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.

Nekos and furries are the VIPs at the always new Syncretia - There's a spa and a burial chamber, too

"Love the skin you're in," goes the saying. I've worn many skins and avatars in my Second Life®, including dozens and dozens of human variations (both female and male), Yoa Ogee and Tooter Claxton's art object avatars, assorted fairies, witches, all sorts of wild and prehistoric animals and fishes - many of them from Grendel's Children - and the odd skeleton-doing-odd-things by the inimitable Madcow Cosmos. I've even given neko and furry avatars a shot, but of the lot, these last two are the ones I am the least comfortable in.

It was, therefore, with much admiration but also dismay, that I recently discovered one of Alpha Auer's newest additions to her elegant but always playful Syncretia: a glorious Spa for furries and nekos...


I'm such an impostor!

To gain access to the Spa, review the northern end of the convenient map that Alpha has made available at the sim entry point (teleport directly from here), and then look for this pool area. Hop in!



In a welcoming notecard she writes:

"Welcome to ears, tail and furrr... the penultimate experience in neko and furry health, beauty and fitness..."

I am obviously late to virtual worlds. Would someone please clue me in as to why many people don't capitalize their first name, or many other names, for that matter?

Alpha's notecard continues: "While these facilities have been designed primarily with nekos and furries in mind, avatars of all species, persuasions and proclivities are more than welcome... (Obviously, but thought I'd make it clear anyway... hhh)"

When you see Alpha write "hhh" she means it as the sound that you make when you giggle. But I digress. At least we non-furry/nekos are not officially excluded! I suppose we simply aren't on the VIP list... sigh.

I should point out that Alpha doesn't hesitate to integrate and mod the work of others and weave it - sometimes literally - with her own throughout her Syncretia sim. She also writes some of the best notecards on the grid to accompany her creations.

Alpha's notecard: "We provide an extensive gym (we are still working on the personal trainer, but hey - Rome was not built in a day either you know!)..."


Few gym's could out-do this club's offerings in the way of equipment

Notecard: "...a luxurious pool/Jacuzzi as well as ear, tail and paw polishers designed for huge, tall, medium, short and tiny avatars. Copies of the ever popular Syncretia Rejuvenation Sphere (SRS) have been situated here as well, directly below the ceiling, for your convenience..."


She's also added a magnificent tree by Seph DaSilva and then interlaced its branches with "tree crawlers" by Max Hatfield

Notecard: "Beyond these, a laboratory has been set up on the premises themselves to produce the finest in facial care products. Please remember to take with you your complimentary bottle of "Fade-a-Wart" serum, placed at the outside corner of the laboratory table..."


There are dozens of items that would suit even the most demanding alchemist, including vials and beakers by Storm Thunders and Macklin Deckard

Notecard: "This gym is powered by the healing waters of the Citrinitas/Cappadocia alchemical power plant, which purifies water gathered from the natural springs of the Syncretia Black Mountains."



Notecard: Please do not hesitate to take advantage of our Jacuzzi pool by thinking that the water therein is in any way unsanitary due to its somewhat unseemly resemblance to pee. The yellow color is due entirely to the gold derived from the alchemical process that the water has undergone above ground and in no way contains avatar refuse."



The notecard continues: The fish inside the pool should also not irk you in that they will cure your skin of all blemishes by eating them up. And this last bit is the only piece of truth divulged here, btw. They really do have these kinds of fish in a lake in Eastern Turkey. (And before you ask; yes, I did use to be in advertising! --- hhhhhhhhhhhhh)

Did I mention that Alpha (aka Elif Ayiter) lives in Istanbul? It's no secret that I think the world of her, her creations and especially of the way she thinks. Since Monday of this week, it has been my distinct pleasure to add her to the masthead of this blog, as my co-blogger.

I just have to share one more new area at Syncretia with you, a burial chamber just beyond the Spa that is worthy of the tomb of Tutankhamun. She wrote about it on her blog, and I cannot possibly encourage you enough to go there and read what she had to say.



Alpha modified dead whale bones and scarabs by Grendel's Children's Ryan Snook and then assembled them with her signature veiled, alpha style in this incredible chamber.

Please allow me to introduce myself...

Yes! When Bettina asked me a month or so ago whether I would want to join her as co-blogger on the NPIRL blog, it took me less than a second to say yes! Yes, yes and yes!

As Bett has already mentioned I am indeed the builder of Syncretia, which some of you may already have visited, thanks to Bett's wonderful previous posts on the place. To those that haven't yet, please do come at some point or other ;-). So, I am first and foremost a designer/artist in Real Life and a dedicated, if not downright obsessive, builder in Second Life®.



Writing is something that I have stumbled onto in recent years: Reading an amazing book called the Telematic Embrace, written by a wonderful man, Roy Ascott, led me to study for a PhD at the Planetary Collegium. Although initially embarked upon with much trepidation, once involved, I found to my utter surprise that I actually rather enjoyed research and writing. It has certainly not become my primary mode of expression, I am very much what I have always been - a visual artist. However, it has certainly become a close second. I should probably also add here that my research and writing activity has very recently given me the opportunity of becoming the editor of an academic journal on Metaverse creativity, to be published by Intellect Journals, starting in the fall of 2009 - a feat of which I am quite proud of, I have to say.

And as for the the blogging: A somewhat bleak period in my Second Life last spring led me to start my own blog. And then this summer I created an alt, Xiamara Ugajin, who now has her own blog as well. These two blogs will continue their existence alongside this, the NPIRL blog - which quite needless to say will get my primary attention from now on, where all blogging activity is concerned. The Alpha blog is for personal thoughts and naughtiness (and yes! I am very naughty!), the Xia blog is for helpful tips (Xia is very well behaved!), particularly for apparel and the like.

The NPIRL blog is for my thoughts on Second Life creativity, a subject that also involves my PhD thesis, which is about art education in Second Life. I cannot help but feel very strongly that the metaverse is promising immense implications where the artistic fields are concerned - and this at a time when, in my humble opinion, things are rather seriously challenged in this department in Real Life. I have previously written on this on my own blog and will now take the liberty of adding in the link here , so that I do not need to make this post any longer than it absolutely has to be.

I delight in humor, in the unexpected, indeed the absurd, in that which is fundamentally un-didactic. I also delight in narrative, in the fairy tale, in the not possible in real life, the larger than life, the unimaginable. I cherish the unselfconscious, the playful, the spontaneous. And yes, also the naughty, the irreverent, the tongue-in-cheek... And many of these attributes seem to me to be absent from artistic activity to an alarming extent in Real Life today. Somewhere, something went wrong and we dried up. We became humorless, if not indeed downright preachy. And suddenly, here in Second Life, we seem to be gaining ground in the springing up of imaginative acts. In the creation of utterly absurd objects and situations. This I cherish. This is what makes Second Life creativity beyond valuable to me. This is to me what, at this particular moment in time, makes it quite essentially NPIRL!

And not only do we create objects, we take creativity up one notch altogether: We create new lives and alternative identities. The whole manifestation of avatars and their alts; the vastly complex, autopoietic interaction of the human being behind the keyboard with these emergent selves is what to me lies at the very heart of metaverse creativity. Thus, time permitting, I would like to delve into this subject on this blog as part of content creation which is Not Possible in Real Life, alongside the examination of object oriented artistic/design output, of course.

And now finally enough of the pretty words and onto some practicalities: As I mentioned above, I am a dedicated builder. What I should also mention here is that I have an avatar family who is every bit as dear to me as any Real Life family would be. Thus, my time in-world is divided fully between my building and my family, and then of course also the viewing of creative content generated by others. From this it will inevitably follow that I will be remiss in responding to Instant Messages, notifying me of events and things to see in-world. Not to put too fine a point on it - I will simply not be able to do so. Please do not think this to be insufferably rude: My Second Life has essentially been a very private one to date, and I have come to truly cherish the way in which it has evolved and would thus be extremely hesitant to enter into any kind of a venture that could upset a truly meaningful balance. I will thus be very grateful for emails, to be sent either to the sendtonpirl@gmail.com mailbox or directly to me at alphaauer@gmail.com. These I will try to respond to as fast as I can, within a matter of hours, a day at the very most.

And finally finally finally ... Yes! Bett! Thank you for having entrusted me with this. I feel truly privileged to have become a part of this formidable operation. And thank you above all for being my friend!

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.