The most complex sculpture in any world, real or virtual?

Mystery, beauty, superlatives and controversy have punctuated the short life of Black Swan, a region in Second Life® that, at its birth, was famously the stage for Starax's return to the metaverse as Light Waves after a much lamented 15 month disappearance. The discovery of Black Swan in mid-September, 2007 revealed graceful prim-light sculpty sculptures placed spectacularly along the periphery of a watery aquamarine basin, and Light Waves did it all using less than 4,000 prims.

Now, and since July 16th of this year, this inherently dramatic simulator has become the site of what must surely be the most complex sculpture in the history of virtual worlds...



I am not talking about the fact that it is airborne, or the size of it, but because Noobility is nothing short of a play that is taking place before your eyes in real-time... a 3D, immersive and silent play. It tells a powerful and highly theatrical story that transpires over the course of an hour, and then recycles again, and again, in automated fashion. The only thing that's missing is the popcorn.

I did some research to learn if any other art installation, real or virtual, had ever accomplished this, but the only thing I could come up with, that even came close (and while delightful, it is certainly not "art"), was the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland, and even that doesn't run one hour long, destroy itself completely and recreate itself anew, while its spectators are able to move around it and in it freely at any time.

We had already seen a variation of the sculpture - The Sky is Falling - also by Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), at the Garden of NPIRL Delights. 1,500 prims "in a pattern based, in part, on a process that turns up in nature a lot: 'growing' new objects around an axis at an angle of 2pi/Phi from the previous one, where Phi is the golden ratio," he explained.

Seifert, a postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer living in Austin, has been featured on these pages many times in the past with his math-inspired art - and the adulation he inspires in many of the grid's leading content creators is well deserved - but this new installation, realized together with his Real Life brother, Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) - a Brighton, UK-based prop master for film and theatre in Real Life - is way, way over the top.


Credits:
* Concept and storyline: Seifert Surface and Art Laxness
* Sculpties: Art Laxness
* Scripting: Seifert Surface
* Video: Bettina Tizzy
* Music - Awaiting the Attack: composed by David Flavin, ASCAP and Roland Rudzitis, ASCAP

The technical aspects of Noobility, as the kinetic sculpture is now known, are without precedent. To give you some idea, there are 2,552 active scripts... fewer than ten are listeners, and almost everything is collision-activated. Three sensor prims inject scripts that make the falling phantom prims drop.

I met with Seifert and Art at Noobility to learn more from the two masterminds.


A 17-sculpty-prim noob meets his creator. Art Laxness' avatar is a basic prim

What were some of the pranks you pulled when you were kids?
Art Laxness: Henry (Seifert) would never go for pranks. He's been a grown up since the age of 10. :P
Seifert Surface: We did build those tripwire traps. Well, trip string, but nobody ever went through them unaware.
Art Laxness: Elaborate Rube Goldberg things to shoot stuff at people...

How old were you at the time?
Seifert Surface: Err. 10?
Art Laxness: ... dunno first used a band saw when I was 8... liberal parents. There were bits and bobs, like that board game... ninjas! And we made that wrestling ring. And the bows and arrows? Then there was the scooter race course we built in the workshop, and the play dough head where you cheesegrated the end of my finger...
Seifert Surface: Oh, yes. :)

Where did you grow up?
Seifert Surface: Manchester, UK. We lived in a place that was half our Dad's business (workshop) and half house.
Art Laxness: His company makes strings for Renaissance instruments and repairs them, too.
Seifert Surface: Used to be lots of people around, making instruments...
Art Laxness:... and having early music jams.

How'd it happen that you decided to collaborate on Noobility?
Art Laxness: Henry happened to be (coming) 'round in Brighton. I had the making-fake-AVs idea rattling around for a while.

Did you develop the storyline first?
Seifert Surface: No, it all came together at once. I decided really very late that we were going to rerez the whole structure anew each time, and then the question of what prims it would rerez came up.
Art Laxness: Kinda how I find making art works... the making instigates the concepts and vice versa.
Seifert Surface: ... and we already had these noobs, so the concept of the noob god, Giganoob, came up naturally.


The noob, or the avatar most male users are wearing when they make their first appearance in Second Life®, has the perpetual countenance of a young and innocent simpleton. His facial features aren't fully realized and his clothing could be described as "generic basic." Interestingly, it seems that the noob avatar we all know and recognize today will soon be history. Second Life is introducing much more elaborate "starter kits"


The noobs' nincompoopish look is magnified when he is "afk," (away from keyboard), which newbies often do since they generally don't know anyone upon arrival in-world. This hilarious capture taken at a USC MacArthur Foundation event by Wellington Bahram

When did you come up with the noobs, Art?
Art Laxness: Pretty much as soon as sculpties came out... avatars were, until that point, unique. You couldn't reproduce them.

Did you hear that they've gotten rid of Ruth?
Art Laxness: Yes, we now have the cloud.

I think the guy noob looks so much better than Ruth.
Seifert Surface: We'd always wanted to go for the male avatar rather than Ruth anyway.
Art Laxness: Wonder how that would fit into our mythology ;)
Seifert Surface: He's quite a bit creepier looking.
Art Laxness: Yeah, the noob we used here was my first experience of Second Life. When I signed up, all of my informative experience was wearing that skin. I wore it around the Ivory Tower of Primitives.



Interesting way to put it.
Seifert Surface: Will has a degree in fine art. He can reel all that stuff off for hours.

Art also works with The Magicians, a metaverse development company led by Kim Anubis (aka Kimberly Rufer-Bach), and while their current project is quite Possible in Real Life (PIRL), it's a stunner.

A different way to spend a holiday... You were working off Art's router?
Seifert Surface: We decided quite a bit of what we were going to do before I was in England. Then, pretty much the whole time I was there (2 and a half weeks), we were working on it. (Worked off of ) Art's wifi. Yeah, my Mac on the kitchen table, Art's computer on the other table. Back door out onto a view of the sea.
Art Laxness: Was fairly intense. I have a lovely large kitchen here with my computer in it.
Seifert Surface: Art's latest Real Life project...
Art Laxness: I sculpt fine art and also make props for film and theatre in Real Life. (Art showed me a photograph of Cate Blanchett in the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for which he had sculpted some of her armor). (It) was a lovely project. Prop making is fun but the pay isn't great and the hours suck.

Are you unionized? I have an old school friend who is in a prop masters union here (US), and boy, do they have it locked in! The last time I looked, they only had nine members.
Art Laxness: Nope, all freelance, and there's way more people (who) want to do it than there are jobs.

While we'd been chatting, Noobility was pressing on in its automated fashion.

Uh oh, here comes NOOB GOD.
Art Laxness: Apocalypse time
Seifert Surface: Giganoob giveth and Giganoob taketh away.

I love the flexis.
Seifert Surface: Nice bit of incongruity. I might have spent the longest on that kind.
Art Laxness: I was unsure of them at first but yes, glad they're in.


Here and there, when things really get going, a flexi pyramid begins to spin on its own axis

It's a masterful touch. How many flexis are there?
Seifert Surface: The number changes. There are a couple of factors: which pyramids are special, and how many of each is determined each time it rezzes.
Art Laxness: Giganoob decides.
Seifert Surface: There are prime numbers and integers modulo those primes involved.
Lol
Seifert Surface: He does actually... there's one part which is random. Giganoob decides on a random seed for the whole pattern, which is a number between, er, 1 and 90000, I think. That one number determines the colours, the positions and numbers of special pyramids... everything. One of the tricky things is that, when you rez something, you can pass the rezzed thing a single number for initial data, so what people often do is use that number to set up a listener and then use the listener to transfer extra data, but there are 1500 pyramids (here).



... would lag us to death.
Seifert Surface: Right. It probably wouldn't be that bad, actually, but yes, it's bad form. So, the Giganoob rezzes a pyramid, and it knows which of the 1500 (prims) it is, and it knows the seed number (between 1 and 90000). From those two bits of information, it can work out everything else, and it is because it is all mathematical and procedurally generated that we can get away with that. The blue glowing things are just going out there to deliver the actual prim. When they get out there, they rez the appropriate type of pyramid.

The veins in the pyramids are new in this installation.
Seifert Surface: Art's department.
Art Laxness: Inspired by Aztec-ness and my housemate playing the WII Zelda game.
Seifert Surface: Oh man, did you know the texturing is entirely different when a prim is flexi? I had to convert Art's texture using a python script to get it to look right. You can see a tiny flicker on the texture when it comes back from flipping twice... Little bits of imperfection... le sigh.

What else about the scripts here is different from what you've seen in Second Life before?
Seifert Surface: Hmmm. There are a couple of things that are a bit different. All the vanilla pyramids (the stable ones)... none of them have any scripts in them, again, for lag purposes, and nothing has a listener in it.

Vanilla... like the one I'm flying over?
Seifert Surface: Yep, vanilla as opposed to more interesting flavours. Not a reference to the colour. Just that it doesn't try to kill you.
Art Laxness: Check the (prim) description to see what flavour each is.
Seifert Surface: In order to make the things fall, it needs a script in there, so it's all done with the use of a function called llLoadScriptPin which loads scripts into existing prims. It's not used much, although I got the idea from Jeffrey Gomez, who used a similar thing for his Primmies game.
Art Laxness: Seif assures me its all very clever.
Seifert Surface: Quite a bit of hackery to get it to work :) I guess having the rezzing be part of the artwork is kind of new in Second Life. Seeing things built by script is one of the most awesome sights in Second Life, I always think, but it's usually only the builders who see it.
Art Laxness: I get to see that aspect of Seif's stuff and (it) is as good as the final thing.
Seifert Surface: Well, you rez your thing using Cadroe Murphy's Tools. Then you've got your nice big circular platform, and you're done. Visitors later on might figure out that it had to be built by script, but they won't see it building.


Among other things, Seifert Surface created the winning logo for the Not Possible IRL group

Did you fill out that NPIRL survey on IP protection, Seifert?
Seifert Surface: Errr, I think so, but it is not something that I'm terribly concerned with. Scripts are in far less danger of getting nicked.

Unfortunately, what did get nicked was Art's prim-based noob. It was copybotted and free full-mod noobs became available - even via SL Exchange - all over the grid a few weeks ago. While Art filed a DMCA, he has not had a response from Linden Lab.

Well, I mention it because the biggest concern of the participants was the protection of their scripts, by far. Meaning... that they serve one purpose and you don't repurpose them?
Seifert Surface: Yes, and even then, I don't sell much in-world for L$. Most of my things are one-offs. Nobody is going to steal Noobility and set it up somewhere, even if they could. Well, I guess they might, but specific commissions for a client would be a little obvious.

Have you tossed any scripts into the open source bin?
Seifert Surface: I have a couple on the Wiki. There's a fractal tree generator, and another one for making arbitrary parametric surfaces from triangles.
Art Laxness: You should get the door script you made for me out there... doesn't sound like much, but if you regularly make doors, it is serious stuff.

Are you mathematically inclined, Art?
Art Laxness: I enjoy maths but not to the level Seif does. (He) is a mathematician who does art; I'm an artist who does math. I see math as more of a means to an end... which results in Seif explaining stuff to me so I get what is going on while I need to. Then I promptly forget it all.
Seifert Surface: That works :)
Art Laxness: ... and hey, if I ever need to know again, I've always got Seif right (here).

Art, what program are you using to make your sculpties?
Art Laxness: I think I used most in this project: Maya, Wings, Blender. It involved lots of trying-things-out.
Seifert Surface: ... and we used Glintercept to get models of the noobs to build the sculpties around.

But working with all this software seems so foreign to your Real Life work, and crafting with objects.
Art Laxness: Not at all. I'm into making 3D objects in every medium I can get my hands on. Any sculptor who isn't into 3D software is really limiting themselves, and as 3D printing becomes more accessible, the fields are going to merge. I mean, consider prop making in 10 years time when I could just print out Cate Blanchett's armour.


Teleport directly to Black Swan from here. To access the sim, you must pay $199L and wear the attachment you are provided with.

See also:

More on Seifert Surface:
- Summer Noob Games ;-)
- Mathematical Sunday with Seifert Surface
- It's blooming sculpties at Seifert Surface's "XYZ" sim
- Turning the page on 2007 in virtual worlds - What happened and what's next
- This just in! The future of huge prims is looking good
- Not Possible IRL field trips with Seifert Surface

More on Black Swan and Starax/Light Waves:
- Baby found at Black Swan
- For the dude who worked so hard on it in the first place
- Rezzable Productions: The slippery slope of turning art into a revenue stream
- It's easy. No, it's magical.
- Light Waves' 'Night Dreaming' statue comes alive

New sculpture at Black Swan packs a wallop - You aren't going to want to miss this one

There is something new and so important at Rezzable Productions' Black Swan sim that most everyone in Second Life® will want to see it, and yes, I am aware that Rezzable is charging a $199L admission fee. All the same, I suspect that you will forget your objections and pony up.

The last time Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman ) and his younger brother Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) collaborated together on a project in Second Life, they created an animated series of bots that spell out YMCA with their "arms." That was back in November, 2005.

Seifert - an Austin-based postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer - just got back from Brighton, UK where he was visiting his brother Art, a fine art sculptor and prop designer for theatre and film. Together, they collaborated to create a kinetic, story telling sculpture in Second Life that cycles every hour. I'll get back to you with more on the technical aspects of this sculpture soon, but for now, here is a taste.



Credits:
* Concept and storyline: Seifert Surface and Art Laxness
* Sculpties: Art Laxness
* Scripting: Seifert Surface
* Video: Bettina Tizzy
* Music - Awaiting the Attack: composed by David Flavin, ASCAP and Roland Rudzitis, ASCAP

Teleport directly to Black Swan from here.

Baby found at Black Swan

Rezzable Productions' RightasRain Rimbaud (aka Jon Himoff) sent me an offline that read, "I got a big surprise to show you... you gonna flip really..." Who could resist such an invite? I logged in.

His teleport took me to Black Swan (teleport directly from here), the mysterious and fantastical sim created by Light Waves when he made his re-entry into Second Life® after an even more mysterious and much morned absence. Black Swan has been the center of considerable controversy recently, since Rezzable added an entry area and began charging $199L for admission.



Intriguingly, the creator of this baby is not Light Waves, but Unreal McCoy (rez: 4/29/2004). "Who is this artist?" I asked RAR, as he is affectionately called. There was a long pause before I got an answer. "The artist prefers that the focus be on the art." Oh, I do so love a mystery!

RAR mentioned that the sculpture is on sale and for the special price of $5,000L today. Tomorrow that will go up.

Light Waves' statue at the Garden

June 27 Update: Seems polysilox Apogee had also discovered Light Waves' sculpture, way back on May 17th! polysilox had been photo blogging and was checking for the names of content creators for attribution when she made the discovery.

Every time I think about Light Waves, I find myself grinning. There is something about his personality that simply inhibits any other reaction. Beyond the fact that he is the creator of many, many of the creations we most admire in Second Life®, including his groundbreaking (sometimes literally!) sculptures...


This photo of Starax statues taken by Amalthea Blanc

...and the magical wand - and everything it rezzes - back in the days when he was known as Starax...




These photos by Wellington Bahram

...to the lovable Greenies at Greenies Home Rezzable when he emerged as a new avatar by the name of Light Waves...


This photo, "Bella meets the Greenies," by Bella March

...and his elegant and mysterious Black Swan sim today...



Beyond all these staggering accomplishments, it turns out that Light Waves is quite a likable dude. Yes, I don't think I'd known him but a couple of minutes before I'd called him a curmudgeon, but he always cracks me up and always keeps things in perspective. What I'm trying - badly - to say here is that, despite the fact that he is quite possibly the most revered artist and scripter on the grid, Light Waves is a grounded, earthy kind of guy. Some might (do!) call him crusty :P

Anyways... a few days before the Garden of NPIRL Delights opened to the public, I IM'ed Light Waves asking if he'd like to make us a little something for it. The next day, you can imagine the extreme rush of pleasure and excitement I felt when there was an inventory offering from him waiting for me called simply "Something for the Garden."

Did I have to go to a sandbox just in case it was very large, I wondered? I couldn't wait. I rushed to my inventory and rezzed it - quite breathlessly - to the ground... and waited what seemed like an infinite number of seconds for it to rez... Later, Light Waves told me he had wondered if I was going to laugh or cry when I saw it, LOL.




I guess I did a little of both... the crying and laughing, I mean. I know that Light Waves is very busy these days, so I was astonished to receive anything at all. But this little naughty gnome! Taking a tinkle on our Garden, no less! Harrumph!

Fact is, I'd give my right arm to be able to make anything as well done as this just once... and to think that he made this simply as a joke. What a talent!

My brewing mind quickly came up with a plan: I'd extend the joke to everyone who visited the Garden. Knowing that I'd be taking a break from Second Life for several weeks, I shared the news of the gnome with the very talented Nectere Niven and entrusted her with it, asking that she move it around, if necessary, to keep people looking for the famous "Light Waves" sculpture. She did better than that. She rezzed it in plain view and even created a little park-like setting around him.



Later, I added a few of artoo Magneto's surreal 3D trees...



... and there he sat, for the duration of the Garden. The only person I know who found him was Selavy Oh.

Hehe... and so it goes.

It's easy. No, it's magical. No, it's easy and magical - Plus, a Black Swan writing contest

When I was five years old, my dear and wondrous grandmother - who undoubtedly would have had an even worse case of NPIRL-itis than I do - took me to a "thousand and one nights" themed restaurant for dinner. We were greeted at the door by a sheik... the tallest man I have ever seen... and led to our table through a candlelit path by a veiled and supernatural beauty.

Later, to celebrate that I had eaten all the lamb on my plate, that same belly dancer branded the evening's experiences on my mind for all eternity when she ripped a gold coin off her belt... and gave it me!

For years, I begged to be taken back, and my grandmother's answer was always the same: "It will never be that perfect again, so why upset the memory of it?"

The restaurant was in a strip mall, the sheik was surely a local high school basket ball player, and the belly dancer, well, she was just sweet. That coin? I still have it today... the gold paint worn off by me and the five-year-old fingers of my envious friends who were sometimes allowed to hold it.

Years later and just one week ago, I visited the Black Swan sim to see the "Night Dreaming" stone girl for the first time. No one had told me what to expect. "Okay...sculpties," I thought, and touched her to learn more, thinking I'd soon be teleporting off. Suddenly she was transformed into a living, glowing nymph, and I was that five year old all over again, shivering and thrilling all by my lonesome.


These photos by ColeMarie Soleil

Her creator, Light Waves, assured me today that there was no magic to it at all. "The effect is very simple," he said and proceeded to explain the process in his gentle and breezy manner, in terms that even I - a half-baked script-hacking dilettante - could understand.

Well, I don't care if it was simple or complicated. Easy or hard, the effect was sorcery, in my opinion. It transported me to my magical place and I'm not coming down.

The point is - and no, I don't own stock in Linden Lab - Second Life is the most affordable and complete tool I know of to commit hardcore creativity. Every single one of us - whether we are paying members or not - has tools at our disposal to enchant, mesmerize, and even disturb our fellow residents through the use of a simple script or a texture overlay or... but we just have to ssstretch our imaginations... which is the most powerful exercise of all.

Which brings me back to the Black Swan sim. Everything about it is mysterious and unexplained... so the online speculative fiction and dark fantasy zine, The Future Fire, has invited Second Life residents to participate in a creative writing competition that must have a discernible link to the artwork at Black Swan. Go there (teleport directly), flex those brain muscles, and you might become the author of the best entry. The winner of the first prize will receive (USD) $500, and be published in The Future Fire as well as in Second Life by Black Swan, but hurry... the deadline is December 10, 2007.

As for me... I am still buoyant, and I'm headed back to visit the stone girl. Unlike strip malls in the eyes of a five year old, her magic still holds up, and is locked inside me forevermore.

Light Waves' 'Night Dreaming' statue comes alive

Nectere Niven IMed me tonight to say that there was a new statue at the Black Swan sim. Yes, the one that was once known as Hallucinogen Rezzable, and before that, the Error sim.

Once again, Light Waves has broken new ground.



Read no further. Just go there (teleport directly) as soon as you can. She is on the far end of the sim, on tiptoes... with eyes closed... alone on a rock, her shawl billowing in the wind behind her. Observe her, and then touch her...



Many thanks to that lovely and cherubic faerie ColeMarie Soleil - a magical member of the NPIRL Flickr group - for allowing me to post her photographs here. Her faerie-dusted pics often express what I cannot find the words to say.

Body of a Woman
by Pablo Neruda, 1924

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look yourself like a world in your attitude of surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depths of the earth.



I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me
and the night enveloped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged to you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling.



But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Ah those goblets of the chest! Ah those eyes of absence!
Ah the roses of the pubis! Ah your voice slow and sad!



Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my unbounded desire, my uncertain road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst follows,
and tiredness follows, and the infinite ache.

From Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair