Horses in SL?

Who can predicts what happens during your life? Who would think ever to be tempted to buy a horse? Indeed, who could have imagined ever dreaming of a virtual horse?
Well, of course it is not me, Five, who is dreaming about horses, oh no!

It is Nugget Kidd, the man of the desert, always searching gold, where everybody has long left any hope. He was looking at some horses, which were roaming free in the desert of Virgin Island. Actually you can walk right through these horses, but be careful: they sometimes leave some droppings, no: quite a few!

But then came horses with people riding them, happy to have a whole sim to take their horses for a ride. And indeed these are beautiful animals. It is not only fun to look at, the animals have a wonderful structure. If you are looking through the right glasses, you can see that they have not four but even eight, yes eight legs. Miraculous how many legs you need to wonder about on horseback in a virtual world. Strange feature also is that the people riding the horses are really having a lot of fun, are relaxed and take their time to have a chat. (Of course they want to show off too, but well, who wouldn't?)

Five, always inquisitive, went on a tour to see other horses. You even can find a horse to do a rodeo act with. But really in town the horses are a bit strange. Then Five asked, do the horses really belong to this world? This Second Life world is a showcase of design, clean, clear cut, bright and shiny, fast moving Futuristic helicopters and spaceships are around every corner, so are smart sport cars. Even though we don’t need any transportation, being able to teleport and fly around. And may be even more important: never becoming tired of carrying the inventory with thousands of articles contained in it! A world of: no eating, no illness no hunger, ok now Five has found another one: no carrying things on your back, no hauling of suitcases. Brilliant!

Back to the horses. The horses a bit weird in the city, really transform the desert to nature, even more than trees and grasses, which always look a bit funny, a bit like the plants of quite a few hundredmillion years ago, the ferns, for instance. The vegetation of Second Life really is a bit prehistorical.

The horses whinny, they make dust, they make clattering sounds characteristic of westerns about horses. Five wouldn't even know if these sounds are realistic, but they are indeed like the ones you hear in the movies. It is a pity you cannot try one out. Not that the owners are refusing it. You cannot lend one because of the permissions: only the owner can ride them. Permissions rule the Second Life world! The owner would have to give them away to lend them for a ride, and who would give his horse away? “A kingdom for a horse!” wasn’t it?

Well Five bets that if Nugget finds gold somewhere that he also will soon be able to ride a horse. Although it is becoming dangerous out there in the sim, because there is settlement of some tribes of Indians, and quite a few fierce amazons are riding around too!

Five in a tent, TP, tipi

Hello Five, do you see this teepee, Amiryu said. Which tp? (Which tp is normally short for teleportation.) “And how can I ever see a tp?”, Five thought, seeing a teleportation is like seeing a thought, or a sentiment, a teleportation carries a name, but it is not a tangible object, not even in Second Life. But no, a teepee is a tipi, an Indian tent! Funny, the words tp and teepee having the same sound, even in chat. It is easy to get confused. Well Amiryu showed the teepee to get some work done: the teepee has to belong to a tribe, and each tribe has different decorative signs on their teepees and these tribes, being very sophisticated, change their symbols by a very smart dialog box appearing at the upper right corner of the screen of their laptop. But this nice blue dialog box, a sort of a menu has to be programmed. That is where Five March (who, by the way, is borne on the 6th of January) comes in. All sides of the tent, depending on which tribe, have to change in a given pattern, and the entrance has to be opened and closed. A nice fire must be around, and a powerful drum, which sounds makes all the tents in the neighborhood belong to the same tribe. Yes, even in Stone Age societies the laptop has been introduced, disguised as a drum. May be these societies even had their laptop before the cowboys, who knows what was hidden under the beautiful hides?
Well, an hour of programming Five thought, hmmm. This Five never learns anything. Five is always underestimating the amount of work. At the end it was a full morning, because Five wanted to program smart and because of all kinds of stupidities. Trying to be smart often leads to foolishness. In programming it is the stupidities which cost time. And in Second Life the transfer of the object worked on also costs time, because of the setting of the permissions.

Two examples of what can go wrong. To have a quick laugh! First all the textures were loaded in the sides and the part of the menu visible on the screen of the inventory of these objects were completely filled. In one side of the tent one of the textures, all with permissions copy and modify was accidentally introduced twice. What happens? Second Life doesn’t accept the same names in the inventory of an object so puts a “ 1” behind the second name. And at the same time sets the permissions as it normally does: no copy no modify! Logically, but when assembled, it takes an hour to find out where it goes wrong.
Second mistake: all the scripts where painstakingly set to copy. But in some inventory menu of some object of the tent another script was created. It disappeared under down under in the menu, which, because of the many textures, wasn’t visible anymore. New scripts: of course, no modify, no copy. This script, doing nothing, quite empty, also caused a headache, because it was invisibly hidden outside the screen border in a menu which was longer then the screen could show. And because all the other sides were ok…..
Some lessons to be learned here: be more careful Five, don’t mess around!
After a lot of transferring all resulting in “no modify”, the tent was transferred piece by piece, until the side causing all the pains showed up, and betrayed it evil intentions of not wanting to be modified by Amiryu. Then everything was quickly assembled. Only Amiryu had figured out a better name for a tribe! Never change names in software, after everything is assembled. If not prepared for name changes, these names can be everywhere….and they were everywhere. The teepee had to be disassembled again, all the scripts changed, reassembled again. All these simple tasks, after the writing of a really smart piece of software were killing Five. Five wanted to jump out of the window. But in Second Life, being perfectly able to fly, you only fall a bit on the ground, doing a falling animation, in this case in the desert, so happily no harm was done. The teepee was finished at last. Even the fire was an innovation. Using the time difference between touch_start and touch_end, you can make smoke signals!
Ok Five had learned another lesson. Actually quite a few. Some new ideas were developed too. All is well that ends well!
The teepees, or tipis, or tents can be found in Virgin Island in the desert. The tents are hidden in a no go area, so beware, don’t go there!

Delicious downtime

Every Wednesday there is a downtime in the world. The grid is down. The world doesn’t exist anymore. The time of day is well chosen, at the end of the afternoon. Five is kicked out of virtual reality. It means a possibility to make music, to get a drink, to make a drawing, to sleep.

All kind of things that are impossible in SL. If the weather is fine, Five will take a bicycle and make a tour. Reality is so incredibly tangible, textures are so rich. The sun is really warm. The wind on your skin. Splashing of water, fallen leaves moving and tumbling on the road, making all kind of rustling noises, the humming of a plane from afar, birds of all kinds. And the reed, the reed in the wind at the waterside of old rivers.

Look how beautiful the real world really is! Seen the flowers of the bramble? Some have five petals others seven.

Reed is funny, long leaves, which always tend to be flat in the direction of the wind. Isn’t it strange that these leaves are never blown off? Ok, very elongated leaves. But looking closer, you can really see why. The leaves of reed can rotate! The leaves of reed are fitted on a shaft around the stalk which is about 10 centimeters long. This shaft is at one side, where the leave is open. Because of the flexibility of the tissue, the long shaft and the opening at one side the leave has the possibility to rotate freely. It has to, because of the everlasting battering of the wind, always from different directions. Strange how simple reed already displays a rather complex interplay between its shape, its structure and its setting at the border of water, always exposed to wind, storm and rain.

This downtime is marvelous. Five hopes for a long, long downtime. Nothing to do but listening to the world, of feeling yourself getting warmer while sipping tea, looking around in the room. Time to get some texts written. Time to clean up a bit. Free time. Real free time.

Admitted, Five was nearly crashed in the canal by a car, the driver must have thought he was in Second Life. Children had carefully arranged bits of cutting glass on the road, to cause a flat tire for people on bicycles. Well, there was this inline skater, who tried to kick off Five from the bike, but Five’s bike weighs about 150 kilos so that attempt was easily countered. Yes, and this racing cyclist who thought he was winning the Tour the France and therefore taking a shortcut just in front of Five. Oh and this dog free from the lease, the owner probably thinking that his dog would respect traffic rules. Not to mention this nicely looking, cute child, who suddenly took a sharp left turn without looking who was behind her.

Yes, yes, the world is really nice and friendly. Black downtime makes the world bright. Five wants to finish a book, take a shower, smell the evening. May it take very long to restart the world.

Five thinks linked

Five likes to think about life, first or second. At the same times Five programmes a lot. This is called scripting in Second Life. So Second Life two lines of interests come together, the reflections and the programming. Sometimes these are mingled: Five looks at life from a gaming point of view: if we change this or that setting in life, what would happen? Most of the time, if you think well, you cannot escape the conclusion that life is a very good game. This is the position of poor old Leibniz: this is the best of all worlds! At the same time you see that so much is so wrong! It was not difficult for Voltaire to ridicule this observation of Leibniz, for instance in his novel Candide.
There we go again, you might think, but no, this time Five stays practical.
Five wants to show you something. A handler which might be handy when working with linked objects. A linked object, when scripted, mainly functions from its root object, sending messages to the links, or receiving info from these links. The linked objects have numbers, depending on which order you follow linking them together.
If you change the order, the numbers are changed. This is terrible! For instance making a HUD with digits, you have to be careful to take the same order, and when you decide to link something within this order, you can change the whole script! This is because although the function llGetLinkName(integer linknum) exists, there is only llGetLinkNumber() in the link itself! Not something like llName2LinkNumber(string name)!
And this is quite needed, sending commands to the links from the root, with llMessageLinked().
So Five proposes a small function, see how it works:

This is all taking place in your root script, please give a name to every link, for instance (for the digital clock) digit1, digit2, digit3, digit4, digit5, digit6, etcetera.
Than at the top of your script you declare a list, linkNameList. Then you make a function, going through the whole list of linked objects, and noting the names of the objects. It is as simple as that.


list linkNameList = [ ];
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//getting linknumbers from link names this in state_entry handler
getLinkNameNumberList()
{
integer x;

//x=0 is taken by the root returns 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
//so we have to go to llGetNumberOfPrims() + 1, to get all the linked objects

for (x=0;x<llGetNumberOfPrims() + 1;x++)
linkNameList +=[x,llGetLinkName(x)];

//these last lines can even be left out, just for checking
integer check = 0;//if check = 1 this gives list of numbers and names
if (check==1)
for (x=0;x<llGetListLength(linkNameList);x+=2)
llSay(0, (string)(x / 2) + " " + llList2String(linkNameList,x) + " " + llList2String(linkNameList,x+1));
}

Ok, then all we need is a small function to be used in the rest of the script, simply replacing the name of the object by the number. Put this function also above the default

// linkName -> linkNumber
integer name2LNum(string linkName)
{
integer x;
for (x=0;x<llGetListLength(linkNameList);x+=2)
if ( linkName == llList2String(linkNameList,x+1) ) return x / 2; //the 2 is because of the ‘strided’ list
return 0; //returning 0 means an error: name not found
}

At the state_entry of the default, we simply call the preparation….

default
{
state_entry()
{
getLinkNameNumberList();//this prepares the list of names and linknumber
//etc….

And now somewhere else in the script, instead of

llMessageLinked( 12 , my1000, "", NULL_KEY); //where 12 is the number of the link

and you can edit and renumber the 12 every time the link order is changed, you use the nice function, just by the putting in the name of the linked object you want to send a message
llMessageLinked( name2LNum("digit4") , days, "", NULL_KEY);
llMessageLinked( name2LNum("digit3") , hours , "", NULL_KEY);
llMessageLinked( name2LNum("digit2") , minutes , "", NULL_KEY);
llMessageLinked( name2LNum("digit1") , seconds, "", NULL_KEY);

So regardless of the linkorder or the complexity of the linked prim, the script will find your digit without a problem!

Succes in SL

Five showed Second Life to a friend. This friend was very curious and asked a lot of questions? She was very interested in the appearance of the avatars. So you can edit yourself? Yes, nose, mouth, ears, eyes, legs, arms…But also your entire skin. You can change in a second from agreeably sun burnt to a very nice pale, slightly colored skin. You can even do a tryout with an image on your skin. Five does very well with a very brightly colored pentagon, which happened to fall by accident on the spot for tattoos! Some people think this skin is freaky, but others tend to like it. Five is visible with this skin in other blogs.

The eyes of Five’s friend started to twinkle, apparently some desires were come from deep down under…..then she asked: and can I edit my success in Second Life too? That was not really what Five expected! Never thought about this possibility!

But this remark started a whole sequence of thoughts. What is success, anyway? For some it is selling much, for others being loved, supporting a family. Indeed, everything about the avatar can be edited, but just not - the most important, if you really think about it.
In the appearance menu there is even the very interesting radio button male-female, which gives you the possibility to experience (in a primitive sense) what it is to walk around as the other sex. But then this simple question about editable succes clearly shows what kind of 'features' are not at all editable: your speech ability, nice or not so nice behavior, the response of others on your ideas about the world, your friendship, solidarity, working power……and the success in SL, in whatever sense you want to consider this……

Without a doubt, this “what is left” is about two universes more than your simple appearance! You can call this world a “Second Life”, in the sense of a Paradise, at last, but you still end up with yourself. ANd being your own prison is a very, very old thought of mankind.

Five was still pondering about all the consequences of this innocent remark of someone still surviving without SL when Armoe Lipo came along. An old friend for SL standards, so Five told him about the visit and the fruitful discussion about editing your appearance in SL, and that we possibly need, but won’t get, Five supposes, a slider indicating success.

Armoe Lipo immediately started an in depth analysis of the stupidity of the notion of success! He showed very effectively in an unstoppable landslide of chat, that success totally depends on its definition and your position in life! And indeed he is very right! Not the definition of success or the editing of it is important: editing yourself is much more essential. All this appearance stuff, male-female included, is quite childish compared to this transforming yourself.

This powerful intervention of Armoe Lipo gave the train of Five’s thoughts a totally other direction. It was a fine example of the manner language influences our perception of the world, and how words, language, ideas, can be molded and interpreted in an endless variety of ways. The question, which can of course never be answered, about the 'real' relation between language and reality, is very near.

Five likes it tremendously that these discussions, all on a very human level, take place in Second Life! All in this tiny, simple window for chat! So we have a mission: edit yourself. Don’t stop at the length of your nose!
For this simple and very difficult duty, forced labour for every day of the rest of your life, Five wishes you…..succes!

You never walk alone

Five loves to explore, and is a bit of a workaholic. Exploring and working have one thing in common: it is mainly done alone. And since the keyboard of a computer, and the screen of a laptop in particular, is designed for one person only, this being alone with your computer is quite normal. This behavior is partly continued in Second Life. Building is done alone, designing things, programming, it is all done one your own, by yourself.

But there is just that big SL-difference that while building, and while exploring, you meet other people. These people may be total strangers, but also owners or designers of beautiful things, and of course: your friends. You could consider SL as a sort of 3D website, and many people treat is like that, but coming from SL, even the best websites are suddenly terribly flat places, simply absolutely unexciting, in 2D, but even worse: flimsy in the social sense.
Ok, websites serve another goal, being documentary, promotional, blog; and yes, true, this blog is also a website, lol, as is said in SL encountering a paradox.
Five as workaholic always becomes a bit nervous when friends only want to talk a bit. There is always work to do; a blog to write, a flower to create, a script to be written. But every so often Five’s friends, who are very, very patient people, succeed in putting Five down in a chair, or just the back of a chair, and they teach Five to socialize a bit. Because although Five is boasting about the social aspect of SL, and even teaching students the secrets of communication, it is very difficult in this interesting world of Second Life to sit still.

After months of exploration and experiments, Second Life remains new and unexpected.
And be honest: it would be very strange to sit down and socialize too much, when you have chosen to sit alone behind an illuminated screen in a sort of desolate dungeon in real life, isn’t it?
Anyway, the few moments of rest and talking chit-chat’s really are truly marvelous. Small islands of tranquility in a continuous stream of ideas and things Five wants to do or finish.
So this blog is an ode to those friends, who with endless patience and persistence try to curve Five into the social world.

There was DJ Mainakay, quite in the beginning, a lot of friends in the middle, and at the moment Armoe Lipo, Amiryu Hosoi, Amber Ashton, to name the few which are shown in the pictures.
These friends always ask Five during a tête-à-tête, what are you doing Five? Well making pictures for a blog about socializing…..sorry, always doing more than one thing at the same time……..
And aren’t these images nice? Just like people sipping a coffee? Spending an afternoon in a sunny garden, near a pool?

Yes indeed, there are times to explore the sewers of Second Life, times to wonder about the stupidities, the emptiness, fortunately endless more times gazing at the great designs and ideas of all the people walking around in SL, and………tiny bits of warmth…what is it called? Human?

Thx, guys!

Nonetheless, back to work, and fast! (Behind on schedule, talked too much about talking. Sorry, I’m off…)

Five starts a flower shop

After finishing a big scripting job, Five had an incredible desire to do something nice and simple. But what is nice and simple? And of course: not what can be found everywhere! Ok you have guessed it: flowers! When young, so three months ago, Five made a lot of drawings of flowers.

And the spring was so beautiful this year. Starting early with snowdrops and starflowers, the whole display of colours and shapes went on and on with crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, lilacs, and there was no end to it, roses, rhododendron with their deep reds. Some flowers are inconceivably fragile, others so robust! But also the weeds and grasses are flowering, Gypsophila for instance, buttercup, daisies.
The daisies were particularly bright this year, and Five choose an name for the flowershop: Five Daisies!
As the Virgin Island Sim is attracting lots of customers, Five decided that for a try it would be good to start a shop in this beautiful sim.
Armoe Lipo helped Five finding a place in the palace and Five started working on flowers.
These flowers are animated by wind and movement. Together with the possibility of softening the shapes and a bit of manipulations of the pictures with the use of alpha channels new and unexpected objects consisting of a diversity of flower combinations were made. Of course the creations all reflect this gorgeous spring.
The shop must not be filled to the top with flowers and endless variations. It must be in style with the classy sim. So Five started experimenting with the interior design of the shop. The colours must remain isolated and the background must reinforce the colour and not muddle it up.
After a few days of shifting things around the shop really reflects the feeling of flowers in Second Life. The flowery objects are not real copies of RL flowers, they are a bit stylized. Five is continuing with experiments and new creations are added on a daily basis. And because of this Five must also remove some items. Adding and removing makes the shop come alive and customers will always see different aspects of Second Life possibilities and different flowers. The flowers are following the seasons, because Five thinks that this also contributes to a natural atmosphere. Well Five would be delighted if the dear reader would come around and stop by, looking at the new motives and patterns of nature.
Of course an ad belongs to organizing a shop and a text was made with the word flower in all languages which Five could think off at that day, including Japanese!

The real reason we cannot eat in SL

No eating in Second Life! Not really! No drinking either, no coffee, no beer. Ok there are animations, even of the famous whiskey bottle you are getting from all your friends: after sipping a bit, a lot, you will fall down! There are bars in SL, there are restaurants. Drinking champagne in Paris of around 1900! You can buy whole courses and eat them, forks and knives included. But it is all…….a bit dry? A far reminiscent of real food, of real pleasure drinking coffee or tea with friends, eating chocolates, or a cake.
No eating means no hunger. And this thought is more positive: a world without hunger! How many crimes are not committed because of hunger? It can even hardly be called a crime, stealing when you are hungry. Myths are built around it, Robin Hood! Stealing from the rich, to give to the poor!
No crimes of this sort in Second Life. No stealing either, not of this kind.
No eating because the avatar doesn’t need food? No real stomach! (No real brains either by the way…). No not at all: this is not the real reason.
The real reason we cannot eat in Second Life is hidden in the deep structure of this virtual world: the permissions! In Second Life every object has a creator and an owner. These might be the same, but when a creator sells his creations, the owner changes. Creator and owner can always be found by right clicking on something, then choosing ‘more’. A menu opens which indicates creator and owner.
Not only the objects you see in SL have a creator and an owner, also the sounds, the animations, the textures and the scripts, hidden inside the objects. When constructing something, you want to sell, or give away you must be careful to get the setting of all the permissions right.
For every part these permissions must be set, especially if you want somebody else to be able to work with your stuff. If you buy something, there are a few possibilities:
“no copy”, this means you have only one “copy” of the item, when rezzed, it disappears from your inventory - “copy” means you can rezz it, take it back and you already have two copies.
“no transfer”, you cannot sell this, nor give it away, only rezz it, or delete it.
“no modify”, you cannot rescale it, you cannot remove a script.
Ok, so an object and all its part have permissions set or not, influencing the process of transferring and being transferred. A bit dry this stuff isn’t it?
We now return to the eating: what is eating in real life: buying, preparing, eating, enjoying, munching, digesting…a shear infinite process of changing ownership mixing and remixing things, when you think about it from the world of Second Life!
Should real food and all its parts have all those permissions on them, we, real people would be starving before being able to eat the tiniest bit of a pizza. We would suffocate before being able to get a breath of fresh air!
So reality, or call it God, has thought this over and decided that there are no permissions or absolute ownership in real life. It would simple block the whole process of living, of changing, of processing, of evolution.
We now know the real reason we don’t eat in Second Life, the permissions! And we know why absolute ownership in real life is not possible: it would not permit ….life!

Paula34 versus Craig666

A friend of Five March called Nugget Kidd wrote us this report:

“ I was on a walking tour in the desert, trying out my new longcoat, being robbed of my boots, when suddenly in front of a cabin I found a terrible car. Terrible because it didn’t fit in the scenery, terrible also because you cannot even transport a tray of beer in it. The only thing that can be called a car is a pick-up….But I am drifting away. Sorry, I continue: A beautiful lady on a horse passed by….this even happens at my age…she asked me to remove this car. Of course, for a gorgeous vamp, we stupid desert rats will do everything.

But in SL the ownership of things is quite strict; I couldn’t even scratch the bloody thing. Well, we live in an age of communication, so I asked the owner with IM to remove it. Craig666 was his name. With a number like that, I should have known not to bother and just wait for the owner of the desert….He told me to remove it myself…he was “on a job”. Poor fellow, probably camping in a chair or something. Hm, I repeated my question, sent him a few teleport invitations. And then he came around, of course mad to be disturbed. Yes this is SL, we can find out who left his rubble behind! No hiding your spoiling nature sir! He came with his girlfriend. Started pushing me around, putting caves in the desert, oooh all the usual stuff. Then he disappeared.

It goes without saying he left even more of his stuff around. Paula34 came from her horse and begged me to be permitted to use her weapons! Oh no, not for the moment Paula34! But she would love to defend the desert! She was afraid too, apparently she had got a warning from the owner of the desert not to shoot in the desert. Paula34 preferred riding on her beautiful horse, more than shooting, so she restrained herself. But then Craig666, yes the number is the famous one from the apocalypse came back. He made a tour through the freebie shops I suppose and had his inventory filled with bombs fire, pushing devices. He was again accompanied by his girlfriend. He had to show off!

HA ha, and then I figured that, ok when he is showing off like that, why not Paula34 ? While I was pushed around, I told Paula34 to go ahead! This also is an advantage in SL: even in the greatest danger we can have a sip at our coffee, and chat around to others. How happy Paula34 was! She got out her guns, even bigger then the ones from Craig666 and apparently they had a lot of fun! Afterwards Paul34 and I became friends! She showed me even bigger guns. Ladies with guns, fighting in design clothes on high heels in the desert, it all happens in Second Life! But now she was afraid! Will I be banned now? Well, that’s the advantage of being able to drink … a lot of coffee. I think it will all be affine.

Later on we met in the desert, the owner Amiryu Hosoi, of Virgin Island, me, and even Craig666 showed up. Yes that’s true of SL too: even after a lot of firework, we stay talking. And that’s important. Just after the virtual fight, we were gone to other places, Craig666 had been sneaking back to the desert and cleaned up his mess. That’s funny! But one thing I don’t understand, he said something which sounded strange in my ears: he said: “my name is haas”, I wonder very much what that could mean………."

Thx Nugget, for your story.....and have fun with your new friend!

A concise SL History of Art

Walking through SL is sometimes like walking through the landscape of some medieval icon. These paintings in their early stages create extremely stylized landscapes, some in very bright colors. Although the perspective doesn't at all follow mathematical logic, the emptiness of space is almost tangible. Just this emptiness is what one encounters al the time in Second Life. People in icons seem to fly, and trees are done individually and in great detail. The drawings are very sharp, the edges clear cut.
Later on in their more baroque style of for example the 17th century the icons get more dark, green-brown colored, and the atmosphere becomes dense, the contours are fading away. Even perspective becomes more regular. But strange enough, these icons seem te be much further away from the imagery of Second Life. Indeed the atmosphere is so stressed, and just that is missing in the virtual world.

These observations made Five think about the styles of art that well fitted for SL and the styles that will never be reached in the 3D-world representations which are nowadays available. Of course within the broad sweep of a style, exceptions are found, and even within the works of one individual painter one finds a large variety of approaches.

So are there other styles to be found which approximate the way SL looks at the moment. Five thinks of Caravaggio and his followers: stark light-dark contrasts, sometimes heavy perspective and bright colors. The renaissance in its discovering of a logically constructed perspective is of course almost to easy to connect with the perspectives of the SL world. Michelangelo with his clear drawings fits in very well, but he as a sculptor is thinking only about space and its effects. Leonardo da Vinci is more difficult as far as his paintings are concerned. These portraits display persons in great detail and mysterious inner world, and together with the blurred landscape in the background, it lifts itself totally from the "primitiveness" of Second Life.


On the contrary, the great Flamish painters represent just the opposite: Rubens and van Dijck, in their enormous paintings will never be approached by the imagery of the virtual world. Densely filled spaces, blurred contours, complex lighting and colors are all packed in a dominating composition which creates a great unity in the surface of the painting. The viewer is not able to move anymore in this space. Rembrandt organizes the surface otherwise, but with his thick paint and just enough superbly conceived light directions to create his famous inner worlds he also is far from the spaces found in SL. Neither, of course the impressionists, but then again the Russian constructivists, beginning of the 20th century, indeed it seems they “are” already Second Life.
The have this clear-cut ideas and concepts, the functional no-non-sense design of everything in SL. And the colors of Mondrian, his light, his straight edges are really as if he already dreamt of Second Life. Bigger canvases tend to me more blurred, although there are some beautiful very small paintings too. The landscape and whole imagery of Second Life is then more like a drawing at the moment, a drawing in fine lines and the colors mostly following the shapes. Wild painting tends to leave the form behind, the colors spread all over the surface, mingle and the space is neither open, nor rectangular anymore. These kinds of styles can be compared with the textures one sees in Second Life, for instance the graffiti in subways and in hidden underground places.


The cubists really form a problem for this reasoning. In its idea it should be at the side of Second Life, but in its appearance the space they create is not accessible at all. And besides that the cubists are applying the technique of spreading out their colors, so even more attacking the crystal clear imagery of open space.

Painting nowadays has a scattered global style, but the main feeling is dreamlike, with techniques coming from child paintings, heavy use of paints in it’s material form, so this will never apply to the virtual computer screen world. The style attacks the normal shapes and forms being in protest against the too rational world we live in according to these painters. The surrealistic legacy is strong and not to be fitted with SL, although some aspects of fantasy, coming from Science-fiction can be connected to the not so human shapes some avatars are taking on.


Illumination in a book of Gaston Phebus, Count de Foix of France.
Icon of the Holy Transfiguration
Rubens, Saint -Georg
Malevitsj, The woodcutter
Franz Marc

Five, imagine!

Five March and Contrechoc are getting along fine nowadays, Five is developing in an interesting character. Contrechoc is often amazed by the way Five handles things. Five is no copy of Contrechoc. A character in Second Life is never a copy of the person behind the screen. Just as a book never tells the real life of a writer, even if it is autobiographical, nor a drawing or a painting is a real copy of the artist, even if it is a self portrait. Five thinks lots of people playing the game of Second Life are mistaken in thinking that they, as real people, are walking, talking and doing things in Second Life...

Kees Spermon, artist, showed this in his works, etchings, with titles as “As if -”, or “A Voice...imagine”. Actually he was referring to Samuel Beckett. Becketts piece “Waiting for Godot” could easily be seen forming a great theme for a few sims in Second Life. Really this theater piece, radiating loneliness, is still crowded compared to most islands and places you see in Second Life! Beckett’s piece can be seen here in streaming video.

“A voice.... imagine!”. Five remembered this title of Kees Spermon because of a neighbor, called “Alles Brenner”, a German name, meaning “Burner of all”. (In fact he is called “AllesBeta Brenner”, but always look at the roots of a name if it signifies something, after all we can choose these names in Second Life.)

If you look at it from the side of the Enneagram (based on ideas of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, (see for instance Enneagram of Personality), speaking of 9 different personality types, “Burner of All” is a salesman. Five is the artist, dreamer. These types of this personality circle don’t get along very well. But although simplified this scheme also tells, that when experience grows with time, the types eventually become blurred, and all types can understand and live with the others. (Five is still talking to Burner of All, for him communication on this level is more difficult, but he manages too, we have to stay human don’t we?)

Well, as his type, “Burner of ALL” tries to sell; he has built a giant mall, and offers spaces to rent. He also built a sort of old German town, also consisting only of shops to rent. As could be expected, this neighbor doesn’t like the art experiments carried out on the land of Five. Last week he decided to put a giant screen with the new name of his mall right in front of the land of Five. This name new name for his so called "paradise" is “Imagine!”.

But now, because of this huge sign, it seems to be the billboard of Five’s land. Five was amazed, but quickly realized that this sign will attract more visitors to the Contrechoc land, than to the mall, which seems to belong to something different, because it is so small compared to this sign! And no it becomes clear why Five introduced this blog with the artist Kees Spermon, his title “Imagine… a voice”, coming from Samuel Beckett! It all comes together: the “Imagine” of the superb etching, the main idea of art “imagination”, and the meaning of this character “Burner of All”, which could also mean tabula rasa, the whipping out of the past, just to create the new. And really in these shopping places we encounter the solitude presented in the texts of Beckket, “as if” predicting the emptiness of Second Life. Creativity goes both ways, it destroys as fast as it offers new ideas. New art is making older art pale, before it quickly gets pale itself. All art being put in it’s right place only after a few centuries. Five and AllesBeta Brenner are getting along, they are as ever on speaking terms. Exchanging experiences, learning from each other. And apparently, they are doing an interesting game of ping-pong with titles. That is the central thought of the Enneagramm: learn from the other types of personality to enrich yourself, to become a whole, and to become a large together!

Five looking for the French

For a friend Anoukh who speaks only French Five went on a mission. Find French people. Find nice places to visit and where you can have a chat in French. The first place we visited was a French shop, not much to do there. Five asked around, but only newbies were camping in chairs. They started asking Five how to earn money. Five told them that they actually don’t need any money. In the freebie places, for instance …….. you can find everything you need, flex hair, flex dresses. Only shoes are somehow more difficult to find, but Five found a few pairs of excellent prim shoes for free. So keep looking, there is free art, there are free houses, free outfits, what more do you want? Ok for boots in the desert you have to have money!

Well that is not the concern of my French friend at the moment. She is still floating around in SL not knowing what to do or what to say. To her everything is in English. Although working in the French version of Sl (as Five does, just to learn the terminology) you still get a lot of English pop-ups and messages. So Anoukh is in a world which is difficult to understand. Five helps her along, she will find her way.

In the search list, CTRL F, for find, after a bit of looking around, Five found a help island called Gaia, for French speaking avatars. Five thinks this will help Anoukh a lot. On Gaia some other tp’s were given of places much visited by the French. No wonder, these places are French by there very nature!

Paris around 1900,

Mount ST-Michel, Shivar

La France Pittoresque, a beachplace Seychelles,

Some of these places, Paris and the Seychelles, are really crowded with French people.

The Seychelles is a beach, hammock all over the place, really packed with French speaking people. The sim was overloaded, and went in a restart!

Paris is provided with the Eiffel tower, really a huge structure pointing right into the sky. It needs little comments, just go there yourself! (Don't be surprised to to see a giant elephant - didn't know they breeded them in Paris.)

The Mount st Michel is a SL copy of this small island totally covered by buildings and churches in France. The church on top has very colorful windows. The surrounding landscape is an extremely mountainous. Between th cliffs you can find cosy hide-out’s, one was equipped with a very nice writing desk. The chair gives you a pencil, and the animation of the chair is called: writing. Do sit down; this is really fun, because, with the pen in your hand, you make all kinds of silly movements, but never start writing at all! You make only thinking and wondering gestures, shifting from one side to the other in this wonderful chair. Five guesses the inspiration didn’t come. Really funny, lot’s of humor. (Humor which is so seldom seen in SL, but Five realizes that that’s the case for RL too.) Do notice the paintings on the wall; they are in between SL imagery and photos, very clever. Outside on a mountaintop is more than enormous statue of a man, a Greek God? Sometimes associations are built up, fantasies about the hidden meaning of a sim. This thinking about the hidden is really happening in this sim called Shivar……

Oh and indeed, the French like to speak, don't be afraid, wenn not speaking french, most of them speak english too!