A new exhibit opened at Veekay Navarathna’s Art India recently. Facesis a collection of paintings by Canadian artist Liana Russwurm (Lilianna Clarity in SL), curated by Quan Lavender.
The pieces are reproductions of Liana’s real-life paintings, and as the name of the exhibition suggests, largely focuses on paintings of people’s faces. However, these are by no means “simple” portraits. The subjects are often masked, either physically or with make-up / paint; some are apparently playful, others innocently happy. All of them, however, tell a story, a story which reaches out to us through the facade of the mask, make-up, face paint or playfulness.
Born into an artistic family, Liana draws from contemporary media and culture such as reality television, fashion magazines and billboards, as well as her own experiences. Her biography reveals the approach taken to the works on display at Art India, which are themselves drawn from a real life exhibition of her pieces called Façade:
Through the use of staged photo shoots, props, costumes and make-up, she aims to strip away the layers of the individual, invoking a fragmented yet authentic portrait of her subject. She is most interested in “the figure”, and capturing the essence of the model.
Several of the pieces stand in strong contrast to one another, and it is worth taking the time to work your way around the paintings on the outer walls of the exhibit space in “order” – starting with the two young girls facing you from across the room, as your arrive at the teleport point. Both have the genuine innocence of childhood about them . Follow the pieces around the walls, however, and the different stories come into their own, giving us a unique window into the thoughts – perhaps the very souls – of the models,
This is an intriguing exhibit, which runs through until January 21st. For those drawn particularly strongly to any particular piece(s) – and I confess, a couple did catch my eye – they are available at L$700 each.
This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Viewer Round-up Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware) and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy
By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
The Viewer Round-up Page also includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
CtrlAltStudio Alpha version for Oculus Rift updated on December 18th to version 1.1.7.34400 – core updates: ability to turn your avatar when seated & wearing the Rift by turning your head; Rift prediction delta default value changed from 20ms to 35ms to improve typical perceived latency; fix for mouselook not being able to turn more than +/-180° (release notes)
It’s once again that annual time of reflection. The winter is with us, the old year is slowing dying, the new year awaits, and it is time to look back across the highs and lows of the virtual year as seen through the pages of this blog.
This year has been even busier for me than previous years, so rather than give you a sea of text to wade through, I’ve opted to break things down into three more manageable offerings, starting with January through to April, and have tried to limit myself to bullet-points to the various links. I’ve not attempted to dot every “I” and cross every “T”; rather my aim is to highlight the main items of news for each month (or those which raised a smile), and those aspects of other VWs I had time to cover and well as a look back on some personal elements of my SL times over the year.
For those into art and SL exploration, I’ve also summarised installations and regions visited by month in the hope that doing so will stir your own memories of those events / places.
I couldn’t help poking at the Lab early in the year with the “Palme d’Face” award
I start the year with a look ahead at 2013; not as a series of predictions, but a look based on what we’d seen in 2012
More details on Versu’s upcoming release start to emerge
Together for Swayraises a stunning L$ 1,551,825 in just two weeks to help Sway Dench meet her RL living costs during a 6-month convalescence following major brain surgery and unable to use SL, her major source of income, as a result
The long-running dispute between Gala Phoenix, proprietor of Curio Skins and Hush Darkrose / Verikai Vargas, proprietor of Hush Skins, reaches an out-of-court settlement
The Lab starts to promote SL via Amazon in the US, offering both the viewer and special “vehicle” packs; I wonder if they’re really on the right track with the packs, while a bit of a cock-up in the “free offer” department presents the opportunity for a little humour
The Lab starts the year with further work on threaded region crossings, improving the way very large objects are handled by the server during rezzing and working on a new pathfinding capability to keep characters within parcels
Work continues through the first half of the year to bring CHUI and materials processing to maturity, Server-side Appearance marches cautiously forward and Monty resumes his HTTP library work, something which will occupy his time for most of the year, and Andrew continues his focus on interest list work
Server updates result in an increase in incidents of diagonally adjacent regions failing to render in the viewer increase and region crossing issues continue
Work continues trying to resolve camera issues and “content warping” when crossing regions, and reports continue about sudden and massive region lag at live events
Towards the end of the month Region restarts get new notifications and concerns grow over the “breaking” of z-offset height adjustment with SSA, while Andrew’s interest list work moves forward
Saturday December 21st marks the opening of a very special event at LEA4. Quite how long it will be there is unclear; hopefully through until the goal is achieved – and perhaps even a little longer.
35 Elephants is the work of Eliza Wierwight, and the aim is simple: raise funds to sponsor 35 elephants at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. Specifically established for the rescue and rehabilitation of abused elephants, the park is a place where elephants can live as close to their natural environment as possible while remaining free from their biggest predator – mankind. The park also finances and runs projects such as Jumbo Express for the rescue and medical care of elephants in remote regions of the country, as well as working to stop the steady deforestation of the Thai northern rain forest, which is threatening the entire local ecosystem.
“Lek” Chailert, founder of SEF and the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand (image courtesy of SEF)
The Park is operated by the Save Elephant Foundation (SEF), created by Sangduen “Lek” Chailert. Born in northern Thailand, Lek grew up increasingly concerned at the plight of the Asian elephant, fast becoming an endangered species largely due to a tradition which sees an elephant’s spirit cruelly broken through the Phajaan in order to be put to work, increasingly for the amusement of the tourist industry, and often in the cruelest of conditions as beasts of burden.
Eliza, who has had a life-long love of the elephant, was made aware of the horrific – and I do mean horrific – means by which young elephants are ripped from their mothers’ sides and their natural environment and then forced into subservience to humans through the film How I Became an Elephant, which focuses on the efforts of another remarkable person, 14-year-old Juliette West, and her determination to raise awareness of the situation alongside of Lek.
You can read more of Eliza’s own awakening to this situation, and her own determination to help, through a post by Emma Portilo. Suffice it to say that while Eliza’s efforts to help with the SEF’s work began modestly enough – buying lunch for two of the elephants – she has striven to do so much more, both in sponsoring one of the 35 elephants on which the LEA4 event focuses, and on becoming the official representative for SEF in Second Life.
Sponsor an elephant at LEA4
It costs L$27,000 ($109) to sponsor an elephant. A number have already been sponsored through people rallying to Eliza’s call, which she put out through her Flickr stream and through her efforts at her in-world store, where she has created a seasonal topiary featuring a baby elephant, the designed approved by the SEF. This is available at L$499, with 100% of the price going directly to SEF, and can be purchased as a gift for others as well as for yourself. If you prefer, there are also donation boxes located throughout the store, with all proceeds again going to SEF.
Elephants at LEA4
35 Elephants, making full use of the region generously provided at short notice by the LEA committee, provides a means for visitors to not only donate to the efforts in reaching the target of 35 elephants sponsored, but to also learn about the elephants, their plight in Thailand (where it is believed there are only 3,000 elephants left, and around 50% of them are living in captivity, many for the amusement of tourists) and learn more about SEF through the photography of Lek Chailert.
Things will kick-off at 11:30 SLT on Saturday 21st December, with a benefit concert by the fabulous Joaquin Gustav – which itself is not an event to be missed if you’re in-world.
Commenting on her efforts, Eliza says, “I’m not getting all vigilante about this, I’d rather emphasize the positive. There’s a place in our cognition to recognize wrongs in any stance, I guess it’s how we choose to address the revelation after that fact. Promoting awareness and cold hard cash directed to those in the front lines seems a reasonable reaction.”
It’s a fair position to take. After all, money has a powerful voice; so why not add your voice to the cause, and either hop over to LEA4 for Joaquin’s concert or, if you’re still looking for the Christmas gift for a friend or something special for Christmas in your own home, drop by Eliza’s store and pick-up the baby elephant topiary?
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a video from the Elephant Nature Park.
Linden Lab has issued a blog post looking back over the course of the last 12 months, noting what have been, in their eyes, the high points of the year.
It’s an understandably upbeat piece – and there is nothing wrong with it being so. It’s possible that some will see it as a reason for more grumbles and complaints about X, Y and Z. Certainly, I’ll be offering my own look back over the year as seen through the pages of this blog in due course, and not all of it may be as positive as the Lab’s post. But all things considered, this has been a reasonable year for the platform, particularly on the technical level, as the post points out, referencing as it does Project Sunshine (Server-side Appearance), Project Interesting (the interest list updates, the last of which will be making their presence felt in viewers in 2014), materials processing and CHUI.
There’s good reason to point to these items, and several which pass unmentioned, such as the Lab finally deciding to get behind a methodology by which mesh garments can be made to fit, and the ongoing work to overhaul the Lab’s network communications protocols, as taken together they all demonstrate that the Lab still has the interest Second Life in order to try to substantially improve it and to address users’ needs.
And while the decision over which approach to take in order to get mesh garments to fit may not be pleasing to everyone, at least we now know that we are going to see mesh garments fit our assorted shapes, and it’s not going to be too much longer before it is available to everyone. We can even take some comfort in the fact that while it may not be the easiest to work with from the creation standpoint, it can be used (and indeed, is being used), and it is likely to stand the test of time in terms of maintainability.
The Lab’s introduction to Project Sunshine from earlier in 2013
Server-side Appearance (SSA) in particular was deployed as it should have been: without being tied to specific time frames or “to be done by” dates, while fully involving the TPV community in order to make sure that everything was not only on course, but to also help ensure the Lab didn’t miss any glaring holes or make any damaging omissions. Yes, there were issues and upsets along the way – the loss of the “z-offset” height adjustment capability, the introduction of the less-than-ideal “hover” option to replace it. But on the whole SSA was perhaps one of the smoothest deployments of a substantial change to the platform rolled-out in the history of Second Life. Not only that, but it appears to have helped forge new levels of co-operation between the Lab and TPVs.
This year, thanks to SL’s tenth anniversary, also saw the platform regain some attention from the media – and while some of it was the same old, same old, it’s fair to say a good part of it was fresh and positive.
Of course, there are the things which are left unsaid: Marketplace sales may well have been good, but the Marketplace itself still remains a sore point for many merchants – as does the long-term silence of the Commerce Team when it comes to outward, ongoing communications. In fact, communications from the Lab have remained at rock-bottom throughout most of the year. Had there not been a raft of projects going on under the “Shining Project” banner, one wonders how much actual communication would have taken place between Lab and users outside of the in-world user groups. We also have the unfortunate situation with the Terms of Service still to be sorted through; while some things like the changes to how third-party L$ exchanges can operate could have perhaps been better handled than they were at the time – but that again brings us back to the most awkward of “c” words, and I’ve banged on about that enough in the past.
Facebook may not by everyone’s cup of tea (it’s certainly not mine), but that’s no reason to get upset over the SLShare capability introduced this year and which provides the Facebook users among us with the means to share their SL experiences with friends and family if they wish
Tier hasn’t been quite the cause célèbre it has been in the last couple of years, but it has still been a worry for many, despite the fact that there really isn’t a lot the Lab can do about it without potentially hurting themselves more in the process. something which is probably unlikely to change any time soon. It’s also something I’ll likely have more to say about myself in the near future, if only to update (and complete) my post on the subject from the start of the year, which I never quite got around to finishing with its “second half” despite periodically working on it.
But even with these not-so-upbeat aspects of the the year, we’re all still here; or the majority of us are, and many of those who have departed have not necessarily done so out of annoyance or anger with the Lab, but simply because times change, interests wax and wane and life inevitably rolls on.
All this is not to dismiss the issues which have occurred during the year; 2013 hasn’t all been a bed of roses. But then again, name a year in the public history of the platform that has. However, this year has been positive in that it has seen the Lab put good, solid effort into making Second Life more robust, and more predictable than perhaps it has been in a good while, and added some decent nips and tucks to capabilities across the board. Hopefully, in 2014, we’ll see the same approach taken towards unravelling the thorny issue of ensuring more of those coming into Second Life “stick” (to use Rod Humble’s expression) long enough to become fully engaged with the platform, its user base and its economy.
After all, contrary to the opinion held in some quarters, it’s not just (or even necessarily) the cost of land that’s the key to SL’s sustained growth – it’s the numbers of people using it. But that’s a blog post for another day.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 