Currently open at The Eye art gallery, curated by Mona (MonaByte) is a most intriguing exhibition of digital photography and art by Kubbrick, entitled InPerfección.
Kubbrick describes himself as “a sailor of the virtual seas and an artist [who] captures images in the physical world and transforms them through software and pictorial techniques in a search for the beauty of shapes and colours.”
One the ground floor of the gallery space, for example is a series of studies -of water and bubbles. These include photos of all or parts of the human body in the water, some in clear focus, some blurred, with applied lighting and contrast that marvellous utilise colour and reflection to explore our own relationship with water.
This can be seen withinAl Calor de la Flama – “the colour of flame”, and through the dynamics of motion in water shown through Nadadora de Aguas Profundas – “deep water swimmer” and Escape en el Agua – escape in the water; mixed with these images are thoughts even on the nature of rain on a window with Paisaje (“landscape”). However, for me, Escape en el Agua is particularly captivating; within it there is a wonderful displacement of air through the water that’s given birth to clouds of bubbles, and these naturally lead on to the remaining images in this part of the gallery, which in turn offer fascinating abstractions on bubbles.
It is perhaps “abstraction” that most applies to Kubbrick’s style, and this is further demonstrated in the digital pieces to be found on the upper level of the gallery.
These offer a rich mix of art, colour and form, all beautifully dynamic, some apparently created purely through digital means, others utilising “everyday” objects – the roof of what appears to be a gallery or stadium, the humble engine block, gears and chains, all combined with with digital techniques – to produce finished images that have an incredible feeling of being purely fractal in form. These all stand as captivating images in their own right; however, they also draw the eyes inevitably to Enfrentamiento (“confrontation”), a piece that appears to capture in mirrored form a piece of wall art.
My one regret with InPerfección is that I did not drop in sooner. The exhibition opened on June 28th, 2019, and so may not have much longer to run. So, if you do want to witness it for yourself, I would recommend a visit sooner rather than later.
A while back Yasmin (YouAintSeenMe) mentioned to me that she was considering a rock climbing system for Second Life. Being one who doesn’t particularly handle looking over the edge of extreme tall / high things in the physical world, it struck me that a) rock climbing would not be my first recreational pursuit, and b) but why not have a go in Second Life where bones don’t get broken?
So, armed with a follow-up note card from Yasmin on the subject, I toddled off to try out a climb she’s set-up on the west face of Nitida Ridge, Heterocera.
Nitida Ridge – 100m of cliffs to climb!
Here, at the foot of the ridge, sits a little base camp established by Yasmin, with tents, food and a warm fire. Close by is a sign that both introduces the climb(s) up the rock face and provides visitors with the necessary kit when touched. The latter is free, and comprises:
An abseil harness (worn invisibly, just ADD to attach to the stomach attach point); information on the climbing HUD, a note card on the routes up the cliffs – direct or extended; and an image of the cliffs overlaid with the routes up (green) and abseil descents (red).
The climbing HUD – clicking the sign will cause a pop-up asking for this to be attached so your avatar can be animated during a climb.
Starting my climb
The HUD attaches towards the lower right of your screen by default – although obviously can be repositioned. It is colour-coded as follows: Blue (generally the default) = ready; Green = active climb located / engaged; red = disabled. In addition, touch the HUD brings up a dialogue box. There are a handful of points to be remembered when climbing, and with the HUD in particular:
It is still an in-development system, so not all features may be present and the occasional bug might try to put you off your climb.
Not all the options on the dialogue box may be fully functional at present.
The ones you are most likely to want to use are the climbing speeds (Faster / Slower) and the avatar position options (In / Out) – the latter to move your avatar either further away from the rock face (so you’re not up to your elbows inside the rock, for example, or climbing air).
Taking a breather and a look around at 170 metres above sea level and …. Eeep! It’s a long way down!
Climbing is a matter of finding the first pitch along the foot of the ridge. To do this, it is suggested that you examine the image of the ridge and then zoom out with your camera and align things visually. This can be a little difficult (but then, it’s not like people hang signs on rock faces that say, “Start Your Climb Here!” – you pick your start point by eyeballing the best spot to make an ascent), so for those who may get frustrated in trying to work out where to start, there is a direct SLurl link.
When you’ve found the correct point, the HUD will try green to indicate you can start to climb. Use the Up arrow key to climb – turning off any AO system can be an advantage here to prevent conflicts. When pressed, your avatar will start what is effectively a solo free climb. Releasing the key will pause you, but shouldn’t cause any backsliding.
Taking a rest in a bivvy and inset, where it sits on the climb….
The nature of SL may mean at times you might get stuck. Should this happen, release the Up key and they resume. Similarly, you may “slip” and assume your default falling pose – again, releasing the Up key should revert your avatar to the “rest” pose. Also, sometimes using the Left / Right arrow keys can help a little – but take care. Left / Right can help you crab diagonally sideways in the climb, but use one of them too much and you’ll leave the “climbing path” – your HUD will turn blue and you’ll take a fall!
After the first 15 metre climb to a very broad ledge, you’ll have a choice: the direct route, or along the “bivvy” (bivouac) route. The latter is the more challenging, and requires you channel your inner Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible 2) for some diagonal climbing across the rock face to reach various ledges – including one with the tent, allowing you a little respite from the exertions of climbing – and additional vertical ascents.
Abseiling down the Nitida Ridge (note ropes added in post-processing so I don’t look like I’m simply sitting in mid-air!
The direct route is just that – straight up the cliff, using a natural fold in the rock, just as a real climber would. I admit to having a little trouble at the top of this – the climb animation refused to release, so I’d reach the top, fall back a couple of metres and resume climbing, reach the top, fall back… A double-click TP resolved this.
For those prone to a little daring-do, the Nitida Ridge climbs also include a couple of high lines (shown in blue on the climb image), where a little tightrope walking can be, um, enjoyed, using Yasmin’s tightrope kit.
Of course, getting up a climb is half the story – there is also getting back down. For this, Yasmin has included abseil options. Just find the anchor points located at various places on the cliff face (again, use the supplied image to help in locating them). Each is a square metal plate fixed to the rock with a carabiner hanging from it. Touch the carabiner and you’ll abseil neatly down the rock face.
Ropes for abseiling are invisible (a particle system would likely complicate matters), but the animations are fun to watch, and in keeping with climbing (I assume at least, not being an expert in any way whatsoever!) the shorter descents are more hand-over-hand.
This system is – as noted – still somewhat in development, but it is simple and clean – and works. Obviously, you can add to the feel of climbing by dressing appropriately if you wish – I was tempted to add either a rucksack as a climbing backpack, or at least a bum bag to double as a chalk bag, but in the end just opted to get on with it.
Yasmin offers a number of alternate possible climbs within the HUD instructions note card, but as the HUD appears to be temp attach, you’ll need to keep it in place in order to try them, or return to Nitida Ridge to affix a new one before visiting an alternate climb. Overall, however, the Nitida Ridge climb is the most well-rounded in terms of climbs and features.
High lines offer the opportunity for some tightrope walking …
You still wouldn’t get me hanging off the side of a cliff at the end of a length of rope in the physical world, but within Second Life, free climbing / rock climbing like this is fun, and Yasmin has put together an excellent package that can be enjoyed individually or with friends. The kit isn’t (yet?) commercially available as it is in development (a further reason to try it at Nitida Ridge!), but I would suggest that if / when it is made commercially available, anyone with reasonable cliffs and highlands (say 15m or greater), it could be an attractive addition as an activity.
Update, October 1st: Ani’s Gallery has relocated. SLurls in this article have been updated to reflect the gallery’s new location.
Ani (Anibrm Jung) is an award-winning photographer in the physical world who has been active in Second Life since 2006. Based in the Netherlands, Ani has specialised in photographing nature, many of her images captured from her own garden, and all of them recorded using only natural light, with everything framed directly through the viewfinder, and with no subsequent cropping or image manipulation.
More recently, Ani had turned her attention to photography within Second life, where she has brought her eye for detail and composition fully to bear to create some of the most engaging studies of Second Life art, landscapes and avatars.
A selection of Ani’s art can be seen, appreciated and purchased through her new gallery, Ani’s Gallery and Home to Sibelius, and she recently invited me to pay a visit to view the gallery, which also includes an exhibition by another of my favourite artists, Cybele Moon.
The gallery – located in a skybox – offers several spaces for exhibitions, with Ani’s work occupying the lower floor, and the guest exhibition space on the upper level. The landing point sits within the lower level, in a hall that serves both as an exhibition space and as a reception foyer. This area has a focus on Ani’s physical world photography, which is as bewitching as ever, and includes several pieces captured from within Second Life, thus presenting an eye-catching mix.
The neighbouring hall focuses almost entirely on Ani’s Second Life photography which – as noted, includes the same richness of focus and attention to composition, angle, tone and detail that marks these pieces completely captivating – and don’t miss her cat photos, either! Upstairs, Cybele presents Travels Songs and Stories, another completing enthralling exhibition of her exceptional digital art which also can so marvellously combine the realms of the physical and the virtual – and which should never be missed.
Two remarkable artists together in a single gallery marks Ani’s Gallery a worthy destination for any lover of the arts and artistic expression in Second life.
It’s been almost a year since we first visited Athenaeum, the full region designed by Dema Fairport. At the time I noted the Adult-rated region to be stunningly scenic and offering a lot to see. For details of that first visit, see: Athenaeum: scenic beauty with an adult twist in Second Life.
More recently, Dema passed an invite for us to make a return visit following something of a re-design, I added it to the list of our upcoming destinations, and recently had the opportunity to drop in.
I’ll be honest, given the outstanding look and feel of Athenaeum a year ago, I was a little hesitant in thinking about what might have changed. The build we witnessed back in August 2018 was so visually stunning that there was a concern that any change might come at the cost of something very special being lost.
However, all such fears proved groundless; the “new” Athenaeum offers a well-rounded mix of new locations sitting within a setting that retains all of its scenic beauty and many of its popular locations. These include the the manor house to the south and the gorge that must be spanned to reach it. Thus Athenaeum presents a setting that is both familiar and new.
Chief among the changes is the landing point. This has moved from inland to the west of the region to sit on a waterfront pier. it offers the way to a surfaced road running past the gallery and museum, each of which still offers a celebration of the physical world photography of New York’s Darque, and a history of kink respectively.
From here the road climbs upwards, becoming a familiar (for those who have visited in the past) cinder track that offers the way to (again for visitors making a return to the region) a familiar bridge spanning the gorge to reach the the big manor house. The latter further retains its marvellous member’s club look and feel from August 2018, which I described thus:
Within its rooms are leather arm chairs, great bookcases filled with tomes awaiting reading, fires in the hearths, bottles of port and cigar humidors on some tables, coffee and After Eight mints on others, and just the most subtle of hints as to some of the activities that might follow conversations in these rooms; activities which themselves might be enjoined in the rooms above, going by their décor.
The manor house retains its terrace and pool where events can be held, while to the east, a path leads the way into the deeper shade of tall fir trees, to where the summer house and its pool still reside.
The newer touches to the region are subtle. Take, for example, the barn with horses roaming before it, additional cliff-top hideaways, or the rickety bridge crossing the deep gorge to offer a path to where Buddha still sits, going by way of a shaded snuggle spot.
And While it might be a case of mis-remembering over the course of the year, there also seem to be a lot more – and individually – attractive spots around the coastline for sitting and enjoying company, whether intimate or friendly. These include waterside camps with little fires blazing, covered seats mounted on rocky outcrops or wooden decks built out over the water. Cinder paths lit by lanterns and occasionally marked by vintage cars, point the way to most of them – although some may require a little discovery.
Throughout all of this, Athenaeum remains richly photographic, and the invitation for visitors to submit their images to the region’s Flickr pool remains open. If you’ve not visited before, I cannot recommend doing to enough – and if you have visited in the past but haven’t been recently, then a re-visit is also recommended.
Xia’s Diary, currently open (for a little while longer, at least!) at Diotima Art Gallery curated by Red Bikcin, is an exhibition in images and words that offers reflections on life – both real and virtual – by Xia Chieng.
This is a thought-provoking installation in which Xia offers something of in introspection on her own life – how it has played out in Second Life, and how matters from her physical world life have informed her time in in the virtual and how the latter has caused her to more generally reflect on life as a whole.
My life has been intense, but I’ve never known where to fit. Opportunist and ambitious, my life has taken me to many places and to experience all kinds of situations, some good and some bad. Blinded by moving forward, never look around me or those left behind … When I looked at life through the camera, I felt that I could finally see it. Then he started a new path.
Twenty-one images – all of them avatar studies (although one has an aspect to it suggesting it might have originated in the physical world) – are presented in the exhibition. Most sit as individual pieces, although there are three that clearly form a single group, and three more are presented in such a way as to suggest they could form a set.
All are accompanied by Xia’s thoughts, the words provided with evocative titles such as Lost Hope, Ode to Emily, Broken Doll, and so on. They offer frames to the images over which they sit – and a windows into Xia’s thoughts and feelings.
These images are a document of my journey through life, RL and SL, I make no difference. Everything I do is part of my life. Many things are recreated in our mind with our imagination. Maybe it is a way of looking for a meaning and transcending many problems that torment us. A second life can be a second chance.
The words, offered white-on-black are as clear-cut and unequivocal as their presentation. Evocative, provocative (as are some of the images), brutally honest, they offer the kind of introspection most of us probably prefer to carry out within our own heads (and most likely in a darkened room) well away from public display.
Thus, Xia’s Diary becomes something of a tour de force of feelings and responses in which we are cast into multiple roles. We are the voyeur and the emotional vampire, illicitly peeping in on the sometimes salacious, often poignantly deep, confessions from the heart and drawing from them. And given these are confessions – honest, down-to-Earth examinations of self, of hopes, of fears, of confusion of need – so too are we cast as the confessional-made-flesh, bearing witness to the opening of a soul. And because these are deeply personal reflections, so too are we given pause to hold up a mirror to ourselves and review who and what we are in life, both physical and virtual.
Update: It appears this iteration of Natural Falls has closed. SLurls have therefore been removed.
DannChris might be a hamster in Second Life (and love the Maverick profile photo, Dann!), but he’s a hamster with a love of water settings. we discovered this when visiting his Natural Falls V in early 2017 (see Navigating Natural Falls in Second Life) and again with a visit to A L T I T U D E earlier in 2019 (see Gaining a little A L T I T U D E in Second Life).
At the start of July 2019, Dann dropped me a note thanking me for writing about A L T I T U D E – which was nice in itself – and to inform me that a new Natural Falls would be coming along soon. More recently, friend and fellow traveller, Miro Collas poked me to let me know it had arrived. So hoping it has retained the watery themes present in the previous builds and within A L T I T U D E, we jumped over to take a look.
Natural Falls, July 2019
Natural Falls has tended to represent, in Dann’s words, a decaying city waterlogged by some disaster – whether man-made or natural or a combination of both (such as humanity’s willingness to acknowledge climate change but stubborn refusal to adequately address it), is up to the visitor to determine.
As with previous builds, the city sits at least knee-deep in water and under the cement conduits of a really elevated railway, the parallel tracks of which sit to the north and south, bracketing the larger part of the city below them.
Natural Falls, July 2019
Getting around is a matter of following the wooden board walks, some of which sit between walls cunningly designed to resemble buildings, adding to the feel that this is a sprawling, flooded metropolis when seen from lower levels. Power lines are strung along some of this walkways, passing between tall poles that march along the board walks, giving the impression some of the buildings here are still occupied. The walkways don’t however, all interconnect – so if you’re going to explore everywhere (and you should), you’re going to have to be prepared to do a little jumping and / or get your legs wet.
This is particularly true if you want to get down to the little Japanese style market that sits just over (and on) the water, or drop in to the old amusement park the water has claimed as its own, the old roller coaster looking rather forlorn. A slightly worrying aspect of stepping down into the water is the fact that off to the north-east, a couple of massive electrical pylons drip their high-tension power lines in to the waves. Fortunately, neither one is actually connected to a electrical generation system, so there’s no risk of electrocution present with them!
Natural Falls, July 2019
Which is just as well, really, because it is only by wading through the water that you can get to visit what I personally think is one of the most gorgeous motifs Dann presents in his region designs: a fabulous walled and flooded garden. I first saw this in Natural Falls V, and it was – for a time, and in an expanding form – a feature of A L T I T U D E, so encountering it within this iteration of Natural Falls came as an absolute delight.
“I had to recreate it,” Dann informed me when I noted its presence, “We had a party at Altitude which needed a special place, but there wasn’t enough LI, so the garden got taken down.” He paused a moment and continued, “I will put it back at some point 🙂 .” If he does, I hope he actually reproduces the garden in some form at A L T I T U D E rather than moving it from Natural Falls, as it makes for an ideal focal point; and with a suitable teleport portal, could even make for a nice link between the two regions.
Natural Falls, July 2019
There are other reminders of past builds to be found here – the old pavilion sitting among the lilies, the great engines slung beneath the elevated railway lines and concrete channel that turn massive propellers – presumably helping to keep the structures aloft.
Also to be found are the more artistic / whimsical statements those who have visited past Natural Falls might find familiar. The figures close to the landing point, for the example, who stand beneath a pained warning: Who Watches The Watchers, even as a haphazard pile of televisions rises close by to apparently keep an eye on them – and while a flying saucer overhead appears to be spiriting some of them away! Then there are the quirky little places to sit waiting to be found, such as atop a set of diving boards, complete with a potted plant. Or, in a touch of delightful and fantastical whimsy, a blue whale slowly circling in the air and offering passers-by a ride, either hanging from the ladder that dangles from his flank or in the garden sprouting from his back.
Natural Falls, July 2019
Imaginative, rich in detail, quirky, fun, and giving a little tap on the shoulder of ecological conscience, with this iteration, Natural Fall remains a thoroughly recommended visit. Photos can be shared via the region’s Flickr group.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 