[ Dispersion ], June 2021 – click any image for full sizeDesigned by Syna Kiyori / Sônge (SongeFireflies), [ Dispersion ] is an atmospheric Homestead region that offers a lot to take in and appreciate, as I recently discovered courtesy of another pointer from Shawn Shakespeare.
Syna/Sônge describes the region as a meeting place for lovers of sensuality, inviting them to dance and explore and allow their creativity free reign as they enjoy opportunities for photography. And the truth is, the region offers all of this and more.
[ Dispersion ], June 2021Sitting under a twilight sky where the Sun is dipping towards the horizon, and the heaviness of sky and cloud give a sense that we’re already in the last light of day, the region is intriguing in its mix of setting and home for art.
From the landing point in the north-east, the region immediately suggests something of a post-apocalyptic / disaster setting: the main bridge leading away from the landing zone is broken and partially collapsed – as is the road beyond. What appears to be a decontamination crew is warning people away from the far side of the broken bridge.
[ Dispersion ], June 2021Nevertheless, the bridge can be crossed; and despite looking cold, the waters washing over the old road are not deep, allowing the road to be followed to a pair of blocky structures linked by a glass and wood gazebo. This is the home of the La Boite Noir (The Black Box), a gallery space that at the time of my visit was featuring the art photographer Hilaire Beaumont, whilst outside are places to sit and enjoy the view back over the region.
But to return to the landing point a moment. This offers something of an event space, what appears to be disused parking lot (despite the warning it is a tow away zone ) now partially overgrown, a tree having long since taken over the centre of the tarmac. Old televisions hang from the branches of the trees and from another to one side of the the tarmac. Together with the wrecks of old cars and the carcass of an old low-loader for a stage, they present place where the promises dancing can be enjoyed.
[ Dispersion ], June 2021A gap in the fencing on the west side of the landing access a path leads the way between an old wall and tall trees, passing a long-abandoned swimming pool complete with Cyrillic writing on the roof. Here, and along the path itself, are further displays of art: the old pool house contains images by Syna, and the path is home to sculptures.
Further west, the land opens out a little, home to a domed pantheon. Despite the fact that nature is taking control inside, this is home to a strangely cosy and engaging club-like setting. Chandeliers hang from the branches of the old tree, armchairs and couches scattered beneath its branches and lit by spheres of light.
[ Dispersion ], June 2021To the south sits an island connected to the rest of the region by two wooden bridges. Rugged and home to fir trees, an old barn sits just across the bridge, but the island’s delight lies in the orangery standing amidst the trees to the south-west. Again partially reclaimed by nature, it also offers something of a romantic setting, one framed by the westering Sun and with places indoors and out to sit and appreciate the many views to be had.
The eastern end of this island looks back towards the art gallery, close to where another wooden bridge offers a route back to the landing point. A tractor sits on this bridge which, when added to the presence of the barn and the goats, gives the suggestion that a farm once existed here.
[ Dispersion ], June 2021What may have happened to flood the land and leave it partially broken and with sunken containers washed against the shore, or why a team in hazmats is needed is open to the imagination. However, what cannot be denied is the fact that [ Dispersion ] is a picturesque and captivating setting and one thoroughly deserving on a visit.
June has brought with it two new exhibitions at the Kondor Art Centre, curated by Hermes Kondor, featuring the talents of Mareea Farrasco and CybeleMoon.
Having opened on June 10th at the Kondor Art Square, La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée, is an engaging selection of Second life art presented by the owner and curator of IMAGO Land Art Galleries, Mareea Farrasco.
Kondor Art Square – Mareea Farrasco
As the title might suggest, this is a collection that has a certain focus on the sea – although this is by no means the case for all the pieces on offer; at least, not in the sense of traditional water. Pieces such as Fabulous Goats and Silenced World give a suggestion of flowing waters through the wind-brushed sea of grass that presents a backdrop, and the shimmering of falling rain on which a rainbow is forming. Similarly, and while the sea does appear within it, Lavender perhaps embodies the ebb and flow of an ageless tide far more through the curving sweep of flowers that is its focus than by the sea that sits on the horizon.
However, all these pieces are deeply evocative and rich in narrative. Mareea has a deftness of touch coupled with a eye for style, angle, cut and framing that brings her images beautifully to life. Her use of colour to suggest emotion is sublime, while the lightness of her use of post-processing allows here pieces to retain a natural, unforced beauty about them that is simply ideal.
Kondor Art Square – Mareea Farrasco
It is absolutely no secret that I am in awe of CybeleMoon’s artistry. Her work embodies a life and spirituality that is is unmistakable both for its heartbeat and for its richness of narrative. Witnessing her pieces is genuinely like stepping into a Loreena McKinnitt song: you are lifted beyond the plain of the ordinary and carried into a mystic realm of light and shadow, life and dance, legend and fantasy and love and remembrance. Just as McKinnett’s music and lyrics weave tales in your mind, so Cybele’s images offer tales for your imagination.
Celebrating the Solstice, on display in the Kondor Art Garden embodies all of this in an exhibition of two parts. At the landing point and close to the stage, are eight images simply arranged on stone plinths. Each one evokes a sense of story both in terms of image and title (I confess that Listen to the Wind from the South utterly captured my eyes and heart, there is so much within it that sets the imagination alight).
Kondor Art Garden – CybeleMoon
Beyond this and within a wooded grove sits a mystical ring of standing stones and more of Cybele’s pieces. When crossing to them, it is best to set your time of day to Midnight to fully absorb the atmosphere of the setting and the beauty of the art. Again, while the focus is on celebrating the summer solstice, so too are wider tales embraced.
For example, Aine, the Irish goddess of summer, wealth and sovereignty, and who is particularly associated with midsummer, is pictured alongside the Celtic god Lugh, more usually associated with the time of harvest, and Ogma, the inventor of Ogham, the script in which Irish Gaelic was first written and who is often given the epithet Grianainech, or “sun-faced”. Thus through this exhibit, Cybele helps open us to the broader richness of Celtic mythology and the landscape of Ireland (The Hill of Tara, Listen to the Wind from the South) as well as to the worlds of fae and nature and childhood dreaming, all of which further engages the visitor in viewing these pieces.
Kondor Art Garden – CybeleMoon
Two superb artists and two very different but equally engaging exhibitions that can be enjoyed side-by-side when visiting the Kondor Art Centre.
SLurl Details
Waka region is rated Moderate.
Kondor art Square (La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée – Mareea Farrasco)
Adored – For Bambi, June 2021 – click any image for full size
A perusal of the Destination Guide recently brought me to an entry for another region design by Valarie (Zalindah) and dedicated to Bambi (NorahBrent), whose hand can also be seen in a couple of places within the region, and with whom Val has worked with in the past to create virtual spaces.
Adored – For Bambi is another enchanting setting, described as a “Japanese inspired Zen garden”, but which is so much more: a landscape that mixes garden and wilder spaces, water with land, the natural and the fanciful in a marvellous mix of ideas and settings that flow together perfectly and achieve Val’s stated desire to boost spirits, inspire the mind and relax the heart.
Adored – For Bambi, June 2021
The landing point sits within a Japanese pergola located on a short finger of land that extends out into the bay that cuts into the island to form the focal point of the zen garden. A path from the pergola leads to a pair of Torii gates standing guard on either side of the garden’s path as it set out to follow the curve of the bay’s edge and to a small koi house on the shore.
This house offers a charming / romantic retreat, a place to be enjoyed at the end of a visit, especially if accompanied by a loved one. But before turning to it, there is much more to see, as a second path extends beyond the two Torii gates of the garden, pointing the way to northern grasslands. Here the land is in sharp contrast to the woodlands around the garden and bay: the trees are few, the grass long and turned to gold under the Sun.
Adored – For Bambi, June 2021
The remains of a single, once massive and elm-like tree rises from one side of these grasslands, its few remaining branches still sprouting leaves, the top of its truncated form smoothed and levelled into an elevated platform, tree bark acting as a natural wind break on one side and a set of wooden steps spiralling around the broad trunk to reach it. The nominal shade of this tree and the sea of grass around it has been claimed as the home of a small herd of fallow deer, complete with offspring, that wanders and grazes peacefully.
Across a narrow channel of water cutting into the grasslands, stands the remnants of a stone building, now little more than a pair of incomplete walls. Paired lines of trees close by give the impression the land here may once have been an orchard. but if this were once the case, the denuded and withering state of the trees and the tumbledown nature of the building would suggest that time was long in the past, and building and trees have been left to fade; even the little greenhouse that someone had built into the ruined building has been deserted, the area now home to a frolicking Kitsune.
Adored – For Bambi, June 2021
And this is just scratching the surface of the region’s secrets. Off to the north is a little island with a shelter of its own, whilst back in the woodlands there await more discoveries along the lanterned path that sweeps around the land under the trees to return to the koi house on the shore.
Along this path lie woven arches, Torri gates, places to sit and, hovering in greeting, three little flying monkeys. Such creatures are often not found to be friendly in literature and tale, but visitors have nothing to fear from these three, as they watch the comings and goings quietly and present a small taste of the more fanciful elements of Adored – For Bambi.
Adored – For Bambi, June 2021
The latter is more keenly to be seen just beyond the landing point, where a rocky hill forms a small promontory to one side of the bay, balancing the koi house on the other side. A carpet of fluffy grass offers a way up to the crown of the hill, passing between tall growths of bamboo to reach a bridge that stretches out into the air to where clouds await those seeking a place to sit and watch the orca playing below.
With domesticated dogs, stags and wolves helping to round-out the animal population, and with lanterns floating on the water and through the air, Adored – For Bambi makes for an engaging and restorative visit for the weary of eye or soul.
About a week ago, I bumped into Hera (zee9), creator of the ever-popular Drune series of region designs and during the course of our conversation, she mentioned that while the last (at that time) iteration of the city – Drune Diesel (see: Drune’s diesel-deco delight in Second Life) – had now gone, she was nevertheless working on a smaller-scale redux of the more dystopian versions of the city.
The result is Drune Sleazy Street, and at the weekend, Hera extended an invitation to visit and explore.
Drune Sleazy Street, June 2021
As the name might suggest, the new build only replicates the main street of the dystopian Drune. Given the design is sitting within a Homestead, it’s a little hard to reproduce all of the city; but what Hera has produced is nonetheless engaging and rich in detail, both echoing the older Drune builds and offering some touches of its own.
Drune Sleazy Street, June 2021
Awash with the neon that always gives Drune a pulse of life, the street is home to the passage of hover vehicles along the main carriageways, the adult-themed emporiums and the eateries, all overseen by hovering bots, quietly parked police spinners, and elevated walkways.
Among the buildings that line the street are two clubs, one with the familiar Alien-esque theme, the other offering a more grunge feel (and called appropriately enough, Biohazard). Also awaiting discovery is opulent delight of the Shanghai Dragon. While for those who seek it, an elevator will lift them up to the Exotic lounge.
Drune Sleazy Street, June 2021
But rather than being written about, Drune Sleazy Street – like the various iterations of the full-scale Drune – is a place that should be seen and savoured while it lasts and which will appeal to anyone with a love of sci-fi (the Blade Runner references are clear in the design, and really don’t need mentioning alongside those of the Alien franchise). As such, I’ll just leave images here as encouragement (I hope!) for you to hop over and take a look for yourself.
Blue Orange Art Project 5: Stabitha and Talullah Winterwolf
I was stunned to discover it’s been over 2½ years since my last visit to Ini Inaka’s Blue Orange music and arts venue. True, for part of that time, the space seemed to be quiescent, but the gap has meant I may have come close to missing the 5th of the Blue Orange Art Projects, given it opened at the start of the 2021.
These Art Projects bring together an ensemble of 2D and 3D artists and creators from across Second Life, who are invited to display their work as something of a contiguous, semi-thematically linked series of displays and installations to be found throughout the seemingly random jumble of display spaces – a layout which encourages careful exploration in order to discover all of the art.
Blue Orange Art Project 5: Eupalinos Ugajin (left) and Olympe
For the 5th Art Project, Blue Orange brings together Amanda (aht1981), Andromeda (pehi61), Chibbchichi, Tx (ThierryTillier), Eupalinos Ugajin, Gitu Aura, Grady Echegaray, Kleines Sternchen, Mistero Hifeng, Olympe (Olympes Rhode), Stabitha (What88 Zond), Talullah Winterwolf, Tx (ThierryTillier), Venus Adored and Xirana (Xirana Oximoxi). Together they present a mix of 3D elements (perhaps only 1 per 3D artist) and 2D art displays that have been put together around the theme of four core art movements: Dadaism, Surrealism, Avant-garde and Expressionism (with a lean towards German Expressionism of cinema in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933).
Each of the artists has been left free to adopt whichever of these movements they find personally appealing, with some touching upon more than one, and others folding-in additional artistic statements. for example, Xirana’s Children in War, and Andromeda’s compositions (some of them interactive – by sure to touch the stars of the constellations) on the subject of astronomy / stargazing.
Blue Orange Art Project 5: Gitu Aura
The latter may not initially appear to fit in any of the four movements. But when you consider the marvels of the cosmos around us, and how they can present a juxtaposition of realities (our own finite span of years compared to the seeming endless enduring of the universe around us); the manner in which some of us illogically assign the happenstance alignment of distance celestial bodies as seen from Earth with some kind of mystical power that affects our lives, and yet we can create images of painting of them which match our ability to photograph them, then the alignment between astronomical images and surrealism starts to become clearer, particularly when you add the fact the way they evoke emotional experience rather keeping us focused on the physical reality of everyday life, and the link gains further strengthened.
Elsewhere, Olympe marvellously captures aspects of Avant-garde together with elements of surrealism through her fractal paintings that are richly captivating in form and colour. In the space below, Tx celebrates the irrationality and photomontage of Dadaism in the company of Amanda, who leans more towards Expressionism – as does Grady Echegaray in the neighbouring room, whilst also borrowing from the art of collage (also to be found within Cubism).
Blue Orange Art Project 5: Xirana
This is a exhibition that should be explored carefully and without rush; there are multiple ways through the various exhibit spaces, not all of which may at first appear obvious (look for the arrows and the signs). Venus Adored, for example, has an immersive 3D experience that touches on all four movement, but can be missed by the unwary if the sign and arrow inviting people to walk through a wall are not spotted.
Venus’ exhibit is also one that requires both Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) and shadows to be enabled in order to appreciate it fully; elsewhere it is probably best to have ALM enabled (Preferences → Graphics → Advanced Lighting Model checked), but it is not necessary to have shadows enabled throughout.
Blue Orange Art project 5: Mistero Hifeng (foreground) and Talullah Winterwolf
Richly mixed, Blue Orange Art Project 5 makes for an engaging visit.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021 – click any image for full size
Bella’s Lullaby is the name Bella (BellaSwan Blackheart) has given to her Homestead region design I had occasion to visit in June, courtesy of another pointer from Shawn Shakespeare.
A quiet, natural setting of two main islands surrounded by off-region hills and embellished with a subtle and fitting sound scape, this is a delightfully tranquil setting that sits easy on the eye and most likely will soothe troubled nerves.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
The larger of the two islands is home to a variety of trees scattered across its low form – Scots pine, fir, oak, linden, and so on, giving it a temperate feel. Between the trees, and occasionally shaded by them, is a smattering of small buildings – cabins, sheds, Tuscan style house – that give the suggestion this may once have been a farm smallholding, but which has now become a retreat of some kind.
Nor do the trees or buildings dominate the island; there is plenty of open grass where the young shoots of the rapeseed plant (which tend to be called by their Japanese name nanohana) freely grow, giving a sense of open space and room to wander and breathe.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
The smaller of the two islands sits to the west, separated by a shallow channel marked by rocks that rise above the water, and by snakeweed and water moss. Devoid of trees, it is home to more nanohana and grass, curtains of shrubs partially lining the low hump of its pate like hair on an old man’s head.
This smaller island is dominated by an old warehouse unit – what role it might once have served now lost, although the passing trawler suggests that perhaps, once upon a time, it may have had something to do with local fishing. Now it sits as another isolated retreat, partially furnished, a little (static) boat with outboard motor sitting at the dock apparently the means to travel back and forth to the large island.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
The southern end of this smaller island forms a slender finger, edged by rock, a place where the nanohana gives way to poppies and daisies and other meadow flowers that offer a splash of colour to the island and which wash around the feet of the oblate water tank atop its sturdy tower.
There are a couple of tiny islets that also make up the setting. One is a flat-backed slab of rock, is home to a small lighthouse; the second is a little more robust, a rocky table with its own sandy-shale beach. In difference to the rest of the region, this little corner sports palm trees that grow alongside what appears to be an old rail carriage long ago separated from its bogies and converted into a cosy two-roomed shack.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
These two southern islets are overlooked by the region’s main landing point (although this is not enforced), sitting on a square deck built out over the shallows surrounding the main island.
Close by is a sign that draws on motto of the Baltimore Grotto: Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints (the motto itself continuing Kill nothing but time), itself a variation of a phrase from the “Leave No Trace” philosophy of naturalist all over the world. It’s a perfect sentiment by which to start an exploration of the region.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
From the landing point, a rough track runs north between several of the island’s little buildings to the Tuscan style house. It’s a natural way to start explorations, although the cabins either side of the path are liable to tempt feet away from it.
Not that this is a bad thing – there really is much to discover here without the region feeling an any way overcrowded. As such, roaming freely (if under the watchful eyes of the local cats!) is the best way to proceed.
Bella’s Lullaby, June 2021
From landing point to old ranger’s tower, and from water tower to east side patio, Bella’s Lullaby has been beautifully crafted to offer a place to explore or to sit and enjoy company and comes rich in opportunities for photography.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 