Mescaline Tammas' sunglasses for Second Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I've been shouting from the roof tops in Second Life® for at least a month now about Mescaline Tammas' set of delicate, dusty and seriously elegant Windlight presets. If you enjoy photography or just wandering around in a haze of beauty, these are a must. I was astonished just now to discover that his post on Flickr (with links and instructions to download and install them) has only had 783 views.

Ah well. I guess I'll have to keep one of Second Life's best secrets to myself.



Windlight makes it possible for you to adjust and customize sky, water and atmospheric lighting effects in-world, so while the person next to you may be seeing everything from a nighttime lens, you can be enjoying your world in the comfy haze of London's dawn, or within a dusty Western patina.

Oh, I know this has nothing to do with Second Life, but just look at this animated film clip Mescaline created. Talent, eh?

A Burst of Conversation: AM Radio’s "The Red and the Wild"

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Avatar AM Radio unveiled The Red and the Wild to the public yesterday. It is the first such art installation at the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, a hybrid art and design studio at Ball State University funded by the Lilly Endowment. AM is a narrative artist who uses prims, Second Life®’s basic in-world creation tools, to paint moody settings that are awash in nostalgia for a time when objects of wood and metal were shaped and crafted in a workshop or barn, and not in some faraway factory in Taiwan. A keen observer of nature, his Plein Air scenes are hyper-real, and always unmistakably American… the wheat fields of Illinois near his current home, and the vast expanses of the Northeast. Those who know, however, realize that there are surreal secrets and surprises tucked away in every AM Radio build.  

...

It seems like forever ago; it seems like only yesterday. Matthew Kiddomen, then a member of our working group (NPIRL) and someone who left the grid for good soon after, sent me an IM some 20 months ago inviting me to come at once. “You must see this. It’s incredible,” he said.


I Set a Stack of Books by AM Radio

It was up in the sky above the IBM sandbox… a wheat field, an old rusty train, a table set with an odd assortment of objects including a violin, some grapes, and a sketch book. Also a quaint garage, an old fashioned gasoline pump, and a shadowbox recreation of Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Marat. There, too, was the creator of all this, a rather surprised but nevertheless congenial and very tall gentleman by the name of AM Radio, sporting a long black coat and top hat.



He had bits of straw about him and the air of a chimney sweep. Within five minutes there were many of us there. I recall that I teleported Pavig Lok and Orhalla Zander, among others. We peppered this man with questions and he answered them all quite obligingly. Yes, he’d created this about a year ago. Yes, it had been up in the sky all that time and no, he owned no land.

Today, even if you are only a minor explorer in Second Life, odds are good that you have ventured onto at least one installation created by AM Radio. You probably own a set of sticks that he has given you. Perhaps you also have one of his dragonflies.  

...

Engine, by AM Radio

Edges, by AM Radio

AM and I spent an hour conversing on Saturday, looking back at all that has transpired, and how it has influenced his thinking behind the creation of his newest: The Red and the Wild.  

So much has happened to you in the past couple of years. 

AM Radio: Huge learning experience. Often people will see me and say, "Oh, you're a person." And I have gotten used to it, but AM Radio really sort of became a brand. People think it’s a bunch of people building. So I have learned a lot, you know, managing that. It really is a careful process. So there is the learning aspect, but really in the last couple years I think the most important thing, the most meaningful thing for me has been the idea that we can participate in these virtual world activities, and have a real impact on the real world… and sometimes it is only vaguely related. Showing up at a concert in Second Life, and someone in Africa gets a cow.

Not long after he rezzed The Far Away at Dreamworld, AM Radio began to sell plots of wheat to benefit Heifer International with 100% of the proceeds. Heifer is an organization that works to end hunger and poverty by providing livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of people who struggle daily for dependable sources of food and income. It is best known for allowing people to "purchase" cows ($500US a piece) and other livestock. Today and just 20 months later, the sales of AM’s wheat have raised enough to buy a REAL herd of cows: $7,300 or nearly 15 cows.

Is there any way to know how your fundraising efforts have specifically benefited anyone?

AM Radio: Not specifically, not like the Adopt-a-Child programs you see on late night television. We like the cow metaphor Heifer uses. You know that $500 US is equal to a cow, or $120 a goat, but even then it’s impossible to say. Even if you knew you bought an actual cow because that cow’s milk is bought by other people in that town, trade occurs and neighbors converse, enemies begin to see advantages to understanding their neighbor. It's exponential.

Saturday was World Malaria Day. I recall that you did some fundraising for nets. Have you continued that effort?

AM Radio: Nothingbutnets.net - In 2008 I sold an off-road vehicle and the Lindens from those sales went to Nothingbutnets. That's a great program. Literally one net potentially saves one, or even two lives. For just $10 USD? I mean… come on, how better to spend ten bucks? Two Big Mac meals, or a teenager in Africa has anti-malaria nets at night to sleep in.

Is that vehicle still for sale?

AM Radio: That vehicle is not. You know, that was another thing I learned. Growth can be unpredictable. I had a very kind sim owner offer three sims, plus Princeton, and NMC and everything got complex really quickly, so I went back to my roots with the charity work, focusing on Heifer.

Sometimes it is best to keep the message as simple as possible, is it not?

AM Radio: Yes, exactly. Splitting off was requiring management at levels I am not ready for yet. I need help!

He went on to create The Quiet for Princeton University and Husk for the New Media Consortium (NMC). Then came The Refuge and the Expansion for just one week, a sim-wide version of the wheat field, and today that same installation is three sims large, under the patronage of art collector Alexandar Vargas. Since then, AM has conjured two other acclaimed sims: Beneath the Tree that Died for the University of Kentucky and Waiting for You.

Time-lapse machinima by AM Radio: "This is about 200 minutes of time lapse captured with FRAPS. A visitor with a powerful face-light visits about half way into filming and briefly lights up the center." Music is Artemis

If people wanted to help you, what could they do?

AM Radio: Right now, the easiest thing to do is get the word out. Often people apologize to me, especially at music events hosted on the sims. They say, sorry, “I can't donate right now.” And I totally hear that. But one of the great things about Second Life is that participation alone adds to the momentum. Showing up and being excited inspires those who do have the ability to donate.

How has your view of art in a virtual scenario changed in the past two years?

AM Radio: That Virtual Worlds is a valid art medium. It went from “Oh, this is neat.” To, “Wow,  something is happening here,” to “Wow, it's in the New York Times.”

Is this a confirmation? Or did you believe it was less than that before? And how about how you approach your art? Has that changed in any way?

AM Radio: I don't think I thought any less of the medium. I think I paused more on the perception of Second Life by its own users and the Real Life public, and yes, (it) absolutely changed my art process. I think in my Real Life art, I have always been drawn to organic subjects. The fields, the trees, but there was a frustration, having been born in the mid-seventies, and really growing up in a very plasticized and prepackaged, processed world... sunlight, for our generation, is something seen through Plexiglass windows, and my art is a reaction against that. It's looking for more… for the organic. So it was an attempt to tear down the fakery, all that plastic in impossible colors, and awful rugs, and terrible media, like television, but in Second Life, there's almost an acceptance that much of this generation has already been living virtual. Everything is controlled, and marketed, from the music to food, to the computers the cool kids use. And now, here I am in a virtual world, trying to create the organic. I think it is still a search, but almost feels like…(pause) …a responsibility.

The wearable HUD at The Red and the Wild plays a tone and guides your camera to a specific angle when you touch a specific number - Photographs courtesy of Newdoll Nikolaidis

AM Radio: You know my critics like to peck that I am too close to (Andrew) Wyeth, but why not? Why can't we bring that here? Why can't we make sure we don't forget where we are, that this is all those plasticized windows filtering our sunlight.

I can't help but think... you and I both spend so much time in world. How has all this changed your own sense of place? The ability to create your own environment and live in it, and share it?

AM Radio: Let me be careful how I answer that. I don't want to dissuade criticism of my work... but my work is deeply personal. What you see is so much a part of me; these are symbols of my life and events, and my emotions. Yates said “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...” My sense of space here, I suppose, has become a more elastic version of real life. You know I can place out what I want and I can share things, but people can visit and bring their own emotional baggage, and see what they want, and expand my own understanding of my own memories. It's like having hundreds of people analyzing your dreams and posting their thoughts about them on Flickr... thousands of them.

You mean... that they can affect your own understanding of your creations?

AM Radio: Yes. Some artists…

…prefer not to read the reviews of their works, for whatever reasons. I take it this is not the case with you. How much of what you read/hear/discuss about your work are you absorbing? Is it malleable? Vulnerable?

AM Radio: I think I try to read as much as I can. I think I often do go off on tangents on builds, and I sometimes forget about the bigger picture and mission of Second Life. It's easy when you have access to a sim to just cover the sky when Windlight isn't really jiving with what I am trying to do, but I still find myself challenged by this specific limitation to not be able to easily share settings. What I did was try to make a build that allowed you to easily remove my tinting. You can lower your draw distance a bit and return to the default sky, for example, and also it is a tinting, so the Windlight bleeds through, allowing for the user to work with their list of presets in ways they haven't seen them work before.


sensations by Thea Denja - Taken at "The Red and the Wild"

Your works, all of them, seem to hearken to days - we can only speculate - of your childhood. What we do know is that most people don't live like that anymore. The train that was rusty in The Far Away is new and more of a concept at The Red and the Wild. Are we entering a new era?

AM Radio: Maybe more toy-like at The Red and The Wild. The new sim is inspired by elements of my boyhood. The house itself figured centrally in my life. The other houses I have built were more abstract memories of houses. This one is nearly accurate. In fact, it is odd to see people walking on its porch and not feel like they're trespassing somehow.


AM Radio's train at The Red and the Wild 

What age were you?

AM Radio: Oh, I must have been about ten.

Does the red abstract burst have a name? Care to explain it?

AM Radio: The sim has the same name (The Red and the Wild). I had been fooling with prims in an abstract way. I had started doing that way back; you might remember the boxes on The Far Away: The Way the Air moves.


The Way the Air Moves, by AM Radio

I think abstraction fails in a vacuum. I think an abstract painting looks far more interesting when a lady wearing a Packers jacket is fumbling through a museum looking at them, wondering if she should know more.


The Speckles in Your Iris, by AM Radio

AM Radio: There is a dialog between the abstract and the real that occurs in any abstract art, and I have had a really difficult time accepting abstract art in virtual worlds because that dialog is often missing. I think (that dialog... that ether for a relationship) most often works when the artist interrupts the abstraction with some inclusion of the avatar... with most avatars based on a very real human form. So, I have been really leery about using Abstraction in Second Life. I use it a lot in Real Life in my collage work. You can find some of those real life works on the new sim. 

Tiny Little Pieces of Radio, by AM Radio

AM Radio: I had been thinking about these large shapes and not really understanding how I might get away with using them, and be able to explain myself to an art critic, or press, and I was really kind of at a dead end with it, but a friend from Atlanta, a very talented music, film, and 3d artist, sent some music he had been working on. One of the tracks included samples from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. At one point in the movie, and in Capote's Novella, Holly, the main character describes her anxieties and her fears as “the mean reds,” and immediately I thought of this large shape, these looming things in our lives that seem to want to tear us down. At the same time, these looming things, these anxieties, inspire us to become who we are, how we behave, how we react to things, how we present our avatar, how we define our virtual spaces.

In fact, in the movie, Holly has created an entire virtual world for herself. Her escape is the commoditized world where money defines what's real, and I thought “Wow, this is really relevant to virtual worlds.” Later in the movie and in the novella, Holly says... "But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll just end up looking at the sky," and suddenly my thoughts on injecting abstract shapes made sense.

I had the courage to say that this abstraction means something, that here is a symbol of something, that we have these abstract parts of ourselves, these fears, these wild things we try to bury, and without them, we don't become who we are. The Red and the Wild really is a comment on that relationship that abstraction and realism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they rely on one another to even exist. In the end Holly, of course, realizes she's living in a self constructed world, and immediately begins to redefine it.

Teleport to The Red and the Wild directly from here. 

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AM Radio's project, "The Space Between Those Trees," is a finalist for the Linden Prize, which will be awarded to one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD for "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."

Bryn Oh's abandoned robot theme park - Tomorrow's featured NPIRL-Koinup Safari

by Bettina Tizzy

Tomorrow, January 10th at 11:00am SLT, and awaiting on the other side of your teleport (directly from here) will be Bryn Oh. For an hour, this talented content creator will give an intimate and informative tour of one of the most photogenic sims on the grid: Immersiva. I've had the experience, and I guarantee that you will never look at Bryn's work the same.

A few weeks ago, Dusan Writer - the coolest businessman in SL, and yes! He is the same man who acquired and created a home for Eshi Otawara's Flower Tower - underscored his role as an arts benefactor by giving Bryn Oh her very own sim to do with it what she wished. Imagine Bryn with the abilty to create her own ground textures... her very own world.


Bryn Oh and Mr. Lightbulb

Immersiva is emerging as one of the truly great sims on the grid. Before you go, you really, really should add Bryn's Windlight preset and all its blue-ish atmosphere. You can download it and get installation instructions here (it's easy!) or set it up manually:


Immersiva Sky Windlight setting by Bryn Oh:

Go to World at top left of your screen. In the drop down menu at the bottom pick environment settings and then environment editor. Click on Advanced Sky. Then click the button "new".

If you are using a Mac, go to your Applications folder, right-click "Second Life WindLight", select "Show Package Contents", then open Contents > Resources > app_settings > Windlight

Under Atmosphere

Blue horizon R=0.24 G=0.43 B=0.50 I=0.50
Haze Horizon=0.65
Blue Density R=0.08 G=0.21 B=0.39 I=0.39
Haze Density=4.0
Density Multiplier=0.36
Distance Multiplier=11.6
Max Altitude=586

Under Lighting

Sun/moon colour is all set to 0.18
Sun/moon position is 0.25
Ambient is all set to 0.11
East Angle is 0
Sun Glow focus 0.1 size 1.81
Scene Gamma is 1
Star B is 0

Under Clouds tab

Cloud Color is all 0.7
Cloud Density x and y is 0.5 and D is 0.54
Cloud coverage is 0.5
Cloud scale is 0.53
Cloud detail x and y is 0.5 and D is 0.12
Cloud scroll x is 1.45
Cloud scroll Y is .01

Now give this preset a name, such as "Immersiva" and save it. Voila! You are ready.


Bryn's "Ferrisquito" in the background...

Immersiva has its own page on Koinup, which you will find here.



Once a month, NPIRL and Koinup - an inclusive social networking site for all Virtual Worlds that permits storage and sharing of imagery: photography, Machinima, and "storyboards" - are offering the NPIRL Safaris - with many of Second Life's best content creators, exposing the participants to new sims, new content, and new ideas that are leaving the old world behind and breaching the future.



Among the Virtual Worlds you'll find images of on Koinup: Second Life®, World of Warcraft, Lively, The Sims, IMVU, vSide, Kaneva, There, and more.

The Not Possible IRL (NPIRL) and Impossible IRL (ImpIRL) groups are dedicated to identifying and sharing well conceived and realized content creation in Virtual Worlds which would not be possible in Real Life: architecture, landscaping, art, animations, fashion, particle effects, building tools and scripts... show me, I'll show you.

Gary Hazlitt turns the page on 2008 - What happened and what's coming in virtual worlds

Sydney-based Brit and marketing wiz, musician, composer and rich content creator in virtual worlds Gary Hazlitt (aka Gary Hayes), is already done celebrating the incoming year, while we wait for a few more hours in the Western Hemisphere for 2009 to arrive.

Gary, who studied physics, is the director of the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP), and also heads up Virtual Worlds for the UK-based The Project Factory, for which he produced the highly successful and eminently revistable (as the traffic numbers indicate) Australian Telstra and ABC Second Life presences.

I welcome Gary's guest blogpost and knowledgeable take on the recent past and the coming adventures of virtual worlds. Happy New Year, everyone! - Bettina Tizzy

by Gary Hazlitt



In the social Virtual Worlds context, 2006 was about hype... another new frontier 'kid-on-the-block,' but became about fast bucks and cheap and cheerful PR. We saw that bubble gently burst in 2007 as the realisation that one world in particular, Second Life® (which is still the leading example of culturally created virtual content), was really about creative communication and artistic expression versus the local shopping mall or a crude business tool.

Last year, 2008, we witnessed a distillation in what Second Life (and by implication other customisable worlds) is really about, leading to a proliferation of new, niche virtual worlds meeting the cultural and entertainment needs of much broader demographics. We effectively saw the 'fat' surgically removed from Second Life and an acceptance that this new medium and form is still in its very early days, but in 2008 there are clearer reasons for being a part of the social web mix:

1. An immersive expression of community - Facebook and MySpace-meets-World of Warcraft. This community can create their own environments or swarm around trusted film, TV or lifestyle brands, too.
2. For business, it is more about a place to meet, present and recruit and far less about brand awareness, product sales or vacuous hype. The business model in 2008 clearly came into focus: the community selling to itself - brands needed to court existing inhabitants very carefully.
3. For education, Second Life is one of the most efficient tools in the learning process. Education becomes democratised, everyone can contribute and learn equally, remote learning is far more compelling, fun and immersive.
4 A creative tool. Second Life, in particular, showed significant maturity as we saw a higher number of serious live performance (CARP, NMC, DanCoyote Antonelli, for example), a record number of in-world 'machinima & TV-like programs' and by far the largest array of creative statements from virtual environment artists, many members of the NPIRL group. The quality of 'experience' creation from talented musicians, designers, photographers, artists, etc., reached new heights.


GROWTH OF WORLDS

Investment across the board - more than $900 million US invested since Oct 2007 - has moved away from generalist worlds like Second Life to more focused niche or user base environments with many starting to exhibit core game elements. These include those with renewed investment after new'ish launches: vSide, Football Superstars, Stardoll, Home, IMVU, Metaplace, Multiverse Places, and Music Mogul.



Towards the end of the year, console social worlds came onto the scene. XBox360 and Wii are very similar in 'cartoon' aesthetic, whereas Sony is far more game focused. All have very similar business models - create a space to hang out and be 'tempted' by games/film/merchandise. Although these are not yet places for community creation, they will soon learn that to keep inhabitants they will need to be or, like Google Lively, have to pull the plug. Embeddable or layered worlds began in 2008 and are likely to be significant in getting people used to real time communication through 'representational' avatars - vs text based 'social network' profiles. Also, Facebook worlds like YoVille or Vivaty, or layered worlds like Rocketon or Weblin that are embedded on the existing 2D web. The dominance of the likes of Club Penguin and Webkinz at the tweens end of the spectrum will be duplicated through teens and gen y's as a series of new, highly focused and targeted social worlds launch next year. This has already begun with Football Superstars and Music Mogul but expect to see many more - including several with user created content as a feature alongside the virtual economy.


HIGHLIGHTS OF 2008

- Graphics in Second Life become teenagers. Still some way from the likes of Crysis, Second Life Windlight turned the world into something far more fantastical for many. It added layers of light, glow and control to a previously very 'flatly lit' world. We still wait for dynamic shadows, better environmental sound and an even more useful scripting language (post Mono), but this was a paradigm shift for environmental artists.
- Some companies got it! There was not a plethora of companies or brands entering Second Life but those that did had continued success as they concentrated on the social (people) rather than 'product' aspects of their business. Although the Pond leads in dwell terms, new entrants like Warner's Gossip Girl have done exceedingly well. Car companies still do well even though Pontiac walked away from Second Life, and Toyota, Fiat and Nissan are always in the top 10 brands.


Click image to see larger

- The quality of machinima across all social and game worlds increased exponentially this year and a growth in communities watching 'documents' of the worlds they spend most of their time in. In addition to some machinima appearing in heritage media ("Molotov Alva and his Search for the Creator" and HBO/Cinemax, for example) there has been a growth in long form game-engine films and notably many more serious issues tackled.
- The New Worlds. A fracturing, as it became obvious that Second Life cannot be all things to all avatars - so nearly 70 other worlds all showed up on the radar. Many are focusing on niche interest or are highly branded. Several of the new 'jack-of-all-trades' entrants will learn that enabling community creativity and an economy is absolutely necessary. There were several walled garden/locked content mirror worlds and builds in 2008, which will learn to be not about 'broadcast' spaces, and realise that their worlds are far more significant than modelling what is around us - "In augmented and online virtual worlds, humanity will exponentially evolve, free from the limiting ghosts of that other virtual world we called reality".

The Chasm between loneliness and solitude - Nebulosus Severine and her sim prompt self-awareness

Chasm, the dramatic new mostly black & white sim that is available for just one more week, is an unconvential virtual experience for the visitor who is encouraged to go there alone.

Its creator, New England artist Nebulosus Severine (aka CM Pauluh), asks that you download and install two custom Windlight presets to round out a journey that involves music, light and loneliness. Or is it solitude?

Beyond the obvious aspects (terraforming, textures and prims) of the sparce but eminently theatrical installation offered there, Chasm is, for me, the antithesis of the virtual experience that is marketed to us. Indeed, I cannot recall another time or place in Second Life® when solitary exploration has been emphasized, yet most of us spend a good deal of our time alone. I certainly do. I asked Nebulosus about this and more.

What do you want the visitor to take away after visiting Chasm?
Nebulosus Severine: I intended Chasm to be a challenging but (hopefully) rewarding experience. Some of the technical requirements needed to view it (the Windlight preset, for example) might deter some viewers who don't want to bother taking the extra effort, but I don't create art for those kinds of people. I want my art to be provocative - not necessarily in a controversial way, but to have emotional and intellectual impact on the audience.

I built 'Chasm' to underscore the feelings of isolation and desolation I have often experienced; I know I can't possibly be the only person to have felt like this, so I am hoping others will be able to relate to it as well.

How important is the spectator/visitor to you when you create your art?
Nebulosus Severine: A lot of my art is very personal, thus I hope that my art connects with the viewer on an individual, emotional level. I often have trouble relating to people directly, so art is a way for me to reach out to them, and a way for me to deal with my feelings, as well. A lot of my art is meant to be challenging -- not the kind of thing you go and have a look at for 5 minutes, but something to ponder, something that will have an impact.



For most, the Second Life® experience is a social one to be shared in the company of others. It is certainly always promoted as a social experience... What are your thoughts on being alone in Second Life?
Nebulosus Severine: I think the same could be said of First Life; humans, or at least the majority, are largely social creatures. There are those of us who, whether in Second Life or First Life, spend a majority of their free time alone; and while in a broad sense those people can be described as introverted, the experience is different for everyone who falls into that category. Personally, I regard my solitude with some ambivalence.

I am not that great at conveying my thoughts and feelings verbally (visual communication is much, much easier for me), thus I often rely on the words of others to describe how I feel in writing. A quote by Paul Johannes Tillich simply and accurately states what my reclusive nature means to me: "Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone, and the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."


Before you teleport, download Nebulosus' essential and custom preset for this visit here. Follow Nebulosus' installation instructions provided here. Then, teleport directly from here.

Eshi Otawara's one-hour sim project is blossoming

July 22 - 1:47am UPDATE: The flower will stay for a bit longer. Eshi would have to eject people from the sim otherwise! I look at what is there and wonder... how can people who aren't in Second Life® look at this and not want to dive in immediately?


Can you smell the Night Jasmine? Eshi's tux dress against Eshi's flower

1:40pm UPDATE: Dusan Writer has just acquired this installation... thank heavens! Eshi has not been saving any of her sim-wide creations for this project, but this one just couldn't disappear. It just couldn't!

Also, I should mention that I took all of these photographs using Torley's special Windlight presets.

~*~

These are just a few of the dozens of photographs I took at Eshi Otawara's latest in her ongoing one-hour sim project... a towering flower. I didn't retouch them.

Just go... Teleport directly from here. It will poof by midnite tonite SLT.

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.

Using forced shadows in the Second Life engine

Interesting exchange going on here between Dave Parks at Linden Lab and Argent Stonecutter, regarding SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion), and the future of forcing shadows in the engine. Be sure to look at all the photographs once you get in Picassa.

*Drools*

Time Out!

By golly, a new record... my fourth blog post of the day and so much to say!

NEW WINDLIGHT VIEWER WITH FIXES!
Get that baby here now, and like Pastrami Linden says, if you have an ATI card, be sure to download the latest drivers.

SPECIAL REQUEST TO ALL INVITATION MAKERS
If you are seeking wide distribution of your invitation, kindly make the invitation and all its enclosures (notecards, landmarks, etc.) full perm so that they can be distributed via notice.

SPECIAL REQUEST TO ALL ARTISTS:
Whether you sell your art, or give it away, collectors will bless you many times over if you *add your name* to the name of every art piece you ever make. It's a misery trying to find things with obscure names in inventory.


That said, let's talk art...



If you like sculpture - and I do mean really_great_sculpture - I highly recommend that you make your way over to the Time out of Time show curated by Tayzia Abattoir at her Crescent Moon Museum. It has a very short run... opened yesterday, and ends this Sunday.

I've just been and there were three important pieces by Starax that I had never seen before: Rivals, Sore Love and his Clock. The more I learn about his work, the more I understand the depth of his legacy to art in Second Life. The Crescent Moon now sits on a Havok 4 sim, which seems to be disagreeing with the script for the clock, but it was behaving when I was there.

There's one incredible piece by Savi Seyes (look for it on the top of the little mountain just outside the museum). I understand Savi died last year and that some were not aware of her passing. If you are learning it here, I am so sorry.

Look for several sculptures by Bryn Oh. This new artist has me in a tizzy... her clockwork mechanisms and insects! I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more from her.

I found two works by Cheen Pitney , just outside the museum to one side: his Sax Man - featured here earlier today - and his Bear Dancers.

There are only two copies in-world of Fire 'n Ice by Aiden Seraph, and Tayzia has rezzed one of them.

So many other inventive, special works, many new to me... a gorgeous sculpture - Bold Caution - by Lash Xevious, Stella Costello's Primolution, Sorrow by Androclese Antonelli, and Determination by Neobokrug Elytis... many more. In fact, I think I need to go back and look again!

Again, recommended. Teleport directly from here.

A vacation postcard - visiting Spiral Walcher

Dropped in to take a peek at what Spiral Walcher is up to... it's blue!



No landmark yet, but he's got his own, brand new Rezzable sim.

Spiral Walcher introduces "the new neon"

I live for those IMs... unexpected, urgent, and magical on the other end of the subsequent teleport to something surprising and new. I received a couple of those messages this past week from Spiral Walcher, who's incredible top hats were featured here not even a month ago. Spiral is yet another terrific content creator AM Radio has introduced me to.

Just look at what he is doing... playing with Windlight and textures! I've sent a few samples to Torley Linden as I think these are shining examples of the pluses of Windlight, but haven't heard back yet. Please someone, show Torley this!

They are rezzed in a sandbox in the sky over IBM 6. Still, 2D photography doesn't do them justice. They move and shimmer and change in much the way many particles do. You simply have to go and see them for yourself. First teleport here and then look for these coordinates: 171, 106, 101. Then fly up... looking for a black box in the sky.





This is a floor... again, 2D stills do not do it justice.



It all started with his experimentation with this box and a couple of others.





Then, just yesterday, Spiral TP'ed me to this... an electric forest! Teleport directly from here.



I'd say this is the beginning of an important new technique, wouldn't you?