Day: September 19, 2024

Diving into Second Norway’s Havfolk Fjord in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Havfolk Fjord, Second Norway, September 2024

As is fairly obvious from this blog, I enjoy exploring Second Life and writing about the places I discover either directly as I bounce around or via the Destination Guide, or am led to through the kindness of others dropping me a  landmark or SLurl and / or a suggestion. There are certain criteria I tend to apply to places I visit when considering them as a potential blog post; some of these criteria are pretty obvious (do I like what I see? Is this a place with a broad-ranging appeal?, etc.); others perhaps less so.

While there are some exceptions, I live within the estate and feel comfortably , I rarely review residential region or those that are largely residential focused – not unless they offer a good extent of public spaces thing to do and / or reasonably clear delineation between public and residential spaces. There’s a simple reason for this: I don’t want to be responsible for upsetting people’s privacy in regions that are largely residential by suggesting people go a-wandering in them and end up trespassing to the annoyance of those living there.

Havfolk Fjord, Second Norway, September 2024

But, as noted, there are at times exceptions to thus broad rule of thumb. This is one of them – but as a long-time resident of Second Norway (4+ years now) and knowing Vanity and some of her staff, I’m comfortable in writing about it. Specifically, it relates to Second Norway’s new Havfolk Fjord, a two region area of the estate that has been redeveloped to provide underwater rentals and open spaces for those within Second Life’s Merfolk community to explore and in which to set-up home if they desire.

The Norwegian word for “mermaid” is havfrue. For “mermen” or “mer people,” the term is havmann (for males) and havfolk (which refers to merfolk or mer people in general).
Havfrue = Mermaid (literally “sea woman”); Havmann = Merman (literally “sea man”); Havfolk = Merfolk or Mer people (literally “sea people”)
Welcome to our Havfolk Lands at Second Norway! The Mer Community helped form the Blake Sea way back in the day. We are very pleased to introduce our own Mer Lands at Second Norway and hope all of our residents will enjoy this added dimension to the Role Play here.

– From the Second Norway announcement about the opening of Havfolk Fjord

With a small island serving as the Landing Point at its southern end, Havfolk Fjord presents ten rental parcels (at the time of writing) of various sizes across the sea bed and within an environment decorated by Second Norway resident (and operator of the Knapper village MyStory community within Second Norway) BenjaminButtonss on behalf of the Second Norway management team.

Havfolk Fjord, Second Norway, September 2024

Linked by “paths” along the sea floor where ancient ruins  and sunken ships might be found and fish food obtained (yes there are little fishes scattered around , giving you the opportunity of finding Nemo and given feeding him), the rental parcels range in size from 3744 sq m / 484 LI through to 11040 sq m / 1431 LI, making them suitable for most pockets among merfolk (and maybe underwater explorers?), whilst the sea floor within the region offers a certain, if limited, given the need to conserved Land Capacity for residential use), “landscaped” seafloor ready for exploration via submarine or by scuba diving as well as offering merfolk the chance to rent space for a home. Meanwhile, the open waters on the surface offer space for boating and sailing.

The Landing Point island offers – literally, given the pier at one end of the beach – a jumping off point for explorations. However, on visiting, I couldn’t help but feel it might benefit from a little rez zone so visitors could conjure up a little boat or underwater craft to take to the water for a spot of sailing or exploring. But that said, the idea behind the updated regions of Havfolk Fjord is interesting, and I do look forward to seeing what develops on the seas bed there!

Havfolk Fjord, Second Norway, September 2024

In the meantime, if you are within the merfolk community and looking for a suitable home, feel free to jump over the the Havfolk island and dive in for a look-see; details of all rents can be found within the information boards located within each of the available parcels.

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Blip’s Black and White World in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
IMAGOLand Galleries: Blip Mumfuzz – Black and White

Currently open within the Suburbs sky gallery space at Mareea Farrasco’s IMAGOLand, is an exhibition of photography by Blip Mumfuzz. Entitled Black and White, it is perhaps a slight departures from Blip’s past exhibitions in that – as the name implies – Blip eschews her usual lean towards a richness of colour palette and explorations of tone and colour within her landscapes and images, as seen with the likes of Exaggerations (reviewed in 2022), or for capturing the mood and tone of entire regions, as seen within Images of Skrunda (also reviewed in 2022) in favour of a dive into the world of black-and-white photography / image processing.

And it is another tour-de-force demonstration of both images capture and processing; the section of images found within the two hangers  of the gallery space (and outside on the tarmac!) are simply eye-popping in their depth and content.

IMAGOLand Galleries: Blip Mumfuzz – Black and White

I’ve long admired Blip’s art because of her many abilities and approaches. She has, for an example, an eye for creating images that hover between offering a complete scene whilst simultaneously encouraging the eye to focus down with macro-like intensity onto individual elements – a pot apparently tossed aside here, a towel draped over a bath there, and to on – imbuing the completed image with a layer of prompts which may prompt the imagination to create a story.

For example: who hung the cap on the handle of a garden fork? Was it the gardener taking time out to mop his or her brow, or a youngster who has decided they don’t want the encumbrance of the hat whilst playing?  Or is it simply, like the sheets hanging on the line behind it, just set out to dry in the day’s sunlight?  And what of the corner of an old building (or barn?) where a door stands open, the darkness inside beckoning? What might we find on stepping through? At the same time her compositional skill can produce images that blur the line between the digital and the physical to the point the eye can be tricked into thinking it is looking at a scene from the latter rather than the former.

IMAGOLand Galleries: Blip Mumfuzz – Black and White

In other words, Blip has an innate ability to draw us into her images, to not so much see them, but experience and explore them; and this is more than evidenced within Black and White. Admittedly, not all of the images presented are necessarily new creations; there was at least one I recognise for certain from Blip’s Images of Skrunda and one I seem to recall from Urban and Industrial Images (2021, and reviewed here), although I’m not 100% certain on the latter.

But the fact that these images may well reply of post-processing to achieve their monochromatic finish doesn’t matter. Black and white photography / processing is in many respects a lot harder than working with colour; it is an unforgiving mistress prone to highlighting errors and imperfections – and this is true when converting colour images to black-and-white; yes, often the software will do the basics for you, but to get the genuine look and tone of a black-and-white image, with its clarity of line, light, shadow and so on, takes time and practice. And as these piece show, Blip has an artist’s skill in bringing this factors to the fore such that the pieces in this collect stand more as monochrome “originals” that anything that started life in the world of colour-.

IMAGOLand Galleries: Blip Mumfuzz – Black and White

In being completely honest, I could have perhaps done without the nose and wing of a 747 being shoved through the the roofs of the hanger galleries – by a quick right-click derender soon eliminated that such that it did not intrude on my enjoyment and appreciation of this collection – and as such, I again strong commend it as being well worth viewing.

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