Franco Brambilla's cute aliens (and pirates)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Impossible IRL'er and über virtual explorer Molly Montale wrote to share Franco Brambilla's Flickr stream and "sci-fi imagery Photoshopped on to retro Swiss postcards," and because we are always interested in Real Life artists who inspire us, we had to follow up with him.



Where are you, Franco?

Franco: I live and work in Milano, in the north of Italy, a decadent, conservative post industrial city. I'm a free-lance illustrator, specialized in sci-fi. Since 1999, I have been working every month for URANIA, the Italian sci-fi book collection by Mondadori that began in 1952. I do a lot of "post production" with Photoshop and Painter but I also use some 3d programs such as 3ds Max, Poser and Bryce. You can find many of the book covers I created for them here.



Are you a resident of any virtual worlds and have you considered using these as a platform to create your art?

Franco: No, I don't visit virtual worlds too often, but I did shape a virtual asteroid attacked by space pirates for club NEVERDIE.

Why this obsession with cute aliens?

Franco: Obsession?



If you had the opportunity to spend an entire day alone with a friendly alien, what are some of the highlights that you would show and share with it about our planet?

Franco: First, I would ask him to show me Earth from orbit, and maybe take a little detour to the moon. Then I think I would invite him to meet my family and friends before asking him to take us to a better place... his planet maybe? Italy is full of fantastic locations and art that an alien with superior technology probably visited and appreciated already... Maybe, before going, I would ask him to vaporize our Parliament with all the politicians inside... Mars Attack style :)))))

Fabulous falsies

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

It was very late in my Second Life® when I discovered "false" eyelashes and now I want more. More styles and colors and by all means longer, crazier, hotter ones. Sure, they raise your ARC (Avatar Rendering Cost) a tad, but I'm willing to cut back in other areas if I can have some fantasy springing from my own peepers and basic lashes. Maybe we can persuade Jopsy Pendragon or Darek Deluca to make some with particle effects, or who knows what Cutea Benelli would attach to them... Dollar bills? Miniature scissors? Spiral Walcher would make them glow, of course. It's a pain to get them to fit properly in both lives, but worth it, I tell you, so very worth it.

D.W. Griffith came up with the idea for false eyelashes back in 1916 when he was directing the film Intolerance and wanted actress Seena Owen's lashes to "brush her cheeks."

I was chatting with virtual artist AM Radio who must have been simultaneously searching on the web, because he began to send me one link after another that led to the more than theatrical lashes that Japanese company Shu Uemura makes (check out their Tokyo Lash Bar). Perhaps this is an area where Real Life has trumped us on the fantastical plane and we need to catch up?






All photography via Shu Uemura

Strange and Fantastic Buildings (in Real Life)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I can't recall ever just linking to another site as the centerpiece for a blogpost, but here you go. Totally worth a visit: 80 Strange and Fantastic Buildings Architecture. Hopefully this will inspire a few more unusual buildings in virtual worlds.

12:18 pm UPDATE: And here are 50 more unusual buildings!

The Flora of the Rain Forest and Jedda Zenovka

Posted by Alpha Auer

"Welcome to Wild Designs... (says Jedda Zenovka) Home of unique and funky Organic designs....

You can take the girl out of the jungle...
But you cant take the jungle out of the girl!
Rainbow Obsidian
A usually dark outer appearance contrasted by a soul filled with burning light
Jaguars dont need self help books!

... Live light free and happy

And have a wonderful day!"

Initially introduced to me by Truthseeker Young, Jedda Zenovka is a regular visitor at Syncretia. During the year or so that I have been Jedda's friend I have come to care a great deal for this lovely, sensitive, talented lady with a huge flair for converting the flora of her home land, the Australian Rain Forest, into formal investigations of botanical shapes, using a virtual 3D building environment and terrain to achieve some remarkable translations/transformations from the organic to the synthetic.






Her flowers and mushrooms have been used to create the virtual garden at Happy Clam Island and I urge you to go and check out this shimmering, glowing virtual space by teleporting from here.

...






A complex underwater garden in which Jedda Zenovka weaves together a multitude of shapes and colors to great effect can be seen at Terravia Island. Teleport from here.

...

You can teleport to Jedda Zenovka's Wild Designs from here, and also here.

Floating buildings - In Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

My colleague Alpha Auer and I have this ongoing discussion regarding what, in virtual worlds, is actually Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL). One concession she makes is the concept of floating islands and buildings in metaversal skies.


soror Nishi's newest landscaping shop,"lifstean," as photographed by Lem Skall. Teleport directly from here

Still, I was surprised yesterday when Alpha mentioned that folks are already making "floating" buildings. It seems that a company in the Netherlands, Dutch Docklands, designs water-based solutions that make “land from water” by providing large scale "floating" constructions.



As far as I can tell, plans for the construction of a string of floating islands containing hotels, restaurants and a heliport off the shores of Dubai have been shelved due to the economic crisis. It seems that each island was to have been in the shape of a letter, with all of them spelling out a verse that reads in part, "Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey."

National Public Radio (NPR) did a great piece on the project in April, 2008, and here's another from DE51GN.

It could be argued that space stations, already in use, are in fact, floating buildings.


Boeing's International Space Station (ISS), slated for completion in 2010, will be about the size of an American football field

All the same, I'll wager that the only floating buildings most of us will ever experience in our lifetimes will be pixelated and very virtual.

Thinking differently, right down to your tippy toes

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

While I maintain that no other platform can rival virtual worlds for thinking differently about design - and specifically Second Life® and OpenSim where user-created content is not only possible but encouraged - my pulse still quickens when I come across innovations by Real Life mavericks.

One such designer is Netherlands-born, London-based and award-winning artist Marloes ten Bhömer. Her brainchildren actually belong on our feet, and offer an alternative to existing design languages.





Marloes' shoes, which are more architectural than fashionable, afford women the incredibly rare chance of freedom from conventional style clichés and codes. Everything about her approach is different, including the materials she works with: carbon fiber and stainless steel, among others.




Many thanks to artist AM Radio for the toes up on Marloes' shoes.

Attitude adjustment with the help of a little steam

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I thought I'd take a moment out of our busy virtual lives to celebrate a couple of individuals who inspire us in Real Life with their steampunk approach to architecture and life even, and also to alert you to the existence of the Clockwork Quartet, a musical group in the UK that isn't really a quartet at all but rather a thirteen-piece band featuring an odd assortment of instruments, including a musical saw and a double kit composed of old typewriters, scrap metal, metronomes, clocks and other found objects.

The Clockwork Quartet is of particular interest to us since one of our own, NPIRLer and Second Life®r Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) is a member, performing on the 5-string banjo. For your information, it was Art who created the charming (and sadly copybotted) prim newbie that so many of you - including myself - have enjoyed placing in highly irregular situations.

~*~

Then there is dedicated Burner and steampunk creator, Tom Sepe, with his steam-powered Whirlygig Emoto, among many other things. Drop in to Second Life and say hi to us sometime, Tom. I've a few people I'd love to introduce you to, including some of your fellow Burners.



~*~

Lastly but hardly leastly, David Trautrimas, is a Canadian artist who disassembles old kitchen mixers, hole punchers, waffle irons, staplers, vacuum cleaners, coffee machines and other household objects, photographs the parts, and then puts them back together digitally, into what he calls “Habitat Machines.” Can you say "Brazil?"


Oil can residence, 2008


The Typewriter Factory, 2008




Sprinkler house, 2008


Electric razor cooperative, 2008

Many thanks to David Trautrimas who graciously allowed us to reproduce his photographs here.

Kinetic Apparel: Hussein Chalayan...

Posted by Alpha Auer

Hussein Chalayan's beautiful garments are kinetic in the sexiest possible way: They float away, unpeel themselves or lift off. And no clumsy techno-choreography here either. The revelation of the nude body is timelined, graceful and dramatic. And most definitely not mere computer gimmickry attached to so-so fashion design - regardless of whether the clothes move or not, they are gorgeous enough to merit attention in themselves as well.

I am a more than just a little proud of this incredible fashion designer since he is my landsman. Well - stretching facts a bit here: Hussein Chalayan is actually Turkish-Cypriotic / British whereas I am a born and bred Istanbul city rat!
;-)

Real Life inspires: Theo Jansen's "Beach Monsters"

Powered by the winds, Dutch engineer and artist Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures are, quite simply, breathtaking.

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... ;-).

The underwater sculptures of Jason de Caires Taylor

Posted by our guest blogger, Amalthea Blanc

As a group, NPIRL continues to trail-blaze into new avenues of self-expression, regardless of whether these avenues are in the metaverse or in the digital world at large. However, it's worth to keep up with fresh, amazing talent that keep pushing the limits of what “real life” can do. If that edge is something that defines our common interests, we have to be aware that it's not a static barrier. Case in point: the art of Jason de Caires Taylor.

Take a look for yourself at the video below or at the photography of his underwater sculptures.




Vicissitudes

The art of Jason de Caires Taylor transcends sculpture through its placement in the water medium. It's a fascinating approach to art. The corals, fish, and nurturing quality of water continue to modify and alter the initial sculpture, embracing it and allowing it to become a true part of the environment. In other words, the medium and the message blend together, in harmony.


The Lost Correspondent

Another notable aspect is the fascinating effect these works have on the viewer – they hypnotize through their silence and through the beautiful play of light among the water waves. Some have said that this particular type of art is eerie, probably because it taps into this feeling of “other world” that all of us have ingrained in our senses.


Visages


Nature Morte

More images and information about the artist can be found here.

Real Life inspires: Doll Face

I am quite taken with artist and animator Andrew Huang's Doll Face video. You might also enjoy his Fluxis, and Projections III. Doll Face reminds me a bit of Senuka Harbinger's Senasy Cybernetic Arachnid Avatar. Andrew, if you have a presence in Second Life®, I hope you will introduce yourself.