Day: April 24, 2019

The Spirit Blooms Timidly in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ribong Gallery: The Spirit Blooms Timidly

Currently open at Ribong Gallery, curated by San (Santoshima), is a new exhibition entitled The Spirit Blooms Timidly by Artistik Oluja.

An interestingly curious exhibit, combining 2D and 3D art, The Spirit Blooms Timidly requires time to absorb, and also includes media elements as well; so make sure you have media enabled within the viewer, and be sure to toggle the media panels (and some of the artwork itself) whilst visiting.

Ribong Gallery: The Spirit Blooms Timidly

This exhibition merges several personally inspiring concepts, beginning with a passage by George Santayana: “The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

– Artistik Oluja, describing The Spirit Blooms Timidly

In short, life is transient, changing, imperfect; nothing lasts forever nor does it ever really remain the same; through imperfections, through growth, ageing, decay, everything is in a state of flux.  Thus the art within the exhibition is intended to reflect this.

Ribong Gallery: The Spirit Blooms Timidly

From the landing point, visitors are asked to jump down into the gallery space, wherein they will find the exhibition proper, a place of “light-hearted optical illusions, hypnotic mandalas, and vibrant dandelions”. Among the pieces on offer are Cylent pieces, which are described as:

A technique that Art developed in-world. It is a hand-made process that merges virtual photography with Lenticular Motion printing [hence the merging of Cy(ber) and lent(icular) to form “Cylent”], and she describes them as being “like those fun little animated cards I got in cereal boxes as a kid 🙂 .

Ribong Gallery: The Spirit Blooms Timidly

When all is said and done, this is a difficult exhibition to quantify, simply because it is layered in several ways, all of which can have a different appeal, from the visual through to the underpinning ideas of change and impermanence. As such, a viewing is suggested.

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Fantasy Faire 2019: Ursula Le Guin and voting for rulers!

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Fantasy Faire

As a part of the Fantasy Faire LitFest, one day at Fantasy Faire is set aside to mark the life and works of popular writers of fantasy and science fiction. The roll call for this event so far reads:

  •  2015: Terry Pratchett.
  • 2016: William Shakespeare (marking the 400th anniversary since his death).
  • 2017: J.R.R. Tolkien.
  • 2018: G.R.R. Martin.

On Wednesday, April 24th 2019, the Fantasy Faire LitFest is celebrating the life and work of American speculative fiction icon, Ursula K. Le Guin, who sadly passed away in January 2018.

Ursula K. Le Guin by Eileen Gunn

Regarded as one of America’s foremost writers of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish Universe, and her Earthsea fantasy series, Le Guin’s career spanned 60 years. During that time, she produced more than twenty novels, over a hundred short stories and many volumes of poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children’s books.

Her first published novel came in 1966, with Rocannon’s World, after she had faced around a decade of having her work rejected by publishers. This novel formed the founding volume of her Hainish Cycle, the fourth volume of which, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), propelled her in the mainstream of science fiction, garnering her a Hugo and a Nebula award in the process – the first of many awards she was to receive throughout her writing career.

The Left Hand of Darkness laid down many of the defining traits found within Le Guin’s works, which often include themes of cultural anthropology, Jungian archetypes, philosophical Taoism, gender and sexuality, moral development, political development and systems, and general sociology, psychology, or philosophy.

Today, Le Guin is rightly regarded as a writer who did much to bring fantasy and science fiction forward as accepted literary genres, and her work, ides and style influencing many authors in both fields who followed her.

Ursula K. Le Guin day will be marked by a series of special events, comprising:

  • 09:00-10:00 SLT: Exploring Le Guin: A Brief Tour and Discussion: a “tour” of Le Guin’s lands, via favourite passages from her books – suggestions invited. Moderated by Aoife Lorefield.
  • 10:00-11:00 SLT: Aoife Lorefield Shares Readings from Ursula K. Le Guin.
  • 15:00-17:00 SLT: A Wizard in Earthsea Party: The LitFest Ball.
  • 19:00-21:00 SLT: Seanchai Library present Celebrating Ursula K.Le Guin.

Don’t Forget To Vote!

And while discussing matters literary, don’t forget to cast your vote for this year’s King, Queen and Chancellor for Fantasy Faire 2019!

This fun (and fund-raising) activity lets Fantasy Faire visitors vote for the fictional characters (human in the case of King and Queen, strictly non-human in the case of Chancellor) they’d liked to see “crowned” at this year’s Faire. Voting is via donations to L$ Fantasy Faire, and this year’s nominees (selected by popular demand) are:

Kinq Queen Chancellor
Doctor Stephen Strange (MCU) Arya Stark (Game of Thrones /  A Song of Ice and Fire)
 Drogon  (Game of Thrones /  A Song of Ice and Fire)
Inigo Montoya (Princess Bride) Brienne of Tarth (Game of Thrones /  A Song of Ice and Fire) Falkor the Luckdragon (The Neverending Story)
Jareth, The Goblin King (Labyrinth and winner, 2016) Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones /  A Song of Ice and Fire) Kalessin (Earthsea series)
Newt Scamander (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) Lyanna Mormont (Game of Thrones /  A Song of Ice and Fire) Paarthurnax (Skyrim)
Tyrion Lannister (Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire)  Moana (from the film of the same name) Smaug (The Hobbit)
Toothless (How to Train your Dragon)

To vote for your favourite in each category, visit the voting board on The Celestial Plain.  Here you can cast your vote via a donation to RFL of SL. Just right-click on the donation boards beneath the nominee(s) for whom you’d like to vote, and enter an amount of your choice to donate.

Voting for your choice of king, chancellor and queen – uright-click on the RFL donation kiosks, not the nominee images!

You can pay as much or as little as you want but the more you pay, the more chance your candidate has of becoming King, Queen or Chancellor, as the winners will be based on the highest amounts raised for the nominees in each group. You can also vote as often as you like, as this is a fun activity to help raise funds for Fantasy Faire and the KNH Hope Hostel.

Voting will close at 16:00 SLT on Sunday April 29th, and the results will be announced at the end of the Live Auction.

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Bellisseria gains a coastal airstrip in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Flying over the new island airstrip at Coral Waters off the west coast of Bellisseria

Update: Abnor Mole offers a list of rez points for vehicles and boats (again, as per the note below, keep an eye out for the lighthouses for the majority of the latter).

The Moles have been busy again! Following requests for airstrips within Bellisseria, the new Linden Homes continent (something I’ve actually requested in these pages as well), one has appeared off the west coast, complete with a boat rezzing area alongside.

We spotted it by chance whilst taking one of the boats out to try local region crossings; in fact, the airstrip was so new, it hadn’t actually appeared on the world Map – although we weren’t by far the first to spot it. By the time we happened to motor past it, the island was already the subject of considerable attention – some of it probably not suited to the environment (such as attempts to rez an ocean-going freighter followed by a United States Navy warship).

At the time of our initial visit (by boat – we’re loitering at the left-hand ed of the island in the photo) the Coral Waters airstrip was so new, it hadn’t even propagated to the world Map – but people were finding it!

Situated on a low-lying sandy island in Coral Waters, the airstrip has a tarmac runway suitable for light aircraft, complete with a rezzing zone off of its north end (although the mesh here can give some aircraft a little trouble when trying to clear the runway onto it).

The boat rezzing area – one of a number scattered around the region (generally on the offshore islands such as Springhurst Gulf or those with lighthouses on them) – sits on the east side of the island with a couple of piers. Rezzing time for both airstrip and piers is set to 2 minutes, which should be enough to get a ‘plane or boat pulled for inventory and sat upon.

The position of the island, with the north-south orientation of the runway means there is plenty of room for aircraft manoeuvring when taking off or positioning for a landing – just be sure to be careful if turning west on climbing out, as the island isn’t too far from the grid boundary.

Readying the TBM Kronos for take-off at the new Coral Waters airstrip – the aircraft rezzing area can prove a little rough for some ‘planes

Following our boat trip, I dropped over to the airstrip to give it a go using my TBM Kronos (see Flying the TBM Kronos in Second Life for a review). There’s not really a lot to report in this respect, other than the fact the airstrip does exactly what it does on the tin – provides space for flying out of / into for light aircraft (it’s really not suitable for jets or larger ‘planes), and has room enough from helos – again providing they are not oversized.

It’ll be interesting to see how popular the new airstrip is once the novelty of its arrival has worn off – and whether another might pop-up somewhere else in or around Bellisseria. Kudos to the LPDW for being so responsive (again) to requests!

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