Australia awards AU$30,000 to Nonnatus Korhonen and Nuerone Schism to combine art with neuroscience and make virtual bees

Avatar Nonnatus Korhonen and real bees hover over the honey in Nuerone Schism's hand

It must be said... Australia continues to trailblaze ahead of most first-world nations in its funding and fostering of novel programs that explore the arts in the virtual realm. The Australia Council for the Arts has just announced the winners of its collaborative massive multi-user virtual environment (MMUVE) arts project, MMUVE IT!, and this is the second consecutive year that a NPIRLer wins.

Our own Nonnatus Korhonen (aka Andrew Burrell), together with Nuerone Schism (aka Trish Adams), are the recipients of the Council's AU$30,000 grant, which they will use to collaborate on Mellifera, a mixed-realities artwork exploring cognitive processes and body movement, and their relationship to virtual environments in both Second Life® and the recently launched Australian virtual platform, Vastpark.

Last year's winner was Babelswarm - an interactive sculpture based on the mythical Tower of Babel - conceived and created by NPIRLer Adam Ramona (aka Adam Nash), Mashup Islander (aka Christopher Dodds), and Justin Clemens, (teleport directly from here).

Andrew Burrell (Nonnatus Korhonen) is a Sydney-based visual artist and writer, best known to us as the man who created the mysterious and elusive birds at the Garden of NPIRL Delights...


This photo by Kean Kelly

... as well as Oracle, an installation that investigates perception and interpretation of language and representation of form (teleport directly from here).



Brisbane-based arts/science practitioner and researcher Trish Adams (Nuerone Schism) has a Doctorate in Visual Arts, and her thesis explored the impact on expressions and representations of corporeality of experimental techniques in biomedical engineering and involved a cross-disciplinary collaboration with a biomedical scientist at The University of Queensland.

The artists will collaborate with Professor Mandyam Srinivasan, head of visual and sensory neuroscience at the University of Queensland's Brain Institute - where Trish Adams is currently an artist in residence - to create artifically intelligent bee-like creatures that will be native to their virtual environment. Said Andrew,"They'll feed and have predators like ordinary creatures, but their behaviour will be determined by the rules of the environment."

Professor Srinivasan was the recipient of the 2007 Premier of Queensland Smart State Fellowship Award for his leading research into cognition and navigation systems in small brains such as the honey bee.

Burning Life with Juria Yoshikawa - Just a peek

Our first blog photo... <3


SLURL: Event has ended.

Toxic Garden Rezzable

Our group members were among the first to be invited to preview the beta version of the newest Rezzable creation on Monday. Not one of the 9 or 10 NPIRL’ers I have spoken with survived long enough to experience (or cam) even half the build, and most gave up that day after three attempts/kills (you get sent back home o.O!). Of the three most recommended highlights: lady liberty, the foundry and reactor buildings, and the train, I only managed to see one of them myself... and then those pretty pink petals swallowed me up.

I Skyped yesterday with Toxic’s team leader, Foolish Frost, and his RL/SL wife Botany Black - the lead designer for organics - and learned that they started working on this project 6 weeks ago, but that sculpties were not initially used. Foolish, who works a great deal with Blender, stressed that Toxic was a group effort and that nearly every piece had passed through many hands. “All got to put our best into it; none of us own one piece of it,” added Botany.

The primary culprits for avatar kills are the artificially intelligent, path-finding dirge/ant drones, which make decisions as they travel from one point to another, determining what is needed, communicating with each other and hunting stuff down. This feature plus the animatronics (built into the winding vine tendrils and avatar-gobbling flowers), are two of the novel aspects at Toxic.

Speaking from experience, here are two life-saving tips:
#1 Grab the arm band in the foyer and for heavens sake, don’t take it off
#2 Stay away from the ants. Get off the path immediately if you see one coming.

Thanks for the preview, Foolish and Botany! We look forward to exploring Toxic and learning what comes next in this fascinating build.

Toxic Garden Rezzable

P.S. I just counted, and give or take a few, looks to me like Rezzable Productions, Ltd owns 32 sims. That's thirty two. XXXII.

Rezzable, btw, is actively hiring creators and managers.

Looking like mere specs on the Rezzable chunk of the map - you are required to look further in every direction - are Toxic Garden Rezzable, the much adored and practically-perfect-in-every-way Greenies Home Rezzable, and Cannery Rezzable which this afternoon inaugurated a smart and polished photography show featuring portraits of avatars. SL photographers Shoshana Epsilon and Vint Falken curated. For those of you who live in Los Angeles, some of the design elements of the gallery might remind you of the astonishing building that was especially created to house the Ashes and Snow show that sat on Santa Monica beach last summer.