NPIRL fashion sometimes obeys the laws of geometry and thrift

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

While both the Spring and Summer catwalks for 2009 featured fashion with a geometric - even architectural – construction, Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) kicked that up a notch under her label Alpha Tribe. What’s more, whether she is aware of it or not, she’s in tune with the global economic mood. During the great Depression, a popular maxim was "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without:" To create her latest outfit, Deagu, Alpha Auer recycled a poster she had designed for an invitational exhibition at the Daegu Culture and Arts Center in Daegu, Korea in 2006.

On her blog Strange Pixels, Grady Echegaray seemed to be invoking the Gods when she composed her post about Daegu: "I can feel them. They are coming again. Sweeping in over the shoulder of Orion."


Daegu, as modded, modeled and photographed by Grady Echegaray


The Deagu headdress, as modded, modeled and photographed by Grady Echegaray

To obtain your own Daegu outfit teleport directly from here.

Anatomia - Alpha Auer's 3D anatomical drawings of a different sort

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

For – like forever – when I thought of the human body, it was always in the context of Gray’s Anatomy, the classic textbook developed by British anatomist and illustrator Henry Gray, or Leonardo’s studies of the human skeleton. The yucky factor was zero and none of it, from my POV, was related to me or my body. Like a flood taking place in some remote village in China, it was something that was happening somewhere else.




This photo of the Anatomia installation by Alpha Auer

Now Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter), my co-blogger here and creator of the ground-breaking Syncretia sim in Second Life® (see here and here and here), and also Body Parts, has come up with another way to look at our bodies. In essence, she’s turned us inside out and fanned out our musculature and appendages in a way that barely resembles the real human bodies that are on display in the world-touring exhibit Bodies, inviting many new questions about our self-schema.





Teleport to Anatomia from here and "buy" the outfit that is offered there. Put it on and become a part of the installation. Then you might understand that Alpha doesn't want the visitor to "have illusions of grandeur regarding her elevated status as a human, or indeed even an animal or mammal. I want her to be vulnerable, perishable, impure. I want her to gaze upon something other than her - in its cleanliness, its shiny surfaces, its clean bright lines, its mechanical perfection." In fact, Alpha has added the horns of a demon, as well as botanical growths.



On her blog, Alpha explains,"I have tried to deliberately make the dweller of the exhibit un-clean… Not the pristine, sharp black and white image assembly, with the odd spot of clean bright color here and there, but something mussed up with organic textures, layered and superimposed with elements that seem confusing and out of sync. The avatar of Anatomia is quite fragile: This is not a perfect, unbreakable machine, a thing rendered to help us gain insight into the workings of a superlative system. But rather a black and yellow mass - the colors of when things go bad in our bodies. Not the red of living blood but the low saturation of decay."

"body parts" : Virtual lovers are star-crossed islands

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

“body parts,” Alpha Auer’s fittingly poetic contribution to the new Poetik sim, is an installation that consists of several monochromatic and nude human bodies heaped upon each other, and an offering of unusual skin outfits (both male and female) to be worn by its visitors. Poseballs scattered around the bodies invite visitors to become a part of the sculpture. In the accompanying notecard and on her blog, Alpha bemoans the lack of corporal love in our virtual environment and asserts that avatars are ultimately alone.

While Alpha’s work in Second Life® is often playful, this is no puff piece, and it opens up the conversation about the compromises virtual world residents make when we dedicate so much of our time tethered to our computers, manipulating our human simulations, but never actually making contact.



Virtual lovers are star-crossed islands but… are we not beautiful to look at? Like hothouse petals, translucent “body parts” emanate from the wearer, pining for, reaching out for, but never touching. Romantic? Yes... but also quite sad.

One might argue that physicality is not essential to love or to friendship, and most assuredly, it is not. But it is the deepening of that exchange between two people that gets hobbled and can go no further in pixilated form, no matter how ardent or tender the feelings. Intimacy is the casualty, and any participant in “body parts” is sure to face his or her demons.





Alpha was intentional in creating a colorless piece, but “body parts” plays well with Windlight. The installation can also be found on her own gorgeous sim, Syncretia, where it resides behind a cinematic wall of creamy nudity.



In addition to creating art of staggering beauty (or hilarity), Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) also blogs here on Not Possible IRL.

You can visit "body parts" at Poetik by teleporting directly from here, or at Syncretia, by teleporting directly from here and looking for a creamy globe some meters above ground. While the lighting at Syncretia is set to "sunset," Alpha has also created a Windlight preset for "body parts," which is available here.

Many thanks to Naxos Loon for posing for these photographs. Because Alpha is a mix-master when it comes to avatars and clothing, I knew she wouldn’t mind if I adorned my avatar’s body with Hern Worsley’s hair.

Hard to believe but... I seem to have made it into the Hall of Fame of Data Visualization!

Posted by Alpha Auer

Blowing one's own horn is really not such a terribly cool thing to do but this occasion does seem to justify the act:

I wear many different hats, which sometimes converge and at other times do not. While, here in Second Life® I am incorrigible Alpha, heavily into tails, ears and all manner of nonsensical playful activity, in a parallel universe I am actually a design researcher in the field of data visualization; collaborating with a computer scientist and an architect in work that has even brought us an IBM award last year; not to mention that I also supervise some long suffering PhD students who exert good brain power on little conundrums such as how best to visualize heterogeneous data sets of one million plus nodes. (One of the cute little critters even had the audacity to leave a comment at the very location of my current glory, totally taking the piss... grrrr ;-)

So, how do the hats converge? Well, if there were such a thing as paw boots in Real Life, I would most definitely be the first in line to get a pair, and moreover I have been known to trample on many a tender academic toe with my lovely Doc Maartens during somber occasions such as faculty board meetings and the like (alas)...

The web portal Visual Complexity is the one indisputable Mecca of data visualization, the place where everyone connected to the data visualization field dreams of having their output posted at. And mine seems to have gotten in! I did not apply, they must have found me, which makes the whole thing even better!







The Bridge Project is not part of my collaborative research in data vis but a solo venture, undertaken as part of PhD work at the Planetary Collegium (as I said, I like to wear many hats ;-). Indeed, I am not really sure that the Bridge Project can even be termed as proper data visualization since it only contains some hundred nodes, which is a laughably small number in terms of a data vis study worth its salt. Instead the Bridge is a free fall artistic project which I created with VRML. I presented it both as creative work and as a theoretical study at numerous conferences, including the Siggraph Sketches Program in 2005 and the EuroGraphics Computational Aesthetics Conference of the same year. Both very nice, both very prestigious - but this Visual Complexity add-in is most certainly the cherry on the icing and I want to share with all the world.

You can download and view the project from here. Oh and, it is absolutely NPIRL of course: You have to fly in VRML to be able to look at it... ;-).

Not Possible IRL unveils new structure and leadership

In fifteen months, the Not Possible IRL group has expanded from a good idea to a working group, then a blog that reflects our best findings and analysis, then an in-world news source via the Impossible IRL group (now one year old and 1,000 members, many of them leading artists, builders and scripters), as well as many Flickr groups featuring the best photographers in virtual worlds, a Youtube group, and a following on Koinup.

Since those early days to now, the grid has grown and the sheer volume of things to review and share has more than quadrupled.

New NPIRL structure and leadership

My role, moving foward
NPIRL/ImpIRL has become far too large a task for one person, and the windows for intelligent growth should not be missed. I need breathing room so that I can focus on deeper strategic work for our groups and some of my own, personal goals. I also don't want to lose the excitement and wonder I feel when I see the incredible work you are all doing.

I will continue to manage the ship, serving the groups as the primary catalyst for working issues and opportunities. I will also blog.

It gives me much pleasure to share with you that NPIRL is reorganizing to meet our expanded needs. Effective today, Monday, October 13, two women I very much admire are joining me at the helm of Not Possible IRL/Impossible IRL:


In-world notices to be issued by Miki Gymnast



Last spring and for one month, Miki Gymnast was responsible for in-world notices and she did a fantastic job in her own singular style. Miki knows quality when she sees it. She is perceptive, knowledgeable and has a discerning eye. She is also extremely organized, diplomatic, fair-minded and has the ability to say "no," all essential qualities for the task she is taking on. Beginning today, selections for, and the issuance of all in-world notices to both groups concerning builds, events, and tools will be her responsibility.

Miki's in-world creations are usually generated via intricate scripting work and inspired by mathematics, featuring mostly colorful panes of glass in complex, undulating and soaring structures, including the recent Klein bottle.


Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) to join the masthead on this blog



A Turkish artist and designer and creator of the sumptuous and singular Syncretia, Alpha Auer is already a blogger in her own right, and has written several imaginative and fascinating reviews for the NPIRL blog. In Real Life, Alpha teaches design and design history, and also conducts research specializing in the development and implementation of hybrid educational methodologies between art & design and computer science. She has presented creative as well as research output at conferences including Siggraph, Consciousness Reframed, Creativity and Cognition, ICALT and Computational Aesthetics (Eurographics) . She is currently studying for a doctoral degree at the Planetary Collegium, CAiiA hub, at the University of Plymouth with Roy Ascott and describes herself as "a totally irreverent, mischievous, politically incorrect, frivolous, fashion victim avatar in Second Life®."

How to communicate with NPIRL for in-world notices and blogging

* All in-world tips, leads, landmarks, notes and objects should be dropped off at the NPIRL mailbox: teleport directly from here.
* All emails - unless responding directly to Bettina Tizzy, Alpha Auer and Miki Gymnast - should be sent to sendtonpirl@gmail.com
* Previews should be arranged via notecard or email.
* Please PLEASE refrain from IMing the team directly regarding builds.

Many thanks to all of you, and very special thanks to Alpha and Miki,
Bettina

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.

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.

The Garden

UPDATE (June 24, 2008) - After a spectacular two month run, the Garden of NPIRL Delights - produced by Not Possible in Real Life and sponsored by Rezzable Productions - has ended. Thank you to everyone who made it possible and to all who enjoyed it.


by Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter)

I have been taking walks around the four sims that constitute the Garden of NPIRL Delights, and as I have been looking at the displayed art work it has begun to dawn upon me that Garden itself is the really important thing that is going on here. It transcends its content.



What hits you the moment you land inside is the spontaneity, the gaiety, the total "joie de vivre," of the work that stands here. And the companionship: Newbie builder stands here shoulder to shoulder with seasoned veteran - no competitions, no awards. All equals in one huge playground. With a total freedom that even includes terraforming privileges! In effect, quite different from what would have been par for the course under Real Life conditions.

True, there is a theme: The Bosch triptych. One that certainly gives you plenty of rope to hang yourself with if you choose to do so. And admittedly, some of us have in fact done exactly that: I would be lying if I said that I am perfectly OK with everything that is on display in there. But conversely (and much more importantly) there are pieces in there that had me quite breathless with their energy, their imagination, their narrative ability - and above all else... their individuality. And if that utter freedom of expression had not been fostered in the first place, these art works would simply not have materialized.



And here is the divine irony (and I love it!): The Garden has achieved cohesiveness, has managed to become bigger than the sum total of its content. This is, of course, precisely the sort of thing that any curator worth his or her salt shoots for - to achieve this kind of Gestalt. Now, I do have this rather wicked theory that in quite a few curated exhibitions in Real Life, certain kinds of artistic output tend to get turned down simply because they go off too much on their own; they are too difficult to categorize and to fit within a mainframe. So, you may end up with this dreary monotony of unindividuated output in rank and file. But hey!!! Who cares? It's a strong theme, forget the individual art work please!



Bettina Tizzy has not forgotten about the individual art work. She has put the individual first, to the point where not everything on display in the Garden passes full muster when viewed with a gimlet eye. That is the chance that you take when you allow full freedom, do not set up tight boundaries, do not shoot for a particular "look" or a "concept." And, am I glad that she did take this chance... What is exquisite more than makes up for what isn't fully up to scratch. But exquisite or not - all is individuated to a truly remarkable degree: Gutsy in its individuality is the phrase that I think that I am looking for.



I think the way that the Garden pulls its manifold content together is by virtue of its landscape. I have to say that I find this landscape and the way it has been conceived of and implemented by Littletoe Bartlett nothing less than inspired. The hills are there for a good practical reason: They function very much as separators between art installations, much as walls in a Real Life gallery space would do. But there is much more going on here, in that the entire landscape transports me directly into one of my favorite worlds, the world of the late Gothic illuminated manuscript.

This is very similar to the detailed, ornate, velvety and yet touchingly naive backdrops of those medieval scenes, that can be glimpsed through narrow windows in front of which wimpled ladies exchange devotional books with chivalrous gentlemen. Didn't the Limbourg brothers paint this very landscape into all of those Books of Hours that they designed for their patron, the Duc de Berry?


The Apostles going forth to preach from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry

Of course, I have no idea that this was, in fact, the effect that the landscapers of the Garden were after but this is definitely the feeling that the rich, soft ground textures (again by LittleToe Bartlett and Pavig Lok) and the hills and hillocks, all rolling into a gentle sea give me. And then comes the foliage, the trees of artoo Magneto that share the space with those of soror Nishi. The delicate touches of Ravenelle Zugzwang and Bettina herself.

All told, I am very glad to have been part of this show... to have been able to wander inside the Garden of NPIRL Delights as one of its content creators.

Syncretia revisited - Exhuberant elegance

Is it possible to get to know a person only via email and the rare IMs and even rarer conversations? Historically, people who were geographically distanced from each other only had letters to go by and none of the social cues communicated through voice, facial expressions and body language. Somehow they muddled through, many of them admirably, as can be appreciated by reading old corresondence between the likes of Virginia Woolf, Rainer Maria Rilke and Jorge Luis Borjes.

Today, and even though I live 6,861 miles or 11,042 kilometers or a non-stop 14 hour flight away from Istanbul-based artist and designer and educator Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) - and thanks to virtual worlds - I can "inhabit" her space - Syncretia - and watch it progress in a very direct and personal way, almost as if I had an extra key to her Real Life studio, but was only allowed in when she was not there.

Syncretia continues to evolve and grow richer with each passing week. It is certainly quite different since I blogged about it three months ago. In the five months that I have known her - ever so virtually - I have rarely communicated with Alpha about Syncretia, but she knows I watch over it. Instead, we talk about everything else! Just this week she was a guest blogger here, reviewing the three new Konica Minolta sims.



I mostly learn what Alpha has on her mind via her Flickr journal, where she has written: "Please note that the north shore of Syncretia is subject to highly inclement weather conditions, due to the personal proclivities of Alpha Auer, who has a marked preference for rain, storm and snow over sunlight."





Syncretia is an intensely elegant manifestation of Alpha's investigations in the new media wedding of the year, where her research in virtual worlds is coupled with art and design. Importantly, Second Life® is central to Alpha's PhD coursework.


"Above water, suspended in the air are three huge spheres which are home to an endless army of lizards and other strange and inexplicable creatures"


"The basin has also been the scene to a plane crash, the debris of which can still be seen and heard clearly throughout the southern shore"




While it is one of the handsomest islands on the grid, like everything that Alpha does, Syncretia is playful. Trees and bushes are gently swaddled in ghostly wrappings. In the botanical garden, plants are suspended upside-down and sideways. Here and there, surprises: a stingray encircles a conference table in the company of a small school of tropical fish; a nuclear bomb to reminds us that everything can disappear at any moment... No music is streamed at Syncretia. Rather, a piano offers the Goldberg Variations (Johann Sebastian Bach), Mozart's Sonata in C Major, and Debussy's Clair de Lune.


"The Angry Monkey Tent, Alpha’s island retreat, (is) a tribute to her own nomadic heritage as a Turk. However, interspersed with the nomadic element are also Hobo and Steampunk interests, such as a tripod camera, a cast iron stove for those chilly island nights, a copper samovar, a Hobo bicycle and backpack. The tent further houses a big field of steaming snake plants as well as a tiny sculpty rabbit"



Is this the future of virtual meeting rooms? Where conference tables, fish, bathtubs and crashed planes share a space underwater? Bathtubs under water?! Yes, Alpha believes that "cleanliness is next to godliness" and clarifies that "the fact that they are already underwater should please, not deter avatars from taking advantage of the considerable power of the additional cleansing properties."

The ecosystem at Syncretia is oddly logical. Here, no organism or thing is an autonomous entity isolated from its surroundings.



In a notecard offered there, Alpha explains: "Citrinitas, or sometimes referred to as xanthosis is a term given by 15th and 16th century alchemists to "yellowness." It was one of the four major stages of the alchemical opus, and literally referred to "transmutation of silver into gold" or "yellowing of the lunar conscientiousness." In alchemical philosophy, citrinitas stood for the dawning of the "solar light" inherent in one's being, and that the reflective "lunar or soul light" was no longer necessary. The other three alchemical stages were nigredo (blackness), albedo (whiteness), and rubedo (redness)."





"Syncretia/Citrinitas is an alchemical power plant which utilizes the water pumped from the Black Mountain for alchemical purposes. This water is cycled through the fairy chimneys at Syncretia/Cappadocia, after which it begins its long journey across the plains of the northern shore. The acquisition of alchemical properties is initiated during this phase: As it progresses the water gains in density. In the plant proper the water is further treated to the point where it can actually turn dross to gold! The two Hobo trucks inside the huge containers are currently undergoing treatment. One unexpected byproduct is a rejuvenating elixir! Sitting inside the two spheres below the purification tanks can create wonders, not only in terms of appearance but also of state of mind!"




She goes on to explain: "Psychologist Carl Jung is credited with interpreting the pseudo-scientific alchemical process as analogous to modern-day psychoanalysis. In the Jungian archetypal schema the nigredo is the Shadow; albedo refers to the anima/animus (contrasexual soul images); citrinitas is the Wise old man (or woman) archetype; and rubedo is the Self archetype, which has achieved wholeness.


Here, Light Waves' ghostly horse and lion munch placidly on giant grape leaves

While there are seemingly unlimited new places to acquaint oneself with on the grid, and never enough time, I intend to keep using that spare key I have to visit Syncretia for as long as it is there.

Teleport to Syncretia directly from here.

All photographs taken in Blue Midday Windlight settings. No Photoshop.

Syncretia - A fictional world in subtle hues that throbs with the narrative

I am tired of constraints imposed by time zones. I crave hours with the creator of a microcosm that exists only in Second Life.

Alpha Auer's (aka Elif Ayiter) stand-out world at Syncretia (teleport directly from here) is ghostly and architectural. Seeping through its monochromatic palette are moments of tension or humor or serenity, but the predominant take-away is that this is a place where many layers of civilization co-exist, making room for or overlapping each other in an orderly way, until (sh*t)/Life happens... disrupting the harmony... and all those carefully laid-out designs and plans are faced with discordant elements. Nothing is as it would be in Real Life, but this space and its existence feel tangible.





Alpha's range of colors is purposefully narrow, but not bleak. It is a temptation in Windlight, which I succumbed to.





Alpha's human, Elif Ayiter, is a Turkish artist, designer and educator specialising in the development of hybrid educational methodologies between art & design and computer science. Her Flickr stream further explains the evolution of this quiet masterpiece.