During my SL travels, I may have mentioned I have a love of castles. So when I learned that Fuschia Nightfire, in association with Italian Square Gallery & Tanalois Art, was opening a new installation which takes England’s once mighty Corfe Castle as its inspiration, I was immediately intrigued.
Corfe Castle was established by William the Conquer in the 11th Century to command a gap in the Purbeck hills of Dorset (where Fuschia also lives in RL), and it was one of the earliest castles in England to be built using stone when the majority were built with earth and timber.
During a long and distinguished history, it served as both a royal fortress and later as a private residence. However, loyal to the crown in the English Civil War, the castle was besieged by Parliamentarian forces and eventually betrayed from within in 1645. Following its capture, Parliament voted to have it demolished, leaving a striking set of ruins atop the hill where it once stood.
Ghost Castle, Fuschia’s new installation, which opened on Wednesday April 16th, presents an interactive means of exploring a Norman castle. From the landing point, the visitor – assuming not too many people are already exploring – is presented with the castle ruins much as Corfe is seen today.
However, as you draw close to the ruins, things start to happen, with the gate house and curtain walls materializing before you, presenting vistas of the castle as it may have appeared in its heyday. As you pass by them, climbing up towards the keep, they fade away again, new sections of the castle appearing as you pass over or through them.
But as you approach, parts of it are slowly restored as they materialize before you
The nature of the installation does make navigation a little difficult, as elements of the castle are necessarily phantom. This being the case, I recommend walking up to the curtain walls and then flying up to and around Henry 1’s great keep. Make sure – as the introductory notes at the landing point advise – that you have draw distance up relatively high and have set RenderVolumeLod (debug settings in the viewer) to around 4.00; both will be necessary for camming out to get good views of the castle.
Work with other visitors, or go in a small group, and you can reveal more of the original structure
This is a novel and interaction way at viewing historical pieces in Second Life, one which could offer significant opportunities for things like educational recreations. It’s also an installation worth getting a small group together to visit, or while spending time working in cooperation with other visitors is worthwhile, so that you can work together to render more of the various elements of the castle simultaneously and so get more of a feel for how it might once have looked.
If there are enough of you, the full richness of the castle might eventually be revealed
The Paper Tower – ACC Alpha, april 2014, as seen from Sparquerry
Four years ago, architect Haveit Neox raised the Paper Tower over his ACC Alpha sim. At 175 metres in height, the Tower became a landmark for the region and the neighbouring Sparquerry, where more of Haveit’s fabulous works reside. However, all good things must come to an end.
In January 2014, Haveit took part in the LEA’s series of Interim Projects, and presented his Paper Observatory, indicating that it would replace the Paper Tower on the occasion of the latter’s 4th anniversary. And so it is that on Thursday April 10th, 2014, a special Carnival of Architecture will take place at ACC Alpha, during which the Paper Tower will vanish into inventory, and the Paper Observatory will descend from the sky to take its place.
The Paper Tower – ACC Alpha, april 2014
Festivities will kick-off around 14:00 SLT, with a parade. Then, at around 14:30, free vendors will appear in the Paper Tower Court where the Paper Tower once stood, offering attendees the opportunity to obtain architectural attachments – walls, domes, columns, etc., – they can walk and fly around wearing and come together in groups to “build” their own versions of the Observatory. Then, as a part of the grand finale, the Paper Observatory will descend upon the Court and those in it, in – to use Haveit’s apt description – a raucous collaboration of performance art.
For Haveit, the departure of the Tower is something of an emotional event, and it took him some two years to come to the decision to take it down. “The Paper Tower is one of my pet builds – one of my first,” he says of the Tower. “Working on its grand scale and industrial motifs was an exciting new adventure in my new exposure to 3D building. I have many fond memories with friends, and with public events in and around the Tower. It is one of the last standing of my newbie builds.”
The Paper Observatory at LEA25, January 2014
One of the problems with building tall structures in SL, as Haveit points out, is that while in RL they provide excellent platforms for viewing your surroundings, due to the default camera offsets in SL, when you build over a certain height, all that’s seen is the sky. The Paper Observatory compensates for this by having a translucent floor.
While the Tower will be taken down, it will not vanish altogether; although the observatory will occupy the space once taken by the Tower, the Paper Tower Court beneath it remain and continue to be an exhibition space, and the themes of paper and decay seen in the Tower are reflected in the Observatory’s design, which will be used to display scientific information.
Those wishing one last visit to the Tower can still do so ahead of the Carnival, although most of it has been cleared ready for the removal. While there, and if you haven’t done so previously, you might want to explore the rest of Haveit’s remarkable designs and builds within ACC Alpha and Sparquerry.
I dropped into Assis Art Gallery as a result of discovering a lapsed notice of an installation opening there at the start of the month. Curated by Joaopedro Oh, the gallery is currently home to four exhibitions for the month of April (and possibly longer), three of the photographic, and the last a 3D exploration of identity.
The various exhibits are displayed in different levels within the gallery space, and a teleport is required to move between some of them – look for the blue mask in the lobby and temporary building levels.
Located in the gallery’s lobby area is a small exhibition of photo art by Hikaru Enimo. These are quite exquisitely rendered, and occupy a space towards the back of the lobby space. Small though it may be, the works on display are worth casting a very close eye over, as they really are marvellous life studies.
In the Gallery’s “temporary building” area are two exhibitions which can be viewed without the need to teleport between them.
The first is a series of real life studies by Gatekeeper Gustafson. This as another stunning display, with some of the pieces containing two images each which are displayed in turn for around 30 seconds apiece. The themes for the photographs, whether paired like this or individually framed, are diverse, as are the post-processed finishes evident in some, making for a fascinating display of studies and subjects, which again rightly demand time to be appreciated.
Alongside of this, just down the stairs. is a further exhibit called Playing Cards, by Edward Nussbaum. This comprises images set as the face cards from a deck of cards, together with the joker and ace. The face cards and aces are displayed in sets of four, each image in a set representing one of the four suits in a card deck. There is a high level of nudity in the images presented in this display, together with sexual themes and a degree of homoeroticism, so be prepared!
Accessible via teleport, Blue Tsuki’s installation is called You Wear That Face, and is a simple but effective exploration of identity. Blue describes the piece thus:
We all wear masks. In SL we present ourselves with a mask every day. In this landscape find a hole in the ocean, armillary spheres of orbiting electrons, shafts of memory and our masks. “You Wear That Face” is a nexus, a vortex, an analogue of neurons and a self-reflexive look at our mask in a sideways dream.
This is a mix of physical elements and particle displays which combine to from a dream-like space with a lavender-coloured ocean flowing into a central vortex (which you’re standing over when you arrive), and over which golden armillary spheres float.
A spiral of prims descends into the vortex beneath you, images flickering across them in rapid succession, perhaps representative of the many masks we wear within SL (and life itself?). Around the spiral sit four rectangular shafts and four masks each within a pattern of particles. These are interactive pieces – click to sit on them – which place you either looking out from behind one of the masks – again, the reference to identity – or floating at the mouths of the shafts and looking down onto old photographs – our shafts of memory.
There is not set order for viewing the exhibits, so you can visit them as your muse takes you. If you do start from either the lobby or temporary building, watch out of the Assis Art Gallery signs – these will furnish you with a notice on the exhibitions and news of the gallery. If you visit you Wear That Face first, the teleport is the small red inverted pyramid in the centre of the vortex (under your feet on arrival).
A Petrovsky Flux, a collaborative piece by Cutea Benelli and blotto Epsilon and curated by the University of Kansas at their Spencer Art Museum region in SL, has been a popular destination since it opened in around 2010. It’s also, I’m somewhat ashamed to say, a destination that has been on my list of places to visit for a good while now, but I’ve never actually managed to get there.
However, as it has been in the news of late, both in notices circulated in-world and in blog posts. So I decided to hop on over and take a look – and see if I could find out what was going on.
For those unfamiliar with the installation, I’ll borrow some words from Steve Goodard, the Spencer’s associate director/senior curator of Prints & Drawings, who overseas the Museum’s region in SL:
A Petrovsky Flux is a cluster of devices that grow, assembling themselves from modular units, only to blow apart and rebuild themselves. Each time they rebuild differently so the overall flux is, as the name implies, constantly changing. Visitors … can also explore the inside of the organic architecture, and they also receive a free “noggin protector” — a miniature version of the flux that is worn on the head to protect against falling debris. The project takes its name in part from a previous project, the “Bogon flux,” and in part from the “Petrovsky lacuna,” named for Russian mathematician Ivan Petrovsky.
The “noggin protector” is well advised, as this is living art in the most literal sense. As Steve states, it is constantly building and falling apart, building and falling apart, and each rebuild is unique compared to the last. “Organic” is also an appropriate term to use with the installation, many of the elements are spherical in form, and when joined, result in undulating, hollow structures you can travel through and which from the outside resemble segments of a gigantic worm. These are often topped by dodecagon-like pieces which look like they could be maws and / or multiple compound eyes.
There is also something a little Gilliam-ish about the installation. Sheep and pigs are prone to flying past suspended beneath clover-like rotors (you are offered a tiny version of one of these “Henrycopters” to wear as a gift, along with your noggin protector). There are also spring-loaded armchairs that will carry you around the region, boucning randomly here and there.
Amidst all the chaos are islands of relative calm which survive the construction / destruction cycles, offering places to sit, including outdoor cafés where the unfolding spectacle can be observed; and places of reflection, such as a little Buddhist shrine. Do be warned, however, given the industrial nature of the design, there’s as least one dump which may be toxic in nature…
The installation has been in the news a fair bit of late, as mentioned towards the top of this piece, with notices circulating over its impending closure, together with blog posts on the matter. Quite why it should be closing has been a little confusing, as information has been prone to shifting and changing over the last few days. Initially, it appeared to be due to an issue of billing; however, I’ve been in contact with the Spencer Art Museum, and assured this is not the case.
Right now, and without delving into specifics, it is reasonably fair to say that any decision over the future of the Flux still lies with the Museum and with Cutea and blotto. It may yet be than in order to survive, the Flux will need to find a new home; it may equally be that it is safe where it is. I’ve been promised I’ll have word as soon as decisions have been made by the Museum.
Whichever way it goes, this does open-up a wider issue regarding the preservation of long-standing builds and installations which have come to be regarded as a genuine part of SL’s history. As Saffia Widdershins correctly points out – Keeping great sims on the grid is not Linden Lab’s responsibility. It is ours. But how this can be achieved is a complex subject in its own right; even if some form of resident-led funding mechanism can be established to fund regions, there are many thorny issues remaining, as Saffia points out in responding to comments following her post.
For example, how it is determined what should be saved and what should be allowed to naturally die? Who should be the arbiters of fate? Why should they have more say than others? How are vested interested best avoided? Should the LEA perhaps have a broader remit where art is concerned? If so, what of all the other region types considered worthy of preservation – role play environments, public parks, and so on, which over time may have significantly contributed to the betterment of Second Life?
This is a subject worthy of debate and discussion. and while matters relating to Petrovsky Flux may not be as Ziki first thought – and through no fault of her own – she has also started putting some thoughts together, discussing ideas in person with others. But in the meantime, and if you have yet to see A Petrovsky Flux – even if it does prove to have an assured future at the Spencer Art Museum’s region, I strongly urge you to visit sooner rather than later. You will not be disappointed.
To encourage you, I’ll leave you with Toxic Menges’ brilliant video of the installation.
That fractals as art fascinate me is no secret. I’ve covered Gem Preiz’s work several times in this blog, and more recently enjoyed Mac Kanashimi’s marvellous Dragon Curves at the LEA. So when I heard by way of Caitlin Tobias that Mac had another fractal-based art exhibit opening in SL, I had to add it to my places to hop over to.
3D Fractals opened at SperiMenta on Monday March 31st, although I missed the actual opening. Co-hosted by SperimentArt & Tanalois Art, it is like Dragon Curves, located high in the air. However, it is also on a much smaller scale, not that this makes it any less interesting. It features two pattern generators which, over a period of time, individually generate a range of deterministic fractals defined by their Hausdorff dimension, and which – once rendered – stand both individually or as a pair.
The fractal forms created by the generators include the greek cross, Hilbert curve, Htree pattern, Menger sponge, octahedron, Sierpinski triangle (tetrahedron / pyramid), solenoid fractal, and Vicsek snowflake. Several of the shapes have additional complemented or inverted forms as well, and all are cycled by the generators in turn, each appearing for several minutes at a time prior to the next being rendered.
If all this sounds terribly dry, it isn’t; the shapes can be quite fascinating to watch and compare / contrast as they rez and are coloured, their structure a mix of prims and mesh. If you decide to visit, and assuming your viewer supports de-rendering, I suggest you temporarily de-render the black platform prims over which the shapes appear. This give a much better impression of them, as they seem to hang in the air, and allows for a spot of photography as well!
On Thursday April 3rd, Maya Paris returned to the LEA with what is in some ways the follow-up to her popular Celebrity Blow Your Own Tits Off, only this time she’s inviting people to discover the secret sauce of relationships … via spark plugs, fish and chips and a touch of sauce science which, visitors are assured, contains no dangerous or explosive chemicals.
Sauce, which forms a part of the LEA AIR round 6 entries, is designed to be enjoyed by people exploring it in pairs or as couples. As with Celebrity Blow Your Own Tits off, this is an interactive piece, with giveaways (including your very own spark plug avatar!), rides and more, which invites you to click, click, click as you explore. In difference to the earlier game, however, there is no overall aim or goal to the piece, rather the aim is to have fun in a British seaside saucy humour kind-of way, as Maya explains:
Slap on your wig and flash those knobbly knees because this time it’s personal.
Test your Sauce Factor, try your luck at the Modern Love Bureau, get sparky in the Saucy Science lab and take a headlong dive into a sea of plenty more fish&chips.
Maya kindly granted me the opportunity to partner-up with Honour McMillan ahead of the opening and try-out the installation. All I can say is – it’s fun. And I’m not entirely sure we discovered everything. Indeed, to say too much about this piece would be to spoil the fun; you need to explore it for yourself and the good of your own teeth / hair / relationship with a friend…
Transportation around the installation is via public telephone box. If journeying with a friend, you should each select the same one to get the most out of your trip. There are a number of boxes available at the start, depending on your hair / teeth status, and it’s up to you which category you choose. Do keep an eye out for the number 1, however. You’ll need that to find your way back … or out. And while the sauce my not be explosive, at least one lot of chips is, when fired from a fish…
As well as being a lot of fun, the piece seems to include some very English cultural references – the seaside humour and sauce, the fish and chips being two. There also seems to be an oblique reference or two to the 1960s TV series The Prisoner, with large penny farthing wheels emblazoned with a “9” that so easily might be an inverted “6”, and the appearance of translucent spheres prone to hunting you at one point. There’s even a hint of Brief Encounter with the trains…
However, I’m not saying a word about how the fireworks at the end might be interpreted! Instead, I’ll just say, go and enjoy. And take a friend.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 