Yesterday, the area near the tower was filled with green spheres that floated around and did interesting things. Today, Andres Watanabe has replaced them with a new installation of crystalline cubes. Or do the changes happen automatically somehow? I don’t know, but I do know I really like the cubes! One picture couldn’t even get close to conveying this one, so I included two; an overview from the sky and a closer-in picture taken from ground level. As I’m watching right now, there seem to be some small spheres mixed in with the cubes, so it continues to evolve.

The cubes grow and shrink, spin in different directions and at different speeds, and move around. Sometimes a cube will disappear, or a new one will appear. They’re shiny and partly transparent. The surface texture on some of the cubes (they’re not all the same) reminds me vaguely of the surface of the moon.

In summary: wow! Bubble Matrix is beautiful, kinetic, and completely unlike any real-world piece of art you will ever see. Drop everything and come over to see this one.

Virtual Worlds, art | 2 Comments »

Prox Box v4 is a collection of two dozen rotating pillars; twelve at ground level and twelve more a bit above them. The pillars are partially transparent, and have different amount of transparency on the four sides, so there is a good play of filtered light through them as they rotate. Touching the pillars has an effect, and different pillars do different things, so try them all. The installation also has a pleasant droning sound. I found it a relaxing piece to view; the subtle play of light through the pillars and the sound combine to produce an almost trance-like state.

The artists recommend using a WindLight viewer (1.19.1.4 or later) with at least Basic Shaders and Local Lighting enabled; adding Atmospheric Shaders and Water Reflections is even better if your video card can handle them. They also recommend setting the environment to sunset or midnight (try both, and experimenting with the WindLight sky presets is fun too) and turning up your speakers and stopping music and media, and listening through headphones (though in my experience good speakers work nearly as well).

I didn’t get a picture before Spiral went up, so the photo is a bit cluttered.

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Tuna Oddfellow is another long-time (well, by Second Life standards!) friend. I knew his fiancee, Shava, from a LONG time ago when we were both active in the SCA, and renewed the connection when we found each other in Second Life; from there, I also got to know Tuna. I’m a regular attendee of his Odd Ball, and helped him make an audition video for America’s Got Talent. (Last year, he won NBC’s SL competition for Second Life’s Most Talented Avatar, so they asked him to try out for the RL version this time around.) So here comes another unbiased art review

Tuna is perhaps best known for the Odd Ball, a weekly event where he dazzles people with constantly changing textures displayed on complex curved surfaces. (That description doesn’t do justice to the event; to really understand you’ll just have to go some time! To get more info, join the Tunaverse group in-world or visit his new site at Ning.) His new work at BIW is inspired by the work with sculpted shapes that he has been doing for the Odd Ball and for his new line of clothing.

The first challenge you’ll face with this so-far untitled work is figuring out how to get there. You can’t simply fly up from ground level; Dancoyote has a floor at 600m for looking at his work, and you’ll bump your head against that. Instead, take one of Dancoyote’s chairs up from the ground level to his viewing platform, and then fly up to 900m or so. You’ll need flight assist; the free flight feather works nicely if you don’t have a MystiTool.

Once you’re there, you’ll see a complex sculpted prim. From some angles, it reminds me of the top hat that Tuna normally wears. From other angles, it evokes a flower. I’m sure you’ll see many other things in it… explore!

One gripe: the texture looked a bit washed out to me. The combination of WindLight, full-bright textures, and light colors often does that.

And a postscript: Reactor Core has been taken down. Dancoyote has a new piece on his viewing platform at 600m; I’ll post about that soon.

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Spiral, in concept, is a simple piece. It’s made of a LOT of white box prims that are phantom and scripted. The prims are arranged in a special pattern; position and rotation are both significant. View Spiral from a distance to understand its title.

Actually seeing all of Spiral is a challenge. As your avatar moves around the region, parts of Spiral that are now close to your avatar appear, and the areas that you moved away from tend to disappear. Adjusting your view distance helps somewhat but not entirely, and the LOD settings in the Advanced menu didn’t seem to help. This appears to be a limitation in the Second Life viewer; there may be an upper bound on the number of objects that can be displayed at once. I tried three different systems and had some degree of the effect on all of them. (more…)

Virtual Worlds, art | 4 Comments »

From most positions, the Black Pearl is a collection of interlaced silver arcs. View the Pearl from the correct angle from any of four sides (imagine the sides of a cube, though the Pearl is round) and the reason for its name emerges. View it from the top for a different look at the Pearl; the bottom might yield yet another effect, but the floor gets in the way. Full appreciation of the Pearl will give your camera skills an excellent workout!

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When you first land at Brookyn is Watching, one of the first things you see is a classic Starax sculpture, Samson. It’s a wonderful piece of work, but Starax is already one of the legendary art gods of Second Life, so I don’t need to say more.

Next to it are two works by a newer Second Life sculptor, Charlot Dickins; today I’m going to have a look at Afraid To Be Late. The sculpture features a young woman on a horse, with her skirt flying in the breeze. It has an astonishing fluidity of line; I’ve never seen such graceful curves on a statue as those of the horse and the woman. Dickins appears to have used sculpted prims in the design; sculpties behave in an idiosyncratic way with LOD as you move your camera away from them. (Sculpties seem to be a running theme in this week’s reviews! LOD means Level of Detail; it’s something that the Second Life viewer does to keep the burden of rendering a scene manageable. As you move farther away from things, some of the smaller details are no longer rendered. With sculpted prims, a lower resolution version of the sculpt texture is used.)

The picture below isn’t the best angle of the sculpture. But it was one of the only angles I could get that was free of background visual clutter, and Second Life wouldn’t let me rez a background prim tonight to block the clutter. You’ll just have to view it yourself and find even better viewing angles.

It’s too late to buy a Starax from the artist; he left Second Life a while ago, so the only way to get one of his sculptures is to convince a collector to sell one. But it’s not too late to buy a Dickins; look up her shop and studio in her picks.

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I’ve known Dancoyote Antonelli for a long time (since mid-2006 or thereabouts). We first met when he did an exhibit at The Bluffs, a nature preserve, art area, and general nice hangout that is next door to my house in Lappet. I went to a couple of performances of the Sky Dancers, and a couple of my friends were performers. So I’m not an entirely unbiased observer; now you know.

Dancoyote has never been one to do things in a small way. The Bluffs exhibit was a multi-level sky platform thing that filled half the sim, and other exhibits of his that I have seen have also filled the space as well as the imagination. His exhibit at Brooklyn is Watching, Reactor Core, is no exception. It’s actually a much smaller number of prims than many of his past creations, but that’s because it is made of 256m megaprims (sculpted, I believe, but I can’t verify that without edit rights). Dancoyote’s description: Reactor Core is an evolving algorithmic monolith 500 meters tall. March 21 2008. No, this one isn’t new, but (as I said earlier) I’m also going to have a look at some of the existing work.

Reactor Core is displayed about 600 meters up. There are two sets of four chairs at ground level that take you up; all the chairs take you to pretty much the same place, so the choice isn’t important. Sit on any of the chairs and pick 1 from the menu to ascend; you’ll go through a couple of other sky exhibits during the ride up.

You’ll need patience once you arrive. On my system (Pentium D, NVidia 7600GS) my frame rate drops to under 2fps when I look at Reactor Core with my normal settings; it rises to over 20fps if I look away from it. The frame rate hit is not as severe in a non-Windlight viewer (I got about 6fps with the OnRez viewer, which is based on 1.18.5.3), but you’ll want WindLight (1.19.1 or later) for this exhibit; it’s much more beautiful in a current viewer with atmospheric shaders enabled. (In the OnRez viewer, the color lost a lot of its richness.)

What you see is worth the wait. Reactor Core is a rich, ever-changing, glowing mix of greens and purples. It rewards long observation and repeated viewing. A minor gripe: Dancoyote hasn’t provided any way down, so you’ll have to teleport back to ground level or walk off the edge of the observation platform.

Uncategorized, Virtual Worlds, art | 2 Comments »