Truthseeker Young and "Voices: Orion's Arm"

Posted by Alpha Auer
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Yes, that's it folks! Absolutely no need for any further pontifications from yours truly on this newest one by Truthseeker Young. Teleport directly from here.
:-)

"at home" with Truthseeker Young

Posted by Alpha Auer... ;-)

How easy can it be to write about someone that you really like and yet maintain your objectivity? Well, if the reasons that you like the person have something to do with the context of what it is that you have to tell, I personally see no big conflict of purpose...

Truthseeker has imagination. This is why I befriended this person. Truthseeker has a sense of humor. Again, this is why I befriended this somewhat androgynous personage, of whom I have absolutely no idea as to their gender, their age, or anything else related to their Real Life flesh and blood existence. And guess what? I am not even remotely interested in any of that. Truthseeker is possibly my one true solely virtual friend and I have befriended him/her through my interest in his/her art work, writing a glowing review of one of his/her installations basically during a time when I did not know this wonderful person from Adam/Eve. So, methinks that it is perfectly possible for me to write a blog post that does not reek too strongly of nepotism about the extraordinary home and the charged virtual days of my colleague Truthseeker Young.
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(Photographs courtesy of Truthseeker Young.)

The obvious place to start I suppose would be Truthseeker's avatar. This slender creature of vague Meso-American or possibly African descent undergoes the occasional modification but some features have stayed in situ, more or less since we met: The back pointing open jaw, displaying an ominous set of teeth ready to bite the living daylights out of anyone who would dare to sneak up on this seemingly frail individual from behind... The staff, of course. The staff has had its share of transformations, however it is always there, in all of its glory... And of course, the goatee. But is this just a plain old a goatee? Or some magic appendage that seems to miraculously sprout forth from Truthseeker's chin?

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And then of course, there are the stories that happen around Truthseeker:



We are crouching on the rooftop in anticipation of any kind of "undesirable element" to creep up. In which case, I guess we will proceed to pour hot virtual oil on them or something?

As it turned out later, an eminently sensible strategy it was too. Recently the place was in fact taken over by some highly undesirable squatters...



Alpha Auer: You were invaded???
Truthseeker Young: More like infested! A mother fighterjet & her miserable little young tried to roost in my front yard! Execrable vermin...

One day later:



Truthseeker Young: oh! OH! OMG!!! d00d, where's my gun... ohhh, nonononono...this ain't good...

One day later:



Truthseeker Young: aah, crap! I thought I'd chased them off, but last night when I came back home, they were back, and they'd built a NEST outta my FENCE!!
Alpha Auer: the "crouching on the rooftop watching vigilantly" pose thingy isn't helping you too much over there is it? :)
Truthseeker Young: /me glowers & mutters curses from the acceptable distance established by the mother jetbird

(Photographs courtesy of Truthseeker Young.)

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And then there is Truthseeker's house, what this proud parent of a three year old Real Life minx calls the "space_age_bachelor_pagoda", rezzed high up in the skies of Extropia. When first I saw it, it was a thing of floating splendor, imagination and grace, the likes of which one would be hard pushed to find maybe even in places like Bangkok.



But, recently this magnificent dwelling has acquired a far more anthropomorphic cast - indeed to the point where Truthseeker could not help but remark that he/she thought the house looked somewhat stoned.





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We make art in Second Life. We rezz sculptures and buildings. Installations and soundscapes. Entire sims even. But isn't the thing that we are really busy creating, the thing of paramount importance, the thing that has never really happened before (or only in a very narrow "staged" context), our "self"? Indeed our many selves? Our very lives? The endless stories that we spin, the tales we tell to ourselves and to others. The magnificence of the fairy tale narrative come to life as an avatar.

Avatar Art?

It seems to me that we all do it. That every person who becomes immersed in a virtual world becomes involved in this strangest and most hard to explain and analyze of creative processes. At least this is my sense as well as my own personal experience. However, when a person possessed of the levels of visual talent, of imagination, of intelligence and of humor that Truthseeker so obviously is, becomes entangled in this magical mesh of make-belief the outcome becomes what I have tried to feebly describe above.

Extraordinary!

You can teleport to Truthseeker Young's home directly from here. More images and stories of Truthseeker's virtual life can be found on his Flickr photostream here.

yu can haz teh POWAH!!! - Creative combustion and a gift economy in the desert

Beginning this Saturday and for one week, scorched earth awaits you. Burning Man, the annual event that Burning Life is modelled after, is about dreaming your dream in a radically awake and alive state.

I scowled and shook my fist at the heavens yesterday because 22 sims brimming with the creative art and builds produced by hundreds of talented minds is too much to absorb in just one week, but now I am going to put all that behind me and immerse myself in the joy.

The temperatures at Burning Man are brutally hot. And cold. The dust storms whip the camps for hours at 50mph. Lag is Second Life®'s weather. Be brave, be courageous... it will all be worth it.

A core element of the Burner's culture is gifting, with no strings attached. It is not about trading or barter. Just a way to say hello, or thank you, or hey you!

One such gift will be from artist Truthseeker Young.



His vase of flowers contains a single stem flower staff and an animation with particles. Put them together and "yu can haz teh POWAH!!!"

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.

Tuna's trippy textures

"trippin'! It's when everything is the most important thing in the world"

Bostonian Tuna Oddfellow (rez: 8/15/2005) is a magician in Real Life, and a really pleasant fellow, too. Known as "Fish the Magish," he has performed at all manner of events for the past 30 years, and is the recipient of the "Best of Boston" award by the Society of American Magicians.

In Second Life, his biggest claim to fame is that he was the winner of last June's $3,750 US prize (then $1 million Lindens) for his participation in NBC’s "America’s Got Talent" in-world contest.


Tuna Oddfellow, working a screenfull of HUDs.

Shava Nerad, his Real Life fiance and Second Life wife - their February 9th wedding was featured in last week's online edition of Businessweek - handles his bookings and public relations in both worlds. She also works as a consultant and does avatar makeovers.


Shava's butterfly outfit was a knockout, especially in the setting.

So, why am I telling you all this? The textures, man. Tuna's textures. A couple of days ago Impossible IRL'er Truthseeker Young TP'ed me to a location in the sky that took forever to rez, but when it did, the only word I could utter was "whoa!"

I was inside a hypercube that was pulsing with the most insanely beautiful - and busy - textures, and in the company of many friendly but extra exotic and strange avatars. It was Tuna who was responsible for this.


A harlequin'ed megaprim, spooling out some wicked effects.

Tuna Oddfellow: I really feel like we're doing something native to Second Life and groundbreaking, just with immersion... and I like playing with the art, and widgets!

Bettina Tizzy: In what way do you think it is ground breaking?

Tuna Oddfellow: The megaprims are loaded into a wearable Hypercube. I layer them, I use transparency and partial transparency and glow to produce layered effects. I basically torture the prims! ;) It's like a fully surrounding kaleidoscope.



Tuna Oddfellow: Shava turned to me one day when I was playing with stuff, and she said, "OMG, we've got something here, this is giving me vertigo." And that was last year sometime, maybe fall. Since then we've been working to make the show more and more *effecting*.


Thanks for that TP, Truthseeker!

Tuna Oddfellow: People come and they forget they are in a chair behind a computer. They forget the boundaries. We destroy the "fourth wall" of the computer screen and pull people into the reality. To me this is what virtual reality is supposed to be like, right? Not a chat client with graphics, but something that makes you *feel* different. People don't just get dizzy, they get happy. They feel stoned. They are exhilarated.



Bettina Tizzy: The textures are gorgeous. Are they very high resolution?

Tuna Oddfellow: I love fractals. And I love playing with the GIMP to mashup images. They are generally between 512 and 1024, and then seamlessly tiled.

Bettina Tizzy: So you are wearing this hypercube?

Tuna Oddfellow: When I'm on my own land, yes, like last night, I leave the cube on the floor, as it were. But when people hire me to do a show at a sim, I can either set it up there, or it's all set up to be wearable. Like a one-man band! My screen is completely covered by HUDs.

The funky music was streamed from a radio station in Louisiana.


Tuna does a weekly party on Monday nights from 7pm to 9pm SLT on his own land (teleport directly from here.) Occasionally he'll do a Saturday event for the European time-zone-challenged crowd. You can check out his upcoming gigs here.