My happy place in Second Life - And a fab new Windlight preset by Mescaline

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Created by Blotto Epsilon and Cutea Benelli, the Bogon Flux (and the new couch for big asses!) - currently at East of Odyssey - is where I go when I want to be happy. I whiled away a very pleasant hour yesterday in Blotto's company and came away with a grin on my face. It's like a vacation in Second Life®.



This gone-bonkers Steampunk structure builds upon itself and then sheds parts or all but its base to begin anew. Pipes and doorways (many of them open with a touch) make it possible to navigate from one section to another until, that is, it decides to cut you loose.


There are lots of new modules on the Flux

Teleport directly from here, and by all means turn on your music stream.


Oh, how happy I would be to have such a couch in Real Life!

These photographs were taken using Mescaline Tammas' appropriately named Sunday Windlight preset.

Mescaline has a new preset, too! The Bristol...



Says Mescaline: (I shot this) "Short film to demonstrate a new Windlight Setting 'Bristol.' Edelwiess reminds me of Bristol which reminds me of Banksy and Massive Attack. This preset is made having 'lived' in shadows for a while, more ambient light than previous settings. Film has no post processing, just cut. Shot in Kirstenlee Cinquetti's S17."

See also:

• Wonky wacky steampunk wonderfulness
• Awesome vid of Bogon Flux (by Mescaline)
• Second Life content creators save lives, one net (and one eyeball) at a time
• Virtual fashions: Recycle and reuse

Strange and Fantastic Buildings (in Real Life)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I can't recall ever just linking to another site as the centerpiece for a blogpost, but here you go. Totally worth a visit: 80 Strange and Fantastic Buildings Architecture. Hopefully this will inspire a few more unusual buildings in virtual worlds.

12:18 pm UPDATE: And here are 50 more unusual buildings!

Groundbreaking, literally - Faith in Selavy Oh

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

And they said you couldn't move mountains... Oh ye of little faith!

Physics and now Land artist Selavy Oh has created a script that operates the terraforming capabilities in Second Life®, resulting in the continuous and automated reshaping of land, even without her presence.

To my knowledge, this is without precedent.


That's me filming in the center of the mountain peaks. Selavy was not even in-world for that portion of the taping!

Filming and editing: Bettina Tizzy
Music: "Truth of the Legend" by Kevin MacLeod

Terraforming, the ability to intentionally transform surface topography, atmosphere, temperature or ecology, is not unique to science fiction or even science (where it is primarily called planetary engineering).

In his book, The Making of Second Life, Hamlet Au (aka Wagner James Au), explained the in-world terraforming process quite poetically: "Standing on a hill like a demi-urge, a Resident can wave her hand and cause the ground to swell, expand, or even collapse into the sea."

In Second Life, terraforming land is a skill that looks easy to do, but frequently results in unrealistic and poor duplicates of mountains, lakes and canyons.

Selavy, who rezzed in February of 2007, is most widely recognized for her physics work with the most basic of prims: the humble but noble cube. She has expanded her range considerably in the past few months and now works with any number of shapes and even Alpha textures, but physics are always involved. Art historian Amy Wilson once compared Selavy to Rauschenberg, explaining that, "I can’t help but think she’s the Rauschenberg of SL, albeit one whose hands are much, much tidier than his ever were (makes sense for the environment we’re talking about). Navigating in this little space created by artists whose work is pure abstraction (DanCoyote, Juria) and artists whose work specifically references real life (Cheen, Nebulosus), she comes to find some very fertile ground indeed."

Given recent developments with Comet Morigi's terraforming explorations and her anchoring of huge prims to sims - thereby extensively and surprisingly expanding the canvas - and now Selavy's epic work - many of the most exciting innovations in virtual worlds at this time have to do with Land Art so extreme that I can't help but wonder what James Turell and Micheal Heizer would think.

Possibly the closest reference to Dancing Mountains in Real Life might be Heizer's 1971 Double Negative project in Nevada, for which he removed 240,000 tons of stone to make two slices 30 ft wide by 50 ft deep on opposing sides of an existing canyon to suggest a line between the canyon walls. His focus was on the removal of something, thereby creating a Land Art piece that stressed space, rather than an object. But I have no Real Life reference for land that wiggles, shrinks and grows, with no attending human, in an automated fashion.

Selavy accomplishes this by leaving her scripts with Negative Overland, a bot that is hidden underwater.

Some years ago, I was traveling in the rain forest in the heart of Costa Rica. My traveling companion and I had just sat down to a white tablecloth dinner at a lodge perched a top a mountain less than two miles opposite the Arenal volcano. The volcano was erupting (and still is to this day). Constantly. With a surprisingly loud and deep rumble, the mountain would cough up the fiery lava and rocks, dressing itself in a never-ending kinetic skirt of thick veins in an orangey red.

We struck up a conversation with the couple sitting at the table next to us. They were vulcanologists from Finland and they spoke about volcanoes the way we talk about virtual worlds. The woman shared how she got a kick out of hugging active volcanoes at the base and putting her ear up to them. She swore they sounded like the loudest heartbeat on earth. That certainly had a lasting impression on me.

For some reason, it was the first thing I thought of when Selavy teleported me in to watch a proof-of-concept demo of Dancing Mountains. She has managed to breathe life into the landscape in ways heretofore unimaginable.

~*~

Dancing Mountains can be experienced on arts patron Mab MacMoragh's Soup sim by teleporting directly from here.

In addition, Selavy nearly always has an installation at Brooklyn is Watching. Teleport directly from here.

See also:

• Land Art in Second Life: A historical perspective and an introduction to virtual artist Comet Morigi
• The Patron Saints of Poetik
• It's Hip to be Squarish
• Selavy's page on the Odyssey Art Ning
• "Attention Economy" by Beth Harris on smARThistory
• New York Times piece on art in Second Life

Own the universe - and a piece of Second Life - in Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

This mathematical structure - known as the E8 Polytope created by Wizard Gynoid in Second Life® with the guidance of renown physicist Garrett Lisi (and sometimes avatar, Garrett Netizen)... is now available for purchase in Real Life.

The virtual version consists of 6,672 prims that were generated via script by Wizard with the assistance of Desdemona Enfield and Nand Nerd. Given its complexity, it seemed unlikely that its recreation in Real Life would be possible, barring enormous expense.

Now art, math and 3D printing artist Bathsheba Grossman has done it.


The 80mm glass cube will cost $72 USD and will be available as of July 10, 2009

Batsheba used Wizard's mathematical data for the crystal visualization and explains: "This 3D projection is notable for showing all 240 vertices, arranged in the concentric circles that appear in the common 2D "spirograph" rendering of this polytope." She adds that if Garrett Lisi's unified field theory is true, it "would mean that it explains most aspects of the observable universe. Here's a handy model for pondering the possibility."

In Lisi's seminal work from which these mathematical virtual creations stem, "Theory of Everything," the E8 Polytope may at last reveal the link between gravity and the other fundamental forces of nature.

"It has all 240 vertices and if you look straight down from the top, the zenith downwards, you will see a hole through the middle. If it were flattened, it would form the perfect spirograph," Wizard explained.

Here is a TED talk recorded in February, 2008, in which Lisi unenviably attempts to get us up to speed on his unified field theory in just 18 minutes.



See also:
Universe in the Metaverse by Hamlet Au, New World Notes

Visualizing God: A virtual art show

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

In "Human Destiny," Le Comte Du Nouy wrote, "Any effort to visualize God reveals a surprising childishness. We can no more conceive Him than we can conceive an electron. Yet many people do not believe in God simply because they cannot visualize him." In fact, many Christians feel that images dishonor God because he is invisible. "No images drawn from visible things will enrich our worship of him," said Gordon R. Lewis.

Be it God, Yahweh, Adonai, Allah, Lord, Elohim or Baal, every faith has its rules and designations and many won't even utter His name. Most Christians prefer, instead, to focus their paint brushes and chisels on Jesus since the story goes that he became incarnate and walked among us. John of Damascus wrote, "The Son is the image alive, natural and perfectly similar of the invisible God; he carries in himself the Father, and is identical with him in everything, except for this single fact, that he derives from him as from his [primary] cause."

This thinking becomes particularly interesting and gets mightily challenged when sacred images are considered from the Not Possible IRL (in virtual worlds) perspective.

When LogLady Loon - founder of Freak Show - named her newest collective "GodArt: My faith, between sacred and profane," I'm sure she knew what she was doing. The woman is inciting us again to explore, with art, our deepest beliefs, and this after her Pornosophy and Freaks vs Beauty Paranoia shows. She asks, "Tell me what you believe."



Given my ongoing interest in 3D art, which I view as the ultimate expression of what is possible in virtual worlds, and my disinterest in waiting what seems like an eternity for 2D images to render in-world, I'd abstained in the past from getting involved with Freak Show which is overwhelming about photography, but I find the GodArt theme irresistible.

I'd like to encourage land owners to help sponsor the show and provide as many prims as possible, thereby enabling more artists to present their works three-dimensionally.

For these reasons, Not Possible IRL has become a sponsor of the GodArt show, joining ItaliaSL, ModaSL, Avatrait, BadGirls magazine and Poetik for the first time, as a supporter of Freak Show.

The deadline to enter is Monday, August 31st, and only one work is allowed per participant. For more information, please refer here.

Happy 2nd Birthday, NPIRL!

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

This Saturday, July 4th, after hundreds and hundreds of in-world notices, 700 blogposts (this is the 701st), and thousands of happy hours celebrating great content that would not be possible in Real Life, we will mark the passing of our second year in the metaverse.

If you consider that each human day is the equivalent of 8 days in Second Life® and OpenSim, that would make NPIRL 16 years old. So either we are entering our terrible twos or we are sweet 16.


This photo by Sugarbloom Cupcakes

So here's a great big thank you to all the passionate and dedicated members of the incredible Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL groups who made all this... err... possible! We couldn't have done it without you.

Keystone Bouchard, building community with prims

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

If I were to commission the design of a building - whether commercial or residential - I would vastly prefer the opportunity to walk in and around it before brick and mortar were employed, over looking at CAD animations and illustrations, a flat screen, or even a 3D printout. Wouldn't you? It is such an inexpensive step and so basic to our senses (including common sense!). Using virtual worlds to bring blueprints to life is not only possible but a daily reality in Second Life®.

To me, it looks like the body of an acoustic guitar, or maybe a key hole, or perhaps it is a musical note. When I met with him just hours before the Metanomics studio he had created was about to have its public debut, I completely forgot to ask Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud) if he had implemented Feng Shui techniques in the design. My guess is that he did, whether he is aware of it or not. The thing just flows.



Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are very new to Second Life, then you know that the secret sauce over at Metanomics - the talk show that explores the serious uses of virtual worlds – is its community of suits and geeks who are there to mobilize mostly biz and tech ideas through conversation, together with the occasional sprinkling of left brainers, a smattering of educators and hard-core scientists, and a dash of memes. It’s a hale and hearty concoction.


Le Corbusier defined architecture as the “magnificent play of volumes brought together under light”

Keystone and I had been chatting for well over an hour, with just one interruption (he had to step away from the computer to say goodbye to his grandmother who was visiting his Real Life home – a real family man!), when it occurred to him to share with me that he’d been notified minutes before our meeting that his Studio Wikitecture, which he co-founded along with Theory Shaw (aka Ryan Schultz), had just won the Linden Prize: $10,000 USD for developing an “innovative in-world project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world.” And that should give you an inkling of the kind of fellow we’re talking about here.



Fast facts about Keystone Bouchard

• Architect, urban planner and artist; Master of Architecture, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.Co-founder of Crescendo Design, a residential design studio located in Madison, Wisconsin (Real Life)
• Creator of Autodesk Island, the virtual U.S. House of Representatives, Linden Lab’s Virtual Headquarters, a build-out for a TED conference event, and many other edifices and islands. (Second Life)
• Co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, an open group composed of a diverse range of individuals from varying disciplines, interested in exploring the application of an open-source paradigm to the design and production of both real and virtual architecture and urban planning. (Virtual worlds)

Early Keystone Bouchard video, dating back to January 2007

• Founder of the ARCH Network, a community resource for architecture and virtual worlds, including consultation, training, virtual design, BIM/CAD model import, and hosted Virtual Project Spaces.
• He created the Reflexive Architecture installation, where I first discovered and fell head over heels for virtual architecture.

This photo by Keystone Bouchard

Keystone began the design process for the Metanomics building in February, and it had its unveiling on May 6, 2009. Here is the transcript of our conversation just before the opening.

Would you say that this was the most complex project you've taken on?

Keystone Bouchard: It wasn't terribly complicated from a functional perspective, since the intended use of the space was very clear. As far as complexity, I would say the Linden Lab HQ 4-sim project I worked on in 2007 while I was working with Clear Ink was quite a bit more so - given the magnitude of different program elements it had to accommodate, and the functional goals were much more difficult to quantify.



The biggest difference, I think, was in openness. The Linden Lab headquarters had to remain confidential, and it was harder to gain access or feedback from most of the people who would actually be using it, whereas with Metanomics, I was able to more fully engage the community of people who will actually end up using this space. Everyone was invited to stop by at any time and provide feedback. I think the incorporation of that feedback ended up making it a much stronger design than I could have come up with on my own

Who was on the Metanomics team to create this space?

Keystone Bouchard: Discord Schism, Metaverse Engineer, and Dusan Writer were the main collaborators. I was responsible for conceptual design, Dusan designed the set, Metaverse Engineer did all of the landscaping and various detail elements, and Discord Schism built out the event partner hub and other detail elements. Joel Savard was the Project Manager. I also did 99% of the construction on the main building shell and most of the texturing.

What was the plan?

Keystone Bouchard: My brief was to provide an event space for Metanomics that would span 2 regions - the set on one (to help resolve lag issues), and audience on the other, and also to provide space to display additional content - material from past shows - and design for the site to scale over time, with additional buildings to be added later. My goal was to design something that everyone could feel comfortable with, and to invite community wide feedback throughout the design process. We had regular community forums, where we solicited feedback, and presented the design's progress.

One of the things I observed before starting this project was that Metanomics can be as much about the back-chat as it is about the show itself. So many people expressing so many different ideas and opinions, yet, they're all coming together at that moment - around this show. I wanted to design something that was a visual metaphor for the coming together of ideas – the coming together of the community - so, the early conceptual designs were very literal. There were lots of building pieces coming together from all different angles - to create the auditorium.

In the final manifestation, that visual metaphor was represented with structural columns, while earlier on it had been more literal. It became a much more subtle expression, as though there are many individual pieces that are working together. None of them could visually support the structure alone.



How was this experience different from designing in Real Life, other than taking backchats into consideration (although nowadays twitter IS the equivalent of backchat in Real Life)?

Keystone Bouchard: It was much easier to express the idea here. In Real Life - conveying a design is a very abstract experience. You're sharing 2D plans, or sketches, and trying to imagine what it will look like - and trying to help the client imagine what it will be like, so, you're always trying to build a portal into that dimension - and show them that world - like from the outside looking in.

That’s similar to how it went down for DB Bailey (aka David Denton, AIA, in Real Life) and his Egyptian client recently. Once the client saw it in Second Life, it was something palpable. He could walk around it. He had a sense of perspective. In Real Life, the best you can do is create an illustration - which is static - and it is only one view. Animations (via CAD) get closer, but they're time consuming and expensive and still very prescriptive. The viewer has no control, and creating that illustration is an 'event.'

So how does the experience compare directly with CAD?

Keystone Bouchard: You decide, at some moment in time, to take a look at what the design will actually look like; whereas here, it’s always there… constantly. You're always in real-time 3D. There's never a moment when you have to stop and say, “Ok, let’s look at it in 3D.” It’s always 3D.

How often do those moments come up in a Real Life situation?

Keystone Bouchard: That's the other part of it. The client only gets to see your progress at bi-weekly meetings. Here, the client can make an appearance at any given moment. And that is just the design process. Some designers might consider that unnerving - but I find it to be invaluable. I like sharing the burden! If I'm stuck on something, I love being able to bounce ideas off of people. It becomes much more efficient because I’m not working in some direction for two weeks and then showing it to the client.

At what point in the design process did you introduce the stretched canvas texture? Did you originally think in terms of canvas? I'm reminded of Franklin Lloyd Wright and also Paul Klee. It seems organic, like a skin.

Keystone Bouchard: Yes, I've always been a fan of the idea of translucent marble that is cut so thin that light can permeate. It is possible to do in real life, but incredibly expensive. The idea with the outer shell was for it to be 'skinnable.' This is just one possible solution, but I hope in the future that it can be re-skinned with other textures: perhaps dynamic, maybe reflexive, or maybe (it) changes color based on concurrency or the mood of the community - like a visual display.

Or seasonal?

Keystone Bouchard: Yes, maybe something about the upcoming show; maybe competitions to design the best skin. Whatever the result, the goal was to make it very flexible.

What was the stickiest point?

Keystone Bouchard: Scale. It is still a challenge. I think the seats are too far away from the set, for example, because I wanted it to feel intimate, yet, it has to accommodate a large and growing audience.

Is that for purposes of the studio cameras? What percentage of the design discussions took the camera into account?

Keystone Bouchard: Camera had a lot to do with it. I was told 'no alpha' early on. I designed an inner shell where the camera is, for the lion's share of the show - with no alpha - so I could get away with having an alpha outer shell.

The spiraling swirls above the building...

Keystone Bouchard: NPIRL ;-) (Not Possible IRL). At one point, the idea was for the build to start very “Real Life” at the base - where it meets the ground - as though there were already this kind of historical archeology - and building over the top of that as it rises in the Z-axis, it becomes increasingly NPRIL. The idea of NPRIL came up dozens of times in design iterations. At one point, I was talking to Scope Cleaver (another virtual architect) about this. I pinged him often during the course of design development, and he said, “Wouldn't it be cool if the building were actually rising up out of the ground - as though the community were a kind of current - and this building was picking up on that, and crystallizing around it?” A brilliant idea, but as I thought about it, it’s more like something that zips around and orbits.

Later in the conversation I learned of Studio Wikitecture's Linden Prize win, and of course, I had to ask about it.

Keystone Bouchard: When we first started brainstorming the idea of applying principles of open source, and Wikipedia-style collaboration to architecture and the built environment, we knew that Second Life was exactly what we needed to make this work. The ability to customize and program elements within this platform was huge. We were able to build the Wiki-tree here, using this platform, and do lots of unique things with it, like being able to tie it in with a website. The diversity and size of the community is requisite in collaboration like this. Also, prims - believe it or not, prims! - are an important part of why Wikitecture works in Second Life. They're granular, so individual parts of the design can be modified, and the building tools are easy to learn.

That's why Second Life became a platform for experimenting with an augmented form of architectural collaboration that I sincerely believe could be an improved design methodology - and a more effective means of harnessing the collective wisdom of communities - the people who actually use architecture and the built environment. Buildings are just too big, and too complicated for a single firm or individual to fully comprehend and, ultimately, the urban fabric is a lot like one vast operating system upon which we run our lives. Linux was developed by many, many people - maybe architecture can be, too.

How radical is this thinking in the architectural community today?

Keystone Bouchard: O'Reilly called it 'Radical Collaboration' - so - I guess it is radical.

There is no other platform that offers this combination of features - the simple building tools, the immersive, realtime, multi-user experience - the ability to program a technology plug-in into it - and more - because of the fact that this combination doesn't really exist in other software applications. There isn't anything quite like it.

About a year ago... at least that is how I recall it... you seemed to be going through a period of real disenchantment with Second Life and virtual worlds. I felt as though you were... disengaging. Is this true and what happened that changed that?

Keystone Bouchard: When I started using Second Life, I was most impressed by what I assumed it was 'about to become' - not necessarily for what it was. I saw it as a tool. A platform. I knew an environment like this could be powerful in architectural and AEC practice, and I couldn't wait until X, Y and Z feature were implemented. I kept saying, “Imagine what this will be like in a few years!” After two years, it started to feel like nothing had changed and nothing was really getting any better, but that's when a kind of transition occurred and I started to think of it more like a place than a tool. It was then when I began to appreciate it for what it is - not for what I hope it will someday be. I think the fact that it has this 'real life' association - the land, the sky, the human avatars - is why we get disappointed with it when it isn't Real Life. We're comparing it with the physical world, when it really is a place, a context, and an environment all its own.

You can teleport to the Metanomics building directly from here.

See also:

• New York Times, T-Magazine: "Original Sim" by Sam Lubell - Dec. 2008
• Architectural Record, "Wikitecture: From clicks to bricks, avatars to architects" by David Sokol - Oct. 2008
• Business Week, SmallBiz: "Business, and Startups, in Second Life" - Aug. 2008
• NPIRL: The Impossible Made Possible: A Panel on the Future of Architecture
• NPIRL: Reflexive Architecture by Keystone Bouchard at 2nd Live
• NPIRL: Wikisonic to get Real at the Tech Virtual Museum
• NPIRL: Winner of the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Network's Founders Award
• New World Notes: Top Ten Art Installations of Second Life
• Keystone Bouchard’s Flickr stream
• Studio Wikitecture Flickr stream

Poetic steampunk flight, by a Victorian Japanese

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Japanese steampunk creator Yooma Mayo is probably best known for his whimsical bicycles and the delightful steam-powered monorail that transports you from the ground up to his cliff-perched shop in Second Life®, YGD.


Bryn Oh zipped up the monorail on a recent visit with me

In Real Life, Yooma likes to fly kites - the dual-line kind - so when he learned of human aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal's glider, he determined that he had to make his own. Virtually. The irony is that Yooma is afraid of heights but joined Second Life because, "I wanted to talk with people from other countries, use "build tools," and fly in the sky."


Lilienthal (1848-1886) in flight

The resulting virtual Courant d'Air glider is a thing of beauty and heaps of fun to use and fly.



Both photos by Katati Noel, for whom Yooma created a "special edition."



You can visit his YGD shop by teleporting directly from here to Winterfell Anodine, a Caledonian sim where, according to Yooma, "The street and the scenery there seen from the sky are beautiful. When I looked for the land for my new shop, I knew that it was the place. Now, I have built my first shop in a "foreign country."

Special thanks to Yooma's friend, Katati Noel, for alerting us to this and for the use of her photos.

"Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia" - ???

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

JUNE 26 UPDATE: Two posts that are must-reads on this topic:
- Tateru Nino's blogpost "Could Australia be barred from Second Life access?" She continues: "Darn straight they could."
- Lowell Cremorne's "Open Letter on virtual worlds for Senator Conroy"

~*~

With his blogpost "Australia to ban Second Life?" Dusan Writer brought my attention to an article in today's Inquisitr "Confirmed: Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia," and yet another in today's Sydney Morning Herald: "Web filters to censor video games" that outline the Australian Federal government's intent to "block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds."

What might this mean to Second Life® users from Australia? How might they be affected? Would we lose many of the best artists, writers and creators on the Second Life grid: Adam Ramona, Gary Hazlitt, Glyph Graves, Nonnatus Korhonen, Paisley Beebe, Tateru Nino, the entire crew from TREET.TV, the ABC islands, the Pond islands, among many, many others?

On Artists and their Patrons: An SL6B discussion to help shape the future of the Arts

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

On June 1, the New Media Consortium's (NMC) CEO Larry Pixel (aka Dr. Larry F. Johnson) guest blogged here on a topic that has sparked a vibrant dialogue: On Artists and their Patrons: Nurturing Support for the Arts in Second Life®.

The arts in Second Life may be blossoming, but the level of sophistication in terms of sponsorship, promotion and funding still lags far behind Real Life. Also of much concern: lands that were previously available, and amply so, are drying up.

What do our artists and their patrons need to do to get up to speed? How can we encourage more of Second Life's residents to step up and provide meaningful support to the arts?

Please join us tomorrow for a critically important panel presentation to discuss how we can foster and shape the future of arts in Second Life... and begin to put them on par with their Real Life counterparts.

ON ARTISTS AND THEIR PATRONS, Nurturing Support for the Arts in Second Life

WHEN: Friday, June 26, 2009 at 7pm SLT - (60 minutes)
WHERE: NMC's Cooper Coliseum (teleport directly from here)

The session will be conducted in Second Life voice.

PANELISTS:

* Alexandar Vargas (multi-sim arts patron, including Welsh Lakes, artist)
* DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley, artist)
* Douglas Story (artist)
* Mondray Chandler (RL Museum)
* Nur Mo (founder/owner of Poetik Velvets; patron)

Chair: Bettina Tizzy

GOALS:

* To inspire more land owners to provide significant land and other means of support to artists.
* To compare and contrast funding/support methods in Real Life versus Second Life. This level of sophistication and understanding has to begin with us.
* To encourage artists and their patrons to discuss expectations at the onset.
* To come up with a tool set, sort of a Chinese menu, that is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Many thanks to Larry Pixel for bringing attention to this important issue and to the NMC for their support and the use of their venue.

I was at the Hair Fair...

Posted by Alpha Auer... :-\

Like most other females on the grid, all year long I live in joyous anticipation of the annual Second Life® Hair Fair. I am also experienced enough to know to detach every single prim on my body before I venture forth. Same this year. And not only did I divest myself of every attachment that I had but I also took Laynie Link's hair fair tips on avoiding lag at the location posted on the dedicated Hair Fair 2009 blog to heart and reduced all of my Graphics settings as well.

None of it helped. This was quite simply the laggiest Second Life experience that I think I have ever had. After arriving and realizing just how horriifyingly stuck I was, I also disabled all the render types from the advanced menu. All that I could, including rendering the sky! So, there I was painfully groping for prims to which I was getting stuck, completely unable to move, surrounded by a largely gray landscape which when it eventually materialized I was seeing with no shaders, no volume, under a pitch black sky. Granted I did manage to get about with the usage of the red locomotion boxes provided by the organizers but why would I even have wanted to move given that hardly any shop contents rezzed themselves? Nonetheless, I tried, I really did. I have lost count over how many times I crashed, but I was determined enough to log back in every time - until I eventually gave up...

I ran into several acquaintances while I was out there. Chatter was pretty much impossible due to lag but I did contact them subsequently to ask them how it had been for them. The answer was unanimous: Worst lag experience in Second Life to date.

I am writing this because I think I may have identified one of the reasons of the problem and maybe my two cents worth of input might help the builders of these very large scale locations which attract vast crowds of visitors, should they stumble upon this post: I believe the lag at the hair fair this year was due to an over abundant usage of sculpted prims. As I said, it was too laggy for me to be able to inspect the prims, the information as to who their creators were simply did not rezz, so I have absolutely no idea who the designers and builders of the 4 sims are. I am in no position to comment on their output either, given that I really did not "see" it. All I saw was a specter of a landscape devoid of all shading and volume. But I did manage to identify the presence of hundreds if not indeed thousands of sculpty prims through their highlighted contours when I right-clicked on the structures that they were embedded into.

I realize of course, that many of these sculpted prims were used repeatedly and that it can be argued that once one sculpted texture rezzes all of them will have done so. But, as far as I could tell, there were still enough individual shapes present to seriously undermine the overall rendering process. And also, even though in theory it holds true that once one texture is rezzed all identical textures in your location will also have done so, for some bizarre reason, in practice I find that this is not necessarily always the case.

All in all, I am wondering why far more minimalistic design strategies do not get implemented at locations where the primary objective is providing an easy access to the goods displayed therein. An excellent example of such a location are the Hairspray sims (as it turns out a particularly appropriate example in this case, given that our primary area of discussion here is in fact hair ;-). These sims are the epitomy of the maxim "form follows function", the function here being the showcasing of "hair" with no further obstructions from the surrounding environment. Indeed I would suggest that their huge success as a design system and their ultimate beauty lies in their designer Damien Fate's having diligently followed this very fundamental design tenet first coined by the great architect Louis Sullivan.

So, my dear friends, I did not really get to see the hair fair at all this year. From the isolated few stands, the contents of which I actually did manage to rezz (and where what I saw captured my attention), I have obtained landmarks and will be visiting their main stores in due course.