In 2021 Titus Palmira, Sofie Janic and Megan Prumier opened a region build called Skrunda-2, an interpretation of a deserted Soviet-era military base and town built by Russia in Latvia during the 1960s for the operation of their Destnr early warning radar system, before eventually abandoning it in the 1990s.
It was a popular build, attracting photographers and bloggers alike (see Skrunda-2 an atmospheric slice of Soviet history in Second Life), as did its successor (see; Skrunda: the returning in Second Life). One of the latter is Blip Mumfuzz, an artist / photographer with a gifted eye and an ability to create images that are so natural in angle and composition, they sit as scenes we might naturally sport for ourselves when visiting a place – as she richly demonstrates with Images of Skrunda, now open at Frank Atisso’s, Art Korner.
Art Korner: Blip Mumfuzz – Images of Skrunda
Set within an environment suggestive of a deserted town with slab-like blocks rising from all sides that stand as reminders of the blockhouse-like bulk of the great apartment buildings of Skrunda, and surrounded by ruins the offer a further echo of their study, these are genuinely remarkable images. Through a considered use of focal length, focus, and angle, Blip presents pieces that are so life-like in composition they might actually have been taken within the aged, deserted remnants of Skrunda itself, whilst they also offer a unique sense of place and time entirely of their own.
Take Skrunda Drone, for example: it is hard to to imagine one is looking out from a high vantage point across a run-down corner of a township. Meanwhile, it is hard not to look at Skrunda Dream and not feel one can walk into it and take a peek through the open door or climb the rusting steps up to the gangways above, and onwards among the gantries and tanks; similarly, Skrunda-3 12 gives the impression one can hop onto the old rails and walk along them, following the railcar that appears to be vanishing around the bend in the tracks that sits between graffiti-painted buildings.
Art Korner: Blip Mumfuzz – Images of Skrunda
This is another genuinely engaging collection from a gifted photographer and storyteller that helps to recall a genuinely engaging Second Life region build.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022 – click any image for full size
It’s been a year since my last visit to Vivian Pearl’s (Vivian Ewing’s) Where Our Journey Begins, and following a suggestion from Cube Republic, I decided to see what has changed since that time. And the answer is, rather a lot!
Now located in a Full private region leveraging the private island LI bonus rather than a Homestead (as with my previous visit), the setting has literally bloomed in both name (at the time of my visit, the setting was called Where Our Journey Begins – The Bloom) and design with the move, presenting a richly varied location with much to see, admire and photograph as one sets out to explore.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022
This is a setting this is broken into three major areas by the waters that flow through it from the curtain of cliffs sitting within its north-east corner. It is here that high falls have carved a broad, shallow pool that in turns feeds into a second from the midst of which rises a small island that perhaps helps the water branch into two channels, one flowing to the west and the other to the south, so as to split the land.
None of this is readily apparent to visitors on their arrival, hidden as it is from their view. Instead, they arrive on a nub of an isle tucked away to the south-west, the broad back of the region’s major landmass blocking any view of the falls. The landing point sits within a glass house on the little isle, a covered bridge connecting it to the rest of the land to where a mix of dirt and semi-paved paths point the way forward.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022
Westward, the path curves gently to where a summer house sits between the coast and the uplands, its grounds shaded by weeping willows. The house is simply and comfortably furnished, the courtyard offering seating for a meal and for refreshments, together with a view out over the sea.
The path from the landing point curls around the summer house garden to split into two, with a wooden bridge spanning one of the region’s tow waterways to reach a beach sheltering in the lee of the northern uplands, whilst the main path continues onwards alongside the river, becoming a lamp-lit boardwalk that passes under a great stone bridge.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022
Finding your way to the latter is a case of finding the stairs that allow the flat-topped hill in the centre of the land to be ascended. These lead the way to further paths that offer the means to discover a cylindrical bathhouse and onwards up to the lush hilltop, where a garden and place for weddings awaits, together with the broad path of the bridge to where the north-western lands sit over the sheltered bridge, complete with a more formal gardens space overlooked by a large glass rotunda.
The bridge leading to these northern gardens is not the only such structure in the landscape; to the east, a second bridge spans the water that flows down from the falls. Shaded by trees intentionally deformed into an arched walkway of rich blossoms and lit by more street lamps, it provides access to the eastern arm of the land that stretches out from the waterfalls, and upon which stands a paved road fronting a parade of townhouses and places of business.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022
With its high buildings, cars parked at the roadside and people “walking” its footpaths, this little touch of suburbia sits in something of a stark contrast to the rest of the region’s design. But at the same time, the trees and blooms that line the street and surround the buildings soften their lines and helps them to blend with the rest of the setting such that they form a natural part of it.
And still there is more to discover. For those wishing their find their way up to the central highlands, turning right after crossing the bridge from the landing point will offer the quicker route; whilst those turning to the left may avail themselves of the horse rezzer along the path leading to the summer house; it offers a choice of mounts – but those on low-to-mid-range systems may want to disable shadows when riding in order to make things a little easier.
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2022
I’ve also not really touched upon the ways out and over the waters from the falls or to the island at the centre of the second pool or the many places which visitors can sit (and enjoy cuddles if they so wish, or many of the smaller details across the land that both await discovery and / or present opportunities for photography. All of which ensures that Where Our Journey Begins remains an inviting and eye-catching visit.
It’s taken me a while, but I finally managed to drop into Onceagain Art Gallery, owned and operated by Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili). The occasion for during so was to visit Drawing a Dream, an exhibition of of images and drawings by Onceagain herself.
It’s an exhibition can be reached in one of two ways – via direct SLurl, as given here, or by dropping into the gallery’s main landing point and taking the teleport from there to Onceagain’s personal exhibition space. One on the platform, one will find a winter setting, heavy in snow and with a slightly otherworldy look to it thanks to the huge mushrooom trees and and tall crystals, which also help give the suggestion of a place from dreams canopied by the a starlit sky.
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
This open space, marked by stepping-stone paths and a shallow pool of water, is home to horses (complete with poses alongside them for those who may wish to take photos with them) and a collection of pictures by Onceagain that are drawn from both the physical world and Second Life, all of them on the subject of horses – animals for whom Onceagain has an understandable love. As such, I’ll leave it to her to explain her exhibition:
I live in a small farm and among the different animals that populate it there is a mare. She’s been with me for 23 years, I consider her like a friend. She is a barefoot horse, most of the times I’ve ridden her without saddle or just allowed her to follow me like a friend; but she is old, she just grazes.
For twenty years I have made drawings of her, and ten years ago I start to take photos of her. Now I doe the same with horse in Second Life. What you will find here are a mix of all these three things. The pictures in dark frames are from real life, and those in the light frames from Second Life.
– Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili)
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
The result is the most fascinating selection of equine studies it’s been my pleasure to witness in Second Life. All of the images have been finished so as to give the impression they have been hand-drawn,whether they originated in the physical word or were created from photographs taken in Second Life.
Predominantly offered sans any backgrounds or other distractions, they are drawings that perfectly capture these beasts that have been a central put of so much of humanity’s history, and with whom it is so easy to form a special bond. Each piece speaks to the strength, grace and beauty of these magnificent animals – and also speak to the love and understanding in which Onceagain herself holds horses.
Drawing a Dream, February 2022
For those wishing to have one of these pieces, they are available for sale – but only in limited quantities – available numbers are displayed with piece piece in hovertext when viewing up close.
An exceptional selection of art that perfectly blends the physical and virtual worlds.
The Endless Graveyard, February 2022 – click any image for full size
For those who are missing the likes of Halloween and ideas of the spirits that might lie beyond the the veil of death and / or dark magiks, then a visit to The Endless Graveyard might be just the ticket.
Occupying a Full private region making use of the LI bonus, it is a setting designed by Lady Death Valiant (Death Ravenhurst) that presents quite the adventure / opportunity for exploration., with multiple levels and locations lying within its boundaries. Visits commence close to the ground level, where sits the the landing point – and an invitation.
The Endless Graveyard, February 2022
A forest in Sweden that exists at the edge of the land of the living. Can you find the hidden doorway to the realm of the dead?
The Endless Graveyard About Land
The first thing to note about the setting is that – as per the notices at the landing point – this is an environment which uses dedicated EEP settings throughout, and for the fullest appreciation of the region and these settings, it is best to set the viewer to Use Shared Environment (menu → World → Environment), and to make sure Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) is enabled (Preferences → Graphics). The notice at the landing point suggests Shadows should also be enabled, but I’d leave this to a matter of choice and your system.
The Endless Graveyard, February 2022
Beyond the landing point is the Forest of the Veil, a cold, snowbound setting (which is appropriate, given we’re in the wilds of Sweden). Here and there, braziers light the way, while a cold light, seeming to descend from an aurora-like sky, pieces foliage and lights grassy trails. The latter wind around the semi-rugged landscape, leading to various points of interest – a small lake fed by waterfalls and lit by lanterns, a farm ostensibly producing milk caught within the eerie glow of light and mist, a lonely cabin, and more besides.
And, for those who find it, the ruins of a church, and the start of the journey through the realm of the dead. Triggered by the acceptance of a region experience, this will carry visitors to a land similar to that of the ground level, but which sits in darkness and free from snow. Here the church stands intact, although it is not a place given to the glory of God.
The Endless Graveyard, February 2022
Outside, tracks again curl through the landscape, leading the way to a graveyard and a music hang out, or onward to a castle that sits atop a high plateau or over a hill to the River Styx – complete with a ferryman waiting (and who left me with the words of the Chris de Burgh song echoing in my head).
To be honest, it’s here that I admit to getting a little confused; on finding my way to the high castle, I entered it and got growled at by a security orb – although as nothing actually happened, I continued exploring unsure as to whether the castle was supposed to be public access or not. I’m hoping that it is, as it is an intriguing mix of furnished rooms and teleport doors and portals that lead to additional rooms and spaces at different levels within the region, all of which offer their own secrets and portals the lead to further locations when discovered, all of which added further depth to the setting.
The Endless Graveyard, February 2022
Similarly, across the river lies a further building – the actual gateway to death’s realm (I think). Again I was a little confused by it, but once inside, I found a further teleport portal lead me on to a series of chambers connected by tunnels and snaked and curled from point-to-point, offering still more opportunities for exploration.
Rich in detail, and – assuming the castle is open to exploration -with plenty to see and discover, The Endless Graveyard is a dark (literally and figuratively!) place worthy of exploration – particularly if the likes of witchcraft, the realm of death and mystery are your thing.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
Wednesday February 22nd, 2022 saw the opening of the first half of a 2-phase art installation by Gem Preiz. Presented under the over-arching title Exoplanet, the installation carries the sub-title One Step Further, and is located on a sky platform within the region of Akikaze, held and curated by Akiko Kinoshi (Akiko Kiyori) as a part of her “Akipelago” group of regions.
This is another exhibition by Gem that combines a prim-base build with his always fascinating fractal images; as such it follows in the tradition of past installation such as Arcadia, Skyscrapers, Elusive Reality, Sapiens, and The Anthropic Principle, allowing the visitor to consider an architectural theme and / or enter an immersive environment in which his fractal art offers an extension to the environment. At the same time, it is also something of a harkening back to installations such as No Frontiers, his two-part series Heritage: Vestiges and Heritage: Wrecks and Rhapsody in Blue Fractals, in which the fractal images are the nucleus of a tale – a journey, if you will, of the imagination to futures and places within the cosmos that await our discovery.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
In terms of the the build, this takes the form of a human outpost on another world. Where this may be is anyone’s guess; the environment outside suggests Mars, but that belies the main title for the exhibition – Exoplanet – so I prefer to think of it as somewhere beyond our solar system. It’s a curious place, sitting within a geodesic dome (which for me carried echoes of a much smaller dome sitting within Gem’s Skyscrapers city), powered by solar arrays which sit alongside a communications array beyond its curving walls.
In all, 14 different locations can be explored within the dome, either on foot or via the teleport HUD that is offered to visitors on arrival (and which contains a 15th destination – a point just outside one of the dome’s access points). These range from a control centres through to crew habitation units, although not all of the buildings are necessarily accessible. Within the base are also a number of vehicles: shuttles, hover cars and tracked rovers, which can be sat upon and driven, adding a dimension of fun, while the base is staffed by static NPCs that have a slight Star Trek edge to their uniforms.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
A point to note here is that the base isn’t supposed to be in any way “accurate” in its representation of a stellar outpost, as Gem explains in the installation’s introductory notes:
Exoplanet does not intend to look realistic or even consistent from a scientific point of view. Rather, it aims to create an immersive 3D environment which evokes space exploration. It deliberately uses, as with all my builds, prims with their SL attributes (bumpiness, shininess, alpha etc.), and does not rely on meshes or textures to reproduce reality — except for crew avatars.
– Gem Preiz
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
Turning to the art, a total of 18 pieces are offered within the installation and can be seen in one of two ways: via a large screen that hangs to one side of the dome, the 18 images displayed on it as a slide show, or by visiting the needle-like Tower that faces the screen from across the dome, where the images are displayed across several floors connected one to the next by wall-mounted teleports (note also that this tower also incorporates the Observation and Headquarters destinations on the teleport HUD).
While they may not necessarily all be new, these are pieces that all tell a story that is literally cosmic in its theme, carrying us to strange, new worlds orbited by vast space station-like structures, or upon which a civilisations has created massive cities and structures, and out into deep space where more structures are huddled – but whether they under construction or damaged and broken by events unknown and their age or finished articles built to some strange design ethos, is left entirely to our imaginations.
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: One Step Further, February 2022
With the facilities under the dome suggesting a human base sitting beyond our solar system but still on the very edge of the rest of the galaxy, the images present suggestions of both humanity’s journey to reach this point in history (BZ Fractal SF9, BZ Fractal SF18, BZ Fractal SF1 and BZ Fractal SF13), and of the far older alien civilisation whose remnants have both drawn humans to the remote location in the inky blackness of space, and which even now is the reason the people of this base are preparing to venture still further from their homeworld.
There is another aspect here as well, as again noted by Gem in his introductory notes:
The purpose of the combined mixture of fractals and 3D interactive build, is to make them resonate : the space base offers an immersive 3D experience, even if it is in a simplistic environment, while the fractal images show a complexity impossible to reproduce in 3D.
– Gem Preiz
Gem Preiz: Exoplanet: OneStep Further, February 2022
All of which makes for an engaging exploration. When visiting Exoplanet: One Step Further, be sure to not the recommended environment setting displayed at the landing point. And for those interested, Gem has produced another of his soundtrack videos on You Tube, which offers a mixes of pieces that contain within them echoes, perhaps of M83 and Hans Zimmer.
Sous le ciel de Paris (under the sky of Paris) is the name given to a sky platform designed by Tolia Crisp of Frogmore fame). It’s a little corner of Second Life occupying Full region parcel of 5120 sq metres. Little in the way of any description is supplied, other than Welcome to my home, but what is offered is bound to be a delight to those seeking a backdrop for their avatar photography.
This is a place set amongst the rooftops of Paris, a part of the city where many of the houses built in the Napoleonic period have been converted into apartment blocks such that rooftop spaces have become gardens, outdoor terraces and places to relax.
Sous le ciel de Paris, February 2022
There centre point for this is one roof area in particular, a space alongside a cosy little apartment laid out with planters growing flowers and vegetables, bee hives vie with a hen coop for attention, cats and kittens play in the Sun, and saplings sit within oversized vases to provide a further sense of the countryside in this otherwise very metropolitan setting.
It’s a welcoming spot; a place the apartment owner can come home to and unwind tending to flowers, gathering fresh veggies for cooking or tending to hens and bees – or just fussing with their cats under the blue sky. But that’s not all; this is a place that is clearly put together with a view to sharing it with neighbours, a little “coffee shop” having been set up to one side.
Sous le ciel de Paris, February 2022
Some of the neighbours also seem to have entered into the spirit of things – one has created a slight precarious walkway to link a home-made studio with the “garden”, and other has lain an iron ladder to bridge the gap from their rooftop, and a route via a fire escape that leads to another little hidden “terrace in the sky, nestled under high roofs and smoking chimneys; a place where yet more coffee and fresh baked goodies can be enjoyed and people might share a dance or two.
Sous le ciel de Paris, February 2022
With places to sit indoors and out, this is a location that could be idea for avatar photography, and joining the Frogmore group (the parcel is under the Frogmore banner) will provide rezzing rights for props – but please be sure to ick them up afterwards.
I would point out that there are a lot of textures packed into the space and these can take a little time to fully render, and I did have one or two issues on my system with getting all the mesh to rez (solving with right-clicks here and there) – but none of this prevented me from appreciating this little corner of SL.
Sous le ciel de Paris, February 2022
Addendum: If you do take the opportunity to take photographs using Sous le ceil de Paris as a backdrop (e.g. for fashion / style posts, etc.) – or indeed any other location in Second Life, please do make sure the location is credited.
