Inspire Space Park

Five was wandering around in the oracle garden of Tangerine Anatine, Five wrote an oracle script for her she is putting to good use:
See her gardens Tangerine's Dreams: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nimue/208/168/75
It is really a nice garden and tells a lot about cards and numbers which is interesting, even if you are not a devotee of predictions! I don't want to reveal much more, since the real fun is to discover it yourself!
Five happened to look at the profile Tangerine Anatine and there was this Space Destination. Interesting people tend to have interesting profiles, and yes! Tangerine referred me to something I hadn't seen before:

the Inspire Space Park!

This is a really funny place, situated high above the surface on the huge sculpty prims made by Gene Replacement (wasn't he banned , haha, we see his prims everywhere!!! Is he back now, his profile works again! )

Anyway, although called a park, this is a sort of meteor belt like situation, all kinds of planets and stones and rocks tumbling around each other, you can go on a « sleep orbit » which is really a great feeling!

There are floating zen tables, and tai chi exercises.....you can go from one meteor to the other crossing all kinds of small rocks, don't fall down between these smaller rocks!

And the funny thing is: there are lots of people around! They like this place, it is not a boring shopping mall, nothing to be sold, there is just the feeling of the future! When avatars can cross space without needing a space ship. Really this is what being avatar is all about!

The orbital park is made by the group Virtual Life Media, real virtual artists apparently with bright ideas!
This is the inventive art you are looking for when visiting worlds like Second Life, not copied images of Michelangelo or Leonardo or Rembrandt. I like Michelangelo, think he is great among the very best artists, but it has nothing to do with this world...

And this place has a goal: relax from the hustle and bustle of SL! It is not even copying nature, to get this feeling across. Nature parks in virtual worlds, although I like them, always give me a queer feeling: why am I in a nature park, behind the screen, while real nature is just around the corner?

Ok, so a great place to relax, to think about future possibilities, to wonder about what was, is and comes!

Oh just a last remark: you can go on orbital embrace!!! That just seems heaven to me!

Inspire Space Park Ultra Natural Space Destination in Shinda
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shinda/28/213/218

Oh, all my pictures are in daylight, you should see it by night!

Teaching in Second Life.

From our special correspondent Nugget Kidd:

Giving a workshop in several techniques to combine media, I decided to introduce the participants also to Second Life. SL is a superb environment to sketch, to develop ideas, using images, constructing, scripting, sound, animations, and possibly video. SL, as a 3D world is intuitive not to be compared to a real architectural 3D program, but at the same time it has extensive possibilities to express ideas and feelings.
Participants were “forced” into Second Life, and Swann Jie joined the class of her own free will!
So there were eight avatars in total doing the exercises.
All was done on a basic plot of land of 512 m2, and 117 prims.

A great thing about Second Life is that it needs no tutorial:
The examples of what can be done in SL can be found everywhere around, and good ideas have been well developed. The workshop approach to this world was more building and designing than chatting. Chatting and looking at each others results “in-world” is considered a bonus. Social interaction was not a goal.
To get a taste of the virtual possibilities the participants had to make three things: a basic chair, a design chair and a poster. (all within 20 prims, each chair under 10 prim max, hpoing that it would all fit in the 117 prims...)

The basic chair cannot be a chair without having some references to the RL idea of a chair.
The second version of the chair should express some emotion through design, texture or construction.
The tension between the properties of virtual reality and the idea “chair” became too much for two of the participants, they proposed a “world with a moon” or an “ice cream” as chair, Swann Jie and ActionHenk Winkl. This is very possible given poseballs, but is a bit outside of the purpose of this small assignment.

The poster is a way to use Second Life as a 3D drawing machine. Given some text lines and an emoter (SL facial expression tool) you can make a few snapshots of your avatar and using photoshop you have a comic strip.
This idea is elaborated in a very sophisticated way in http://encoreseraphine.com/
The poster exercise became partially a reaction on the SL experience, but also some glimmers of RL popped up in these text-images. Real experience crept in, which was unexpected. Second Life seems to mirror immediately the real life behind it.
This combination of exercises told a lot about the participants, a lot more than you could possibly be expected from such a basic try out of possibilities.
Also you could spot that some participants have a real feeling for SL like worlds, making without any practice maximum use of the medium, others were hopelessly lost and could not construct much more then a cube...
In between these extremes were some people with fast and clear ideas, which also produced good results, ActionHenk Winkl and poohbeermikey Donahue as main examples. poohbeermikey Donahue clearly shows his technical mind with one chair in between a tanning bed and a toaster and the other a toilet with running water!

The try-out was connected to a contest: enormous prizes (25L$) were promised for the best basic chair, the best design chair and the best poster.
I decided to give one participant, the fish in the virtual water the first prize for all of his ideas. This is Net4z Kawanishi, he could have a bright future in Second Life worlds! His poster is of excellent quality and both his chairs are real virtual sweeties!
The prize for the chair in its most basic form is given to Yope Phelps. He also managed to sell his hair even on his first day in SL, and made some fine wings!
Deciding who will receive the prize for the expressive chair is very difficult. Apart from Net4z Kawanishi all the chairs lack either “chair-idea” or real expressiveness. Ok, this prize is for Thomas Paige, who has made a very sweet “fakir” chair, with points.
Then the poster. (Again apart from Net4z Kawanishi, he already got a prize)
Indeed all posters have something to say. Swann Jie even told the whole story of her SL life in one poster!The most powerful are the posters which manage to tell something more then just a pun. These are the posters of GaarAH Heillman and Fluffy2000 Trenc
The prize is for Fluffy Trenc also because he had such a trouble doing something with the virtual medium.
I think the SL introduction will not easily be forgotten even if the participants don't actually engage in an active virtual life.


Teaching totally in SL, fro avatar to avatar can pose a problem: the chat is a poor medium to convey precise ideas, but also to elaborate around ideas. Voice could be added, but I was glad the class was gathered in Real Life to comment on the things thats happened and were produced.
If I look back at this tiny piece of land and see all the things which were made it has became a happy coming together of avatars!