A Dialogue in sculpture and art in Second Life

Kondor Art Garden, Dialogue Exhibition by Artemis and Hermes

I was back at the Kondor Art Centre, operated and curated by Hermes Kondor, just a few days after witnessing and writing about Melusina Parkin’s Lockdown and Hope (see here for more). The occasion for such a reasonably quick return was the opening of a new exhibition.

Located in the Art Garden at Kondor Art Centre, Dialogue Exhibition by Artemis and Hermes presents the remarkable sculptures of Artemis (ArtemisGreece) displayed alongside Hermes’ art.

It’s a part of my desire to create a place for different Art and Cultural expressions – music, art, conferences, readings, and more; a garden display of Artemis’ sculptures and my photographic interpretations of them.

Hermes Kondor

Kondor Art Garden, Dialogue Exhibition by Artemis and Hermes

Hailing from Greece, Artemis was attracted to Second Life due to it many opportunities for creativity and expression. She initially found an outlet building houses, but wanted to be more expressive. Whilst not a trained artist, she taught herself to use tools like PhotoShop and Blender, and moved to producing and selling sculptures and 3D designs, developing a portfolio of work, ranging, encompassing everything from neo-classical pieces through to humorous pieces (yes, you can have a farm cat riding bicycle!) and figures of musicians, as well as more general items – frames, cushions, etc.

For this exhibition we are presented with eight individual pieces that brings together elements of her work that lean toward  neo-classical pieces that appear to be cast from brass, and figurines that look to have been cast and painted, to a complete set of her Chamber Orchestra collection.

Kondor Art Garden, Dialogue Exhibition by Artemis and Hermes

These are genuinely marvellous pieces, many encompassing themes, ideas and  or statements, some animated to add depth to their story / increase appreciation of their form. All are offered for sale to those who wish to purchase them. And believe me when I say these are pieces that will grace almost any setting; so much so, I could not resist obtaining a copy of Woman Makes The World Go Round for our garden; while those seeking something a little more special, Artemis presents an exclusive twin set Out of the Box.

Partnering the sculptures are ten pieces of Hermes’ digital art, rendered with his use of Second Life’s wireframe mode (see: Behind the Scenes in Second Life), but here given additional depth through an expressive use of colour.

Some of these images are placed as a backdrop to the sculpture they represent, as is the case with, for example Artemis Sculptures – 010 and Artemis Sculptures – 026; others stand a little more apart from their inspiration – but all of them a depth of narrative to accompany the pieces they represent. Artemis Sculptures – 010, for example, tells the story of how a dancer is inspired by the figure of The Ballerina, while Artemis Sculptures – 021 brings together a tale of Artemis’ Chamber Orchestra playing for the benefit of her Dancing Couple, in a tale of music, dance and romance.

Kondor Art Garden, Dialogue Exhibition by Artemis and Hermes

Individually, Artemis’ sculptures and Hermes’ art are each captivating to witness and appreciate; together they make for an enchanting exhibition that should not be missed – and don’t forget the telephone station connecting the art garden with the rest of the Kondor Art Centre.

SLurl Details

 

 

 

2021 TPVD meetings week #3: summary

Yukina, November 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 21st, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are video recorded by Pantera Północy, and her recording of the  meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

SL Viewer News

[0:00-2:15]

  • Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555058, January 20, 2021.
    • Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
  • Project viewers:
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
    • Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

  • Viewer updates / releases had been held-up due to some Uplift related issues. This have now been rectified, and viewers should start rolling forward again.
  • As noted in my 2021 week #3 CCUG summary, the Dawa Maintenance RC viewer was the only viewer updated during the week, and this will likely be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status.
  • The Simple Cache project viewer (VFS replacement) and the Legacy Profile project viewer are both now “close” to be promoted to release candidate (RC) status. That latter had been blocked due to some required UI fixes, with Kylie Linden indicating these are in progress.
  • Graphics fixes continue to be added to the LMR-5 project viewer, but this is liable to end in the next week or so, in order to allow this viewer to progress onwards through RC and eventual de facto release.

AMD GPUs “Blue View” Issue

[3:21-11:02]

Some users running systems with AMD GPU has been encountering a issue with scenes being rendered with a strong blue bias when running the SL viewer with Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled and using the most recent (post October 2020, I believe, and particularly the latest Adrenalin drivers) AMD drivers.

  • General reports can be found here, and a formal bug report is available: BUG229727.
  • LL have acknowledged the issue, and believe it to be driver related. However, AMD driver bugs must apparently be reported using a specific reporting tool provided by AMD, and thus far LL have been unable to reproduce the bug when running said software and so are apparently having issues getting AMD to accept it.
    • The issue appears to be somewhat similar to an Nvidia bug of a few years ago, possibly resulting from a switch to using a BGRA for textures rather than the more usual RGBA format.
  • There are reports that an AMD driver update issued on January 21st, 2021, but at the time of writing this summary, this has yet to be more broadly confirmed.
  • In the meantime for those affected by the issue,the following workarounds are recommended:
    • Rolling back to an older driver version (e.g. Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.11.2).
    • If that doesn’t work:
      • Disable ALM in the viewer (Preferences → Graphics → uncheck Advanced Lighting Model).
      • Log out and back into the viewer.
      • Enable ALM (Preferences → Graphics → check Advanced Lighting Model).
      • Remember to disable ALM prior to ending your session (so you only need to re-enable ALM when you next log-in.

In Brief

  • [16:32-34::45] The meeting saw a significant amount of text chat concerning the technicalities of viewer CPU / CPU core usage, TPV work in trying to rebuild viewer threading, etc. As this is text-based (and may not be of relevance to many users), please refer to the video from around the 16m 32s mark through to .
  • [34:47-48:00] and continuing after the brief discussion on chat lag] A further text conversation is on graphic API options and moving away from OpenGL. This is covered in my 2021 week #3 CCUG summary, but it appears that around 20% of Windows users running systems incapable of supporting Vulkan (notably those using Intel integrated graphics).
    • That said, Vulkan isn’t the sole option available to LL, and much is still in discussion internally at the Lab.
  • [48:37-49:15] Some are experiencing an increase in chat lag post-Uplift. LL are currently re-starting the chat servers as an interim means of improving reliability of chat services, but it’s not clear if this is also helping reduce general performance issues.