Category: Reviews

A trip to TNC Commons in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
TNC Commons, May 2025 – click any image for full-size

In my previous Exploring Second Life piece, I visited Lavender Springs, a location tucked away on Heterocera, and designed by some of the talents behind Cerulean Sea (see: Relaxing in Lavender Springs in Second Life). At the time I noted that a return visit to the Cerulean regions on my part would be forthcoming. However – and for reasons I’ve yet to determine – my system / viewer decided to be very unhappy when I did earlier in the week, performance-wise, so I’m shelving that for another visit at a later date.

Instead, and to make up for this, I decided to drop back to Lavender Springs and head west along Atoll Road to visit the TNC Commons, a further part of The Nature Collective no too far away. The work of Teagan Cerulean, Emmerson Skye Cerulean (Emm Evergarden), TNC Commons covers just 8048 sq metres, forming a charming and picturesque corner of Second Life, literally packed with information and places to visit.

TNC Commons, May 2025
The Nature Collective welcomes you to TNC Commons, a blend of urban charm, green space, and forest trails. With exhibits, gardens, and open spaces to gather or reflect, TNC Commons invites you to connect with nature and community.

– TNC Commons description

Again sitting just off the Atoll Road (and thus passed by the local tour pods), the Landing Point for the setting sits back from said road, and alongside the TNC Info centre, where you can – if not already familiar with The Nature Collective and the work of Emm and her friends – discover the secrets of the the Nature Collective and its network of locations and associated locations around the grid.

TNC Commons, May 2025

The Info Centre sits to one side of a cobbled street lined on the other side by little rental apartments. This street is cut through along part of its length by tram tracks – and be careful where you stand on arrival, as the tram is indeed running, and can sneak up behind the unwary as it comes to a halt at the Info Centre!

Jumping onto the tram will take you on a trip around the Commons – which includes a rather novel hop by the tram over the footpath running along the front of the apartment houses 🙂 . This journey offers a pleasant loop around the landscape, and is certainly worth the ride – particularly as it does have a number of station stops at points of interest along the way, allowing you to hop off and explore (you can also explore on foot, obviously).

TNC Commons, May 2025

The far end of the street is home to The Dancing Rabbit Café – a special place for many, and if you know why, you know; if you don’t – please take the information pack from the stone rabbit to the right of the steps leading up to the Café. It is a thoroughly charming corner and, due to its meaning, also has its own Landing Point. Passing around the Café via the little canal to one side or the path between the Café and the neighbouring apartment house on the other will bring visitors to the garden spaces to the rear which includes more outdoor seating for the Café and an event space.

One of the local tram stations is just to the other side of the latter, but for those on foot, steps can be found to the upper parts of the setting – charmingly called The Canopy, due to it being shaded by tall oaks, fir trees and one special tree in particular. Spread throughout this area are places to sit and relax, places to meditate, water features offering space for local wildfowl and critters.

TNC Commons, May 2025

Also to be found throughout is – as noted a wealth of information (including some on the aforementioned particular tree). These information boards allow you to obtain the TNC Connect HUD, offering more on The Nature Collective; information on the secret language of trees (the Wood Wide web); links to external nature-related websites and more; together with opportunities for mindfulness.

A further HUD, the TNC Travelogue, can be obtained at the entrance to the setting from the Atoll Road. It provides SLurls to other locations around the grid associated with The Nature Collective. A sign board alongside the HUD giver also provides direct TP links to those locations.

TNC Commons, May 2025

There are some little quirks to the setting which  – to me – add charm. The warning signs for the tram track are placed such that the provide warnings to approaching trams rather than pedestrians, and the track does change gauge to cross a bridge. This is genuinely not to pick holes; in the case of the gauge change, it’s a classic example of making used of different creations to produce a means to add further visual interest to a setting.

In all, a richly engaging visit – as one would expect when it comes to The Nature Collective.

TNC Commons, May 2025

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Landscapes and a warning in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kondor Art Square, May 2025: Mareea Farrasco – Landscapes

Landscape photography is an art I greatly admire. Within Second Life it offers a means to capture settings and places which – the nature of the platform being what it is – might otherwise prove transient for a wide variety of reasons. Through the images taken of them, we might revisit places which might otherwise have vanished forever, rather than aging and changing with time and allow us multiple opportunities to revisit and appreciate.

As a demonstration of this, the Kondor Art Square, part of Hermes Kondor’s art hub, is hosting an exhibition of exceptional Second Life landscape art captured by Mareea Farrasco. Comprising 20 images gathered from across Second Life, the collection is called simply Landscapes, with each piece capturing its subject uniquely and beautifully. Each has been carefully and perfectly post-processed to give the impression of having been painted, adding a further sense of depth to their presentation, as well as demonstrating the validly of such editing when performed by an artist who understands the proper use of the tools at her disposal.

Kondor Art Square, May 2025: Mareea Farrasco – Landscapes

These are places which may be recognised by seasoned SL explorers – or, equally, they may not. However, whether or not you happen to recognise any given place is the collection doesn’t actually matter. What is of import is the beauty within each piece.

In this, Mareea’s eye, framing and editing combine to produce pieces which are immediately and richly engaging, drawing one into each of them in turn, offering hints of narrative and suggestions of memory. They speak to the purity of art in its ability to portray and present beauty for its own sake, without necessarily carrying a deeper meaning.

Kondor Art Square, May 2025: Mareea Farrasco – Landscapes

“Landscapes with a message” is very much the theme of the second exhibition I’m covering here: that of Blip Mumfuzz’s Landscapes from a Lost World, currently open at Serena Art Centre.

Blip is another artist whose work I admire immensely, hence why I cover so many of her exhibitions. Like Mareea, she has an innate ability to draw us into the heart of her images, together with an ability to direct our focus and weave stories. Her use of colour, angle and editing is such that her images can have both clarity and at times border on the abstract.

Serena Art Centre, May 2025: Blip Mumfuzz – Landscapes from a Lost World

Blip’s art is often capable of speaking to a wider theme; and such is this case with Landscapes from a Lost World. Set within an environment – the abandoned, fading structures of an old farm – specifically created by Blip in which to display them, and which is thus as much a part of the exhibition as the images, the exhibition actually presents a mix of landscape images and life studies, all focused on a message highly relevant to the physical world in which we currently live.

However, rather than offer my own interpretation of the setting and images, I’ll instead offer Blip’s own description and, like her, leave you to follow the advice on viewer settings and explore the exhibition so that the images, indoors and out, to speak to you within the framing of Blip’s words.

Serena Art Centre, May 2025: Blip Mumfuzz – Landscapes from a Lost World
In the face of the imminent climate-induced collapse of our modern technological civilization, the decrepit farm carries a multiplicity of meanings: societal decay, ways of life forever lost, economic and social collapse, and stands as an indictment of the sociopathic billionaires who are abandoning the rest of humanity and all its magnificent achievements in order to save themselves and to hold onto their power as long as possible.
Looking back from a time 25 years in the future, the images, which are scattered around the “farm”, should be seen as nostalgic dream images of our lost world.  A world that was once, within living memory, alive and vibrant; full of life, culture, love, hopes, and dreams, now being destroyed by the greedy and powerful.

– Blip Mumfuzz

Serena Art Centre, May 2025: Blip Mumfuzz – Landscapes from a Lost World

Two very different, be equally engaging exhibitions open through May 2025, and I recommend both to your eyes and thoughts.

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Relaxing in Lavender Springs in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lavender Springs, May 2025 – click any image for full size

Back in September 2024 I dropped into Les Bean at the Salty C, a coffee house within the Cerulean regions (see Coffee and a Salty C in Second Life).

Designed by members of the extended Cerulean family, notably (at the time of my visit) Emmerson Skye Cerulean (Emm Evergarden) of The Nature Collective fame and Teagan Cerulean, it is one of a number of places held across Second Life by members of the family – and somewhere to which I’ve received an invitation to make a further visit, and plan to do so in the near future.

Lavender Springs, May 2025

Another location designed by members of the Cerulean family – V Cerulean Rhys (Veronika Nightfire)and Dani Cerulean (Dani Varela) joining Emm and Teagan – is that of Lavender Springs, a charming retreat offering hot springs, relaxation and opportunities for photography, sitting on the south side of Heterocera.

Located at the end of a short dirt track connecting it with the cobbles of the Atoll Road, Lavender Springs sits and an open-air retreat, a large sign encouraging people to explore, and a notice board offering information on the Cerulean Sea, the Nature Collective and the Greenwich Café – a coffeehouse apparently inspired by England’s Lake District, and so may well end up on my list of places written about.

Lavender Springs, May 2025

Small it might be, by Lavender Springs is perfectly formed and richly engaging. Three hot springs are available for bathing – two on one side of the stream flowing through the setting. The third is reached via a fallen tree trunk now doubling as a bridge across the colder waters of the swiftly-flowing waters of the stream as they tumble away from the local falls.

The first two springs are reached by crossing two wide stepped decks. One is the home of a massage therapy area, the other offers relaxation in the Sun. They are partnered by a stack of Zen rocks forming a tall pedestal for yoga and meditation.

Lavender Springs, May 2025

Oak, Jacaranda, Wildberry form a screen of mature trees to provide shade and some degree of privacy, while the large pool into which the stream flows perhaps offers the opportunity for cold plunges after time in the hot springs. For those seeking a quieter means of relaxation, a swing might also be found.

Watched over by egrets, completed by a gentle soundscape and offer a lot of detail in so small an area, Lavender Springs is another space adding considerably beauty to the Mainland.

Lavender Springs, May 2025

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To Arrakis and the halls of the Fremen in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025 – click any image for full size

As is probably apparent from past articles in this blog, I enjoy science fiction in most of its various forms, be it literary, television, film or radio; and whether it takes the form of epic space opera or near / far-future explorations or action / adventure or comedic in nature. However, whilst I’ve read everyone from Adams to Zelazny, I have, in all honesty, never been overly enamoured with Frank Herbert’s Dune (neither the original novel nor the franchise as a whole).

I say this because Dune – in the form of Arrakis and its hardy inhabitants, the Fremen – forms the inspiration of JimGarand’s latest build (as of May 2025): Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home. Fortunately for those who, like myself, are not soaked in the lore of Dune as it might be found on paper or on film, one does not have to have an in-depth knowledge of either the planet or the the tale in order to appreciate the setting.

Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025

Rather, all that is required is the knowledge that the Fremen arrived on Arrakis as a religious sect, thousands of years prior to the events within the franchise, becoming a numerous and hardy race, fully adapted to life on the desert world, living as tribal communities within cave warrens they call “sietch”, meaning “place of assembly in time of danger” (and borrowed from sich – a term meaning military / administrative centre – of the  Zaporozhian Cossacks, not that this is of any relevance at all in the scheme of things 😀 ).

The sietch of Arrakis, I believe, come in a range of sizes. Within Grauland, Jim and his partner, PaleLily, offer a fairly modest vision of such a centre of Fremen life, located somewhere within the greater desert of Arrakis. And while I cannot offer insight into the sietch found within the novels or associated films, etc., I can say that whilst minimal, Grauland: Arrakis / Fremen Home offers an interesting setting ripe for those seeking something a little different in which to take photographs.

Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025

Surrounded by a desert expanse, this rocky sietch has been hewn within a low mesa, the entrance to which can be found a short walk from the Landing Point. Within it, as one might expect given the general description of such places, is a warren of tunnels, halls and rooms hewn from the living rock.

Some of the tunnels within this warren are roughly cut, walls and floors unfinished; others have squared-off walls, paved floored and properly supported doorways. Similarly, the rooms come in various forms, from simple cubes of space through to a grand pillared hall suggestive of a council chamber of or meeting place – or place of worship. Lights sit above doors, in ceilings and along walls provide pools of illumination which are particularly effective when running with shadows enabled.

Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025

Perhaps the greatest delight within the sietch is its massive pool of water. When discovered, it can be the most unexpected find; it is also the one location within the sietch utilising a reflection probe, potentially as a result of it using a section of Alex Bader’s excellent PBR mesh water. Taken as a whole, it forms a relaxing focal point, with places to sit and meditate to one side.

As noted, this is something of a minimalist build, although I believe it might be one that evolves; whilst there are rooms either empty or only partially furnished, I’ve been given to understand Jim and Poly are interested in being pointed towards items that might sit within the overall setting without looking out-of-place.

Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025

Those who find their way through the tunnels, halls and circular doors might find their way to a landing bay complete with a shuttle vehicle parked within it. Whilst the latter isn’t an Ornithopter, it also does not look out-of-place here as a piece of technology that might exist on Arrakis. The same might be said of the ship passing overhead.

Simple but attractive and well-suited to avatar photography – particularly for Dune fans – Arrakis / Fremen Home makes for an interesting visit.

Grauland – Arrakis / Fremen Home – May 2025

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Art and simulacrum at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Manoji Yachvili  – Simulacrum 

Drawn from the Latin, simulacrum (“likeness, semblance”) entered the language of European art during the late 1500s, when was originally used to refer to a painting or statue directly representing someone or something (most notably a god or deity). However, by the 19th century, it had come to express an artistic endeavour – notably an image – formed without the substance or qualities of the original (e.g. to use a more modern example: a photocopy of a photograph of a painting).

It is a term which is particularly relevant today thanks to the rapid rise of generative AI tools, and the manner in which they can be used to literally churn out prompt-based images over and over without any genuine artistic input or understanding of the actual desired request or the inconsistencies, anachronisms and outright errors present within the final product.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Manoji Yachvili  – Simulacrum 

Of course, those using such tools diligently will argue that they are merely a tool; when balanced with a critical eye and the use of other tools to refine, enhance and correct, they can be used to produce richly diverse pieces that do have originality within them. This is actually not an unfair summation, as far as it goes.

The problem¹ here is that the vast majority of users of such generative tools don’t exercise skill or talent. They prompt, wait, publish, often using minor variations of the same prompt ad nauseam (“make the woman’s hair colour blue”) to produce a stream of near identical images (as all too often seen on the likes of Deviant Art). There is little originality within such pieces when compared one to the next; worse, there is little in the way of critical review, and those aforementioned errors are allowed to persist. Worse still, all this repetition (complete with errors) is fed back into the data pool, further diluting it and increasing the regurgitation of vacuous elements to form what amounts to self-perpetuating simulacrums, devoid of originality and talent.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Manoji Yachvili  – Simulacrum 

This constant cycle of regurgitation and repetition without originality is explored by Manoji Yachvili (onceagain), in her exhibition Simulacrum, currently on display at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas. It is also very much a personal expression of Manoji’s own increasing sense of artistic loss and frustration as she sees creative expression, skill and progress within art and artistic experimentation vanishing in a rising tide of banality.

Reality no longer exists, it has disappeared, crumbled by the media and modern technologies that propose images that do not refer to reality, that receive meaning only from other images and that are perpetually regenerated, thus remaining increasingly disconnected from what was originally real. Everything I see has an appearance and the power of appearance, without a faithful external image and therefore devoid of the original vitality.

– Manoji Yachvili

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Manoji Yachvili  – Simulacrum 

To achieve this, Manoji presents a collection of original paintings that are richly expressive whilst clearly echoing the banality and emptiness of the kind all too easily spewed forth by generative AI. Through the use of simple, repeated elements – masks, faceless figures, and muted colours – she beautifully conveys the empty, expressionless redundancy so common within generative AI art.

Yes, these are all paintings utilising common themes elements – but each of them is completely original in form and presentation, allow it to stand on its own as a singular, unique piece carrying with it an ability to speak to each of us differently. Thus, these are pieces that reach beyond the artist, offering a richness of expression and meaning, standing not as the result of a collection of prompts, but as a prompt for our imaginations to take flight within them.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Manoji Yachvili  – Simulacrum 

In doing so, Manoji establishes the genuine power of art through the hand, eye and talent originating from within the artist, making this a beautiful expressive collection, each piece standing in its own right as a genuine work of art.

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  1. Please note that within this article, I’m intentionally avoiding issues of copyright and ownership in relations to the “training” of generative AI tools, because while these are clearly of concern generally, they are not the focus of the exhibition being reviewed.

Ythari – The echo of silent stars in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025 – click any image for full size
For May – the start of which has become somewhat indelibly linked with science fiction over the last several decades – Saskia Rieko and Konrad (kaiju.kohime) bring us their own epic sci-fi tale; one with its roots in a galaxy-spanning civilisation called the Ythari.

Born long before most others, the Ythari were driven by their insatiable intellects, boundless ambition and an overbearing pride and arrogance which perhaps led to their downfall.

The Ythari once ruled over a vast and enigmatic galaxy known as Veilspire — a name derived from its most haunting feature: a towering, luminous rift that cuts across its heart, like a tear in the fabric of space-time. This anomaly called the Axiom Rift, existing in the very centre of the galaxy, is believed to be the result of their final and most ambitious experiment — perhaps even the very thing that led to their disappearance.

– from the records of Dr. Khiraan Valis

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025

Konrad and Saskia have always produced richly engaging settings within Second Life, often drawing on inspiration from locations and event on or from our physical world. Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, however is utterly different in theme and tone – although its depth easily equals that of any of the previous designs the couple have presented. Whilst it might not draw from events and locations we might all directly research, instead being born entirely of the imagination, it nevertheless comes with a rich back-story; one capable of forming the basis of a novel from the likes or Asimov, Heinlein or James S. A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) for an entire novel.

Mixing a thirst for knowledge and a hunger for understanding with towering abilities and intelligence, the story of the Ythari is one of a galaxy-spanning empire built not on war or dominion, but on the foundations of science, intellect, and an ability to conceive everything within their galaxy from the quantum level to the macro, without any apparent discontinuities of scale.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025
Veilspire was no ordinary galaxy. Unlike the spiral and elliptical galaxies known to modern astronomers, its structure bore evidence of deliberate engineering. Star systems arranged in mathematically perfect formations, gravity-defying megastructures orbiting black holes with impossible stability, and entire regions where time seemed to flow at inconsistent rates, with the centre of the creation, The Axiom Rift — all hints that the Ythari did not merely live in their galaxy, they designed it with the development of The Equation of Being.

– from the records of Dr. Khiraan Valis

It is also a tale of galactic overreach and a hubris which – perhaps inevitably – could only result in one of two outcomes. Outcomes which themselves might perhaps be indistinguishable from one another, thanks to the passage of aeons and when looked upon through the eyes of a far-future humanoid race stumbling across the crumbling, but still magnificent relics the Ythari left in their wake.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025
As they neared the completion of their greatest project — an attempt to rewrite the fundamental laws of reality — they miscalculated. Or perhaps they succeeded too well. One by one, their great cities, planets, even the whole solar systems fell silent … The Ythari simply… ceased. Their towering spires, their quantum archives left behind as if abandoned in an instant. No bodies. No signs of struggle. Only silence and the mysterious humming of the abandoned Axiom Rift.

– from the records of Dr. Khiraan Valis

To best appreciate the setting, make sure you have your viewer set the Use Shared Environment, and you have media set to play (at least initially in the case of the latter). The arrival point will provide you with the back-story in the form of a records / log entry by one Dr. Khiraan Valis, an archaeologist dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the Ythari.

The latter is played back over the computer screens and consoles at the landing Point, and really is worth listening to. For those who prefer, the same information can be obtained by clicking the traditional Natthimmel greeting (and setting name) on the ground of the Landing Point, and accepting the offered folder. This contains a notecard with the  information given within the narration. For those who do listen to the audio, I would strongly suggest pausing media playback (click the movie camera icon / button towards the top right corner of the viewer’s window), as the narrative track can otherwise overwhelm the ambient sounds within the setting.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025

Stormy, eerie and caught under a roiling, almost angry Expanse in which the eye of a galactic core balefully stares from one horizon, this is an environment for which words – genuinely – are not enough. Beyond the consoles and systems at the Landing Point, as left by Dr. Valis and her team, this is an assuredly alien setting. Within it, a water-like sea slips into a low-lying landscape. This initially appears to be dotted with strange tree-like groves. However, closer inspection reveals them to be more rock-like than organic – or perhaps they are the fossilised remains of something; and while there is the odd tree to be found, organics as we might recognise them are few and far between.

Even the paths laid across the water have a geometry about them that feels alien. None lead directly from A to B; instead they seem to be some kind of mathematical expression, as much a part of the gigantic towers and other structures within and floating over these strange lands.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025

Broken, decaying, and ominous even when countered but the roiling heavens beyond them, these structures are riven by massive discharges of energy, themselves accompanied by rolling booms which fall upon the ears as the funerial beat of drums. Whether these discharges are is being generated by whatever remain powers keep at least some of these artefacts raised in defiance of gravity, or whether the explosions of light and energy are the angry response of the atmosphere to their hulking presence, is yours to determine.

Not all the structures are airborne or massive; floating on the waters are polygonal forms, cables and relays on them looking as if they might have once drawn power from the waters – or discharged it into the waver over which they sit. They sit around the remnants of the great towers as if part of their ancient function. Steps climb the interiors of the towers, while outside of one is an indication that the Ythari might not have vanished completely.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025

The very few who dare to explore their ruins tell of anomalies time fractures where the past leaks through, machines that seem to remember their creators, and strange, whispering voices that seem to come from nowhere. The Ythari may be gone, but something of them lingers. Watching. Waiting.

Beautiful, visually impressive, rich in narrative and creativity, edged in mystery and a hint of dread, Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars is a magnificent journey of the imagination.

Ythari – Echoes of the Silent Stars, May 2025

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