lundi 30 avril 2007

Five to the cinema.

During the beta testing of the Search for Gold in the Desert game, Five was approached by Dire Lobo, the owner of InWorld Cinema.

He asked Five to be his guest in his cinema! As already hinted at in a former blog, it was impossible for Five to enter his sim, because the boots made by Joe Stravinsky and the hair and without doubt the name “five” in 3D letters were far to heavy for this poor 3 class sim. So eventually Five had to strip before being able to enter the sim. Nice boots can have disadvantages!

Ok Dire Lobo was watching how Five bought a ticket, passed to the first floor with chairs and screens fitted in round spheres. A hud had to be fitted and the video could be started. Well if you have video streaming enabled. When not you have to go to your preferences and enable it. Five was doubtful, because this connection is not the fastest. Ok but it worked and the video started playing.

The experience of watching a movie in Sl is a very strange one. The human eye behind the screen is so used to see the poor shapes and forms of Second Life! It considers them to be “normal”. But confronted with the smooth pictures of movie quality the contrast between the two worlds becomes very, very big! It is almost too much. What do I do here behind my screen, when the real world is so beautiful, rich with textures, shades of colors and sounds? Ok Five is this character of Second Life, but who is actually watching the movie? Call my Shrink! The better the movie the larger the shock! And actually the movie shown, “Loverboy” is of very good quality. When compared to watching video’s on websites the first thing you think is: what’s the difference? The difference is subtle. But thinking about it, being in SL, watching this movie is still preferable above watching a movie on a website. Even alone somewhere in Second Life, you sense the presence of other “people”. On a website it is cold and quiet compared to Second Life. Indeed I called, IM’d a friend to visit me here and she joined Five in this cinema. Cinema? It might be called that. But Dire Lobo is already developing the idea of the cinema. Because Five can watch the movie in a semi private chair, it is not the experience of looking to a movie screen with lot’s of other people at the same time. But this kind of being together is even impossible in Second Life, at least at the moment. The sims are not capable of receiving real crowds!

The ticket you buy can be used for 48 hours. So you can see a chapter of the movie, do other things and resume looking at it. This is a great solution, because the sitting still in SL for too long is rather difficult. Another difference compared to a website. SL is a world to move around.

Five liked the experience of a viewing a movie very much, especially the contrast, the miles of difference to be covered for worlds like Second Life, before becoming as convincing as movies. It raises just the questions Five is looking for. Will SL become like the movies? Or will Second Life just to stay the stylized but primitive world it is now? But really this last idea is impossible. Five is watching a volatile world in rapid change. Just as the possibilities of some software on old computers will never be recovered, so this Second Life as Five knows it is an experience which will be lost in a year, in a few months may be.

Thx Dire Lobo for giving Five the possibility to visit InWorld Cinema!

Five plays with Fire

Second Life has some reminiscences of the primitive shooter games which featured on the early computer. The games where your thumb got numb from pressing the button, to shoot on all kinds of nasty flying objects. Because continuous firing wasn’t invented in these middle ages of computer history, you had to click of push buttons or the mouse incessantly. It were the days before RSI, the repetitive strain injuries and all was well. If something doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t exist.

Firing can be done in Second Life. An object produces other objects, the bullets, which exist only temporarily in the Second Life world. These bullets, or whatever are removed automatically after about a minute. Five isn’t too thrilled by weapons, but the possibility of the making of these temp-rezzed objects is very interesting, because it can also serve more peaceful ends. It is like melting cannons into ploughshares. This alone should be a reason for Five to use this way of making objects. The objects coming out, rezzed, are stored in the inventory of the thing that makes them. This is also very nice: it’s the kangaroo idea: an object has other objects in its belly. These temporarily produced objects can again be filled with other objects. It is not only a kangaroo, but also the idea of a Russian baboesjka, the puppet in puppet in puppet idea. This principle can be fire for programmers, but this blog is not about that kind of fire.

Other virtual fire was needed to use in the game of gold searching in the desert.

The idea was to let players gain a bar of dynamite to get access to secret places where they could find more hidden items. But an object giving of an explosion, smoke, and rubble? That’s programming particle systems, sounds, and this rezzing of temporary objects, which must be exploding, shooting away. This exploding can be done by using the Havok built in SL. This Havok produces natural falling and bouncing of objects, and the effects are never to be programmed by hand, because it involves lots of calculations which have to be done very fast. It is done on a deep basic level in the software.

Experimenting began. Five made an object which rezzes other object around itself, producing clouds and sounds. All went well, steadily more features were added. And then suddenly it went wrong. The kangeroo thing didn’t react anymore on commands. Five checked everything but eventually was puzzled by the malfunctioning. After a few hours of doing something else the solution was found: the lindenscript is delayed by all sorts of things, the rezzing of objects, the talking of objects between themselves (the rubble has to know in which direction to fly away), the smoke effects and the sounds. By loading more and more effects on top of each other the script got mixed up in itself and refused to function.

The solution was to separate all the different effects by enough time to let the script carry out the commands. So a whole string of effects states are ordered in a sequence in the so called timer event.

Then the explosion is well performed, although even then, depending on the traffic in the sim, some effects can be forgotten, making every explosion a bit individual, which is quite good.

Of course the fire is obtained by the text animation script you can obtain free.

Five was often working in the middle of fierce and violent effects. This made Five think, because Five is much more in the habit of making peaceful games. Shooters are not in Five's repertoire! Could it be possible to make a friendly explosion? So the rubble was replaced by flowers, the smoke by flowery images, and the fire animation was replaced by cheerful colors, jumping to and fro. But then again all was going wrong. The flowers proved to be too heavy for the sim, and the sim Five was working in was going down! You know, also peaceful acts can endanger the world? Luckily this Second Life world is partitioned, one sim going down, doesn’t mean the whole world is in danger. The sim quickly recovered from the flowers, removed them and regained consciousness. But the flowers were not saved, so no pictures from these peaceful demolitioners of sims in this blog!

dimanche 29 avril 2007

Five buys boots! To Joe Stravinsky!

Five has to admit that spending money for Five, this poor, poor artist is the most difficult thing there is. Living without much money is not at all a problem. Certainly not in Second Life. ACtually it is very good: you learn to make everything yourself and to help yourself. Usually this is fine for Five. Of course Five’s clothes, shoes, hair are either giveaways, second hand, or badly made!

But then Five walked around in the desert, actually Five worked in the desert…on high heels. That was hilarious really. So Five made some poorly shoe shapes and textures to be able to do the work, programming and testing the game of searching gold. See the last blog, or use this teleportation.


But this situation was untenable. Visitors complained: who is this…..poor thing. So friends got together, searched their wallets for loose money, and finally collected enough to be able to send Five on a mission. Buy yourself some decent shoes for in the desert!

A terrible quest was started: what shoes for in a desert? Boots. But search SL on boots, and see for yourself that there is not that much around in the shops. It had to be cowboy boots, because the setting is a desert, Indian country. Some entries can be found for boots. But the things offered were rather poor. Search again! Strange enough, there are a few shops to be found, for cowboy hats, gear, boots, and longcoats. These will be listed at the end of this blog. Five was not thrilled to spend the money which was given to her. What to do, already lot's of time was lost!
But suddenly Five strolled in the shop of Joe Stravinsky “Heart’s Desire”.

In this shops Five was amazed by the imaginative shoes and boots on offer, Five really thought these designs were made by somebody with a talent for these kind of thing.

Shoe making is a specialty in Second Life. The feet of the avatars are awful; you have to hide those small monsters at the end of your legs using a combination of visible and invisible prims. In the edit mode you can perceive the complexity of the construction, quickly running into 30 or more objects being put together.

Of course if there are suddenly so many good boots on offer, it becomes difficult to choose! This is going to take long! Five called Armoe Lipo in for help. Actually he paid Five a pair of boots! Thank you Armoe! (Without him, Five would still be around on high heels in the desert.)

With the help of Armoe, Five decided to take the Red Venom. Actually Armoe advised dark colors, so Five took the opposite, red ones, sorry: this is Five!

And Five was so pleased about the new boots, immediately a IM was sent to the designer, Joe Stravinsky. Five wanted to know more about him! Is he a shoemaker, a designer? How do you become a talented builder of objects in SL?

He was prepared to talk to me! Joe Stravinsky is a very modest person in a very fierce avatar.

…..

[8:53] Five: how do you get your ideas for the shoes? it is quite special to make them, it is clear that you have a great feeling for these things

[8:53] Joe Stravinsky: well
[8:54] Joe Stravinsky: this is a nice story hope you like it
[8:54] Five: please tell us?
[8:54] Joe Stravinsky: well i had been playing for a few months
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: just building any like castle and furniture
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: then one in jan 2005 i met my SL wife Heart wishbringer
[8:55] Joe Stravinsky: we got know each other fell in love and got married on Jan 31
[
8:56] Five: in SL?
[8:57] Joe Stravinsky: yes
[
8:59] Five: but .... the design and the shoes?
[
9:00] Joe Stravinsky: well Heart said to me Joe thee are no good shoes on SL do you think you could make me a pair
[9:02] Joe Stravinsky: i wanted to open a furniture shop
[9:02] Joe Stravinsky: i did and sold one candle stick
[9:02] Five: lol!
[9:03] Joe Stravinsky: it was Heart that said Joe make shoes you are really goood at that
[9:03] Joe Stravinsky: so we opened Hearts Desire named after heart

[9:02] Five: And how do you imagine the boots? Where are your ideas coming from?
[9:04] Joe Stravinsky: and my shoes and boots are from my imagination and dreams
……

Isn’t it true that when something “really good” is made, always love is involved? His sweetheart Heart asked him for shoes…he dreamt about them and made the shoes. He isn’t a special designer of shoes in RL at all. He got on with shoes, made his shop, now you understand the name: “Heart’s desire”! His specialty is developed and nurtured in SL. This made Five wonder again. Indeed it is the people Like Joe Stravinsky who are constructing this world, the dedicated people, not the commercially interested professionals, not the land speculators. It is still the wonderful time in SL at the moment of constructing and experimenting with something, before the professionals come in and make it a dull commercial place, like television, websites, and most of the movies.

That is why you can buy shoes from people like Joe Stravinsky for 350 L$, shoes in which he probable has put days of work, getting the shapes and textures right!

The story about the shoes doesn’t end here…Five was invited to do some beta testing in another part of SL, but Five couldn’t teleport in….that was strange! Then it daunted Five that maybe it had something to do with the boots. And yes….half naked Five was teleported through. Five never wondered about the class 3 sims, the older ones. But being “loaded” with prims on feet and hair, you become too heavy to be teleported to the older sims. LOL!

A list fo the shops Five visited:
Hearts desire, this is Joe's alright!
Wild Horses Saloon, much to be seen here!
Cafe Ca, lot's and lot's
Anthony77777 Bandit, what's the name of this shop?





jeudi 26 avril 2007

Five programms a game!

Come and See, it is the

Nugget Gulch Goldmine Game

beta version just starting! Amiryu Hosoi and Five’s first game in Second Life.
It all happens on the Virgin Islands.
Find the shack to start, watch out for the dynamite indoors and the boulders coming down from the mountains outdoors, not to speak of the wild horses roaming freely about.….
Rain is not the problem, and a drink might be found high in the sky.
Get the gear, a sophisticated detector and an even more futuristic HUD and start searching in a dusty environment, a desert, where wild animals lure behind the bushes…
Try to find gold! Put it on the scales to get your bonus. Get your name on the high score list!

Exploring is fun, experimenting is fun, but sometimes it is even more fun to make an real effort to construct something, a game! Five programs in SL in the Linden script. Hm, that’s quite an experience. Because not only object are involved but also ‘people’ not everything can be controlled, programmed quite so easily as in normal programming. On Contrechoc a few programmed counters are installed to see how many people, yes people, are visiting this place. These are ‘real’ people, even if they are not interested in art (Five laughs out loudly!), and the visitors are not search-robots like the ones visiting the websites and boosting the counters on these internet pages. Also on Contrechoc some items are programmed to be temp-rezzed, that is to say the objects are only temporarily in the SL world and are replaced just before they are deleted, so creating the illusion of being there all the time. Five considers this as a peaceful way of using the rather aggressive feature in SL of making guns and shooting on other avatars. And of course the dodecahedron is constructed in script. It would have been impossible otherwise, all these cray angles!

Only if that’s it, programming in SL is without much of a challenge. So once upon a time Five met Amiryu Hosoi with her idea of a game in her sim. Five thought the game idea was too easy to be true, and in fact if it was made in the environment of, for instance, Director it would have been.

But things got a bit complicated with connections between data from the dBases and events in SL, the fact that several players are playing at the same time, and that some gear, needed for the game had to communicate between themselves, the dBase and the world.

But what am I talking about. How can I suppose you to be interested in the details of the making of a game? Play the game! Have fun!


mercredi 25 avril 2007

Five looking for art in Contrechoc

It had to happen: to write about what Five “themselves” produces in a small backyard on a messy continent. Always talking and writing about others. Is it art in Contrechoc? That is the big question! If Five cannot show what art is on this tiny plot of land, how to criticize other peoples ideas and solutions? Actually this is the nature of art: being rather….difficult to grasp, always eluding, and ephemeral. It should be. Art should be beyond, showing other ways, questioning existing solutions. But is questioning enough, when it is clear that the answers will never be given - by art? Art can be thought of as a continuing exercise to think outside the boundaries of the actual. In this sense SL as a whole is in this category. Although a lot in SL is trying to be a copy of RL, it will continually develop to become a world of its own. Back from the largest, the global of SL, to the local of Contrechoc. What is shown will change every instant, things will be added, things will be deleted, so don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize the pictures. Five is experimenting with images coming from real life art, and the possibilities of SL.

Five has invited friends to contribute. This makes it possible to see what happens with different kinds of styles and personalities. As “doing” painting or drawing is not possible, (although you meet an easel with a painter here and there in SL) these more classically orientated styles don’t fit too well in Five’s idea of art. On the other hand the prims need surfaces and these can be very convincingly real, for instance with images of graffiti, see other bloggs about this!

An nice aspect is the possibility of making underground spaces and to show what is in it by making the upper surface semi transparent.
This has the effect of the hidden while maintaining visibility, giving a bit of a clue where to look. In the same construction, you can make the ceiling of the spaces under the floor totally transparent. This gives a possibility to add layers, which can only be seen by looking up. Difficult to explain, just look at the picture and you’ll understand.
The option of letting things float in space, being not “physical” gives the rather interesting chance to experiment with, for instance, drawings, which are placed as if on a wall, without the wall actually shutting of the space. This wall simply isn’t
needed; the drawings float against the background of the surrounding landscape.

For installations, the form of art where the artist arranges a whole space instead of just producing a painting, SL is very appropriate. Five reproduced some installations made in RL, and put these bigger themes in spheres. For instance very SL like is putting a panoramic picture on the inside a sphere, making the outside transparent. You walk into this sphere and the image closes around you. These 360 degrees images in spheres cannot be well reproduced in snapshots, you must be in SL to really see the effect: that’s a good sign! The goal is to construct installations which originate totally in SL, and which distinguish themselves totally from RL. This is Five’s side of looking beyond the copying of RL! Also real SL solutions can be found in the possibility of using the space above the bought land – everyone can fly in SL! This space is actually very large compared to the surface (if you can compare surface and space….). The experiments of Five are well extended in height. The problem is then the coherence between the different layers or just the differences between these levels. The instability, the incredible fast rate of change in SL makes it difficult to establish a final solution, but this is just what is the decisive character of the idea of art which Five is looking for….. Experimenting and exploring is what is stimulated by the whole nature of SL. Five didn’t yet speak of the programming possibility, which is quite extensively used in Contrechoc. For instance the positioning of the benches of the dodecahedron, floating above the lower structures, is done by a script. In the connection of scripting and drawing the two worlds of Five, say science (more technology) and art are become more intimately connected now. Something which Five dreams of is the possibility of making images in world, for instance by scripts. In writing this text, and in showing these images, Five acknowledges that Contrechoc also, like the rest of this world, suffers from being still too closely connected to RL. But okay, it’ll take time to build another world, it wouldn’t be fun if it was there outright!
(Five ends this blogg naming the artist friends whose work are shown and who agreed to publish their "real" names, such as Tilman Rothermel, Hermann Komar, Hans Wap, Christine Deknuydt and Marie-Christine Grosliere.....)

Five in Slum City

Five visits Sandboxes regularly these days. Actually, when writing about sandboxes for a former blogg, Five was a little bit disappointed about what was being “on show”. A few weeks ago, there were amazing things to be ssen! But you have to be lucky! This time Five was more fortunate, because somebody was making a very odd looking car. It looks bizarre, because the textures are those from a cardboard construction set which you can cut, fold and glue together. The explanations and sizes are clearly visible in nice bright colors on the white background on the surface of the car. And just this is the fun! Indeed this way of constructing a car, in SL is really quite fascinating. Normally people are trying to hide the fact that the objects in this world are put together, with this car, the owner/maker Youma Muir (remember this name!) shows clearly that all is but cardboard, only virtual. This is questioning the belief of people, this urge to make something “real” even when everybody is quite aware that SL isn’t too real. Although we could conclude from the success of SL the opposite: that our conviction of existing in a “real” reality can be fooled quite easily. Think about what SL will look like in a few years with more powerful computers and servers, you can already see examples of it in more sophisticated computer games. Humans will be drawn in and be convinced that these worlds are as real as the world of our own. More and more features of the “real” will be added. And in fact, who can argue against it, if you can live, sell, earn, dance, communicate in these worlds? At the moment the distinctions are still very visible, but just that is what makes it attractive at the moment: the not really real…..


When something out of the ordinary happens Five studies the profile of the person involved. One thing often leads to more and Five’s appetite of exploring is big! (A real hunger in SL!) And bingo, the menu of the profile of Youma Muir on “interesting places” was filled up! The first one Five tried was Slum City .

Here Five landed in a fast food place. Remember the Japanese resto, a few blogg’s ago? The textures here are not as abundant, and maybe a bit more of grease and filthy things could be added. The small table is superb though and watch the bottle, fallen of the table, and pouring it’s liquid on the ground, seen through the gray surface of this table. Outside you see the shop with the yellow…what is this called in English? (Seen the pigeon, which really leaves a virtual dropping?)

But you will recognize it, just as the very rusty old car. Inside the shop a super job of textures, really a place you don’t want to visit being in a hurry. But here in SL it is a miracle. Chris Llanfair, who happened to stroll around told Five that it took Archadia Asylum weeks to make it and Five believed him !
Chris was looking in
Fives profile and immediately asked about the local and the global.

But this story is for another blogg. Slum City is high in the sky, but this doesn’t really bother the creators to create a whole cargo ship, with beautiful textures on the containers. Just around the corner even a church, with a very nice light falling through a stained glass window above the entrance. Strange, just in this sim, they have attacked the problem of dirt and decay. In all 3D environments, dirt or dust is the most “expensive” there is. That’s why these virtual worlds are looking so unnaturally clean. In Slum City a bit of the feeling of dirt is regained. Lol, couldn’t we exchange a bit of the dust of our RL with the too cleanliness of SL! Dust, sand, grease, filth, decay is available in abundance in Real Life, we fight our whole life against it. The battle is so engraved in our soul that we miss this kind of mess in virtual worlds. Or is it that mess and chaos are the substrate, the fertile soil for the few good ideas we produce? Ok you sense a paradox here in Five’s existence: on the one hand Five distinguishes quite clearly between RL and SL, not liking the outright copying of things from RL to SL, for instance in the domain of the arts, on the other hand Five likes well done realistic textures and has an urge for mess and dust! Well that’s Five alright! It’s like the car with which this blogg started, compared to the very convincing rusted car in here Slum City…..


PS Did Five tell you about the manhole opposite the rusty old car? More to discover, Five won't whisper about it!

lundi 23 avril 2007

Five returns to the Sandbox (in search for art)

Where are the times when Five hadn’t enough land, or friends with land to experiment with building. Five’s first experiments, on lights for a dj, where done in the garden of a travelling agency. Sitting in a chair to earn the first Linden dollars Five even made the five sided table and chairs you can still see in Contrechoc. Suddenly the owner appeared, and everything was gone!

Some evening we tested the dj devices in a sandbox and a French dj called Anamkhai Sodwind came along. It was in a sandbox, where you can experiment, because you don’t disturb other people and enough prims are available. The only problem is that these places clean up regularly, so beware, you might loose hours of work, just like that. Second Life is unstable compared to Real Life, but Second Life is stable relative to Sandboxes! This French dj, which could easily be identified by his very funny portable dj set, looked at our work and got out of his inventory an enormous dj-disco set. After a few somersaults, he was able to talk to us…. Really amazing! Later on he put down a sort of enormous building.

This is the fun of the sandbox, you can see people experiment on the most simple level, see for instance the couple working on their first bed…well even with their bed they have a bit to learn, never even arriving at using it properly....but also watch real specialists at work.

They conjure up their most exquisite work like that, and put it back in their pocket! Some sandboxes are in connection with a sim with a theme. For instance the sandbox of Elvenmoor. Here you can meet people working in the theme of the Elven, which is quite fun. Palaces, castles, enormous decorated swords, but also enchanted woods in a box can be seen there, if you are lucky.







A special place for me is Serenity Woods. Here Five presented for the first time, projecting the image of SL in RL ! Also the surroundings of Serenity Woods are worth taking a look at. Trees! Living in trees, working in trees, hm, Five likes very much to “think” in trees... Tree houses are seen a lot around here, some are very inventive! The sandbox typically is surrounded by wood logs. With a sort of Startreck teleporter you can also try out the floating platform.



Polkadot is more of the next age: you must get there using funny rockets. You can choose different platforms, floating in the air. Since this is connected to an airport, you must not be surprised to encounter enormous airplanes over here. Very funny to explore are the levels between the platforms, but you must have a ninja feather or something like it, because on this height normal flying is not possible.

In the last blogg about art we were left with the problem of looking for art in SL. The Sandboxes are really the greenhouses of Second Life building and creating. But you must be lucky! Not always interesting things are around and you only meet guys from the jumble sale, trying to sell you things you can get free in the places offering freebies….

mercredi 18 avril 2007

Five thinks about ART, intro

Art, oh boy! When you think about art, you have to know what art is. But art is a bit like Second Life itself and everything that is in it: changing faster than you can think. Everything in art has changed, ideas, materials……since….since the renaissance, since 1945, since 2000.

Adorno starts his book “Esthetical theory” with the sentence: “It has become obviously, that nothing, what belongs to art, is still obvious, not in itself neither in its relation to everything else, not even its right of existence.” That’s it! Art is not to be defined. Every definition will be surpassed.

What then can still be said about art? This idea can be turned around. What somebody says about art, what art she prefers, it says more about this person itself, then it says about art.

So this blogg is not at all to criticize (well a bit it is….), it tells about Five more than about art.

The first thing you see, when searching art, for instance in the search engine of Second Life is framed pictures, of works from van Gogh, from Michelangelo, from all old masters. These can be bought. Sorry, Five doesn’t appreciate this, it goes well beyond her sense of humor!

This has nothing to do with art, this has only to do with earning money with nice things made by others: terrible! Shame on you!

We quickly go, and find galleries, sort of places where artists show there paintings, like in RL. This is a bit better, the work being, sort of, more real. But still it is nothing more than a not so imaginative copy of the real world. It is using SL as an alternative website. This can be done and is legitimate, but you could expect more of artists?

But I cannot imagine Leonardo da Vinci in SL doing the same things as in RL. I imagine an artist exploring, trying to find the frontiers of the possible, test the boundaries of emotions, trying to shock normality. This is just what SL makes possible, in a sense. Not to offend people, but to offer alternatives to real life which is often too normal to be true. Ok, that selling paintings is possible is quite well known. That paintings from the renaissance are interesting is known. (Everyone can download pictures from the web and upload them in SL?) Painting and drawing itself is an act is not possible in SL. Maybe that’s why paintings and drawings doesn’t seem to fit too good in this world.

So we have an ongoing search for “art” and artists in SL. Find out who is experimenting with new techniques and ideas. Who is inventive in SL?

In another blogg I already wrote about Julia Hawthorne, and her leopard. Later on I found a very nice tree, with a branch on which you could lie. Hidden things and possibilities always fascinate me. Hidden things are part of Five’s idea of art, art offering possibilities to dream, being itself an illusion…

Other items of her hand are displayed in her shop Elements-Greenmantle . But the strange thing is, although the ideas are brilliant, for instance the chair, all the things put together make a sort of strange atmosphere. Almost as if it is too much. These creations gain a lot when they are encountered in the rather dull everyday world of SL! But next to the shop, in the surf of the see, is a quite beautiful and interesting island Drymonia , which has a secret entrance undersea. This island really fits in smoothly with the possibilities of SL. It hasn’t at all the pretensions of being art. It just puts the visitor in a mood.

Then there are the buildings. Of course architects are more at home in SL. The building blocks, the primitives are quite like the bricks of the architect. And just where they explore new roads, like not so rectangular things, they are making the biggest impression.

For instance the structure in the sandbox Polkadot. Imaginative because of its nicely curved lines.

But the architect has the problem of reality. People want roofs, staircases, which are not quite necessary in SL. Later more about architecture and about sandboxes! (Maybe the real SL art is only to be found in the sandboxes.)

A bit between art and architecture is the place of Krystal Epic

Here the visitor is made a part of the structure, seeing being the color and the moving textures, and she can go on to other experimental settings, in a sort of guided tour. This place is really doing something with your senses, using the exotic possibilities of SL building and programming. Totally different is the place of Brainiacq.

He uses color in its brightest possibilities. Something which is not done too much in SL. He experiments with programming and has a made a playground of possibilities. Somewhere in this corner Leonardo could be found, doing his strange things, inventing machine without an appropriate energy source…

Back to the visual arts. Five really started in SL using its potential during a real life performance, which was a presentation of the drawings of Christine Deknuydt in Bremen.

Drawings were shown, fitted on a few flight of stairs. This structure as a totality becomes an installation. It was successful, also because during the real life presentation, these fitted drawings were rezzed in an empty sandbox, just like that, and at the end they were put back in the inventory. The audience was stunned! During the presentation persons, for instance Armoe Lipo, came along and asked what it was, Five answered on the fly. Later on Five experimented with more stable installations on a small plot of land, Contrechoc.


The most rewarding results are really underground, that is to say within the cellar. The floor above these cellars is half transparent, so a visitor has the possibility of discovering. But the display is going on high in the sky! Experimenting, exploring, changing all the time. SL won’t be a stable world…

Art is very much needed in SL. Without the inventiveness and exploration of artist SL will be a dull copy of the real world for a long time. SL needs artists to get rid of the feeling of emptiness that floats around, to give it meaning, a sense, and adventure!

dimanche 15 avril 2007

Five in "the Wastelands"



This sim “The Wastelands“ (actually two sims) is one of the “musts” of Second Life. A lot has been written about it. What is striking is the coherence of sims. The brilliance of textures and details is staggering and there is a lot of humour invested too, for instance the living underground. Once I discovered somebody had made a beautiful bed in a deserted metro tube under the surface.
(As written before Five likes “the hidden things” very much, this “not showing everything immediately” is rather lacking in Second Life. Just what is contrary to the aspect of selling as much and as fast as you can.)


But also remarkable are the differences between the buildings, their individuality within the theme. This means a lot of individual people are working together within a common idea: the most difficult thing there is, staying yourself, in coherence with a group.




For me, “The wasteland”, is T.S Elliot’s poem.

This is a superb link for the poem (http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/)


The poem starts with:

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

…..



But the poem has nothing to do with the wastelands sim. Although the description fits, the poem dates from before the notion of total destruction. We, living now, are aware and very conscious of the fact that some people have the power to destroy everything there is. (Quite a miracle it didn’t already happen!) But the fear of annihilation has entered our mind, because endless books are written and movies are made about this final disaster.


So this sim is the landscape, which might still exist, after the bomb. The scenery is based on the comic of Antony Johnston, the videogame Fallout, or the movie Bladerunner.


Recommended for this sim is simply wondering around, and looking for clues, where to enter. There are lots of clues lying around! Just search out where people live, what they have found out to live in.....sometimes even guarded by an giant shrimp, be careful!


Interesting for sim builders is the edge. Five was wondering how the people of the sim could “dig” so deep in the surface. Have they made holes? Can a surface of a sim be broken? At the edge one can see how it is done. The total surface is raised high above see level. Then locally the surface folded sharply, and deep abysses are made. In these deep spaces, the underground constructions are made, and the surface is covered up with prims having textures like the soil. So for the eye on the surface the deep ravine is invisible. Really ingenious application of the restricted possibilities of Second Life. All this can be seen at the edge of the sim. Don’t go there if you prefer to stay in the fantasy of the sim! (Don’t look at the last pictures then!)



As I see it, the sim is also a protest against the childish behaviour, seen mostly in Second Life. The phenomenon that almost everyone is going to copy his real existence, the trying to sell (but failing), the building of a home, the disorder of individual enterprises, which in their individuality are sort of all the same. Maybe “The Wastelands” is not even a protest, better still; it is an example of what is possible, when working together is a joy and stimulates fantasy.





Ok to finish the picture of under the sim....don't look at it!


lundi 9 avril 2007

Five in a Japanese restaurant


Ok we are not hungry in Second Life. That means famine is unknown. Admitted we can live here, without money, and thanks to charity, all the free clothes around, actually we don’t need anything, but to amuse ourselves. A big and daunting task, if you think about it!

Indeed leaving hunger behind is good, but I am missing the food and the times of savoring dishes with friends! The pleasure of eating, the talks about great diners during diner, and don’t forget the wines. There is always the problem not to eat too much. Drinking too much is out of the question, what is the point of drinking when you don’t even taste it anymore, because you’re already drunk? Ok, some people might have another opinion. But I go for the exquisite tastes, more then for the alcohol.

Since eating is not necessary, you can ask about the reason for having restaurants in this virtual world. Just as others habits coming from real life, like building houses with roofs and staircases, you can think that these restaurants are only left-overs from this real world. I should say, from "that" world, "overthere".

But no!

Strolling through the world Five encountered a superb restaurant in Little Tokyo. Five likes this Japanese sim, it is built on a human size, and has a lot of surprises to offer. One of these is a Japanese restaurant where the design is superb. Human too! There are splendid simple drawings on the wall, there are menu cards. (In Japanese, maybe I should ask my Japanese friend Sin Nagy, from a former blogg to translate the cards.) So all is in Japanese. There is very much to discover, th hidden thing is doing it's work, you stay a long time looking around. The food offered looks very seducing. And then, but you have to search them, the pose balls, at the bar.

I liked very much the sleeping on the bar pose. Again all the detail here is stunning. This is really a "taste" for the eye! But can this ever replace a nice red wine?

And then a Japanese entered, Rogue Merlin, not a very Japanese name! Immediately I asked him about these restaurants, the texts, the drawings. He explained a bit about the menu cards.

[9:16] Rogue Merlin: This meny explains the course menu.
[
9:16] Rogue Merlin: main dish and
[9:16] Rogue Merlin: snack

Then I asked about the drawings on the wall, I was very curious about them, being half naive, but also very much designed.

[9:17] You: and what are the drawings behind us at the wall?
[9:19] Rogue Merlin: Kind of autograph
[9:19] You: but that is indeed on the walls in resto's like these?
[
9:20] Rogue Merlin: Some owner of this kind of bar prefer
[
9:21] Rogue Merlin: To put the autograph of sereb.

Then some other Japanese came in and they started talking Japanese. Time to get the Babbler in action. (See the other blogg, Five talks Japanese.) The Babbler is a free translator, you have to instruct it which person to translate.
As expected, it produced some funny translations.

First of all the test:

[9:31] Rogue Merlin: 日本語
[
9:31] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Japanese
[9:31] You: ha ha it just said you talked Japanese....
[9:31] Rogue Merlin:
私は
[
9:31] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: As for me

[9:31] Rogue Merlin: 日本人です
[9:31] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: It is the Japanese

Someone else came in:

[9:33] Rogue Merlin: 今日は
[
9:33] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Today
[9:33] Rogue Merlin:
こんにちは
[
9:34] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Today
[9:34] Rogue Merlin: I said hello in Japanese

[9:34] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: I said hello in Japanese
[9:34] You: yes understand

Ok so today is hello in Japanese. Just like our Good day!
Then from another customer, who was, by the way, only a few days old:
She was dressed in a very pink shirt. We will meet her again at the end of the story!

[9:34] Takashikun Nishi: まだ初心者でよくわかりません
[9:34] De-Babbler 1.1c: Takashikun Nishi: The beginner it is not understood still be possible to be.

I can just understand what she said! This is reality: (being drunk anyway!) Just the opposite of what I told you in the beginning!

[9:37] Rogue Merlin: バーチャル二日酔いの集まりなんだ
[9:37] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: It is gathering what of virtual hangover
[9:41] Rogue Merlin:
今日はインターナショナルな酔っ払いの集まりだな
[9:41] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Today gathering shelf of international drunkard

Still drinking her beer was the lady in pink, I wanted to compliment her on her shirt, asked Rogue Merlin to do it…look how it is translated…..

[9:44] Rogue Merlin: March さんが、君の事気に入ったらしいよ
[9:44] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: When March likes, your thing, it forces,

But well, maybe I have to admit, restaurants have a place in Second Life.

PS

[9:46] Rogue Merlin: Takeshikun is boys name.
[9:46] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Takeshikun is boys name.
[9:46] Rogue Merlin: In japan
[
9:47] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: In japan.
[9:47] Rogue Merlin: Maybe She is he in real life
[9:47] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Maybe She is he in real life
[9:47] Rogue Merlin: Very confusing
[
9:48] De-Babbler 1.1c: Rogue Merlin: Very confusing