In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.
Given people did feel the first video did feel hurried, and that clean installs can be a necessary part of viewer life, the latest Tool Tip Tuesday video from Jessica might be referred to as “Clean installs: the Director’s Cut”.
With a running time a little under 13 minutes, the new video provides greater information and clearer instructions on:
Saving your chat and IM logs to a custom location on your PC
Using Firestorm’s backup capability to save and restore your viewer’s global and per-account settings
Performing a clean install.
The video both complements the original clean install video, and stands as an instructional guide in its own right, providing a lot more explanation and background. So, if you were confused by the speed of delivery in the original video, this revisit may well be for you!
Tillicum Island has been designed specifically for photographers, and it shows. A full region, it is the work of Tinker Drew and her partner, Scott Yedmore, most of which is open to the public; a place where people can come and explore, take photographs and simply enjoy.
The landscape is a rich mix of sandy beach, wooded grasslands, rugged highlands and split by a deep gorge. Scattered across this landscape are a number of buildings, from a tall lighthouse standing atop a small headland in the north-west corner of the island, through to Scott’s and Tinker’s private home, located in the south-east corner. Central to these is a walled terrace, which forms the landing point for the region, gateways on two sides inviting visitors to start their explorations as birds chirp and sing from trees and benches, head cocked occasionally to watch human comings and goings.
A path from one of the gateways offers passage out towards the tall finger of the lighthouse, branching before it reaches the natural stone bridge out to the headland, to offer a path onto the west-facing beach. An old brick and wood building sits back and slightly above the beach, offering visitors a place to sit either indoor our on the front terrace, while a sandy path lit by paper lanterns presents a walk out onto the low causeway that forms one arm of the channel which splits the land in two.
Leave the landing point terrace via the other gate, and there are a choice of possible exploratory routes, one of which will quickly take you up a set of steps to the back door of the building overlooking the beach, while another will take you up to the stone bridge spanning the rocky gorge splitting the land in two. Here, on the south side of the island sits Scott and Tinker’s private residence, as mentioned above; the one place on the island where there is a sign asking people to respect their privacy and not to trespass. This overlooks the rest of the headland, which open to the public as it falls away to the sea to the west, more steps leading down to a sandy bar, at the end of which sits a little wood-built bath house.
The southern highlands of the region offer a further terraced area, complete with an Edwardian folly and, for those who spot it, a way down into a small network of tunnels and caverns under the rocks. These can also be reached / left via a door overlooking further building on the north-east side of the island.
Opportunities for photographs exist right across the island, indoors and out, above ground and in the caverns. The landscaping is such that a wide variety of windlight settings can be used to great effect. With plenty of places to sit with friends or to spend time with someone close to you, Tillicum Island has a lot to offer visitors.
Now open at LEA 6, in what is the final installation under the UWA’s Full sim Art series as we’re currently familiar with it, is Rebeca Bashly’s When Life Gives You Apples … Run
As Jayjay Zifanwee notes while introducing the piece in the UWA blog, it is fitting that Rebeca should be the final artist to participate in the Full sim Art series in its current format; in 2011, she was the very first artist to participate in the series – indeed, in any LEA exhibition – when her remarkable interpretation of Dante’s Inferno opened in October of that year (my review of which you can read here).
When Life Gives You Apples … Run Offers a provocative look at the subject of the abuse of women, either by others or by themselves. “Looking at various myths, legends and fairy tales, apple seems to be pretty unfortunate for a woman. When an apple appears in a story, you know that something will go bad,2 Rebeca says of the piece. “From Eve, thru Greek mythology to Snow White there was always a catch with an apple. It is beautiful, delicious, tempting, seductive. A Perfect disguise for all bad that can come. I use it as a symbol for the monstrosities that woman too often don’t recognise as such in its early stages.”
And indeed, the central part of the installation is – an apple. A quiet incredible apple in fact – or at least the core of one, as it has clearly been eaten. Constructed of mesh and over 70 metres tall, the apple sits on the ground, stalk pointing to the sky, the uneaten flesh at its lower end serving as the arrival point, where a smaller apple sits, offering visitors an introductory note card.
Winding up through the the core of the apple is a tunnel visitors are asked to follow. This leads the way up to a couple of teleport platforms at different levels within the apple’s core, a sculpture in occupying the space between them; and it is by taking these teleports that the visitor is led to the parts of the installation dealing more directly with the theme of abuse (or perhaps “subjugation” might be an equally valid term) either inflicted from within or without.
In the first, Home Sweet Home, we see a house being torn apart by a giant heart, both suspended above an open road – itself an image of freedom. The accompanying story suggestive of a person caught in a relationship marked by the abuse of lairs, deceptions, stories, words, finally breaking the circle and finding freedom in herself and in the world at large.
In the second, the subject matter focuses on self-abuse in the form of anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa, and the destructive effects they can have on those stricken with them. This is also accompanied by a story, that of the Doll’s House.
There is strong symbolism throughout this installation, be it with the story platforms, or the sculpture of the caged women. Even the tunnel winding up through the apple core has a meaning of its own, for example; an echo of the way in which maggots can bore through an apple, ruining its wholesome appearance via decay from the inside, just as relationships or lives which might appear whole from from outside are slowly decaying from within, as with the vignettes presented by this build.
As noted towards the top of this article, When Life Gives You Apples … Run is a provocative piece; but one of Rebeca’s strengths is that she’s never fought shy of making people think. As such, this is a worthy piece on which to close the current UWA Full Sim Art series.
In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 