A sculptural installation that has attained A State of Grace

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Glyph Graves' latest, largest and certainly most stirring installation had many births. Originally conceived in early spring of 2008, it didn't reach fruition due to his busy schedule and limited prim availability. Since that time, however, he has made a name for himself as a notable sculptor in Second Life®, and today marks the public opening of his Strangers Also Dance, the inaugural show at IBM's brand new art and architecture exhibition space, curated by Tezcatlipoca Bisiani (aka Andrew Sempere, Research Designer at IBM's Center for Social Software).

Glyph is an Australian biologist who's virtual self is best known for kinetic, mostly abstract alpha sculptures that emit musical notes and eerie-to-sweet sounds when triggered by an avatar's proximity, though he is increasingly working with partially inverted solid-textured sculpts.

I've been a fan of Glyph's work for some time now and frequently feature his work on my own sim. This winter I happened upon this video by Todd Vanderlin and shared it with him as it reminded me of the behavior of several of his undulating sculptures and their responsiveness to avatars.

Scary Vines from vanderlin on Vimeo.

Glyph has since incorporated this thinking and included it in his reactive reeds. I mention this because he is an artist that is unusually receptive to new ideas and, like his sculptural work, acknowledges and rapidly evolves with his environment. This isn't to say that he is malleable or excessively adaptive. Rather, he is acutely aware and sensitive to exploration.

Strangers Also Dance is a remarkably immersive installation based on a poignant story that conjoins our Second Life universe with an alternate reality sweetly suffered by jellyfish that ventured too far from their warm gas giant home, becoming displaced in an environment that they find difficult but make the best of.

Importantly, Glyph approached the design of this build and its narrative beginning with its climatic circumstances. The Second Life ground upon which the adventure begins is suitable for humans (aka avatars) but too cold for these extra-SLterrestials and plants. Even so, the landscape is other-wordly. Obeying the laws of natural selection, a delicate pink creature was unable to keep up with its peers and has crystallized, laying dormant until it is visited, and touched, and therefore warmed by the avatar's body.





The avatar is enveloped by the creature, which begins to whisper to its guest:

Freed Alien Jelly: Nothing that will hurt you little one. Your warmth has freed me from the cold down here. Let me show you something few have ever seen... rest now. In your sleep, strange fragments of dreams of swimming in strange clouds come unbidden. Suddenly you feel disturbed as the hard crystalline surface you rested on melts away, then comforted by a sense of gentle enfolding and warm gratitude.

Delicately, a luminous jellyfish breaks free from the crystal, enclosing the avatar and floating upwards, all the while reassuring its capture that it will be gentle until...



... finally, almost tenderly, it deposits its human prize somewhere new, somewhere quite different, on a strange and wonderfully tropical terrain.



Sit on one of the immense tubes and you are one with this new matrix, downloading information as quickly as the creatures can share it.

The time was a memory past
through banded clouds
over hot seas
we swam

then later,

of cold stars and eternal night
we arrived,
we stayed too long
we could not go back

Released, you begin to explore, learning as you go about their sorrowful plight which they seem to accept with enormous grace. As I listened and absorbed their story, I couldn't help but admire their forbearance. My empathy grew.


"Do you want to know how we felt?" asks Biocrystal darkness. "When we first left the cradle of our world? Remember, our home, always bathed in warm clouds, always immersed in soft light. (Silence) Then dark. (Silence) What light there was, sharp like thorns and cold. (Silence) Enter. And feel."

Technically, there are a number of hallmarks: All sounds throughout the installation are played note by note. The speakers (the green plants) are designed to produce a spatial sense by cascading the notes down prim by prim as well as having them arranged around the sphere. A stereo effect is created by splitting the stereo track into mono components and playing them in opposite prims, which is also swirled by playing the pairs in consecutive prims.

Glyph's cellular automata react to both the avatar touching them and to the state of each of their local neighbors. After they've been touched, the music begins to self-propagate in a repeating pattern, which is different each time.

Since 2006, IBM has played an active role in empowering Second Life content creators with the IBM 6 sandbox which recently doubled in size and is open to all residents on the grid, whether they work for IBM or not. PatriciaAnne Daviau, its manager, has done an admirable job of maintaining a lively and active community there, though I can't help wishing that they didn't force teleports to one central location. It makes it very difficult to share works-in-progress with others who must then go by the coordinates to find their way.

Thanks to Jessica Qin's (aka Craig Becker, CIO Office of Strategic Initiatives) initiative and drive, IBM has moved to advance its presence with the content creation community, and particularly fans of art and architecture, with the launch of the new two-sim IBM Exhibition Space.

Teleport directly from here.

Evo Szuyuan's video document of Adam Ramona's immersive installation "17 Unsung Songs"

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

A hermit by his own admission, Australian Adam Ramona (aka Adam Nash) makes translucent jeweled sculptures in virtual environments that interact with and whisper to their visitors, and sometimes even sing to them. The tunes are generally mellifluous, but occasionally they are sad or downright chilling. Some of his interactive mixed reality pieces occupy and depend on both Real and virtual spaces to fully blossom, such as Babelswarm, which he co-created with Mashup Islander and Justin Clemens and produced with a $20,000 (Aus Dollars) grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Adam has had me waiting with baited breath for months now to share a gorgeous new installation of his - and a favorite of mine - but in the meantime, I was happy to learn today that videographer and editer Evo Szuyuan (aka Brigit Lichtenegger) has created a machinima in which she has documented his Seventeen Unsung Songs, a sprawling installation curated by Sugar Seville that has endured for over a year on the East of Odyssey sim in Second Life®.

Here are parts 1 and 2 of Evo's video: 17 Unsung Songs, featuring cameo roles by a number of well-known Second Life artists and presented separately because of YouTube length limitations. The video was shown at the premiere of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award Exhibition.





You can still visit Seventeen Unsung Songs by teleporting directly from here.

Aiyas Aya's mountain

Canadian artist Aiyas Aya's (aka Christopher Postill) installation, "Upward Race to the Bottom," at the Garden of NPIRL Delights has always had something missing... until today that is. Aiyas, this one's for you! On the spur of the moment a slew of volunteers TP'ed in and we made it happen!


Not one pose-ball in sight! Click to see large

Aiyas describes his installation as follows: "The aim of this piece is to incorporate audience avatars as an integral part of a sculptural form. I am creating sculpture using the avatars of participants; the piece requires interaction in order to be completed. This user interaction slowly brings together a rough narrative experience as more and more viewers participate.

When properly filled, the piece becomes a wreathing mass of avatar bodies all reaching upward, stuck in a perpetual state of competition. A literal mountain of bodies all supporting eachother but fighting for the summit at the same time. Without participants, the piece is a simple terraformed mountain, but as more audience members sit on the 'pose-balls', the piece transforms into a tableau of never-ending struggle toward the top."


This photo by Gary Kohime caught us in the initial attempt

Participants include (sorry if I didn't catch your name!):
Amyrlin Sewell - Aurakyo Insoo - Avi Arrow - Bettina Tizzy - Bryn Oh - Cocoanut Koala - Dannie Fargis - Decoy Nagy - Economic Mip - Elina Radek - Ella Quinsette - Emuishere Boa - Gary Kohime - Glyph Graves - Gypsy Paz - Izikael Novi - Julia Hathor - Keenan Yengawa - Krystalheart Oh - LittleToe Bartlett - Lumiere Noir - Maraschino Susa - Mordechai Laasonen - Rena Mascot - Rikard Bashly - TheDove Rhode - Tryptofaa Sands


We had to struggle to get in! This photo by fellow Garden artist Gary Kohime

Thank you, everyone! More photos can be seen here and here.


Some days ago, Quadrapop Tree captured another bodacious attempt to fill the mountain!

The myth of Babel comes alive: Babelswarm

In September of 2007, the Australia Council for the Arts announced the winners of its $20,000 (Aus Dollars) - then the equivalent of $4 million Lindens - Second Life arts residency.

Now, Adam Ramona (aka Adam Nash), Mashup Islander (aka Christopher Dodds), and Justin Clemens (a senior lecturer at the School of Culture and Communications, Melbourne University) have just unveiled the fruit of that grant: BabelSwarm.

I contacted Adam, whom I've written about before, and asked him to explain the concepts and workings behind this new effort.

Adam Ramona: Babelswarm is an interactive audiovisual installation based on the myth of Babel and the principles of swarming. It is a mixed reality installation, with a Real Life installation at the Lismore Regional Gallery, New South Wales, Australia...



...and a Second Life installation at the ACVA sim - Australian Centre for Virtual Art, (teleport directly from here).



Adam Ramona: All chat in the sim is monitored and stored to an online database. Voice triggers in the Real Life gallery, or interaction within the Second Life sim, trigger the sky to rain down phrases from the database. These phrases fall apart upon spawning, and the individual letters are programmed to try to reform the word they came from. Unfortunately for them, all they know is their original position in their word. They don't know what the word is or what letters they are. An emergent tower of letters forms, constantly recombining upon interaction with avatars and other letterforms. It is an emergent audiovisual interactive sculpture constructed dynamically by the users themselves.



Adam Ramona: Each letter chooses one of a range of sounds upon birth. These sounds are sourced from many different Real Life people saying the phrase "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech," the first line of the Biblical story of Babel (Genesis 11), in their native language, including Cantonese, Greek, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Malay, Romanian, Singhalese and English. These sounds are harmonically effected using my rational scale. Each letter has two states: hibernation and seeking. When seeking, it is actively looking for other letters to reform its word with. When touched by an avatar in this state, the letter will die. When hibernating, it sits still waiting to be reactivated into a seeking state by either a touch/collision from an avatar or collision with a seeking letterform.



Now that BabelSwarm exists in both real and virtual form, the possibility of setting up that installation in other Real Life galleries and museums is entirely plausible. More information is available here.

The fertile mind of artist and writer elros Tuominen

I've spoken before about prolific artists in Second Life, but none that I know of produces a steadier stream of new creations than the Basque sculptor and writer elros Tuominen (aka Antonio Alza).

Every morning when I log in, there is a notecard waiting for me from elros containing a brief and beautiful piece of prose, always written in first person to a woman he unquestionably adores (not me, mind you :). Here is one example:

Good morning, new morning day, such a beautiful and almost perfect day. Time's stopped, time's over, time's far far far, time's a painting, an invention to organize our little walking through life, time belongs to the old days, time's a beast, it keeps on eating human minds, but time's days are falling down, it's turning into a hurt black bird, still looking for meat, fresh and bloody meat.... but time is hurt, it won't last too much..... time, just like a dying star, it will just eat itself, faster and faster and faster, they will be hard days I know, but time will leave us alone, at least, alone; of course, we will walk like lost children through the ruins of time, with no direction, it won't last, we won't remember what it was, and time will be just dust floating on the sky, pieces of dark feathers going up and down, little and dirty feathers, time... who will remember then... Good morning, new morning day, good morning heart, are you feeling alright? the world is going round and round, good morning heart, isn't it sweet, isn't it amazing, life's making sense, life's giving us jewels... no more black birds...

Good morning
elros Tuominen

elros also creates a new piece of interactive art or jewelry about every two days. 2D photography does not do justice to 3D interactive art, but I hope the following snaps will entice you enough to go and have a peek at his work. Two good places are Tayzia Abattoir's Crescent Moon Museum (teleport directly from here) and Morris Vig's Oyster Bay Gallery (teleport directly from here). You can actually purchase his work at elros' store, the Tubular Gallery (teleport directly from here), or online.


"Multiple planar perspectives" switches from blue to pink to aqua to purple.

Just before the holidays, elros generously offered two of his gorgeous kinetic sculptures to NPIRLers as gifts. I asked him if he wanted to issue a notecard as well, and he replied, "yes, but first I need some Floyd." After further inquiries, I came to understand that he was going to listen to some Pink Floyd for inspiration. I wish music had such a powerful effect on me!


This swirly thing is called "Dancers," and spins very gently on its axis.

Yesterday, elros sent me an unannounced landmark. I don't usually receive landmarks from him, so I immediately popped in for a look (see below).


His newest, very large piece is called "inside road to ovetum" and is made up of megaprims. It is rezzed in the sky. There's another large piece just above it. Simply fly directly up.

Most of elros' sculptures are low prim, and every single one of them is in constant, fluid motion. One can only imagine what elros' reaction was when he first realized that he could add movement scripts to his art work.


This piece is quite large and a good example of a running theme that elros has been exploring that I am simply wild about. Stop by his shop (teleport directly from here) to see his "teardrops in the rain" in-world. I can almost guarantee that you will be wowed.

Several of his sculptures gracefully "fade in/fade out," such as this fan-like piece called "Playing Harp."



Finally, I discovered this Machinima interview of elros by Magellan Egoyan, which makes it much easier for those who are not in-world to grasp what we are talking about when we refer to elros' interactive art.

Fire-side chat with Gary Hazlitt, or interactive marketing 101

Within something like two minutes of meeting NPIRL'er Gary Hazlitt, I realized that I am going to want to warm my toes by the heat of his knowledge and - importantly - his marketing prowess... often and a lot.

It is so very rare to find someone who is, at once, technically expert and savvy/hyper-innovative in the area of user-friendly branding. It isn't for nothing that Australia's 11-island The Pond (or BigPond) - which he masterminded and lead-created for Australia's communications group Telstra - is experiencing 12K+ visits a week (see Tateru Nino's analysis), and is the highest rated brand in Second Life.

Even more endearing is the fact that Gary is a ginormous supporter and believer in the power of the Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) concept, and integrates it into his builds in fun, approachable and unexpected ways.

The spice on Gary (aka Gary Hayes IRL):
* Sydney-based, born a Brit, lived in the U.S.
* Director of the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP)
* Heads up Virtual Worlds for the UK-based The Project Factory
* ...is a busy blogger on SL and its culture, as well as role-playing which he says is a "big fascination of mine atm"
* Is an advocate and has a passion for creating rich organic
story environments
* Makes cool vids
* Is a musician and composer, having created music for film, radio, tv and self-expressed albums

Here are some highlights of what Gary had to say when, for a change, I actually kept my fingers quiet and listened and, dear readers, for you folks who want to learn something about marketing in the metaverse, this is the smartest - albeit basic - 101 you are going to find on how to get it right from the get-go:

"I have been talking about over-representation for a long time ;-) - hence my interest in NPIRL. In other words too many malls, real world architecture, etc, etc.

I have just posted a simple thesis on wikipedia about how the environment can help nurture inhabitants in SL to really dream and create their own fantasies, but most importantly share stories and experiences through places with total immersion.

There are 5 levels and most of the great places in SL, especially the
NPIRL ones, exhibit levels 3 and 4 where the environment itself has character and leads you into your story mode.

Greenies is a great example, albeit a frozen moment. I am always trying to create fantastical and dynamic (things) so (they are) slowly morphing and exhibiting a different character and sensation at any given moment. Every time you go back you have a slightly different experience (and are) always able to uncover something new.

(I) suppose that is the organic side to it... layers of depth to get under the surface; very few places like that but it should be, as creators, our goal to create things that feel like they have been here for years and centuries, even if they feel contemporary.

I am a good friend of DanCoyote's (Antonelli) and his works have that sense of organic... of being created from the virtual earth... and are timeless vs - spits on the floor - copies of RL!"

* PAUSE while this blog poster and yours truly thinks to herself: OMG, this guy sooo gets it!

"(RL) has its place as I have to do lots of corporate builds, too, and although I would love them all to be floating, moving, spacious, ethereal - you have to create the equivalent of the vanity boardroom and such... that being a metaphor for things noobs from companies can recognise at the start."

* PAUSE while this blog poster lowers head, genuflects and utters "amen"

"(We are) happy for people to drop in and - here is a main point with NPIRL type builds - is that they should be responsive to comment. (Important) that the builder and creators agree with the inhabitants who visit that any piece can be changed (to some extent) so it becomes a work of the SL community, too.

We are very keen for folk to suggest changes, because we love to hear from those who have experienced it and say 'oh that would be great' or 'do this.' To me that is what the social network that is SL is all about... co-creation... so we really listen to comments and suggestions and mix that in with our intentions."

***
Over the next two weeks NPIRL members will have the pleasure of previewing two of Gary Hazlitt's new build environments and learning his thoughts on them.

P.S. After posting this, a couple of friends mentioned that my commentary sounded a bit suggestive. OH MY! Is it my fault that smart marketing makes me sizzle? Not hitting on Gary, no no no. :P