Is Second Life the greatest derivative art form? Templum ex Obscurum signifies that it is

See below for a photography and Machinima challenge.

While art is a reflection of its time, it also inherently influences what it seeks to capture. Until I discovered Second Life®, cinema was, for me, the greatest derivative art form... influenced by everything and in turn, influencing everything else. While the notion had been seeping into my thinking for some time now, what I saw last night convinced me that virtual worlds - as a creative platform - will far surpass cinema in this regard.

For many weeks this past spring, I gave my heart and soul to the Garden of NPIRL Delights, and so it was that I ended up spending less than a couple of minutes previewing what was then a new creation on the grid. I probably didn't even have time to rez it all. I've just been back for the first time, and what I saw there astonished me.

Templum ex Obscurum by Baron Grayson - and now owned by Cuwynne Deerhunter - is a place that accomplishes what many have sought to do in Second Life but have always fallen short of... to transport us into a world that is so rich with narrative that we may as well have walked into a Brian de Palma or Visconti movie. Not the set of a movie. The actual movie.



I do believe we will long remember Templum ex Obscurum as being the first to really introduce this new syntax for content creation. For lack of better words, it is cinematic genius... so beguiling and bewitching that I could devote weeks to reporting on its many parts and details.

Instead, I challenge you, the photographers and Machinimators of Second Life, to show us what you see. I would like to feature the best of your work on this blog every week for the next four weeks, beginning today and ending on Sunday, September 14th.

If you would like to participate in this celebration and challenge, please add your photographs to the Templum ex Obscurum - A NPIRL Photographic challenge Flickr group, and your Machinima to the Not Possible IRL YouTube group. I haven't any prizes or awards to offer... just my enthusiasm and eagerness to see what the very talented people of Second Life will come up with. The selection process will be based on the number of comments and faves.

I was so caught up in experiencing Templum last night that it didn't occur to me to take photographs until the last five minutes I was there. The lighting is the stuff of dreams. I must go back, again and again.

Teleport to Templum ex Obscurum directly from here.

I am photographed wearing Eshi Otawara's Blue Tux dress which can be purchased at her Chambre de Chocolat, and a new hairstyle for Hairspray.

Madcap Madcow Cosmos *finally* opens a store + freebies, too

See also:
* Divine Madcow Cosmos' divinations
* Madcow's Cosmos' "Heterotroph" at the Garden
* It's a Madcow (Cosmos) Madhouse!
* Catastrophe! Spacejunk falls from the sky!
* Dear Colgate-Palmolive
* Madcow Cosmos gets orbital
* No red noses here
* Madcow Cosmos silly-wonderful Prey Unit - a photographic challenge

Prolific. Genius. Prim hog. Brilliant. Funny. I have described Madcow Cosmos in these ways and more, but never, ever have I been able to call him a merchant. I can do this today, as Madcow has finally established an outlet where we can pick up copies of his insanely cool avatars and stuff: The Primordial Soup and Sandwich, teleport directly from here.

I spent some time last night in a sandbox with Madcow, previewing his newest line of avatars and Oh.My.Goodness. While all are - as I have come to expect - hilarious, some of them are truly the stuff of my childhood nightmares, and would make worthy under-the-bed monsters. It all got me to thinking about Halloween... NPIRL's #1 holiday and the one day when we observe that rite: PARTY time (note to self: better start thinking about venues 'n stuff).


Madcow greeted me personally at his new store. It was a bit... intimidating :)

Freebies: There are two ways to secure freebie avatars: touch the "specials of the day" on the counter, or take a look in the dumpster.

More on how traffic numbers are determined, this time from Miki Gymnast

Yesterday, I touched on the Second Life® Wiki's explanation for how traffic numbers are determined - one point per minute a single avatar is present on a parcel - and a few hours later I received an interesting email from Master Scripter Miki Gymnast on the topic.

She wrote: "Two parameters seem to be relevant to the Linden Lab traffic number: First, it counts the minutes, but only for people who are present longer than a minute on the land. Additionally, the number of people who are present also influences the traffic score. So, if 2 people produce 500 minutes, it is a little bit less than when 10 people produce 500 minutes. All heights of the parcel where visitors have been are included in the number, from 0-750 meters."

This begs the question... Are avatars above 1,000m counted? "It seems avis above circa 760 meters are not counted," said Miki. "This is also the (regular) maximum building height, so perhaps this corresponds."

Some time ago, Miki created UP, an entirely web-based parcel and sim management system that includes a tool for scanning land heights, and counts all visitor minutes plus the number of avatars which generated them. "It is always very close (+/- 50) to the Linden Lab visitor count (and this many hours before the land shows the number)," Miki added. She also provided the following graphs:


Number of visitors; click to see large


Vistor minutes; click to see large

A demo version of UP is available by teleporting directly from here.

And while we are on the topic of the Second Life Wiki, something very promising is going on over at Linden Lab these days. They appear to be stepping up the communication process with the Residents. Case in point: a just released, super-well executed and fun (yes, fun!) tutorial on how to deal with griefers, file an abuse report or a DMCA. I have depended on Torley's videos throughout my own Second Life, but I can only wish that this one had been available a long time ago. Still, I see this as genuine, sterling progress.

Ian Pahute gives us the world again - This time, a meditation

The last time we visited Ian Pahute (aka Ian Upton), he had just launched, together with Corro Moseley, a geo-coded map within Second Life® that enables you to explore a scaled 3D version of Birmingham, UK and access geo-tagged news in-world, from all over the world.

Now Ian is looking inward. He is putting the finishing touches on a contemplative installation he calls "The Loneliness of Being." Over a thousand words are culled live from about 20 blogs (using RSS), including this one, Amnesty International, BBC World News, New World Notes, Roanna (a cancer survivor), Greenpeace, and more, and come together in the shape of a sphere.



The slurl will be posted later this week.

The skinny on traffic in Second Life

Two bits of info I've been wanting for a long time... Ever wonder - like me - how traffic is calculated? According to the Second Life® Wiki, parcel traffic is calculated as follows:

*In 2006, traffic was changed to be a minute an avatar spends in a parcel.
*The traffic of all avatars count, regardless of their membership status or if a resident or bot.

And here is the Second Life® Wiki on Linden Office Hours. Prefer the Linden Office Hours listed by day? Here you go.

Turn on, tune in, drop out with Anita Fontaine's "Technocolr"

Aussie Anita Fontaine's first show in Second Life®, "Technocolr, the Harlequin Lodge," at the Odyssey feels like I found some old acid in the back of a drawer and took the plunge into a early 1970's patchwork world gone mad.

According to Anita, "Just like the teacup ride at Disneyland or Snow White's house off Route 66, Technocolr pays homage to experimental and fairytalesque architecture, and the ideologies behind creating these miniature fantasy worlds."


Video: Bettina Tizzy
Music: Mercurial Girl by Five Star Fall
Dancing animation: Sugar Seville
Dancer: Skullbee Piek

I asked her if she liked roller coasters, and Anita exclaimed that she did. She added that she likes to get dizzy.

Using installations, mobile ghost encounters, games, the Internet and cinema, Anita likes to expand the parameters of new media and the moving image. She lives in Amsterdam. Teleport directly from here.

The set for "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

While all three shows are sold out and it seems unlikely that additional shows will be added, we must mention the set and venue for the Act Up Theatre Company and Ivy Falls' production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which opens tomorrow.

Brilliantly conceived and executed by production manager Rekka Berchot, the dark forest set will provide a dreamlike space - a fairy forest agleam with twilight and moonbeams and dew - for what is surely one of the most fantastical plays ever written and now realized in Second Life®.

I am sworn to secrecy about most aspects of the event, but I can share that audience members may choose to become fully integrated with the set, in which case they must wear especially provided outfits which are bound to become collector's items.

Rekka created many of her own custom textures, and incorporated particles and special effects with a light hand and an elegant eye.



Many thanks to Lauren Weyland for bringing this to my attention.

Look at me

Squishies and thanks to NPIRLer and clothing/avatar designer 3star Tyne for tipping me off to aoimizuno Meili's nifty chain of shops: Le Petit Prince or LLP. It was there that I discovered aoimizuno's LPP Doll Eyes. Teleport directly from here.

This pair of eyes features compass roses and comes in two shades, yellow and grey (as shown)...


Click to see large

...whereas this pair puts the world in your eyes.


Click to see large

I'm not much of a shopper these days, but the month-long Creators Stamp Rally (CSR2008) promotion that involves many of the stores where my Lindens end up anyway is fun. Even if you aren't into shopping, I promise you all sorts of good finds.

A win for the open source community: The Feds find open source licenses too legit to quit

Via Xeni Jardin of boingboing, a flag we can wave proudly today

Lawrence Lessig , Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and founder of the Creative Commons, has just shared that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or what he calls "THE "IP" court in the US," has "upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.)"

He goes on to explain that, "in non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses, such as the CC licenses, set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license. Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court."

Mike Gunderloy provides a good explanation of it on the Ostatic blog.

Chakryn Forest - Virtual nature by Andrek Lowell, or the real reason I still have a Second Life

Chakryn Wolves, as photographed by Lano Ling at Chakryn Forest. Lano is posing here with Beolas Whitfield who calls his friend a "photopainter"

Life's not just for Paradise,
or places out of time,
for there's something even stranger yet,
that wont fit in a rhyme.
Just when I thought I'd seen it all,
and whilst sitting on a hill,
I saw, quite all around me,
the final Cosmic thrill
Paradise on Earth (The Consummatum Incarnate), by Dick Richardson


Music: Narayanam, performed by Suchita Parte
Video: Bettina Tizzy

"Get a first life," the cynics say. We know, of course, that The Cynics haven't tried Second Life®, or maybe they just dipped their Ruthy toes in our virtual world for a fleeting moment and bolted at the first lag.

I was almost A Cynic. Even with the initial unpleasantness behind me, the spectre of living two lives inside the same 24 hours terrorized me, and that is precisely what was on my mind as I stood in an elven sandbox, toying with a few helpless prims like brussel sprouts on my childhood dinner plate. It hadn't taken me long to understand that, in Second Life, the builder is King, and looking at my feeble work made me feel doomed and without purpose. I am not a builder, you see. Today, I can cobble a few things together, and I know the steps, but the magic is not in my fingers or my brain, hence the reverence I feel for those who have it.

The comely Elvenmoor sandbox of those days was already a favorite place of mine, and noobs like me were still allowed to mingle and rez alongside the prim sorcerers. I recall that a friend urged me to come and see something on the far end, and that is when I saw it...


The very first Chakryn Forest, as discovered in a sandbox on February 22, 2007

It was the lushest, greenest virtual forest that I had ever laid eyes on and it simply beckoned further exploration. Such a pretty thing! We soon discovered that once in the forest, we were transported to a secret place with no end. I later understood that its creator, a hobbit who would become one of my dearest friends, Andrek Lowell, had made the outside walls transparent. You could see into the forest but not out of it.

Finding a place to permanently rez that forest and build a community around it became the instant purpose of my Second Life. There are so many stories...

Today, four locations and five iterations later (including the introduction of sculpties and Andrek's ingenious idea of adding sun rays), Chakryn Forest is still my home and now sits on its own void sim thanks to the hospitality of my good friend and OpenSim guru, thomtrance Otoole.


The second Chakryn Forest no longer exists. Here is the third, now known as Silvanus and belonging to Kirk Nabob, as photographed by Wellington Bahram


The third Chakryn Forest (now known as Silvanus Forest), as photographed by Moon Over Belgium

Here is a lovely video of Silvanus (then Chakryn) by Chriz Palen, also featuring one of those glimmering, sunny "swirly" prim abuse sculptures by Gore Suntzu that I had rezzed there.



He made it with 1,400 prims
I think it especially notable that Andrek created the new sim-wide Chakryn Forest, open to the public since July 15th, with just 1,400 prims, complete with caves, an underwater forest feature, tunnels and many hidden secrets that no one - to my knowledge - has discovered yet.


This dreamy photo of Chakryn Forest today, by Maxiums1id

I asked Andrek how many more prims he would have needed to create Chakryn, were it not for huge prims. Between the trees, foliage, "mountain bits," waterfall, sun rays and grass, he felt he'd need ...

Andrek Lowell: Each tree would of probably cost 10 prims, and in the end, not even come close to matching the detail. The foliage... well over 1,000. The waterfall... around the 100 - 300 range, and of course, not nearly the detail. Grass... another 90 prims, light rays... another 20, and it would also be a pain. And then there are the 256m mega prims that make up the mountain top, river cliff, and waterfall wall...


I've looked at forests in other virtual worlds such as The Endless Forest, where all is flat and no nightime falls and water is still and lifeless...

It is true that I understand my own Second Life to be a mind-altering privilege, so rich with startling and radical opportunities around nearly every corner that I am in a perpetual state of excitement. But in the end, it is Chakryn Forest that I must come home to. It is my lifeline and my greatest source of serenity.

Teleport to Chakryn Forest from here.
Teleport to Silvanus Forest from here.


See also:

The Chakryn Forest and Silvanus Forest Flickr group

Other forests by Andrek Lowell, as photographed by Moon Over Belgium:
* Ile des Amis
* Greenbrier Wood

Other videos that feature Silvanus Forest:
* Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey - A ten-part HBO film
* "Chameleon" by Brigitte Kungler
* "Chakryn Forest," by Morris Vig
* Fenix et Gala by Eiko Ivory

Show and Tell - Get thee some input, some laughs, and some new people to admire

Update! The Show and Tell show is still going on every Sunday at 2pm, but it has moved to Avaria, which you can reach by teleporting from here.

I'm racing to get my chores done right now so that I can attend an innovative and fun event that many had told me about but that I only just last week experienced. Doh! I can only wonder how much I've missed!

For over a year, and today and every Sunday at 2:00pm SLT, dozens of avatars gather together at North Lummerland for one hour to share, review and discuss newly created content. That content can be anything at all that you made in-world (no 2D items, though) and all levels of experience are invited.

Up to nine people (first come, first served, but none after 2:30pm) may submit and unveil their work to a growing crowd of mostly supportive and entertaining audience members. Quips, questions, zany remarks and lots of encouragement are generously doled out to each of the presenters who rez, demonstrate and explain their creations.

And then there is a vote...

And all the participants win! The audience kicks in tips and these monies are distributed amongst the presenters, with higher amounts going to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.

Among the many builders and artists who have presented at this Show and Tell are Pandora Wrigglesworth, four Yip, Bryn Oh, and Crap Mariner.

Founders and hosts Barney Boomslang and florenze Kerensky keep the event on its toes and moving at a good clip.

"It is a fun event, especially since you get to watch builders grow. We have had a few builders who have stuck around, repeatedly showing, and so you get to see the works getting better with every piece," said Barney Boomslang when I spoke with him earlier this week. "It's tremendous fun to see what kind of things people come up with building. We once had someone who made a toothbrush and toothpaste complete with a tooth brushing animation. Totally useless in Second Life®,, but still - great idea just to _do_ :)"

Teleport directly from here, but do keep in mind that sometimes the sheer number of attendees makes it necessary for the entire assembly to move to another location for a smoother performance.

Please remember to remove face lamps, high prim clothing, high prim hair, and all those nifty attachments so that everyone can have a pleasant time. Last week, Pandora gave away many items from her Curio Obscura store to the individual with the lowest Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) rating. I didn't qualify, of course, but I am learning! I think I will go bald today.