AM Radio’s installation of satellite dishes has closed. Thanks to the NPIRL group notice from Bettina Tizzy I knew the exhibit was about to vanish away so I flew over to the location to grab a few final hour photos.
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Film of satellite dishes moving through listening cycles titled ‘Waiting For You’ by AM Radio available on Flickr.
Check out the AM Radio Group pool on flickr as well.
Bryn Oh’s Robo Insects are on display in virtual Vienna’s Natural History Museum in Second Life. Cyberloom went to pay homage with avatar dressed as a steampunk dragon and soon began to feel ‘at one’ with the virtual sculptures. Then, after communing with the ‘Mayfly’ exhibit (above) started to think the Robo-Insects needed to be set free… liberated into the thin virtual air of Second Life. However, dear reader, reason prevailed and Cyberloom switched avatars to view the rest of the exhibition as a more ordinary avatar (wearing steampunk clothing) and somewhat less prone to the emotional over reactions of steam dragons and steampunk robots.
Beautiful steam wyrmling (or dragon) created by Daryth Kennedy and available from the Isle of Wyrms in Second Life.
Q: Second Life – Why would you go there?
A: “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
– Kurt Vonnegut (Quote taken slightly out of context.)
Cyberloom is returning to Locus in this post, at least that is where I begin. The truth is DB Bailey showed me a glimpse of the underworld… There is a special place to stand high up in the mountain tops of Locus, and once you have located this perch you can use your camera to zoom down through the pixel thin rock crust to see a great cavern reveal itself below. DB explained to me that this is a place that can be glimpsed but never visited. My first attempts to use the camera disoriented me and I fell off the cliff face into the cold sea far below. On my second attempt my avatar eyes were able to penetrate the rock wall.
The underworld looked a friendly enough place, there were swirling gas clouds and strange abstract shapes moving through the steam and/or smoke. DB said this location was his favorite place in Locus, he said he liked the ‘painterly effects’ conjured by the gaseous haze. After DB left (to move furniture around the tepidarium and check the large naked giant was sleeping peacefully) I took the opportunity to pan my camera around the underworld of Locus. I discovered I was able to swing the camera around and peer out from the underworld into Locus.
You must go to Locus and seek out the underworld for yourself and I know that it will look quite different for you. I imagine that is part of the mystery that constitutes the underworld? That is, it is some form of mirage metamorphosing into different hallucinations for each of us? The most intriguing aspect of this strange journey is that DB Bailey invited me to examine the furthest extremes of his avatar-made island. He designed the space in 3 dimensions, it is a space we can venture into and explore yet it is all an illusion. The virtual world of Second Life invites us to indulge ourselves within the illusory space, it coaxes us into its very center and we oblige by operating our avatars so that they accord with the illusion. Now, the intriguing invitation handed out by DB Bailey is for us to travel with our virtual cameras to the extreme edges, or limits, of the illusion to see what happens next. At the very least we see the illusion begin to fracture…
Speaking for myself, I keep returning to wander this illusionary world of Second Life because it shows me ideas in visual forms, and juxtaposes those images with their accompanying thoughts, in random fashion. This process (a visual version of the die game in The Dice Man) reflects each individual player’s own mind and preoccupations. It can also generate new insight and understanding into ourselves and others in both our First and Second lives. In other words ‘playing’ Second Life can be a thought provoking process for some of us because we hover around its seams chasing some philosophical insight or other. Mind you, I end up with more questions than answers and feel very much an amateur trying to play the game of another book. I am referring to Herman Hesse‘s Glass Bead Game “a game which is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics.” (Wikipedia)
On the other hand, perhaps a simpler way to say all this is to describe this shared virtual space as a consciously shared dream? But then, what is a dream? It could be described as the ‘join’ between our conscious and unconscious worlds. But the dream analogy feels too easy and dismissive because the surreal vagueness of dreams can be like a drunk having a profound turn of thought. (Difficult to credit dreams and drunks with too much attention because they so easily slip away later with a ‘did not mean it’ or ‘forgotten it all’ message). I am joining DB Bailey now and encouraging you to intentionally stand at the very brink of the virtual world with (relatively speaking of course) a fully functioning conscious mind, and see how far you can go with your camera before the scene before you begins to disintegrate.
There is a group on flickr called ‘Bug Hunters of Second Life’ that helps people figure out what has gone wrong with their display when the Second Life illusion breaks unexpectedly. I once found another flickr group that invited people to submit their photos of random SL aberrations but I cannot find it now (there are 3,682 flickr groups with the Second Life tag after all!) This invitation from DB Bailey to balance on the edge of what is visually possible in the virtual world, then deliberately pan out of world with your camera is like being given the Subtle Knife. The subtle knife can cut portals through the boundary fabric of different worlds thus enabling the characters (of Philip Pullman‘s ‘Dark Materials’ trilogy) to walk through to alternate realities.
There is something poetic about seeing my virtual camera as a subtle knife… I am off to cut another portal… see you later aligator…in another reality crocodile.
Today was the first year birthday of the Pop Art Labs. Sadly, I got there rather late for the celebrations – the birthday party had already been running for a good 6 hours by the time I popped in! Still, the Labs looked festive with fabulous flowers everywhere, a band called Engrama was playing and people were dancing, or mellowing out as the sun rose in the early morning sky. Here are some photos recording my very late visit to the birthday bash.
A big congratulations and Happy Birthday wishes to Pop Art Labs and the charming master mind behind the whole fabulous operation Claus Uriza!
Check out the Pop Art Lab’s blog for upcoming events at the Labs visit: http://popartlab.blogspot.com/
See earlier cyberloom posts about PAL here: ‘plug it in, change the world’ and 3D Pop Art Lab Experiment
Location of PAL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pop%20Art%20Lab%20/86/128/131/
Happy Birthday Claus and everyone at PAL!
Links to visit:
DB Bailey’s Locus (See this amazing island for yourself but don’t wake the sleeping lady…)
Read more about tepidariums and Lawrence Alma-Tadema on Wikipedia
Read more about the giant naked lady in Bettina Tizzy’s Not Possible IRL blog post The Grand Odalisque – a sculpture by an unknown artist
This post is a follow on from my earlier post titled ‘Second Life-Why would you go there?’#6 To enjoy the nocturnal art of architecture
Q: Second Life – Why would you go there?
A: To enjoy the nocturnal art of architecture
This answer is lifted from G.K. Chesterton who said:
” All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
This seems an apt quote to use with Second Life where the virtual sun rises and sets several times in 24 hours. And, should we be so inclined, where we can go and adjust the environmental settings for a whole day of an endless end to end sunset! Judging by the proliferation of romantic saccharin avatar photos to be found on Flickr, Second Life’s sunset is one of the most favored ‘hours’ of the virtual day. But Chesterton observes how splendid architecture can be after sunset, an observation applicable to architecture in both our physical and virtual worlds. Another reason for selecting the above quote is because so many Second Life builders are working into the small hours adjusting prims, and adding textures, to their fabulous creations. It seems fair to deduce that virtual building is itself largely a nocturnal art, conducted by creative individuals opting to build something (rather than watch TV).
Well, some virtual creations do become ‘like the art of fireworks.’ Seems to me that my own (nocturnal) virtual wanderings have led me to some fabulous displays of nocturnal art recently. First Kolor Fall and now D.B. Bailey…
I found D.B. Bailey at Locus quite by accident. I was checking landmarks for my next Second Life class, as places tend to come and go in Second Life, it is always a good idea to ensure they still exist for when you need them. Second Life has its own seasons that mark its ebb and flow of decline and productivity. Builds pop up then vanish, simply melting away to leave large dents on mown lawns, or lost aspidistras marooned beneath the sea.
I had a landmark to the Cetus District, an area of Second Life that replicated a traditional art gallery district of London or New York. I landed on a mountain peak instead of a cobbled street and could see from the buildings below me that there had been some dramatic changes to the location. I went to explore and began to marvel at the imagination of the builders. When I clicked on these buildings, I kept seeing D.B. Bailey’s name and discovered from his profile that he is a first life architect called David Denton. I was then lucky enough to meet David Denton in avatar form, and he treated me to a tour of Locus. It turns out he is experimenting with Second Life to build a real world shopping mall in Cairo. See his write up about this experiment in Dispatch from Cairo: a Message from DB Bailey in The Arch blog.
I have often thought that Second Life is like a 3D sketchbook, and find it intriguing to see it utilized for a first life project. Locus is a gorgeous place to visit! I found myself marveling at the mind and imagination of DB Bailey and his skill for drawing in what looks like complex 3D layers. Friedrich Joseph Schelling described architecture as being like *frozen music, and here you can see that thought realized. One final observation, due to DB Bailey’s use of autumn oranges set against electric blues the architecture at Locus will conjure up reminders of G.K. Chesterton’s fireworks and sunsets.
*”Architecture in general is frozen music.” Friedrich von Schelling
More pictures to follow! (Images above barely skim the surface of Locus).
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Poorlatrice%20/135/127/107/The Quadrapop Tree Gallery has been a little nomadic recently, shifting restlessly from one location to another. However, in a recent announcement from quadrapop Lane we are told that the gallery has finally found a permanent home. It now stands built into a vast hillside balancing on what looks like an elegant Giorgio de Chiroco viaduct. When I visited it was early morning, the gallery was shrouded in fog and a strange micro shower hovered above the Quadrapop Pond and its black swan. As I drew closer I saw the Chihuly-type raindrops were in fact the creation of none other than Second Life’s Glyph Graves. Tall white pillars topped with tidy clumps of ivy spanned the gallery floor adding to the sense of wandering inside a surrealist painting.
I teleported up to the gallery’s sky platforms featuring quadrapop’s own works called ‘quad’s view of the future of VR Worlds as seen in the past’. A document was delivered to my avatar titled ‘Secondlife by quadrapop Lane’. It is a summary of Second Life written from quad’s own point of view. It is difficult to summarize Second Life (I have attempted the feat on many occasions) I was impressed by how many aspects of Second Life quad touched upon in this short document. Each sculpture also has a web link connected to it, by clicking on the sculpture you are whisked off to a web page tying Second Life to First Life.
I wandered the sky platforms, looking in every direction with my camera for shots. Now, I mention my virtual camera here for a very good reason. Many, many Second Life moons ago, while visiting one of quadrapop’s earlier galleries, my avatar fell right off the sky platform (I was looking for a fancy angle with my camera at the time). I came crashing down to land at quad’s feet in the gallery below. She kindly told me how to take the camera restraints off my virtual camera, thus allowing me to move my camera far away from my avatar to get my shots. (A useful tip that has helped me to avoid getting dangerously close to platform edges ever since.)
quad’s generosity does not stop at camera tips either. Golden eggs containing treasures are scattered across the Quadrapop Gallery floor. These are similar to the lucky chairs found in stores which take forever to give you something that no self respecting avatar will be seen wearing (even when ‘away from keyboard). Not the case here! These eggs give out fine surprises if you are observant and move quickly to click on them when you see the first letter of your avatar name. I won a beautiful flying manta ray fish and quad told me you can win pieces of art as well as flying fish.
quadrapop has made her gallery a space where you can hang out with friends. There is music via a shoutcast board that is open to all to change the stream via the radio. She will also be running building classes at some point in the not too distant future.
Quadrapop Tree Gallery, Poorlatrice (135, 127, 107) Gosh! As Quadropop says in comments the gallery has been re-designed! Visit and have fun!
Second Life, a ‘place’ to change your mind in many ways and many times. Those of us who like exploring virtual worlds do so for many different reasons. Clearly some people allow themselves to be swept into the alternative reality afforded by the immersive experience, they might describe themselves as ‘living Second Life’. Meanwhile, others are drawn by the shifts in perception that a virtual world can generate. This line of thinking might be drawn on a continuum from the feeling aspect of experience to the thinking aspect. We virtual world travelers could all potentially position ourselves somewhere on this continuum. I would also factor into our elected position an elasticity; that is, we could each draw a bubble around ourselves that shows the degree that we move up and down our own selected reaches of the feeling/thinking virtual experience.
Some people happily spend their time in-world as their avatar projection of themselves interacting with other avatar projections. They all become players within their projected play, calibrating their virtual relationships according to their agreed upon version of shared virtual reality. I would put these people and their avatars at the feeling end of the continuum. At the same time I would say they have powerful anchors that orient them to their location in a greater picture of space and time. That is, travelers in virtual worlds know they are sitting at home watching their computer screen where they are also answering the phone, planning meals and reminding themselves to unload the washing machine.
Many people simply accept this is how they are within the virtual world as they access it from the physical world, they don’t ask deep philosophical questions they just ‘do it!’ Others find themselves having a different type of experience while hovering more towards the thinking end of the continuum. We self conscious ‘thinkers’ wander the virtual world, play with our avatars and interact with others in the 3D space but we constantly try to align everything so that it makes some kind of sense. We find that the hook that brings us back again and again is a question, actually it is more like a string of questions. Second Life is more of an experiment for those of us hooked on trying to figure out the virtual world experience. I would say it is a ‘Glass Bead Game’ for us, a virtual place where we can explore both ourselves and our understanding of reality. By that, I don’t mean virtual reality versus physical reality (virtual world v the so-called real world) I mean reality itself.
Inspire Space Park, Shinda. Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shinda/73/197/1560/
I have been thinking it’s time to take a look at communication devices in Second Life. I tend to really like the Steampunk inventions first and shiny futuristic space age devices second. The thought behind this little examination of communication equipment is based on the idea that fact follows fancy. Who knows we may all be wearing the next fancy thing-gummy permanently attached to our bodies? (No more dropping our smart phones down the loo.) Maybe we will be powering our own devices with our own body heat rather than causing them to stall with our sweat à la the iphone? The following photographs show the futuristic Holo Wristcomm created by Fenrir Reitveld.
One observation to make, if you wear this device in a location where there is a lot of lag it keeps your arm locked up as though you are wearing a plaster cast. This reminded me of the prosthetic devices I have read about recently: Offbeat O&P–Prosthetic Finger Implanted with USB Drive and Eye-socket camera films from inside the head. Perhaps one day we will be able to get casts for broken arms that come loaded with MP3 players, IM, WiFi and direct links to facebook and Ebay?
Holo Wristcomm can be purchased from MechMind Industries in Hoodoo, Second Life.
Train station located at ImaginBoyzToyz, Second Life
A telephone conference takes all the participants’ voices and squishes them together. Ideas can be communicated and action steps decided etc, but later it’s really hard to recall who was who, and who said what during the call.
Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life gave a talk in April of this year to the Gronstedt Group in Second Life. During this talk he described his frustration with telephone conference calls:
“Think about when you are sitting at a meeting using a speaker phone, and you are staring at that speaker, and then after a while you become frustrated because you think; ‘Why am I looking at this stupid phone’, and you try to look at the other people but that feels really awkward, so you look at the ceiling. Then you kind of give up in frustration and maybe look back at the phone.”
Philip Rosedale then added that our brain localizes “the voices that it hears as being little tiny humans that are sitting somehow inside that phone… If there are multiple people at the end of your line your brain images them all as being trapped inside that little phone, and that’s really unpleasant because two people (or more) are right in the exact same space. When they are speaking to you from the same place… your brain has a hard time.” (Rosedale, 2009).
Philip Rosedale, Founder of Linden Labs. Gronstedt Group. Second Life. April 2009. To hear more visit: http://www.gronstedtgroup.com/MP3s/Philip_Rosedale_Linden_Lab.mp3
(Post update: Friday May 29. Image showing tiny humans trapped inside phone added as a lacy kerchief wave to Dusan’s post titled Philipisms #7 – Get Those Tiny Humans Out of Your Head)
Meta Looming 