Day: May 16, 2020

Revisiting The Eye Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Eye, May 2020

It’s been a while since I last visited The Eye Gallery, owned and curated by MonaByte. Originally opened in 2014 – although it has relocated since opening – the gallery offers exhibitions by invited artists as well as displaying Mona’s own work.

Currently, it is Mona’s work in both 2D and 3D that is on display within the gallery’s rooms.

My first steps in SL came through teaching: conducting various projects with my RL students. Then came Escuelita para Pekes, a place for friends where I shared beautiful moments lecturing to SL children. At the same time, learning to build became my passion and the sim 1+1 was my daily meeting place where true friendships were born. I also took art tours through different sims and galleries to help promote SL art. Then my sister and friend Duna Gant gave me the honour of managing Culture, the workshop responsible for poetry reading and other events at Artemis Gallery. My work with her was a wonderful experience.

– MonaByte describing her initial years in Second Life

The Eye, May 2020

Mona’s work a bold in tone and content, and red features heavily in the works on offer in this exhibition, with some of the exterior walls and spaces of the gallery coloured to match. Her 3D work is also rich in context, and emotion, each piece conceptual in is transmission of both: Balance, Freedom, Obsession, Conflict … Two pieces even celebrate her love of Red, which is also reflected in the 2D work in the main gallery building where as series of images of poppies and red flowers capture the attention.

The upper floor of the gallery annex offers a trio of landscape photos and two more fantasy-oriented images. They lean more to blue in their tone – a reflection of both the time of day at which they were taken and their subject matter.

An engaging and pleasing exhibition.

The Eye, May 2020

SLurl Details

Kintsugi: spiritual beauty and renewal in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

Having recently opened in May 2020, Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond has been garnering a lot of attention – and rightly so; it is a place of serene beauty, lovingly created by NorahBrent and Zalindah.

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-etechnique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

– Wikipedia

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

I include this description, because Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond grew out of a personal loss experienced by NorahBrent, as Zalinah notes in her profile:

Pulling her grief and transforming it into creativity was her only way of coping. She asked me to join her and I couldn’t resist.

– Zalinah

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

So it might be said that Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond that has a deep connection for both NorahBrent and Zalinah, and especially offers a means for Norah to mend her loss through creativity, making it a part of her personal expression, making it a part of who she is, rather than trying to disguise or hide it. This is turn gives any visit to Kintsugi a personal element, the visitor sharing not just in the creativity displayed in the completed region, but also in the healing process that is folded into its design and presentation.

The natural beauty of the region is evident from first arrival, but to help encourage exploration, a story as been added; those arriving are asked to find the nine spirits located throughout the setting, with each spirit found within a location: house, forest, water, garden, and more, there secrets revealed through local chat.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

Thus, the best way to describe Kintsugi is as a subtle story told through a series of vignettes, each defined by a specific part of the region design, and knitted together as a whole by both the stories awaiting discovery and the natural flow of the landscape across the islands and water-borne elements reached via stepping stones that wind across the shallow, reflective waters that enfold the islands and their treasures.

The Japanese motifs found throughout the region  – Cherry trees, Torii gates, koi pond, raked zen garden, water lanterns and more – are used to marvellous effect, both adding to the spiritual feel to Kintsugi whilst also gently brushing it against the imagination sufficiently for the active mind to call forth stories of its own that might find a home here.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

At the same time, there is much to capture and hold the attention of the more casual visitor: the natural beauty of the setting, the mystery of the deserted town on the high hill, the places to sit and appreciate each element within the region’s unfolding story. And obviously, there is much to commend the region to the eye and lens of the Second Life photographer.

Kintsugi is a truly bewitching setting, rich in detail and narrative, fully deserving of a visit. When you do, please consider making a donation at the landing point to help ensure its continued presence in Second Life.

Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond

SLurl Details

2020 SL project updates week #20: TPVD summary; mesh uploader

Posted on by Inara Pey
Silent Melody, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 15, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.

This was a very short meeting!

SL Viewer News

[0:47-4:27]

  • The Mesh Uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, was issued on May 15th. This both offers a number of fixes to uploader issues, as per the release notes, and incorporates improvements to the uploader layout, etc., as first seen in Firestorm and contributed to Linden Lab.
Mesh Uploader project: the revised LOD tab with the additional information outlined

The remainder of the official views currently in progress remain as follows:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer: the new Avatar tab with information taken from the upload options tab (blue) and new joint information panels (red)

General Viewer Notes

  • The Camera Presets viewer is in relatively good shape for promotion to de facto release status in week #21 (commencing Monday, May 18th).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer is currently experiencing issues in merging with the EEP viewer code base, so is unlikely to be in a position to be promoted.
  • The FMOD RC viewer should offer a fix to one of the most common viewer crashes related to audio.
  • The Build Tools viewer still has some issues awaiting fixing before it sees the light of day..
  • Additional CEF updates are also in the works that will expand on the current CEF Special RC viewer.

New Simulator Chat Range Capability

[5:09-6:30]

A new ability is being developed to allow region / estate owners / managers to set chat ranges.

  • This will require viewer-side UI support, which has yet to be completed.
  • The range set for a region will be reported to the viewer by the simulator as a part of the region information.
  • The server-side support will be appearing real soon now™.

In Brief

  • [4:43-5:09] The RC deployment for Wednesday, May 20th should see a fix for Group notices all showing the same time stamp deployed across two of the RC channels.
  • [7:45-7:57] The fix for the issue off-line inventory losses from objects (see: BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”) should be deployed (hopefully!) in the RC deployments of Wednesday, May 27th.
  • [9:12-11:00] The question was asked if LL would skip using Visual Studio 2017 in he viewer build process and go directly to VS 2019.
    • The answer was no, not this close to deploying working viewers using the updated build process, but a project to update to VS 2019 will be started “at some point”.
    • This work should in theory be a lot easier, thanks to the effort up into updating the additional viewer build libraries as a part of this update.
    • This build process is currently using XCode 11.3.1 for OS X, but this may change depending on the frequency of updates from Apple.