Category: Art in Second Life

Sniper Siemens kindly allowed me an advanced look at her LEA Artist in Residence (AIR) installation, which opens at 15:00 SLT on Friday March 28th and will remain open through until the end of June. Like Da Vinci’s World, her installation from the fourth round of AIR works, this is another historic piece – but one of a very different nature!

Invasion – A Tribute to the Greenies Homeis just that: a loving tribute to the world of the Greenies, the tiny green aliens created by Rezzable, who were trying to get to grips with a slight matter of scale during a visit to Earth in the 1950s. Prior to their departure to Rezzable’s own OpenSim grid, they were pretty much a staple part of SL’s “must see” locations.

As with the original, the visitor is placed on the scale of the mischievous aliens, who have found their way into a home somewhere on Earth, and who are both exploring it, and setting-up residence in part of it. While the original was set in the 1950s, the home here has been considerably updated: there are DVDs, a boom box, flat-screen TV, CCTV and so on.

The aliens, too have changed somewhat. The original Greenies were / are the property of Rezzable, and in respect of that, Sniper has – for the most part – used her  own M&M-like aliens.  However, explore long enough, and you’ll find that the little green chaps are to be found in a special tribute space on their own, as the images topping and tailing this piece show.

In terms of exploring, there is a lot to see and discover, through big and little doors. Visitors can walk or fly or ride bikes or, again in a touch of nostalgia, race karts (which can take a bit of handling!) around a course, and more.   There are also some darker elements to discover as well, particularly through some of the doorways …

When you’re done on the ground, there is a teleport up to the aliens’ ship where some odd goings-on are evident. Are these attempts by the aliens to transmorgify themselves into humans? If so, they’re choosing some interesting subjects in two cases; although one appears to have been supplanted (in a clever touch of irony) by a naked young female out of the Boris Vallejo school of modelling. Look out, as well, to a small nod to Sniper’s previous AIR installation from May 2013.

For those who remember the original Greenies, a visit to Invasion is going to be something of a trip down memory lane. For those who arrived in SL after the Greenies departed, the installation offer a glimpse into why their world was so admired. Either way, there’s more than enough here to keep people smiling and engaged during their visit, and Sniper skillfully avoids falling into the trap of trying to re-create the original in every nuance and look, offering something that rightly stands as a tribute, and on its own.

Well worth a visit. As noted, Invasion – A Tribute to the Greenie’s Home will be open from 15:00 SLT on Friday March 28th, 2014 through until the end of June 2014.

Related Links

• Invasion – A Tribute to the Greenie’s Home, LEA23 (Rated: Moderate)

 

Cinema! Take II, by Mary Wickentower, is an extension of her LEA interim piece, The Wonderful World of Particles, originally located at LEA13. Now a part of the LEA’s Full Sim Art series, it has relocated to LEA6 and shifted focus more towards machinima and photography.

Those who visited The Wonderful World of Particles, will find Cinema! Take II somewhat familiar, as it utilises the same large centre-piece movie theatre and drive-in movie space, complete with interlinking roads and tall palm trees. The observant may even note the greeter welcomes them to former, rather than Cinema! Take II!

However, this isn’t merely a relocation of the interim project. As noted, the focus is very much on machinima and photography. In terms of the former, the movie house, the Empire Movie Palace, is showing Princess Ambrosia’s Sakoku: Chained Country (which includes some adult-oriented themes), and also includes photo exhibition spaces, used to display entries into a number of photohunts and other photography-related activities being held throughout the month of March (the next being on Wednesday March 26, see below for details).

Outside, at the drive-in one can watch a veritable plethora of machinima by artists and film-makers from around the world. You’ll need media enabled for this (top right corner of the viewer). Click on the movie screen itself to start things, and use the media controls displayed above it to focus your camera or watch movies in a browser tab, etc. A complete list of film-makers can be obtained in a dialogue box by clicking the frame of the movie screen. Click on the button corresponding to a name to display a list of their available films. To select a film, again click on the number in the dialogue box corresponding to the film, then click on the screen itself if the film doesn’t start automatically after a few seconds.

I confess that I had some issues with the drive-in when using either Firestorm or the SL viewer. Often a movie would start, but either have no audio, or feature the audio of a preceding video. Stopping and re-starting media from the viewer’s controls (top right of the viewer window) generally resolved this.

Also included in the region are Danya’s Garden by Danya Sadofsky, a place of peace & quiet, the Swing Jim Dinner, which is the setting for sock hops and dances, the Gallery of Art featuring fine SL sculpture and Dr. Petrol’s Gas Station featuring a classic collection of pin-up posters.
Special events have been a part of the installation’s month-long run, and coming up next are a photohunt and a Visionaire Institute of Photography field trip.

The photohunt will take place at 18:00 SLT on Wednesday March 26th. Participants will be given a theme or landmark by the moderator, and will have 60 minutes to take a snapshot that best embodies that theme / landmark, with absolutely no external photo manipulation allowed. Finished entries will displayed in one of the Empire Movie Palace exhibition spaces.
On Thursday March 27th at 15:00 SLT, students from the Visionaire Institute of Photography will visit the region to photograph Cinema! Take II, with their work also displayed in one of the Empire Movie Palace exhibition spaces.

Cinema! Take II is open until the end of March.

Storm Septimus’ newly opened AIR-6 installation The [Void] is not, in the words of one of her friends who witnessed it being built, “a happy fun town”. But then, it’s not designed to be, as Storm explains in the comprehensive introductory notes:

The idea was to create a representation of the space that falls between waking and sleeping, but one born of an exhausted mind.

As such, this is a place where insomnia rules, and the line between reality and the imagination becomes increasingly twisted, mixing the two together the longer the condition goes on, confusing the eye and mind.

Insomnia isn’t the easiest of subjects to tackle for many reasons – the most obvious being that few of us ever suffer from it, and for those who do, it isn’t perhaps the easiest sensation to describe, even when willing to do so; particularly once it has gone on so long, our mental faculties are less than optimal unable to correctly process even the most basic sensory inputs.

This is a very dark piece – literally. If your viewer doesn’t automatically switch to the region’s default windlight, flip it over yourself to AnaLu Outdoor City Night (or failing that, Midnight, if your viewer doesn’t have a really dark option). Do bear in mind the images here have been toned-up to reveal details. The darkness is intentional; long-term insomnia is said to induce feelings of confusion, disorientation and upset, and the use of an extremely dark setting of this piece soon induces the same feelings in the visitor.

You start off boxed into a claustrophobic environment where the only sources of light coming from flickering television sets, the first of which will provide information on the installation, the rest of which appear to be literal flashes of random thought from a tired mind (and also, in places, the artist, offering words of comfort).

Nothing is linear here; movement is a case of feeling your way around, walking, falling, flying and discovering things as shapes and forms loom out of the darkness. Here and there, power cables from the different television screens snake through the murky world, offering guidance; but how much guidance rather depends.

Frustration is liable to be a common reaction to initial attempts to explore, as will be the temptation to try to “turn up the lights” with a brighter windlight. I’d encourage you to try to resist the latter and accept the former; frustration and confusion are very much a part of the experience, as noted above. Just stay with things, and you will find your way around. Remember, as per the hints card, touch is an important part of the experience, and keys and a heart play important roles in moving you between the various levels of the piece, which range from high in the sky, right down to beneath the waves and back again (the last being the one genuinely bright element o the exhibit).

Symbolism is strong throughout the piece, such as with the aforementioned televisions. Poppies are also much in evidence here as well, unsurprisingly given their link with opiates and sleep (perhaps the greatest desire of the insomniac), their association with death and remembrance (the memory of times when sleep came), and their classical links with resurrection after death (perhaps mirrored in the insomniac’s mind as their awakening after that hoped-for deep and peaceful sleep they long to experience).

This is a quite powerful piece, assuming you can keep your frustration from getting the better of you – I confess, I read Honour’s post on it in the LEA blog late at night and hopped over only found my own (minor, in the scheme of things) tiredness caused me to get frustrated enough to give up first time around!

I understand from the introductory notes that some live events may be planned for The [Void]. Keep an eye on the LEA blog for details.

Related Links

• The [Void] SLurl (Rated: Moderate)