Art 101 redux - Penumbra Carter

I have no idea who Penumbra Carter is, but this is the best summary of art in Second Life® I've seen to date in one video. Who are you, Penumbra and what did you mean by all of this? Please do tell us!

Roald Dahl feast at Relay for Life

Combine two of our best loved stories for children (and grown-ups, too!) by Roald Dahl with some of Second Life's® most accomplished content creators, and you have magic.

Orchestrated by PatriciaAnne Daviau, two stories unfold: James and the Giant Peach, with little boy James, trees and a big juicy peach by brilliant 3D modeler Colin Fizgig, fantastical insects by Madcow Cosmos, Cloud Insoo's perfect seagulls, and LittleToe Bartlett's fanciful textures...




... and a Willy Wonka factory by Tezcatlipoca Bisiani, complete with a candy cane forest by PatriciaAnne Daviau, strange plants by Tezcatlipoca and robotic creatures by Bryn Oh.





There is so much to see and do this weekend at the Second Life® Relay for Life (RFL) event. More than 80 teams have come together to create an experience with the goal of raising $125,000 US.

Teleport directly from here.

What happens when you let LittleToe Bartlett loose...

Oh, I know... the Garden of NPIRL Delights is over! Get over it and move on, Bett!!

I just couldn't resist showing you what LittleToe Bartlett did once the doors had been closed and the Gardeners had picked up most of their installations.

These are ground textures... sim(s) wide.




... and she wouldn't give me whatever she was smoking...

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.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights is blossoming

There were about 40 content creators signed up nine days ago when Rezzable Productions made the four sims available for our joint effort - the Garden of NPIRL Delights - and the Not Possible IRL group's first-ever build festival.

That number has mushroomed. We had more than 40 people at a noon Town Hall meeting yesterday - our first - and today I think we stand at over 110 participating creators.


Click to see large

Not all builds are in place and there is so much work left to do, but people are collaborating with each other at a furious rate. Just today, every installation got a prim bonus to blend their work with that of their neighbors.


Click to see large

The "bonus and blend" idea came from a person who has contributed so much to this effort that even if she never does another thing, she's left a deep mark of goodness that none of us will forget: LittleToe Bartlett.


Beatrix Newt, Lauren Weyland, Pavig Lok, and the chillin' fridge is LittleToe Bartlett

It was Lag-tastic!

It stands to reason that a call for Not Possible in Real Life builds would generate a lot of scripty creations, and about four days ago, the lag got so bad, that one of the sims was disappearing off the map a few times a day. Sim crossings were laughable.

Pavig Lok studied the situation and alerted us to a few trouble spots. Miki Gymnast came in, fresh from knee surgery in Real Life, and worked with dozens of builders to optimize their scripts. I was worried that participants would throw up their hands or freak out and leave, but a funny thing happened... people started to really cooperate and collaborate, seasoned builders with newer ones, expert coders with other expert coders... and suddenly, you can breathe on all four sims. The lag is gone.


Click to see large

There have been all sorts of heroes and heroines along the way. I still don't know how Beatrix Newt can take on so many responsibilities (site allocation, terraforming, parcelling, tour supervision, and much more) and still appear calm and in control.

And Lauren Weyland... will you ever forgive me? She needed bio input from every participant, so I helpfully issued a notice providing the wrong email address and promptly logged off to a busy Real Life schedule. Ouch. Sorry folks!

Ah well... these stories and hundreds more will only matter to those who are living them, very intensely, on four very special sims these days. I've had very little sleep, and I know I'm not alone in this, but when I look at the Garden and how it is blossoming, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights will open its doors on May 16th.

Money: You can't have it... yet

all photography by Arahan Claveau

About a month ago, NPIRLers had a 24 hour preview of a mysterious sim that is part of an even larger mystery. Last week, I invited master of narrative photography, Arahan Claveau, to go back and capture just a few glimpses... mere hints... of what we saw there, to share with you.





It's as yet incomplete... about 60% there, I'm told. Creation dates appear to begin in December, 2006... and end in April of this year. Built primarily by Light Waves, with several important elements by Pavig Lok and a few by Littletoe Bartlett, this is the same team that gave us the Greenies, but it is not a Rezzable sim.



Doors are open. Someone came or left in a hurry.



Called simply "Money," the sim is dripping with atmosphere and intrigue.



It's clear that something terrible has happened, but we're not sure what or why.



Some discoveries, as you explore, are goose-bump-inducing.



Others seem to be important parts of the puzzle.



In a few days, I'll share a little more of what I've discovered...



...and the answers I have are surprising, indeed.



No slurl... yet.

Happy details

I know y'all have been to Greenies Home Rezzable oodles. I just had to point out some fave minutiae cause they make me smile.

No actual turnips were used in the making of this product. Better if used by: SOON.




And then, of course, there's 60mg of Dammitol. Wish I had some of that in my medicine cabinet.


Just a howdy and thankies Littletoe Bartlett, for the grins.

Not Possible in Second Life? Without huge prims...

Without huge prims... Greenies Home Rezzable by Pavig Lok, Light Waves and Littletoe Bartlett would cease to exist.
Slurl: Greenies

It's alright Ma, I'm only NPIRL'ing

This notice issued in-world to the NPIRL group on August 31, 2007:

REZZABLE!
If you aren't familiar with it yet, here's the crash course on
Rezzable Productions:
* An entertainment company developing 2 million square meters of sim space
* Founder and owner is Jim Himoff, known in SL as RightasRain Rimbaud
* Rezzable is currently hiring builders/content creators
* By now you've likely been to three Rezzable sims: Greenies, Toxic and the Cannery

NPIRL COMMUNITY STUFF
* Burning Life - You in? If so, we want to know. Please contact Bettina Tizzy.
* A NPIRL Social?
Several of you have expressed an interest in meeting each other and networking. Let me know if this sounds like something you'd like to do? I wouldn't even contemplate doing a monthly event until we had one successful session under our belts.

THIS WEEK'S FEATURES

Let's DANCE!

MOVE IT!
Easy Babcock, creator of the first-rate motion-captured (working with RL pro-dancers) Sine Wave danceloops, just joined NPIRL and so becomes our first animator member. We have urged him to make us some NPIRL fantasy loops... fingers crossed :) Easy tells us that he hopes to collaborate with other leading creators to integrate new animations into quality builds in the not-too-distant-future.
Sine Wave Island

MUSIC: Can it ever be considered NPIRL?
Aldomanutio Abruzzo,composer of the etheral/supernal tracks that have accompanied many of our favorite builds (Blink-Juria Yoshikawa; Flowerball - Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield; Full Immersion - DanCoyote Antonelli) doesn't think so. Aldo, I beg to differ :P To me, your sounds convey every sort of color and shade and emotion one might expect in an otherwordly environment.

DISCO GONE GREENIE
Zero G is the new disco at the Greenies site (from the Rezzable peeps and built by NPIRL'ers LittleToe Bartlett and Pavig Lok). Events on Monday nights only for the time being. Greenies doesn't allow direct tp's, so you have to go to the main site, then take a teleport or the bottle rocket - Little think's the rocket is especially fun - up to the Mothership.
Greenies Home Rezzable

SPACEY DANCING
* We've mentioned Inspire Space Park before... Earth Primbee's wildly popular - and deservedly so - spacey frolic.
Inspire Space Park
* The Galaxy Dome (Spaceport Bravo) is an offbeat, whimsical space globe that is part of the International Spaceflight Museum.
Galaxy Dome Music Venue

IN THE CLOUDS...
To my friends it is no secret. If I am hiding, I'm likely to be found whirling at the Particle Lab's Cloud Chateau, happily lost in IM's or simply blissing out. As dancing venues go, the Cloud Chateau is NPIRL in the extreme, but keep in mind that it is strictly BYOC (bring your own chimera). Jopsy Pendragon may be swamped in both of his lives, but no matter how often I visit, there are always new, luscious particle surprises.
The Cloud Chateau

FANTASY FURNITURE and JEWELRY
"Second Life is not meant to replace Real Life. It isn't an imitation of Real Life. Second Life stands alone on it's own merit as a separate dimension, rich in dreams and beauty." So said Gwen Carillon, as she championed the NPIRL concept on her blog.
If you are looking to furnish a fantasy build, Gwen's heavenly Elements in Design store is a dependable source. I am proud to own several of her creations.
Elements in Design

VIRTUAL Reality's Daddy
Jaron Lanier, the founder of VPL back in 1984 - the first company to market VR products - and also the man who popularized the phrase "virtual reality," opened an SL account in January 2004 but never went on to develop his presence here. Is he playing WoW instead?

WELCOME new NPIRL members (in order of appearance):
Aldomanutio Abruzzo
Sugar Seville
Gwen Carillon
DanCoyote Antonelli
Easy Babcock
Masami Kuramoto
Eladon Galsworthy
Adam Ramona