Category: Second Life

Looking at the Second Life Senra avatars

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Tuesday, August 1st, 2023, Linden Lab officially announced the release of the first of the Senra brand of starter avatars for Second Life. The announcement came perhaps a little later than had been planned – at SL20B, Patch Linden indicated the hope was to launch them in July – and more than a year since they were initially previewed at the SL19B event in June 2022.

Of course, the release of new “starter” avatars for Second Life is nothing new; there have been several such releases over the years – some of which have been covered in these pages. However, particular excitement  / interest has surrounded the Senra project, because it is the first time LL has developed a start avatar making full use of “modern” capabilities within Second Life, including the use of mesh bodies and heads, the rigging and animation capabilities presented by the extended “Bento” skeleton and capabilities such as Bakes on Mesh.

More particularly, the Senra avatars are coupled with a new approach to introducing new users to their avatars and to customising them, using a web-based process integrated into the overall New User eXperience (NUX), which commences with the sign-up process and continues through to bringing new users into Second Life via Welcome Hubs and Community Gateways.

The Senra folders in the System Library

Sadly, I’ve been unable to test this customisation process myself, so for that, I’ll have to direct you to the Second Life University video released alongside the formal announcement (and embedded at the end of this article). What I will say about it is that it is very mindful of that used with Sansar. Whether this is a result of taking lessons learned and replying them or purely coincidental, I’ve no idea; but if it is a case of the former, then I say good on LL for doing so, as the Sansar system always came across as easy-to-use.

For those who wish to try the new avatars directly, then as the official blog post notes, they can be obtained via the System Library. However, and if you have not yet done so (and while it may well be obvious to most) – do be sure to copy the folders from the Library into your inventory.

While it is possible to Add / Wear items directly from the Library, this will result in them being copied to your inventory anyway – but rather than remaining together, they’ll simply be placed in the system folder corresponding to their item type (eyes, shape, object, skin, tattoo layer…) thus scattering them throughout your inventory, rather than keeping them all nearly together.

This initial release for Senra – emphasis here because again, it is important to note that work on further avatars in the range, including anthro, are in development, as per Patch Linden’s comments at SL20B – is referenced as “Beta”; in other words, while it is officially released, feedback and lessoned learned from it will be applied to the new versions of Senra avatars as they are released.

In the meantime, this “beta” comprises two avatars: Jamie (female) and Blake (male).

In keeping with most avatar bodies and heads, they are supplied Copy / No Transfer + No Modify, and each, as supplied with this release, comprises:

  • A separate body and head. Both use the standard SL avatar UV Map using the universal channels and are fully BoM. Thus, they are reasonably compatible with most skin, tattoo and clothing layers.
  • A total of six shapes, skins (from bleached to really dark) and nail layers, eight eye colours and nine hair styles (a mix of hair objects and tattoo hairbases).
  • An identical range of clothing (tops, bottoms, skirts, etc.) for each avatar, sized to suit their basic shapes & with alpha layers for the fuller body forms.
    • Note that free additional colours of some clothing can be found at the kiosks within the SL Welcome Hubs (at the Avatar area inside the Second Life Academy).
  • A basic, HUD-style animation system with single-click stop / start capability.
The Blake and Jamie starter avatars

I don’t want to go overboard in discussing these avatars in detail; we’ll all form our own opinions on them over time – and there are others far better qualified to dig down into them than I. As such what I have to say here is somewhat subjective and intentionally limited.

The splitting of the avatars between head and body – given they were originally described as “all-in-one” back around the time of SL19B – is a good move. It allows those transitioning from these avatars to third-party options to split the expense (and learning curve) in doing so over an extended period (e.g. purchase a body first, get used to using it + its HUD, then later decide on a head), rather than having to do everything at once.

Whilst six shapes are provided, these actually split between three body sizes (which for ease of reference, I’ll call “thin”, “medium” and “broad”), and two facial feature shapes (again for ease of reference: “thinner” and “fuller”) to provide two broad sets of appearances: the “thinner” face with each of the three body sizes (shapes 1 through 3), and the “fuller” face with the three body sizes (shapes 4 through 6).

What a difference a skin makes. Left: Jamie with her default shape 4 and skin 4 (l) and the same shape with the skin supplied with the Monique starter avatar (r)

Some have critiqued the avatars  – notably the female – for not supporting heeled shoes. While Patch has indicated this may be added as an option in the future, not doing so actually makes sense in the context of new starters: have to reference a HUD system and find the option to angle the foot for a specific hell height isn’t entirely intuitive when the aim is to keep things as simple as possible.

For me, the weakness visual part of these avatars les with the skins, which lack a degree of depth and  – for Jamie at least – could have been much improved by the simple application of decent makeup in the texture, as demonstrated in the image above, which uses one of the older starter avatar skins suppled by LL (“Monique”).

Again, I can understand LL wanting to minimise items they provide so as to keep the door as open as possible for third-party content creators to join the Senra ecosystem; but surely something a little more attractive could have been provided for new users when it comes to Jamie;  something which lets them feel there avatar is at least reasonably attractive when compared to others. As it is, the blandness of the Jamie skins could leave those using it like they must immediately start spend, spend, spending to “get up to par” with others – or (as bad) feel their avatar is inadequate.

Additional Senra avatar items can also be found at the SL Welcome Hubs

My other niggle is with the animation system; I cannot fathom why LL felt a need to change a term that has been in use for almost as long as SL has been around (Animation Override). True, “Animation Controller is a more accurate term, but it still runs contrary to accepted terminology and could led to some confusion for new users – which Senra is supposed to minimise. Also, could not the animations be a little smoother or more natural?

With regards to third-party creators entering the Senra eco-system, applications for the Senra SDK, intended to allow them to obtain the SDK and do so opened a little ahead of the formal release of the avatars via a forum thread announcement.

This has prompted a lot of feedback related to the design and construction of these avatars which I’m far from technically competent to comment on. However, my own rough-and-ready comparisons using the Improve Graphics Speed floater – whilst not totally ideal in making such comparisons – suggest that overall, these avatars are not that bad when compared to other systems in terms of their overall load, even if they are perhaps not the most efficiently made.

The Jamie head (top) compared with the Lelutka Simone head (bottom, minus its separate eyes and teeth). Note the comparative faces / vertices  / VRAM counts which allow for a number of calculations by which to compare the two heads

The thread on the license agreement has also led to a degree of discussion on the extent of the requirement laid out in the agreement and its associated documents. I don’t want to drag this article out further by diving into things here, but I would say that some of the concerns raised (e.g. LL not allowing content for other head / body ecosystems) is born of a misunderstanding of Senra’s function (the system is for those new to SL and intended to offer a simplified road into avatar customisation – and providing multiple items for multiple bodies or heads could confuse new users), and a degree of over-wrought mistrust of LL born of a misapprehension around legal terms. However, for details, I’ll leave it you to to follow the thread and draw your own conclusions.

Conclusion

As with all avatar systems, Senra has its positives and negatives. What these are seen as will largely be a matter of personal experience and subjective analysis by most – as is the case with some of my comments here. As such, I’ll just close with a handful more of personal observations:

  • Are the Senra avatars an improvement on the “classic” ranges of starter avatars – absolutely.
  • Could the possibly be better? Well, most likely, yes. The devil is in the details, and I do feel this skimp on the most important detail – the skins.
  • Would I personally use one? No. But that’s because I have two bodies and four heads to play with on my main account and two heads and a body on my alt account, and they are more than enough.
  • Would I suggest friends still firmly glued to the the system avatar give Senra a go and see what they can make of them, mix and matching with items already in their inventory? Absolutely.

 

2023 SL SUG meetings week #31 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
NordShore, May 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 1st 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.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, August 1st, all simhosts on the the SLS Main channel received the “Summer Blues” simulator update, comprising:
    • llGetPrimitiveParams will be able to identify animesh.
    •  The estate ban limit gets raised to 750, and the number of estate managers to 20, Not that the viewer-side changes to access these updates can be found in the Maintenance U(pbeat) RC viewer, listed in the Viewers section, below.
    • Two new LSL functions for LSD llLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound.
    • Changes to UUID generation on certain items per my week 26 SUG meeting summary (e.g. textures, notecards, materials (particularly the upcoming PBR Materials)) to reduce the amount of duplication. These changes will not impact  UUIDs for objects rezzed in-world or made by the viewer.
    • Further work to correct some of the friends issues (as seen with BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating”). However, how effective these updates might be will not be fully understood until the update has been more widely tested through general use on Agni.
    • The update also included a certificate update for the simulators.
  • On Wednesday, August 2nd, the RC channels should all be restarted without any deployment.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

Simulator release now appear to be getting informal names (hence “Summer Blues”, above). The next up will be:

  • Dog Days – likely to include the unbinding of the Experience KVP database read / write functions from land (users will still require an Experience to access the KVP database), and set to be the next release to be deployed.
  • Bugsmash – currently with QA, and as the name suggests, contains a range of simulator-side bug fixes. It will also see the welcome return of visible RC channel names (now, if only we could see the return of server release notes ahead of the actual deployments).  Some of the fixes in this update comprise:
    • A fix in llRetunObjectsByOwner so that it won’t hit a throttle on large returns, and a fix to estate manage object return.
    • A change to the stack that gets displayed in the case of some script faults, intended to make it a easier to read.
    • A fix for the GroupMemberData cap giving out intermittently incorrect (but still well-formed) responses.
    • A minor fix about abandoned group land not showing correct previous owner.

Viewer Updates

No updates at the start of the week, leaving the current official viewers in the pipeline as:

Note: the alternate viewer page also lists “Win32+MacOS<10.13 – 6.6.12.579987” as an RC viewer. However, the Win 32 + pre-Mac OS 10.13 was promoted to release status on July 5th, and viewer version 6.6.12.579987 points to the Maintenance S viewer, promoted to release status on May 16th.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video for details on the following:

  • There is a general discussion on an exploit of llMapDestination().
  • BUG-234197 – “[PBR] Many duplicate material override messages for same object” – a potential need to throttle / omit scripted materials changes.
  • A further request was made for BUG-225228 “llStopAnimation is stopping all animations on detach instead of only the one specified” to receive LL TLC, together with requests for a series of other bugs and feature requests (such as the ability to click-through objects.
  • A question from Leviathan Linden on whether object inventory names – i.e. the names of items contained in an object – should be opened to allow leading / trailing whitespace. Short answer: “no”; suggestion, if whitespace alone is used in an object name, have the system replace it with the object type (e.g. object, notecard, texture, etc., possibly with a numerical indicator.

 

Note: there will be NO Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, August 8th, as the simulator team will be engaged in an internal meeting at the Lab.

† 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.

Art, AI and Totems in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Third Eye Gallery: Lalie Sorbet – Totem
Totem
tō′təm – noun
An animal, plant, or natural object serving among certain tribal or traditional peoples as the emblem of a clan or family and sometimes revered as its founder, ancestor, or guardian.
A representation of such an object.
A social group having a common affiliation to such an object.

So reads a typical dictionary definition definition for totem, a word believed to have entered the English language in the 18th century courtesy of the Ojibwe people, indigenous to the Subarctic and north-western woodlands of the North American continent. It is a term which perhaps most readily brings to mind the totem pole, although this is only one form a totem can take. It is also the one given by Lalie Sorbet to her latest exhibition of art, which opened at the Third Eye Gallery curated by Jaz (Jessamine2108) on July 29th, 2023.

Totem offers 16 AI generated, animated pieces representing plant totems intended not as emblems of a specific clan or family or ancestor, but in recognition of Nature itself – the greatest guardian for life and beauty there is on Earth.

Third Eye Gallery: Lalie Sorbet – Totem

Each of the pieces has been generated through the use of the Midjourney AI software, using a phrase or comment by Lalie, to produce images of leaves and flowers in exquisite close-up detail (thus mirroring Lalie’s equally captivating physical world macro photography). These images are then layered onto “blocks”, each with two faces (both facing the observer) each bearing an image, animated via script to move gently in opposition to one another to give the finished piece a sense of three-dimensional depth and life.

These are incredibly beautiful pieces, large in size, caught as if by a light breeze, their colours and brightness shifting in response to SL’s ambient lighting – make sure you are using the Shared Environment when visiting (World → Environment → Use Shared Environment) when visiting. They are rendered (presumably by considered post-processing by Lalie) to offer unique pieces, captivating in their presentation and potentially layered in their possible interpretation.

Third Eye Gallery: Lalie Sorbet – Totem

Take the pieces showing leaves for example. These have generally been rendered to present the lamina in a gossamer lightness, allowing major and minor veins to come to the fore, sometimes in a feather-like beauty, as they flow outwards from midrib to margins, gorgeously emphasising the life flowing through them.

In doing so, they reveal the marvellous complexity and elegance of nature’s design inherent in a leaf which otherwise tends to pass us by unseen. At the same time, the detail brought forth within each of these images echo other life-giving marvels of nature; the veins fanning outwards from the midrib, for example, are like the many outflow channels crossing the delta of a river, turning the wetlands between them into richly diverse living ecosystems.

Similarly, the pieces featuring flowers bloom not only present stunning studies which bring home the beauty and complexity of such blooms petals, stamen, stigma, anther, filament et al, their macro presentation reminds us, perhaps of both the interconnectedness of life on Earth through the simple, yet complex dance of pollination, and that it is also delicate and fragile; that if we do not learn to be better stewards of the world around us, to become better guardians of our planet, then its beauty, its very essence of life, will be all too fleeting.

Third Eye Gallery: Lalie Sorbet – Totem

I would have perhaps liked to have seen the terms Lalie used in initially used to generate each of the images through Midjourney displayed with each piece. However, this is a personal point of view and it does not diminish in any way from what is an engaging exihibition of AI art.

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2023 SL viewer release summaries week #30

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, July 30th, 2023

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Release viewer,  version 6.6.13.580918, formerly the Maintenance T RC viewer, promoted July 14th – 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).
    • glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581126, July 26.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

Note: The Alternative Viewers page appears to have suffered a hiccup, listing version 6.6.12.579987 as the “Win32+MacOS<10.13” RC viewer.  However:

  • The Win 32  + Pre-MAC OS 10.3 viewer was version 6.6.13.580794, promoted to release status on July 5th, and no subject to further update.
  • 6.6.12.579987  was the version number assigned to the Maintenance S RC viewer (primarily translation updates), originally issued on May 11th, and promoted to de facto release status on May 16th.
  • This entry on the Alternate Viewers page is therefore ignored on my main Viewer Releases Page.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool Viewer Stable release updated to version 1.30.2.22 on July 29 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Exploring Kuroshima’s many sides in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kuroshima, July 2023 – click any image for full size

Occupying a Full private region leveraging the additional Land Capacity bonus, Kuroshima is a group-build led by Yuki Ayashi, and offering multiple areas to visit and / or explore. This includes a ground-level environment mixing public and private spaces, multiple sky locations  – including two stores – and more. Set out with a strong Sino-Japanese look and feel in terms of presentation and architecture, the region also has some unexpected touches, such as the presence of African Elephants on one of the island.

The Landing Point, sitting towards the west side of the region, can be found in the lee of a Shogun-style pavilion repurposed as a restaurant. It is here within the arms of three Torii gates that some of the secrets of the region are revealed.

Kuroshima, July 2023

The first of these is a sign offering free housing for those wishing to be an active part of the Kuroshima estate. Touching the sign will furnish interested parties with folder with multi-language note cards which cover what is on offer, what is expected and how to apply for a unit. Participation in this case means things like blogging the estate, promoting it through social media / Flickr, offering DJ services, and more.

These homes are offered to you free of charge. They are privately parcelled. You can pay with your choice of donation or work. If we do well, we can expand. If we door poorly, well you still have a private place to rest your head.
We are looking for designers, creators, artists, bloggers, photographers, scripters, DJ’s and other awesome people with talent that have great potential, but lack opportunity … You must produce something or contribute in some way to the region and show proof of it. Your progress will be monitored bi-monthly or monthly as our time allows.
Let’s work together. Let’s be creative. Let’s have fun!

– Extracts from the Kuroshima rentals cards

Kuroshima, July 2023

Flanking this information board are two smaller Torii gates, each home to a teleport system. One of these provides a route up to the main teleport hub which connects to the locations in the sky. The second uses an Experience to (literally) cannonball visitors around the ground-level locations within the region. However, when it comes to exploring the ground level it is best to do so on foot in order to fully appreciate it.

A walk around or through the restaurant will bring visitors to a bridge spanning a cleft opened by waterfalls dropping from the rocks – although it has been converted into something of an open bath-house, the waters no doubt startlingly fresh and cold as that are caught from the falls, a (presumably) subterranean exit allowing the unused water to reach the surrounding bay.

Kuroshima, July 2023

On the far side of the bridge, a path winds through a garden before descending to reach a shale-like beach to provide access to the bath-house. As it does so, it runs between cliffs shadowed by trees and a small public house sitting just above the open waters on a low table of rock. From here, it is possible to start a partial circumnavigation of this island – one of a number making up the setting -, passing around the south to where a narrow channel can be waded across to reach a shingle sandbar of the next. This is home to a open-sided house sitting as a quite retreat and the beach stretches away from it as a tongue of land separated from two further islands by narrow channels.

From here it is possible to reach the large central island, home to an impressive Japanese house of traditional design, beautifully furnished and offering multiple places in which to pass the time. This in turn offers a further shallow wade to the north-east to where a beach reaches back to the uplands where the landing point and restaurant sits. It is from this beach that the rentals might be reached; or for those who prefer, the eastern end of the low-lying island presents a bridge spanning the water to its much taller neighbour and the last of the islands in the group.

Kuroshima, July 2023

Rising cone-like from the sands which almost completely around it, this island has two routes up its steep, hardened lava-like slopes. One of these passes up the southern slopes alongside a set of human-made and natural-looking pools fed by waterfalls sourced from springs at the top of island. However, this route does go all the way to the top. For that, climbers must travel to the northern end of the island, where winding stone stairs pass by way of giant banyan and a vertiginous drop to end at the bridge spanning the island’s waterfalls and access a hilltop lookout point / hideaway.

All of which sounds straightforward, but actually (and intentionally) skates over a lot. As noted, there are multiple points of interest to be found throughout the islands. While the major points of interest can be reached via the experience-led teleport, the keen-eyed should spot them whilst exploring on foot. For example, those descending from the landing point to pass along the beach to the bath-house mentioned earlier can hardly fail to miss the stone doors set within the cliffs under the shade of cliff-side trees. Touch these doors and they will part to reveal a hidden pool guarded by exotic plants and giant flame sconces held aloft by two mer statues.

Kuroshima, July 2023

It looks a simple, hidden space, a cosy cavern – if one devoid of places to sit, leading to the temptation to turn and walk out again. But the wiser traveller will wade into the pool and allow themselves to be swallowed by the waters. In doing so, they will enter one of the region’s hidden worlds; a place sitting beneath the waves, reach via a descending tunnel and chambers off-shots to reach a place of ruins and a drowned dome ideal for dancing (if perhaps lacking a a dance machine) and, beyond it, an garden perhaps inspired by a song.

Those taking the teleport arrow up to the sky hub will find yet more to explore – the region’s futuristic club venue, a room devoted to magic, Persian baths, a way back to the undersea world, a games world, the local stores and a suite of rooms which would not look out of place on the set of Blade Runner, and more. But rather than prattle on about all of these, I’ll instead just say each is worth a visit and / or offers more opportunities for photos – and this obviously, Kuroshima makes for a more than engaging visit.

Kuroshima, July 2023

My thanks to Morganacarter and Shawn Shakespeare for the pointers.

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More artistic beauty of steam machines in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
IMAGO Suburbs Galleries, July 2023: Hermes Kondor – Mechanical Whispers

In 2020, Hermes Kondor presented an exhibition of his physical world photography focused – pun intentional – on the Tejo Power Station (and now museum) in Lisbon. It was a captivating collection of photographs, richly demonstrating Hermes’ skill as a photographer and in the manner in which it tweaked curiosity about this outstanding Portuguese landmark. It’s also one I covered in The beauty of steam machines in Second Life.

While I am admittedly getting to it a little on the later side – the exhibition having opened on July 7th, 2023 – Hermes is now back with a further collection celebrating another or Lisbon’s historical industrial landmarks, and which again offers an opportunity to both admire his photographic eye and to learn about an important physical-world landmark.

Mechanical Whispers, hosted by Mareea Farrasco via her IMAGO Suburbs Galleries, presents a series of monochrome images of Lisbon’s Museu da Água (Water Museum), formerly the Barbadinhos Steam Pumping Station, responsible for pumping fresh water to the city delivered to the artificial Barbadinhos reservoir by the Aqueduto das Águas Livres (“Aqueduct of the Free Waters”), itself one of the most remarkable examples of  18th-and 19th-century Portuguese engineering.

IMAGO Suburbs Galleries, July 2023: Hermes Kondor – Mechanical Whispers

From the 1880s through until 1928, the steam engines of the pumping station pushed water to more households across Lisbon that had been able to be reached prior to it entering service. Given its historical significance, safter its working life ended, the station eventually became a museum, retaining the great pumps and engines used to drive water from the reservoir to the city proper.

Such was the historical importance of the museum’s role in the conservation and dissemination of European cultural heritage, in 1990 it was the recipient of the prestigious Council of Europe’s European Museum of the Year Award, remaining (at the time of writing) the only Portuguese to be so honoured. Since then, the museum has continued to evolve, encompassing modern display areas offering insights into water and its importance to life, research, science, and topics such as developing sustainable supplies of fresh water in the face of climate change and population growth, as well as providing event spaces for conferences, etc.

However, it is in the steam and pump rooms where the museum holds its magic, and it is these which are the subject of Hermes’ photography. Presented entirely in monochrome, Mechanical Whispers offers an entirely unique perspective of these once mighty machines by focusing not just on their bulk and hard-edged engineering, with its heavy iron forms of its boilers and bulky pipes with oversized nuts and bolts joining their various segments, but also on the smaller – but equally important – forms of the stations, gauges, pressure valves, pistons and pressure releases.

IMAGO Suburbs Galleries, July 2023: Hermes Kondor – Mechanical Whispers

That they are in monochrome, the images might be seen by some as missing the richness of colour evident in the actual museum, with is rich wooden floors, widespread use of brass / copper in its smaller piping and the polished steel of pressure caps and the like.  However, I’d actually disagree; the use of monochrome allows many of these pieces to use a chiaroscuro-like used of dark and light. The former, seen within the machinery itself, gives a sense of a brooding sense of presence, whilst the latter – in the form of the brickwork and natural light falling from skylights above – combines with that sense of brooding presence gives the machinery a sense of life, as if giants are asleep within the alcoves and the shadows, requiring only the slightest noise to bring them to heavy wakefulness.

Coupled with this is a marvellous use of near-macro levels of focus coupled with the use of depth of field. This again brings the small elements of the remarkable engineering present within the machinery to life, allowing us to see the beautiful simplicity of a simple spiral screw valve, together with the craftsmanship evident within something as simple as a pointer on a pressure gauge, and the elegant simplicity of making adjustments to a complex machine by simply altering the position of a piston arm.

IMAGO Suburbs Galleries, July 2023: Hermes Kondor – Mechanical Whispers

Occupying both “hanger” buildings of Imago’s Suburbs Galleries, Mechanical Whispers is a genuinely engaging exhibition by a master photographer; one which not only presents a unique view of its subject but also for the way in which encourages the visitor to learn more about that subject and its history.

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