What *has* Nomasha Syaka been up to?

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

When it comes to virtual creations, I'm a snoopy gumshoe. I want to know what everyone's making, and especially a handful of people I keep track of at all times. For the past year I've been pinging "Anything new, Nom?" now and then, and not getting a straight answer. Just invoking the guy's name here with some news makes me happy, for Nomasha Syaka (rez: 9/13/2006) is the British creator of the poetic sculpted Icarus that I often rez at my own Chakryn, as well as the wacky blender where I take folks when we're up for a giggle. His in-world group I use my nose to type is worth joining for the name alone. He is also renown for his electric guitars, sculpted tigers and wolves, among other animals, but he has been suspiciously quiet for a long, long time.

So an IM from the owner of Blackwater Gallery Jurin Juran to say that she was dancing, and why, had the effect of a bottle of vintage champagne. It turns out that he has been making motion capture animations. Like a hundred of them! Fluid, fun, funny and lots of the oolala variety.

The first and most vital necessity was to dance... and obviously to speak with Nomasha.


Nomasha's sim, re-purposed and lovely

So... what have you been up to for the past year?

Nomasha Syaka: Getting these animations ready – they are very difficult to make and process. I made it my mission to produce better animations and I think for the greater part, I have. Most of the feedback I have received so far suggests this and I have been as obsessive about it as I was about making art objects in SL.

Did you have experience with mocap before?

Nomasha Syaka: None at all, nor with animation generally. Self taught. Though I use someone to process the data once it is recorded and he is a real expert.

How did you recruit your dancers? Did you dance, too?

Nomasha Syaka: Lol, my dancing would qualify for NPIRL. No, I use professional dancers always, recruited from London dance agencies.


Fruits and noobs and bears and all sorts of things zoom by and over the animation stands

How do you make mocap animations?

Nomasha Syaka: The dancer wears a special suit and multiple cameras record the dancer’s movement. These calculations are then transferred onto a computer character and a lot of processing has to be done by hand to ‘clean’ the information and make them suitable for Second Life®. The SL avatar skeleton is a freak, so you have to make a lot of adjustments for it.

You were among the first creators to provide Second Life's musicians with beautifully crafted guitars. Do you have music in your background? (There are over a dozen fabulous animations for guitar players, by the way). Why guitars?

Nomasha Syaka: No music background, at all. I learned the violin as a child for a couple of weeks, and then the teacher disappeared and was never seen again by anyone. Later on I learned the flute, but then the school's music building caught fire and burnt to the ground. Not a good history with music. I made the first guitar because I knew it would be difficult, as no one had made any decent ones at all.

I was relieved to discover that you've rezzed the Blender on the revamped sim. I would have been miserable if it had vanished.

Nomasha Syaka: My favorite build... never been sold.


Nomasha makes it possible for you to dance moving over and around a white tiger, via four different animations

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Are all your interests coming together with this new venture? Music, tigers, art, and now...

Nomasha Syaka: Time for some more sculptures, I hope!

Will there be a NPIRL category of dances?

Nomasha Syaka: When I record myself dancing – for sure.


You can teleport to Nomasha's Ministry of Motion from here.

Don't let your virtual creations die with you - Will your Work Day

December 29, 2009 Update:

I've decided to expand this concept to ALL digital creations. I'm going to need your help to get the word out. Bloggers, website creators, media, tech geeks and geekas... Will you help me? Please contact me at bettinatizzy (at) gmail dot com and we'll mobilize together!

~*~

German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian translations of this information are available here


Dear fellow Residents of Second Life®:

About three weeks ago, virtual artist Vanfarel Kupfer died. Had he not left copies of most of his work (no trans, no mod) with his virtual girl friend, Native Aeon, his only legacy would be what is currently rezzed today.

Avatars in Second Life devote thousands of hours to creating content, and all that work is LOST when they die. Yes, even if they backed up that work by giving it to an alt. Even if they gave their account password to someone. When you die and unless you have taken appropriate measures, no one, not even Linden Lab, can legally access your work. It is simply lost forever.

According to Linden Lab, the correct and only procedure for "willing" one's creations - or for that matter, any Second Life assets - is indicated here.

I propose that we mark this day, May 18th, as Will your Work Day, to encourage content creators to consider their situation and act on it annually.



The goal would be to celebrate Van's art and remind people to either give copies of their work to one or more avatars (not their alts) whom they trust, or add them to their Real Life will.

Also beginning today and for one week - and working with his beloved Native Aeon - Vanfarel Kupfer's work will be exhibited at four locations: his former home sim, EnLuminaria, the Crescent Moon Museum, the Blackwater Gallery, and Chakryn Forest. Understandably, Native is still very much in mourning over her loss, and when I asked her how I could help, she stated that her greatest wish is that Vanfarel's work become known throughout the grid. So be it. Native: Sachez que nous sommes de tout coeur à vos côtés.

Please share this message with your fellow residents and help to get the word out. You will find numerous translations of this letter here, prepared by the following individuals who generously volunteered their time: Lano Ling, Osiris LeShelle, elros Tuominen, Tonjampae Amat and Gore Suntzu. Tell your community in your own way, in your own words.

I leave you with the colorful, dreamy work of Vanfarel Kupfer in a video by Jurin Juran. May he rest in peace.

Here's to enduring great virtual content!
Bettina


The art of Vanfarel Kupfer, as part of Will your Work Day
Machinima by Jurin Juran

The Archipelago of Konica Minolta

I admit it. I am sometimes too easily dazzled by new tricks, and the new Konica sims - discovered by Blackwater Gallery owner Jurin Juran - boast a few fun ground shakers. Given the scope and the nature of this enterprise, it seemed especially important for another builder to review them, so I was pleased when Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter), creator of the deservedly acclaimed Second Life® island Syncretia (teleport directly from here), agreed to critique them for this blog. Alpha is an artist, designer, educator and virtual worlds investigator who has wedded her areas of expertise to explore hybrid art forms to much success, and Second Life is part and parcel of her PhD coursework. In other words, she really knows what she is talking about. That said, I want to go on record and say that I am anxious for corporations to succeed in Second Life. - Bettina Tizzy


by Alpha Auer

Building in a three dimensional environment devoid of two of the most essential elements of volumetrics - i.e., shadows and reflectivity - can be a tough proposition. Current global bandwidth conditions as well as the hardware configurations of most of the users, not to mention discrepancies in viewing conditions between platforms would make ray tracing almost impossible to implement at this stage of technology.

Future generations of Second Life will doubtless see the incorporation of spectacular three dimensionality, but as far as current building conditions are concerned, the situation is far from perfect. Indeed, some of the builders of mettle within Second Life have been challenged with these environmental conditions to the point where they have been prompted to develop solutions and techniques to either circumvent or incorporate these conditions into their creative output. In some cases these propositions have already gone as far as engendering the first tentative steps towards the development of a three dimensional, virtual, visual language unique to the metaverse.

One of the most effective approaches is to make a virtue out of necessity and to incorporate these shortcomings into the visual language itself. Two approaches that come to mind are monochromatic structures, in which the juxtaposition of surfaces becomes sufficiently interesting in itself, thus eliminating the need for shadows...


Whitenoise Church on the island of Die Angewandte (teleport directly from here) by MosMax Hax is monochromatic

...or the usage of structures assembled out of components with high levels of transparency, wherein the construct becomes a conglomerate of layers.


Elros Tuominen creates interesting content through the use of visual layers

A second approach in circumventing the problems surrounding the absence of ray tracing, and one that is employed by the bulk of the builders of Second Life, is to incorporate heightened levels of detail, especially (but not only) where textures are concerned. In its default state, a Second Life island presents us with an almost cartoonish appearance but there are countless islands in which texturing and detail work have been implemented to achieve stunning effects. Many of the cyber punk sims would constitute good examples, however the ones that I think of foremost are Saeya Nyanda's island "Silent” and Abramelin Wolfe's "Devil's Moon."


Silent by Saeya Nyanda


At Devil's Moon by Abramelin Wolfe, effective faux reflectivity is achieved through the intelligent usage of textures alone

What these examples and many others like them show us, however, is that good building in Second Life cannot be achieved on small scale economy: Not only will you need to spend vast amounts of time and energy in the development of an effective island sim, but you will also need to devote considerable financial resources by bringing in textures, weather systems, and scripts, and by deploying huge quantities of prims in the creation of content that has the necessary "depth" for the sustenance of a credible visual language.

The Konica Minolta archipelago (teleport directly from here) is comprised of three linked-up islands and from the onset I have to voice my disappointment that a huge corporation, with all kinds of resources at its disposal, seems to have done so little towards the building of effective island sims. It would, in fact, appear to me that many private owners spend more on the propagation of islands maintained entirely out of their personal income.

True... there are a couple of scripted wonders at Konica Minolta, one being a rising pyramid and another is a water tunnel, but the wow effect is eliminated most thoroughly through the usage of very cheesy textures compounded by the absence of any detailed prim work whatsoever. Thus, the rising pyramid turns out to be nothing but a series of mottled brown surfaces, albeit rising with slow majesty out of a ground that has been simply left to its own, sad, "SL default grass texture" fate.


The parting waters of the water tunnel: Clumsy texturing wrapped around a mega prim diminishes the effect. The glowing directional arrow pad, dead center in front of it, doesn't exactly help matters either

The inside of the pyramid can be accessed through a particle door. (And again, I have seen some beautiful, graceful particle effects in Second Life - this is definitely not one of them!). Once inside, the "dramatic" Meso American exterior of the pyramid reveals itself to be nothing more than a shopping mall (with no merchandise!?)/photo booth - all very shoddily built and very, very meagerly textured.

There is a stage for posing your avatar against a backdrop illustration wrapped around a concave surface in simulation of a three dimensional photo booth. I stood there for almost 10 minutes to see if the blurriness in the photo (suspiciously like a half rezzed tga file) would eventually go away - but no, that was how it was meant to be and that is how it stayed to the very end.



The inside of the "rising" pyramid revealed itself to be nothing more than a shopping mall, with no real merchandise and a photo pose stage with a blurry photo...

Unlike mainland sims which do not give their owners the option to change ground textures, island sims have this unique advantage and much can be achieved through the importing of rich, deep textures to this end. It is surprising then that at Konica Minolta this was so totally overlooked. As far as I could tell, the ground textures on their islands are the default textures of Second Life.

It appears that economies were realized with the foliage, too. Yes, there were trees and shrubs that I recognized from my own visits to Lillith Heart's Heart Garden Centre (teleport directly from here), but the bulk of what has been rezzed in terms of planting seems to have come from the default Second Life inventory’s library folder.

One might say that there is nothing wrong with that, "how were they going to fill three islands with enough plants?" Except that there is: I have worked and worked on those trees, played with their transparencies and their color values and nothing that you do to them will make them become anything other than what they are – default trees. There are plenty of sims where I've seen the default trees and do not feel so bothered by their presence. Something that the content builders do there is obviously different than what has been done at Konica Minolta. My guess would be that there the trees are grouped differently, they are rotated to achieve a more natural look, they are scaled to form clusters of varying height and so on. But in any case, default trees are OK to use if you really and truly are on a shoestring budget. Definitely not OK when you are multimillion dollar corporation!

Color and especially the glow effect are yet more things that I had huge problems with at Konica Minolta. The glow effect is a godsend – if you know how to use it adroitly! The effect is powerful and thus really needs to be incorporated into the overall design and repeated at intervals throughout the scheme so that it does not fragment the design system. Second, it helps if the effect is used with a purpose, such as the emulation of light. Third, the effect can be absolutely lethal if you push the slider since it really does provide a very powerful input. Here it has been used haphazardly, only in isolated instances and at great force, causing the glow ridden objects to completely break away from the overall visual language.

The colors used on the glow objects has not really helped things any either: The neon purple of the particle doors and the vitriolic green of the navigational arrow platform are overwhelming in their intensity and are not present in sufficient quantities elsewhere to establish a coherent visual language, such as the glow paths by Spiral Walcher seem to have done in the Garden of NPIRL Delights sims (teleport directly from here).


Spiral Walcher's glow paths weave four sims together at the Garden

In fact, the color and glow intensity of the paths in the Garden are almost identical to the arrow pads at Konica Minolta. What seems to work remarkably well in one instance utterly fails in the other due to the fact that in the Garden, the paths achieve continuity whereas at Konica Minolta they remain as isolated objects.


The glow effect remains isolated at Konica Minolta and thus breaks down design continuity throughout the island

One of the most effective ways of dealing with the lack of volumetric perception in Second Life is the usage of weather systems and fog scripts. Besides the lack of shadows and reflective surfaces, one major perceptual problem in Second Life is the lack of aerial/atmospheric perspective so that everything you see is equally sharp regardless of whether it is foregrounded or backgrounded.

Windlight, which is now integrated into the official Second Life viewer, goes some distance towards the elimination of this problem. However, by itself, Windlight is hardly ever sufficient. I took several shots of the identical location at Konica Minolta using different windlight presets and there really was no noticeable difference in what I saw.


The Meso American "rising" pyramid, photographed under different Windlight settings

What brings out the magic of Windlight are the things you use in conjunction with it: weather systems and fog dispensers. Now, these do not come cheap. The best fog emitter that I have found in Second Life is a "no copy" object and I think I ended up buying something like 20 of them but the difference that they have made has been worth every penny spent.

The same can be said about weather systems, which give the atmospheric depth that Windlight alone achieves only to a limited extent. My guess would be that the sims of Konica Minolta would vastly benefit from a large scale introduction of atmospheric aids of many different varieties, but most particularly fog emitters.

There are spaces at Konica Minolta which, had they only been implemented with good craftsmanship, would have become highly interesting visual experiences. The Sea of Babel is the most conspicuous one. The Fireworks Tower and the submerged (amphibian) arrow pad can also be considered within this category. In all three cases, the texturing combined with the utter clumsiness and lack of detailed prim work dampened the effect.

The Sea of Babel is accessed through yet another rising edifice, this time built to the resemble the Tower of Babel in Brueghel's famous painting.


The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, c. 1563

Once inside (the entrance being yet another purple particle door!) one can make one's way to a basement lab where a cart will take you on a journey through the human gastrointestinal system. This is, in all likelihood, (the absence of any kind of informational material throughout the sim is somewhat bothersome, I might add) the demonstration of a medical visualization technology developed by Konica Minolta, whereby a tiny camera is swallowed for interior scans of the body.



Now, had this journey been created with attention to detail, with good textures and effects, it really could have been the sort of thing that half the metaverse would have trekked out to experience. As it stands, it is nothing more than a conglomeration of internal body shots arranged along a prim tunnel.


Journey into the human gastrointestinal system: Could have been amazing, but...

The same can be said about the Firework Tower. The poor exterior textures, not to mention the fact that the structure can only be accessed from the top, makes the tower an unattractive proposition for further investigation when looked at from the outside. I did, however, venture inside and again, if the craftsmanship had been executed with greater finesse it would have become very interesting metaverse content.



The entire effect is severely curtailed given the appalling graphic design on the huge instructional panels, that stand out in stark light contrast to the overall dark ambiance of the interior

Finally, what bothered me about the sims is a lack of clarity of purpose. I had a really hard time understanding what these sims are here for. Are they promotional or recreational or educational or artistic - what is the purpose here exactly? Not that I wish to imply in any way that purpose is essential in the creation of good metaverse content or indeed metaverse activity. However, these sims are confusing: They are obviously not "play" or artistic environments, since there are far too many Konica Minolta logotypes, far too conspicuously displayed. Then again, if they are promotional/informational sims - where exactly is this information? The note card dispensers? The bi-lingual signage? Even Japanese signs are awfully thin on the ground - English ones are pretty much non-existent.


Confusing purposes and incongruous content - both of which would probably not have raised any questions whatsoever had the visual language been strong enough to sustain them

And, how does the content actually hang together? What logic brings together the Tower of Babel, a Flying Saucer and a Fireworks tower? Why does the exterior of the shopping mall need to become a Meso American pyramid? Again, not that I am looking for logical thought processes within creative activity - I would be hard pressed indeed to explain my own creative process if I did so. But unlike a purely artistic environment, where one would certainly not pose any of these questions, these sims are caught in a twilight zone between a concern for displaying informational content and a haphazard conglomeration of structures aspiring towards artistic expression.

Sadly, neither aspiration can fulfill its brief due to the lack of a sufficiently well defined and coherent visual language and a lack of attention to detail, be it textures, prim work or atmospheric conditions.

The bottom line, for me, is that - presumably with every good intention in place - not enough time, resources and thought has been devoted to the creation of these islands. And given that a huge corporation capable of providing all that would have been needed for satisfying results is responsible for their instantiation, visiting them and writing about them has been very saddening and thought provoking indeed.

Editor's note: In fairness, Alpha contacted the creators and waited for several days to hear back before she finally went ahead and prepared this blogpost.

Secondlie™

Jurin Juran suggested I might want to check out the Twittering generated by a certain Secondlie... I looked. And looked again a bit later. And now I can't stop looking and giggling.

Happy weekend, everyone.

You guys sooo rock! *Does a little dance* - Chimp case: CLOSED

Once upon a time, three days ago, (doesn't it seem like a million years ago, already?), l discovered an avatar that enthralled me, and promptly crashed, only to discover that logins had been disabled. I shared the few facts I had - as well as my frustration - with you here and slipped off to bed. Incredibly, the next morning... between this blog, Flickr, Twitter and my email, I found over a dozen suggestions for who the creator might be.

Before I say one more word, I want to wrap my virtual arms around all the imaginative, resourceful, helpful, curious and fascinating folks who people Second Life - especially those of you who immediately chimed in - and give you a giant pixelated hug. You're the bee's knees. You're top shelf! I am madly in love with this community. <3

It was Arahan Claveau who suggested that this character might be based on The Monkey King.

Then, Jamma Newt was the first to suggest that the chimp was a creation by Ripped Winkler, followed by, Jurin Juran via Tweet, and Maya and Constance via email. Logins were still disabled...

Finally, Naxos Loon presented us with a Slex address to buy Ripped Winkler's chimp avatars, and the icing on the cake was Mr. Oh's accurate contribution of the source of the glasses.

Well, I've since exchanged IMs with both Ripped Winkler and the fabulous chimp himself, apes Later, and here's what I learned...


Turns out that the worldly, high-style, cyber-chimp apes Later, had been afk while I had stood there asking him questions on Friday night

The chimp avatar is Ripped Winkler's (teleport directly from here). The glasses are, indeed, AVZ Vision Enhancement specs by !AVZ! Cyberpunk Fashion (teleport directly from here. apes made the stick himself, but the superb animations were by Jackie Jetcity, and can be purchased - dirt cheap, I might add - at his store, J's Factory (teleport directly from here). Jackie thoughtfully provides a free stick.

By the way, if I were a Neko, I would not want to live another day without Jackie's outrageously good feline animations set.

I asked apes if he is a builder, to which he said "no," but he did reply in the affirmative when I inquired if he was just a great shopper. I didn't get an answer when I asked - very nicely - if he'd take me shopping with him sometime... heh... and then he had to leave in a hurry to go food shopping... IRL! Sadly, I did not come away with the sources for his clothes, boots, and crown. Sorry.

Ripped Winkler - who missed all the fuss having been away on a brief holiday - came back to my many IM's and said, "Looks like my chimp avie... ie skin, shape, hair and fur. Any clothing and accessories aren't mine, as I leave that for the customers to get creative with. My monkeys come with full simian AO's, too, so the anims on that avatar are probably in the staff he is holding." Ripped's chimps come in both female and male shapes in the one package and were created last fall. He went on to explain that he made the chimp's skin "with a bit of gimp and avpainter, but I'm using zbrush now, which is so much better to work with."

CodeBastard Redgrave splashes the grid - and NPIRLers - with RED

We are avatars in our virtual world, yes... little dollies we dress up, when you get right down to it. But personalities are often more distinct and discernable - larger than life, really - in this format.

Such is the case of a passionate, charming, and funny woman who rezzed the same month I did, some 14 months ago. Add to this that she is 7'6" tall, wears bright red from her locks to her toes, and is sporting the name CodeBastard Redgrave... Well, you just know there isn't going to be a bland pixel about her.



Turns out that her powers of persuasion are over the top, too. She's talked the knickers off of some of the most interesting ladies in Second Life... including a few of our own! In the tradition of the fabled Vargas pin-up girls, she stripped them down, splashed them with red, and then captured the moment for all eternity.


Jurin Juran

Amalthea Blanc

Lainy Voom

Today at 11am SLT, she is unveiling Boudoir Rouge - a collection of those photographs - at her gallery: Code Red. Dress code? C'mon... Hazard a guess! Teleport directly from here.

Playing with tornadoes... courtesy of Tryptofaa Sands

I've been delinquent in my research and blogging because I've been having too much fun. It's all Avi Arrow's fault for owning a tornado, all Jurin Juran's fault for tp'ing me to see it, and especially Tryptofaa Sands' fault for making this too-entertaining toy. I got so carried away, literally, that all my photographs were a disaster, but fortunately can share this video with you by Dimitrio Lewis instead. Forget the first part... you get a better idea of the drama a bit later in the vid. Osprey Therian, creator of some of my favorite Machinima, has captured a few of our antics on her camera and I hope to at least point you to her vid soon.



You can purchase your own 40-meter sculpted Tornado HUD V2.0 on SLEX or drop by Tornado Island (teleport directly from here) and pick one up there.

SynaesthAsia: a realtime jam that spans the globe, with visuals to knock your socks off

As backgrounds go, Tokyo-based Komuso Tokugawa's is rather unusual. For openers, this fellow received the Australian Sports Medal in 2000 in recognition of his contributions to the sport of parachuting. :o

He has a Masters in Music, a Masters in Technology Management, and a BSc in Mathematics/Computer Science. Komuso also practices Tai Chi, in addtion to skiing and rollerblading.

Somewhere in between all of this - and a boatload of other novel and significant activities we'll look into sometime soon - he finds the time to come in-world and, together with MoShang Zhao, put on the chillest events I'd never imagined possible.



Performing in real time for thirty lucky test subjects (thanks for the invite Jurin Juran!) from points all over the Eastern and Western spheres, with Komuso in Tokyo and MoShang in Taiwan, and utilizing the music collaboration software NINJAM, these two put on a landmark show.



Lumiere Noir made it in just in time to hear the first few chords... and that's when you know that your entire week is going to melt away and the journey has begun.


Jessica Qin, moi and Fau Ferdinand dissolve into the moment...

Beyond the dreamtrance sounds, Komuso's particles take center stage. It's all "delivered in a custom setting I designed along with my prototype Generative Visuals System I developed up from my bio/neuro feedback," Komuso explained. I'll be telling you more about that soon :D



Komuso invites you to get in the particles, and Hotspur O'Toole, who blogged about this event and even made his own Machinima there, dove straight in.


Guess who slipped in for the last couple of tunes?

This just in: Osprey Therian's machinima of that event...

Komuso Tokugawa rocks the first day of the year

Just past midnite this morn and again near midnite tonite... rockin' to Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, Komuso Tokugawa-style. Closure for the first day of the year. Jurin Juran, thanks for those TPs.

Concept Art that's fun, or intellectual - you decide: Gazira Babeli's "Collateral Damage"

The day that code performer Gazira Babeli (rezzed March 31, 2006), joined the Not Possible IRL group, I became so excited that I informed my Real Life friends and family. It's just that no other content creator in Second Life has managed to encapsulate, illustrate and celebrate the core concept of our group better than Gaz. Plus, she's got one wicked sense of humor.

Gazira's "Collateral Damage" show at her Locusolus sim is simply the most sumptuously diabolical and hilarious venue in Second Life. If you haven't experienced it, then allow me to nudge you as politely but as firmly as is necessary: on your feet, go, go, go, get a move on right over there quick quick. You can thank me later :P Oh, and your experience will be greatly enhanced if you take a friend or two along. Really.

Until today, I had held back from revealing much about "Collateral Damage" other than to gently but enthusiastically urge you to go, largely because the element of surprise is a bonus... but alas, some people won't take a friendly hint. ;) Fact is, I am always astonished when I learn that someone hasn't been there.

Art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta has already done a brilliant job of analyzing the show, and numerous other fascinating write-ups exist, such as this one by Esther DeCuir, so I will limit myself to sharing a pop/superficial - though blissful - review, and here it is: Gazira amuses herself and you by taking liberties with your head and your avatar.

Earlier this week, I had the distinct pleasure of introducing three charming individuals to some elements of the show, on the pretext of snapping some pics for this very blog post...

There are two very tall towers near the sim's entry point marked with a plaque that reads: "Unbroken Eggs: Monument to Luciano Fabro, July 2007." Chance Abattoir and I watched as Jurin Juran walked between them.



Within seconds, the buildings collapsed atop Jurin.




This being a virtual environment, the buildings promptly reassembled themselves and Jurin rejoined us, along with SuezanneC Baskerville, who had just arrived.

SuezanneC got into the spirit of things right away, and began trampling the pizzas, which responded by melodically bouncing her off, all the while bleating riffs from that Neapolitan tune "O Sole Mio," and emitting generous clouds of particles.



Meanwhile, Jurin had been caught inside a can of Campbell's soup and was getting a peppy shake. Chance was mid-air, having disobeyed instructions that read "don't say new media," and being subsequently possessed by a mini-tornado that didn't let go until some precise words were uttered.



Then, SuezanneC and Jurin discovered some large slabs of concrete that simulate a rather vigorous earthquake when stepped on.



They proved to be brave souls and forged on. We all reconvened at a platform surrounded by poseballs, and hopped on. "Come together" - as it is called - would be putting what happened next, lightly. Each avatar is taken through a series of fun and silly animations separately, but all participating avatars are merged together.




There are several other remarkable pieces within the installation, but probably the most controversial is "Avatar on Canvas," where Gaz has set up three Francis Bacon paintings with chairs that - once used - deform the avatar. Most of us treat our avatars with the same degree of narcissism and reverence that we do our Real Life bodies, so participating in this exploit requires a bit of open-minded loosening up. Speaking for myself, I can't recommend this enough. No matter how many times I've done it, it invariably cracks me up all over again.





I heartily recommend jumping back on the "Come Together" platform for some after-merging, and suggest that your little group consider following that up with a shopping or dancing expedition. It's guaranteed to bring down the house, not to mention the distinct probability that you will never feel quite the same about your avatar again...



...and, I believe, that is exactly what Gazira set out to accomplish.

Ready? Teleport directly from here.

Many thanks to Jurin Juran, SuezanneC Baskerville and Chance Abattoir for being such good sports, as well as great fun and top-notch conversationalists all through this comical experience.

Madcow Cosmos' silly-wonderful Prey Unit - a photographic challenge

Madcow Cosmos says that he builds things "mostly to push them out of my mind." He pushed this line-up - he calls it Prey Unit - out in a couple of days, and has offered to give anyone a copy for free if they can get a good, accurate and detailed photograph of the entire build.



I tried.



And tried.



And finally gave up.



Jurin Juran rezzed it over two sims at at her spacious Blackwater Gallery. Have a go at it here.

1/22/08 Update: Alornia Kamachi nearly blew her computer to produce this shot. What do you think?

This week's notice to you Busy People

This notice was issued to NPIRL members on August 10, 2007, in-world.

* NOMASHA SYAKA'S BLENDER
We are lucky lucky lucky to have Tayzia Abattoir in the group. What a treasure trove. She giggled when she learned that I had not experienced Nomasha Syaka's Blender. Take a friend (and maybe an enemy, too ^.^) and follow the trail of apples to the last one. Touch and "eat it."
Nomasha's Blender
~ Nomasha... welcome to our group! I'm afraid I drooled a little bit over your guitars and sculptures, too.
~~ Nomasha owns the group "I use my nose to type..."

* URASIMA CLOCK ISLAND
Dali-esk, monochromatic, other-wordly, and definitely NPIRL. Numbers dash about and squeal.
Urasima
All the info is in Japanese... so I watched the video at Crazy-Genius . Anyone know these builders?

* JAPANESE STEAM PUNK + fusion
Can steam punk - in its varous SL manifestations - ever be NPIRL? Sound off on the blog. But first check dis place out. Later, you can take the hot air balloon, and lazily work your way down to the diff levels. Teleporter in the cafe, btw, is the cardboard box. This visit will take a bit of time, is well built, and is a pleasant way to unjangle your nerves after a hectic day.
Forbidden Island

~~ time sensitive! ~~
* Juria Yoshikawa's "Blink" is having a closing party tomorrow, Saturday, at 2pm SLT. He's also been fiddling with fire... take a look...
NO SLURL as the event has ended

Here's the video of the closing party - fun! - featuring the music of AldoManutio Abruzzo

~~ fyi ~~
* Some NEW excellent things at the Greenies Home Rezzable, created by NPIRL member Pavig Lok and team.
Greenies Home Rezzable

Welcome to our new members:
- Amalthea Blanc
- AngryBeth Shortbread
- Avi Arrow
- Felix Wakmann - thanks again for the fab SLBrowser freebie, Felix. You guys gotta check it out. Really.
- Finny Yates
- Jurin Juran
- Matthew Kidoman
- Nomasha Syaka
- Scope Cleaver

Fondly,
Bettina Tizzy