Author: Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

Fantasy Faire 2023: previewing the LitFest and FilmFest

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Stump Theatre , Fungalmire – home of the Fantasy Faire 2023 LitFest and FilmFest

Fantasy Faire 2023 is now open, and with it comes the Fantasy Faire Literary Festival (LitFest), now in its ninth year, and the Fantasy Faire Film Festival (FilmFest), returning for its third year at the Faire.

The LitFest

Centred on the Stump Theatre in Fungalmire the LitFest is a special place where the magic of the spoken word will weave tales of wonder, relate stories of great adventure and daring; where talks by authors, discussions, creative writing sessions and performances will all take place. In addition, literary hawks and writers will be encouraged to join daily LitFest tours of the Fairelands and afterwards compose pieces related to their travels.

This year, our theme is anthropomorphic fiction – that is, fiction in which animals displaying decidedly human traits form an important part of the narrative. Think of the likes of Aesop’s Fables or legends out of Africa and the orient, or the retelling of Hamlet through the likes of The Lion King, to evergreen favourites like The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte’s Web.

Guest Of Honour

Anne Louise Avery

The LitFest 2023 Guest of Honour is Anne Louise Avery, author of Reynard the Fox, the beautiful novel that draws upon medieval sources. Anne also creates Twitter vignettes that tell stories of a world where animal and humans live together.

Born in London to bohemian parents – her mother was a novelist and her father a journalist who worked with Ian Fleming and Graham Greene in Naval intelligence during the War – Avery received a First Class degree in art history at the School of African Studies (SOAS), University of London, one of the world’s leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She then held a fellowship at Brown, and studied Japanese at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, before becoming an art historian and writer.

In 2020, she published Reynaud the Fox, which takes William Caxton’s bestselling 1481 English translation of the Middle Dutch tale of a subversive, dashing, anarchic, aristocratic, witty fox from medieval East Flanders and weaves a new interpretation of the story, complete with innovative language and characterisation and themes of protest, resistance and duplicity fronted by a personable, anti-heroic fox making his way in a dangerous and cruel world.

Sunday, April 23rd
 11:00 – An interview with Anne Louise Avery

LitFest Fairelands  Tours

The popular Fantasy Faire LitFest Tours will once again be taking place, leaving daily from the LitFest home base in the Drifts of Anamnesis to explore the Fairelands and seeking the stories they have to tell as well as their special secret places and details. Stories can also be submitted for publication on the Fantasy Faire website, provided they are submitted within two days of each tour.

The Tours depart daily from Fungalmire, and at the time of writing, the tour schedule is as follows (all times SLT):

Fri. April 21
 17:00 – Safe Haven Sat. April 22 13:00- Spirits Crossing
17:00 – Fairelands Junction
Sun. April 23 13:00 – Sialdor
17:00 – Frostweald		 Mon. April 24 17:00 – Dingir
Tue. April 25 13:00 –Giraphoria and Sambeaubee
17:00 – Sipala		 Wed. April 26 13:00 – Nysaris
Thur. April 27 13:00 – Giggenwhirl
17:00 – Fungalmire		 Fri. April 28 13:00 – Khumbala
Sat. April 29 17:00 – Winding Valley Sun. April 30 17:00 – Isles of Aquarius
Mon. May 1st 17:00 – Flambois Tue. May 2 13:00 – Syzstrum Synod
17:00 – Glimmering Meadows
Wed. May 3 17:00 – WooHoo! Bay Thur. May 4 13:00 – Nova Nadiya
17:00 – The Shimmering Fen
Fri. May 5 17:00 – Opera

The FilmFest

The Film Festival is returning for its third year at Fantasy Faire. Events will include: talks, discussions and retrospectives of the works of different machinimatographers, three film premieres, including the premiere of the third episode of the ongoing series, Harland Quinn and the Omega Hex. And don’t worry if you missed Episodes 1 or 2 – these will also be shown.

The Film Competition

2023 will see the second edition of the Fantasy Faire Film Festival Competition, complete with awarding of the Wafflies!

Open to all, the competition is based in the Fairelands, and comprises three categories, with the winner in each will receive a golden Wafflie statue.

Category 1 – 5-minute  fiction   Tell a narrative story, set in the Fairelands
Category 2 – 5-minutes factual This could be a documentary, a tour of a region, a special Faireland event and – if the creator is willing – perhaps a short interview.
Category 3 – 10-minute Livestream
 Either edit a ten minute sequence from the livestream, or give a timeframe of 10 minutes from the longer livestream.

The LitFest and FilmFest Calendar

The calendar blow lists all of the LitFest and FilmFest events – click on any link for more details.

LitFest and Film Festival Highlights

All times below SLT.

Weekdays April 21-May 5
 06:30 LitFest The Milkwood Dash – a chance for you to spend 15 minutes writing your own prose or poetry based on a writer’s prompt, and then share what you have created with your fellow authors.
Friday April 21 11:00 FilmFest Chantal Harvey and Saffia Widdershins explain what will be happening at the FilmFest
Sunday, April 23
 11:00 LitFest An interview with Anne Louise Avery at the Stump Theatre, Fungalmire.
Tuesday, April 25 11:00 FilmFest An interview with Pryda: discussing her machinima work, some of which – the Future Shock series – has been featured in this blog.
Wednesday, April 26 11:00 FilmFest An interview with machinima maker Teal.
Friday, April 28 10:00 FilmFest An interview with Macguyver Mode, followed by the premiere of his new film.
Saturday, April 29 11:00 FilmFest An interview with machinima maker Chantal Harvey.
Saturday, May 6 14:00 FilmFest The Wafflies Awards
Saturday, May 6 17:00 LitFest The Mythos of the Fairelands- Zander Greene and Aoife Lorefield are in conversation about the Mythos the underlies the Fairelands.

Additional Links

2023 week #16: SL CCUG meeting summary (abbreviated)

Posted on by Inara Pey
OCWA Experience The Ocean, February 2023  – blog post†

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, April 20th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT. 

These meetings are for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work. They are usually chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.

Notes:

  • These meetings are conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either to make comments / ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.
  • The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.

Additional note: unfortunately, my audio recording died whilst saving to disk, leaving me with just the first 10 minutes of audio from the meeting available for playback / summary. Given responses to questions in text are supplied in Voice, it is impossible to provide any reasonable summary beyond the point at which the recording save failed, so this is therefore a very foreshortened report, and not representative of the entire meeting.

Official Viewer Status

The Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version  6.6.11.579629 on April 20th.

The rest of the official viewers remain as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance T(ranslation) RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579154, April 6th.
    • Maintenance S, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
  • Project viewers:
    • The PBR Materials / reflection probes project viewer, version 7.0.0.579401, April 10th.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

The Performance Floater / Auto FPS viewer looks set to become the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status in the coming week.

glTF Materials and Reflection Probes

Project Summary

  • To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
  • To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
  • The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
    • It is currently to early to state how this might change when glTF support is expanded to include entire objects.
  • The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid):  Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

Status

  • Viewer:
    • The viewer is now very close to being promoted to Release Candidate status. Issues within the viewer build farm prevented it from getting fully cleared by QA, who are currently taking one more look at it.
    • It is believed that all the significant showstoppers thus far found have been dealt with (although more may show up as a result of it becoming available to a wider audience in RC).
    • The above should include the issue of objects in the camera’s view failing to render unless occlusion culling is disabled and the issues of some mesh items “exploding in the the viewer’s viewer both being fixed.
    • Ton mapping has been updated so there is no longer the ability to change / turn off tone mapping. This has been done in the name of “trying to keep things consistent” with older contents that has tone mapping built-in. This does lead to a few edge cases (such as not being able to get totally pitch black environments), but also fixes some issues around general exposure (e.g. preventing full bright objects changing brightness depending on camera distance).
    • It is likely that the work on exposures will eventually be fed into the snapshot tool, so photographers can adjust the exposure settings for them pictures.
    • There is still a collection of minor issues / bugs still to be resolved – such as getting parity some some of the current sky settings – which will be dealt with in RC as the viewer progresses.
    • Those who do find significant issues in using the viewer in RC are asked to report them via a BUG report ASAP.
  • When the view does go to RC, it is likely the server-side support will be deployed to one (Preflight) or possibly two (Preflight and Snack) small simulator RC channels to allow for testing on Agni (the Main grid). Details of the available regions will be published in my project summaries as and when available.

Future glTF Work

  • There is an internal (to LL) design document in development which is intended to set-out the next steps in the glTF work; however, this is not currently ready for public release.
  • Past indicators have been that it is possible the near-term work for glTF could include planar mirrors (with some controls around their use) and also glTF mesh uploads.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, May 4th, 2023.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Fantasy Faire 2023: your (almost) complete guide

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fantasy Faire 2023: The Fairechylde at Sipala
If you are just after links and Surls, click here to jump to them!

The largest fantasy-related event to take place in Second Life, Fantasy Faire 2023, opened its gates to Fairelanders at 12:00 SLT on Thursday, April 20th, 2023. It will remain open through until Sunday May 7th, 2023 inclusive, once again raising money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) efforts to bring about a World Without Cancer.

 Table of Contents

As with previous years, 2023 will see a wide range of activities and events taking place at the Faire through until Sunday, April 30th, with role-play, parties, Jail & Bail, the LitFest, live performances, auctions, and more. After this, the regions will remain open for people to visit and enjoy sans on-going activities, allowing them to shop at their leisure and explore the regions in relative peace – although some activities such as the Fairelands Quest will also continue through the final week as well.

Fantasy Faire 2023: Safe Haven

The notes below are intended to get Fairelanders old and new up-to-speed with a one-page look at the event as it opens.

If You Are New to the Faire and Other Notes

If you are new to Fantasy Faire, the many regions it encompasses can be overwhelming to the point where you might fill panicked into trying to see everything at once.. But – the Fire is here for two weeks, so you have lots of time to visit, and remember: shopping and sightseeing can be much easier once all the initial rush is over!

The best place to start a first-time visit is Fairelands Junction. From here you can reach all of the regions via the teleport portals, so it makes a good hub for exploring. You can also grab a Fantasy Faire teleport HUD from here (or at the region landing points).

You might also want to take the following suggestions:

  • Keep up-to-date with the Faire and all that is going on through the official Fantasy Faire website.
  • The Fairelands have their own mythology and history. If fantasy is your thing, be sure to read about the History of the Fairelands.
  • For the best visual experience:
    • Make sure you have Advanced Light Model (ALM) enabled in your viewer (Preferences → Graphics) – this shouldn’t hit performance too heavily on most reasonable systems (you do not have to enable Shadows).
    • Make sure your viewer is set to Use Shared Environment (World → Environment) as the regions all have their own environment settings, and several have dedicated day / night cycles.
  • Regions can be busy! So:
    • If you teleport into one, be sure to move a little way from the landing point as soon as you can to avoid becoming part of an avatar tower!
    • Don’t over-dress with lots of bits and bobs and attachments to avoid adding to the rendering lag everyone has to experience.
Fantasy Faire 2023: Sambeaubee

Shopping

Fantasy Faire is very much about shopping. Merchants from across SL can be found in the shopping regions, all of whom offer some of their items through official RFL of SL vendors, so that proceeds of sales go to RFL / ACS.

Parties, Entertainment and Performances

The Fairechylde: DJ Events

The Fairechylde will once again be docked at the Faire, spending her time within the region Sipala and hosting DJ parties to keep Fairelanders entertained. These parties – live or via Fantasy Faire Radio – will be running right throughout the Faire, and further details can be found at:

Fantasy Faire 2023: The Shimmering Fen

Live Performances

Every Friday through Monday throughout the run of the Faire will be live performances by musicians, singers, dance troupes and more from across Second Life. Performances will be hosted on the Arts and Performance regions of Giraphoria and Sambeaubee, and all participating performers, acts and troupes can be found at the Live Performance Schedule.

The Fairelands Masked Ball

Fancy a more formal soiree where tuxedoes and gowns are encouraged and an air of mystery is added with eyes behind masks? Then head for the Fantasy Faire Masked Ball, with two dates to suit time zones:

  • Saturday, April 29th – Noon through 14:00 SLT.
  • Friday, May 5th – 18:00 through 20:00 SLT.

The Ball will take place within the Sambeaubee Arts and Performances region.

Fantasy Faire 2023: Fungalmire

Events and Activities Highlights

Literature and Film Festivals 2023

The Literature Festival (LitFest) will this year be based at the Stump Theatre in Fungalmire, and will again offer a range of activities including tours of the Faireland regions and opportunities to write about them, together with poetry readings, open microphone readings and the LitFest theme day.

This year, our theme is anthropomorphic fiction – in other words, fiction where animals (often displaying decidedly human traits) form an important part of the narrative. This can range from Aesop’s Fables or Beowulf,  to oriental legends, to well-known children’s books such as The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte’ Web, to the medieval tales of Reynard the Fox or the the trickster tortoise and the hare in West African tales. The Guest of Honour for 2023 is Anne Louise Avery, author of Reynard the Fox, the beautiful novel that draws upon medieval sources.

Returning for its third year at Fantasy Faire, the Film Festival features a special machinima focused event almost every day of the Faire from April 24th, at 11:00 SLT. These will include talks, discussions and retrospectives. There will also be three film premieres during the Film Festival, and the Film Festival Competition, and a chance to win a Golden Waffle.

Details of LitFest and Film Festival can be found via these links, and I’ll be previewing both shortly in these pages.

  • The full LitFest Calendar – provides a run-down of activities.
  • Region tours schedule – region tours are held on most days of the Faire at 13:00 and / or 17:00 SLT, offering the chance to explore the Fairelands and seeking the stories they have to tell as well as their special secret places and details.
  • Film Festival page.

Role-Play Events and Activities

The Children of Stories will once again be offering a rolling role-play event during the Faire. This year the focus is on the The Gathered. Based within Flambois as they play out and explore a special storyline tied to the Fairelands.

Flambois is a school dedicated to the Fairelands itself, and has taught many illustrious alumni, but why then did these lanterns summon them to this realm if everything was alright? Strangers to this land, they will have to discover this realms stories and watch for unknown dangers and suspicious characters who may be Shadows of the Unweaver.

– from The Children of Stories

Find out more via these links:

In addition there will be a range of role-play classes for all who are new to role-play in Second Life – fined out more on the Fantasy Faire Role-Play Classes page.

Fantasy Faire Quest: The Magic of Dragons

This year’s chapter of the Fantasy Faire adventure quest series is The The Magic of Dragons. Once again the Bard Queen will call upon adventurers bold of heart to purchaser a Quest HUD (also proceeds to RFL / ACS) and follow the clues in a quest of two parts. The first opens on Monday, April 24th, and will take adventurers across the Faireland regions in search of answers. In part 2, opening on Thursday, April 27th, adventurers will be able to enter the Quest region and resolve the mystery – and receive their bounty from the Bard Queen!

Fantasy Faire 2023: Nova Nadiya

You don’t have to join the Quest right from the start; prizes are for everyone who completes the adventure, and the Quest will be open right through until May 8th.

Many years ago, a realm called Nadiya was invaded by the forces of the Unweaver. Its residents defended their land so well, they drove the enemy to retreat. But sadly, their land was so damaged by the attack that it could no longer support them. They, too, were forced to leave their beloved home.

– from the introduction to the Fairelands Quest, 2023

Find out more via the Fantasy Faire Quest page.

And There’s More

Don’t forget, all the staples of Fantasy Faire will again be available, including the live auction, the silent auction and jail and bail – see the Fantasy Faire website for details on these.

So, why not dress for the occasion (or buy a Quest Deluxe HUD and dress in the outfit supplied with it!) and head on over to the Fairelands to discover what adventures and parties await?!

What’s it all About: The Beacon Initiative

In February, 2022, the American Cancer Society (ACS) began a new chapter in its global work in the care and support of those diagnosed with cancer in all its forms, with the launch of the BEACON (Building Expertise, Advocacy, and Capacity for Oncology Navigation) Initiative. In partnership with health care facilities and cancer organisations around the world, the BEACON Initiative improves support and access to care for people living with cancer in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). It supports health facilities and cancer organizations in LMICs to design, implement, and sustain their own oncology patient navigation programmes.  This is accomplished through the development of materials – called the Toolkit – and a peer-learning collaborative, both of which are provided in an online format for ease of access and adaptability.

Currently BEACON is engaged in a pilot programme which encompasses ten healthcare facilities and cancer organisations across eight nations: Armenia, Brazil, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and South Africa, with some 22 countries expressing interest in the Initiative at its launch.

The ACS BEACON Initiative Pilot Programme (via ACS / Fantasy Faire)

Fantasy Faire has, through its work in supporting the development and operation of the Kenyatta National Hospital Hope Hostel in Kenya, has become a key player in the the development of the BEACON Toolkit, funds from the event being put into the production of two key elements within the kit: a patient and caregiver booklet and a health worker flipchart. While these materials cannot cure cancer, they will ease patients’ stress, helping them to better understand what is happening to them during their treatment, and help them to make the best choices for themselves and their loved ones .

Fantasy Faire is one of the cornerstones of our vital work. It’s an inspiring example of a global community working together to address a global challenge.

– Kristie McComb, ACS Managing Director of Global Capacity Development and Patient Support

Links and Region SLurls

Website Links Event Region SLurls Shopping Region SLurls
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Exploring Nederlanse Bergee in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023 – click any image for full size

Held by Aloriana Shadowstar (Aloriana77) and designed Marie Nova, Nederlanse Bergee is a Homestead region currently open to the public and offering, in the words of the About Land description:

A beautiful island, ideal to get away from everything. A place to explore, to discover, to enjoy, to relax.

The region sits as three islands – two relatively large, and the third much smaller. Of the two larger islands, one forms a ribbon running from the south-west corner of the region and around to the north, separated from the second by a narrow channel which broadens into a bay as it and the ribbon island run north and then east. The third, small, island sits to the north-east.

Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023

The ribbon island is home to the region’s landing point. Ruggedly wild, the island offers a mix of temperate and tropical trees, little beaches, and cosy retreats. The latter range from a beachfront coffee house, passing by way of a little retreat and a small café to a parade of coastal shops tucked behind the island’s high northern peaks.

Somewhat incongruously, this island includes a small tram station. Quite where the trams used to run to / from is unclear; however, none seem to have been running for a good while, and the one that is present at the station has long since been converted into a little diner.

Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023

The channel between the two main islands is spanned at a single point by a wood and rope bridge, well towards its southern end. Footpaths on the far side of the bridge in turn lead to a gazebo sitting on a small promontory in the south-east corner of the region or to a second  little parade of shops which have, perhaps, more of a European lean to them compared to those in the north, which have a holiday island feel to them.

Dominated by a large flat-topped hill, this second island is also home to numerous places where visitors might spend time. These range from an outdoor gathering place that looks like it might be the home of the poetry reading events periodically held in the region (at the time of writing, the next is scheduled for April 28th), through to a coastal holiday home, the aforementioned gazebo and, within the northern bay, a little wharf against which a little boat with Bimini raised sits.

Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023

The smallest of the island might be tucked in close to the ribbon island, but, save for flying, appears to be the hardest to reach; none of the boats scattered around the region appear to be available for use by visitors, and the channels separating the little island from the others are deep. However, it offers a quite retreat in and of itself, with a summer house, wild flowers and a hammock under the shade of trees.

When seen under its default environment settings, Nederlanse Bergee has some of a painting’s look and feel about it; something that increases the Dutch tone evoked by the region’s name. However, the setting also lends itself to a wide range of EEP setting for those who are so inclined to experiment; for once, I stayed with the local EEP for the photos here.

Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023

Restful, a touch romantic and very photogenic, Nederlanse Bergee makes for a gentle, easy-going visit. My thanks to Shawn Shakespeare for the pointer!

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #16 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Burrow Wood County, February 2023 – blog post† 

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  April 18th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, April 18th, the SLS Main channel servers were updated with simulator release 579248, previously deployed to the RC channels. This means the doubling of linkset data memory (to 128KB) and the three LSL functions for strided list management – llList2ListSlice(), llSortListStrided(), and llListFindListStrided() – are now grid-wide.
  • On Wednesday, April 19th, simhosts on the RC channels will be restarted, but there will not be any new deployments to them.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

  • It is still hoped to get the server-side support for PBR materials to at least one RC channel – Preflight, with the potential it might also go to Snack as well – but there was no ETA on this at the time of the meeting. Currently, it remains with LL’s QA team.

Viewer Updates

No official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance T RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579154, April 6th.
    • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.11.579238, April 4th.
    • Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.579401, April 10 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

  • llGetAgentInfo received a new flag – AGENT_AUTOMATED – in week #15, however, the simulator side has et to be released; it is currently in a maintenance simulator support which may go to QA for testing in week #17.
    • This raised concerns of whether or not llGetAgentInfo was the right place for this flag, and whether it could result in the dataserver being spammed with requests from people wanting to know if visitors to their land were avatars or scripted agents. However, as Rider Linden pointed out, the simulator already has information on scripted agent, so there is no requirement for the simulator to query the dataserver.
    • See the video for the broader discussion on when the flag for a scripted agent is propagated across the grid.
  • There was a general discussion on possible LSL enhancements. This included:
    • Possible improvements to notecard handling by LSL (e.g. searching notecards – e.g. BUG-4906 -, faster notecard reading, a safe means of sending back the contents of a notecard so a script doesn’t need to build a web page on the fly / read the entire contents of the notecard into memory).
    • HTTP response expansion.
  • Objects rezzing objects: it has been noted that if an object is set to rez other objects (e.g. say a “crate dispenser” which might be used as a visual enhancement to Get The Freight Out to simulate cargo loading), the rezzing tends to work perfectly when the rezzing object’s owner is present, but can experience issues when the owner is not present.
    • This tends to occur if rezzing within the land is restricted to Group membership, and object owner did not correctly set their active group prior to placing out the rezzing object.
    • As the owner’s group is checked when present, this allows the rezzer to work correctly, hence why the problem only surfaces when they are absent.
  • For all other discussions, please refer to the view below.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

A Minimal Gaze in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
UASL – Melusina Parkin: A Minimal Gaze

Currently open at Galerie Principale within the United Arts of Second Life hub, is an exhibition of pieces by Melusina Parkin, showcasing her minimalist approach to telling stories through her photography.

A Minimal Gaze is not a retrospective in the strictest sense of the word, but it does contain some images that admirers of Melu’s work may well recognise. What it does present is a rich cross-section of Melu’s style, something which might be called “moments in solitude”, whereby she focus on aspects of scene within Second Life and presents a image with a single cynosure, drawing our attention to that focus alone.

UASL – Melusina Parkin: A Minimal Gaze

Thus, the focal point stands in solitude in terms of their in-world surroundings, the framing of the image, and its ability to hold our attention. However, at the same time, a much broader narrative canvas is presented by the background and what lies just outside the frame of the picture; things not seen, but which nevertheless whisper to our imaginations. This gives Melu’s work a sense of unique individuality: the familiar seen without broader context other than what is suggested by the mind’s eye.

It’s an approach that Melu has used throughout the majority of her more than 10 years of Second Life photography, and which I’ve never ceased to appreciate, both for the above expressiveness and for the way it causes us to look at Second Life itself in a new way, bringing this digital world to life in a most unique and singular manner, unmatched by more “traditional” forms of photography (very much including my own) which provide broader, more contextualised views of the places visited and recorded within them.

UASL – Melusina Parkin: A Minimal Gaze

In the notes she provides for the exhibition, Melu notes that she is currently experimenting (like so many) with AI-generated images – but that also, she is not deserting this approach to her photography. It’s an assurance I appreciate, as a Second Life without her unique insight to its many faces and places would, frankly, be a diminished world.

Surl Details