their entry and design of the Nyaya Tele-Medicine facility in Western Nepal. The goal was to design a wired medical clinic in the Himalayan foothills that will connect 250,000 people to doctors around the world via the Internet.

Why did you decide to enter this when there is no cash award?
Keystone Bouchard: Since the 'Open Architecture Network' mission is all about open sourcing architecture for humanitarian purposes, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to submit an entry for this competition, composed in the same collaborative and open-source fashion.

The bottom line: this is about connecting architecture and technology with communities in need. As Turk Pipkin points out in this video, the winners don't actually win a prize; rather, they win an opportunity to help change the world.



Here's a time lapse video of Studio Wikitecture's evolving design:



The Wiki-Tree is a version tracking system that - instead of tracking text documents in a linear history like Wikipedia - tracks versions of 3-dimensional models and saves them within a continually evolving 3-dimensional digital tree 'canopy'. Like Wikipedia, this 3D-Wiki allows a loose, self-organized group of contributors to share ideas, edit the contributions of others, and vote on which design iterations should be considered for further refinement.

What's next, Keystone?
Keystone Bouchard: Our top priority, at this point, is to build more awareness of Wikitecture's potential, recruit more 'Wikitects' and find our next project. Ideally, we would like to take on a paid project that will actually be built in Real Life, but we are open to other possibilities as well. We still have a lot to learn, but we have gathered a tremendous amount of qualified and diverse talent within the Wikitecture community from around the world, and are confident we can meet or exceed the level of service offered by a traditional architectural practice model.

We're also hoping to find some investment, financing or sponsorship to help develop the Wikitecture technology into Phase 2. We have a long list of improvements we want to make, but primarily we need to simplify the interface and improve the web-side technology.

The competition was announced at the 2007 TED Conference and launched at the 2007 World Economic Forum in Africa in June.

Gorgeous prim abuse at the FRI

A prim is a basic building block that is used to create (build) anything and everything in the virtual world of Second Life®. Prim torture (or abuse), as terrible as that may sound, is the ability to change that building block's attributes mid-stream to wield unusual shapes.

It isn't often that a venue and a temporary art show mesh together well. More often than not, something is "off," whether it's the architecture, the colors, or how the art is framed or positioned.



A happier circumstance could not be found in this regard, than the current show featuring Gore Suntzu's kinetic art at the Fashion Research Institute's (FRI) Castle Queen Pea building by Lily Lioncourt (teleport directly from here).



Like jewels encrusting themselves on the arabesque structure, they accentuate the archways and Moorish ceilings.





The pulsating qualities of Gore's "prim abuse" sculpty sculpture can be better appreciated in this video by Iridescent Coronet.



Gore's show ends June 15th.

Florence Babenco's "Twin Sisters"

Twin Sisters

Florence Babenco generally takes some 50 photographs of a subject in Second Life®, and then looks among them for those that "talk to my eyes." Photoshop is the medium where she transforms what she sees. "It is an aesthetic... original and finished work," she says.