World Expo - no sound

 I had originally seen the work of Marcus Inkpen at Burning Life / Burn 2.0?  last year and his work went into my Elevensies machinima below.  I think at BL he would have had at most 1000 prims to work with, and I wondered what he might do with a full sim.  So when I was contemplating artists to help with the World Expo project he was one of the first who came to mind, and he really didn't disappoint with this build.
   

    


     Another great thing about Marcus is his dedication.  He is an extremely hard worker who spent months painstakingly ensuring it was exactly how he envisioned it.  Originally on island five there were to be a group of artists building the final island, and just days before the opening some stomped off in anger when I made some suggestions on how to make it more unified.  As you can imagine I was not terribly impressed with having to build a sim in three days after this group had been sitting on the sim for a month.  Water under the bridge though, but as you can imagine working with artists like Glyph and Marcus, who are both professional and reliable, is a very attractive bonus.  Please watch the machinima below in HD.  Just click where it says 360p and you can pick one of the top two which are HD.

 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Utopia04/128/128/20

     Not sure if part of Marcus's build was in homage to this structure from
the world expo in 1967.  Some of best elements from Marcus's build is his wonderful texturing.  There is no feeling of repetition as you move through the sim, yet it remains connected from the spacious house on the hill to the stacked shantytown.  Sometimes by having two separate distinct builds that have physical space between them, a disconnection can arise where the viewer sees them as separate builds,  yet Marcus was able to make the transition seamless between the two sides.  The machinima I created doesn't use Marcus's sky preset nor does it follow the theme of there being no sound.  I believe Marcus plans to film his own showing it more along the lines of how he envisioned it, so I will post that here at some later point when its completed.

It was a blur

     It was a blur is an exhibit hosted and curated by Radio Signals.  She made available her own land for this event and invited artists are encouraged to sell their work commission free.  The idea was to create a dreamlike memory where each work uses the same texture and setting.  There are a wide range of artists with different backgrounds who all fit together well.  I really liked Surrealia Anatine and Sienia Trevellion's creations, but everything is great.   Always liked Jojoruno Runos work like this one from last year Pervy room
Here is the location of the show   http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mirror/130/134/26

   
And below is Radio's write up about her show.

Do you remember? It went by so fast. It's fuzzy. Hard to pin down. 

You will find items (free and for sale) scattered around the floor about the sculptures. These are items created by our artists to help you blur with the environment. As a viewer of the art you are a participant of the art. You are the art itself. There are also poses, animations, sounds, and machinima to aid in your participation and full realization of the works. This is not a static artwork but rather a 4 week experience, after which it will only have been a blur.

I encourage you to explore, imagine, read, blend in, and blur.  To be a native in this strange land, to take photographs and create derivative works out of the art available for your blogs and walls.

-Radio Signals


July 16, 6pm SLT until August 16.

Participating Artists:
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Allegory Malaprop
Apatia Hammerer
Bryn Oh
Daelia Dollinger
Jojorunoo Runo
Juliette Westerburg
Lyndyn Tzara
Miel Nirvana
Moo Money
Note Buaku
OMGWTF Barbecue
Radio Signals
Redd Columbia
Riki Yifu
Sanura Sakai
Selavy Oh
Serj Enoch
Sienia Trevellion
Stoic Ixchel
Surrealia Anatine
Vintage McMillain
And others.
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To experience this artwork as intended you do not need the highest graphic settings or special windlight settings. Only a few things are necessary:

-A draw distance over 256
-Basic shaders enabled.
-Make sure particles are on. Some of the work here uses particles for it's full effect.

World Expo island three - no colour

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   The early part of this build was what I used for the Moby video competition a month ago so it might look a bit familiar.  When you walk through the sim it will morph on a timer between my shopping carts and some wonderfully colourful foliage Soror Nishi gave me.  The actual scripting to change from shopping carts to trees was done by Desdemona Enfield and I really appreciate her taking the time to create it.  It was an idea that I had given up on due to my poor scripting, but she was able to write it in a few days or so.

I would strongly suggest you put in the sky settings at the start of this sim as I really feel its what blends the colours properly to create the mood. Here is the slurl... http://slurl.com/secondlife/Utopia03/27/98/23

  If you go there for filming and wish to alternate quickly between carts or trees then you can type in chat "vendor" to have it change to carts and type "tree" to change to the foliage.  The sims were made primarily for machinima so having to wait 8 min between changes if you messed up a shot would just have been too annoying.  Oh kind of off topic but cool.  I was sent this wikipedia link someone made for machinima and myself and some other SL artists were mentioned.  I don't really understand how wiki works and it seems its an "orphan" entry which I think means its not linked to anything, so therefore harder to find, but I still like it.  Anyway here it is if you would like to read it.  Its just a small thing but for some reason I like it.   At worst it will inform you about some of the machinima artists working here in SL and what they have done in the past if you are not already familiar with that.

Wikipedia - Machinima: Virtual filmmaking

Once filming was done I added the burning life build I did last year to the sim. It is called Vessel's Dream and is a fairly difficult cam build. Below is its machinima if you wish to go see it.

Ash

Flickr's Ash or Ashanti LeShelle in SL, is a social worker and single mother of three, living in Berlin.
When she joined SL in late 2006, she looked around for a name and her eyes went to her lap where her pet guinea pig Ashanti sat.  And from here arrived one of my favorite artists.

  
 Ash began wandering SL and discovered photography here.  She describes it below.
      "Actually it was that snapshot- option which I got riveted by most then... my thrill of joy for creating and archiving alleged beauty, paired with an amazement for the rapidly increasing quality of appearance at that time (aaAAhhhh – how beautiful it looked and SO real at sudden, didn’t it?) : D
Well, this was followed by a cruel disillusionment soon, and the personally insight that trying to achieve as much reality as possible might not be the most ingenious goal anyway...  At that point I realized the unique potential of SL- photography. I proceeded to taking a chance of making fantasies visible by creating scenes which are not possible in the real world, this by using windlight as a cool tool for composition.
It’s like... SL- photography gives me the freedom of expression of a painter, although I can’t paint..."

One of the things I love about Ash's work is her colour palette.
Her images often use only a portion of the colour wheel which keeps them nicely unified.  What this does is make any colour within the piece that much more important and pronounced.  It also allows for other elements to step forward and become more dominant where they may have become secondary should the works be full of chaotic colour.  For example to the right, the characters dark eyes and dark band on the hat become the focal point.  They are the darkest part of the composition and our eye naturally is drawn there.  Its not jarring nor does it need to fight with other design elements.  We look to the eyes and naturally follow the eyepath down to the girl looking precariously over the edge of the boat.

 Most of her work is of a lighthearted manner which often reminds me of four Yip.  Each feels like they contain a fairytale for us to find.  Each beautiful and wonderfully composed.

 Ash is a charming and delightful person, she is a bit shy and has not exhibited in SL as of yet, but with encouragement who knows?
 you can find her
Flickr stream here