The ninth round of the Linden Endowments for the Arts (LEA) Artist In Residence (AIR) programme kicked-off on July 1st, with the awarding of the LEA’s 20 AIR regions to their respective grantees. Under the terms of the AIR grants, those awarded a region have up to 4 months in which to prepare it for their installation, and have it formally open to the public for at least two months – although the set-up period is flexible, and can be a lot shorter if the artist(s) wish(es).
Cica Ghost opted to really maximise the time people could enjoy her work. While she only received the region on July 1st, it officially opened to the public on July 6th (an event I had to miss due to being away between the 5th and 7th inclusive).
Dreamers is a marvellous build which extends from the ground up into the sky, where eight scenes await visitors. The ground level presents a fantasy environment, perhaps lifted from a dream, full of bright colours and fantastical creatures and wheeled vehicles on a huge scale, all waiting to be explored, and bearing Cica’s colourful paintings, making careful examination of all of them a must.
Within the midst of this marvellous landscape sit sixteen long-necked heads, faces lifted towards the sky, eyes closed – the Dreamers of the installation’s title. Touch eight of them, and they will each allow you to share in their dream, transporting you to one of the eight skyborne scenes Cica has created overhead.
These will each be immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with Cica’s work, presenting as they do little extracts from past installations she’s created. So it is that through the Dreamers we once more get to see the likes of Little Town, Ghostville, Ruins, and Living in a Bowl, to name but four of the scenes on offer.
Small in size, these little scenes are enough to either pique curiosity (for the first-time visitor) or awaken memory (for those who visited the originals), setting one on a personal daydream. I could write a whole lot more about Dreamers, but really the best way to experience it is to go see it for yourself and have a little fun; it is a bright, uplifting place, full of images and daydreams, and there are more than a few poses and things to be found throughout which let you become a part of the settings, at least for a while.
Given only eight of the 16 Dreamers currently allow people to share in their dreams, I wonder if Cica might be adding to the installation as time progresses through to December, and the end of this round of AIR grants, allowing the remaining eight heads to share their slumbering imaginings with us. Or perhaps something else might appear in LEA 24 in due course.
Either way, I took the liberty of making a short film of what is there to enjoy now, if only to give a further flavour and whet appetites. So – enjoy!
I first came across Cooper Creek Wilderness while flying around the estates to the south and east of Blake Sea without any intent or purpose in mind. A part of the Sailors Cove South estate, the wilderness caught my attention due to its proximity to the Sailors Cove South (SCS) airfield, which has a fairly tight little runway for getting in and out of (unless you have a seaplane and can make use of the nearby open waters), making it an interesting place to practice short landings.
Also accessible by boat, the wilderness forms a part of the estate’s protected lands, and offers visitors trails to walk, wildlife to see and places to simply sit and ponder. My most recent visit came after taking my helicopter for a flight; the intention had been to head over to Second Norway, but somewhere along the way I decided to turn south to see if any land down that way might be up for sale, so I quite naturally found my way to the SCS airfield on Frasier Island.
As well as having a very small runway, the SCS airfield also offers a bit of a challenge for landing at the helipad, surrounded as it is on three sides by tall trees, with the airfield windsock located on the remaining side (see the picture above of me manoeuvring my MD900 for a landing).
If you opt to sail to the wilderness, the best way once you reach the Sailors Cover estates is to make your way to Sailors Cove South, cross Thorton Peak on the west side, and then head across Rio Plantano before turning north along the Cerrado coastal area and thus to the Cooper Creek Wilderness moorings.
As I’d flown down to SCS, I opted to make my way to the little quay on the west side of the airfield on the banks of the river behind the airfield. Here visitors can find a rezzing station for one or two person kayaks (with a tiny option available as well), which can then be used to head northwards through the river channels to the wilderness, making for a nice little journey in itself. There are also a couple of kayak rezzers up in the wilderness park as well, making getting back easy, should you hop out of your boat (causing it to de-rez after about 10 seconds).
The park offers a series of walks, as noted, which wind over trails, cross bridges (either with steps for those on foot or ramps for those on horseback). There are also clearings where you can sit and rest, a butterfly house, climbs with zip lines waiting at the top, and a wooden walk through a mangrove swamp (watch out for the alligator!) which has wicker chairs hanging over the waters for those wanting to simply sit and let time drift by. Travel far enough north and you’ll find a swan boat rezzer you can use to paddle your way back along the waterways if you have left your kayak behind,
While Cerrado to the south is largely given over to residential parcels (so do keep people’s privacy in mind if travelling in that direction), the waterways flowing through these regions – Cooper Creek Wilderness, Cerrado and Frasier Island do make for interesting and relaxing exploration via kayak, and there are numerous photo opportunities to be found along the way.
For those seeking somewhere a little different to explore, I can recommend Cooper Creek Wilderness; whether you hop there directly or make it a part of a longer outing by air or water, it makes for a pleasing destination. Just don’t be surprised if you come across me curled up in one of the hanging wicker chairs as you wander the trails and wooden walks!
One of the big use-cases is going to be kids maybe doing an extra, like instead of doing their homework in the normal way in the evening, they go on-line where they join a study group where they join a teacher..
So opens segment #75 of the with some thoughts from Philip Rosedale, co-founder of Second Life, and more particularly now the CEO of start-up virtual worlds company, High Fidelity.
At just over 89 minutes in length, this is a special show, exploring High Fidelity from the inside, so to speak, complete with conversations with Mr. Rosedale, Ryan Karpf (HiFi’s co-founder and ex-Linden), Chris Collins and Ozan Serim, while David Rowe (perhaps more familiarly known to SL users as Strachan Ofarrel creator of the Oculus Rift compatible CtrlAltStudio viewer), who has been working with the HiFi team, becoming a guest host for the segment.
Since its founding, High Fidelity has made remarkable strides in developing its next generation, open-source virtual world environment, both technically and financially. Since April 2013, the company has undergone three rounds of funding, attracting around US $16 million, most of which has come from True Ventures, Google Ventures and, most recently, Paul Allan’s Vulcan Capital (which also participated in the October 2014 US $542 million investment round for Magic Leap). In addition, HiFi has attracted a number of high-profile advisers, including VR veteran Tony Parisi and, most recently, professors Ken Perlin and Jeremy Bailenson.
As well as Philip Rosedale, Drax talks with Chris Collins (l), Ryan Karpf and Ozan Serim from high Fidelity
The interviews themselves are quite wide-ranging. With Dave Rowe, (known in HiFi as CtrlAltDavid) the open-source nature of the platform is explored, from the ability to download and run your owner HiFi server (aka “Stack Manager“) and client (aka “Interface“), through to the concept of the worklist, which allows contributors to bid for work on offer and get paid based on results.In Dave’s case, this has led him to working on various aspects of the platform such as integrating Leap Motion capabilities to improving eye tracking within HiFi’s avatars, so they track the movements of other avatars, just as our own eyes track other people’s facial and other movements as they interact with us.
In terms of general looks, the avatars – which have in the past been critiqued for being “cartoony” (despite it is still very early days for HiFi) – are still very much under development. In particular, Ozan Serim has been working to raise – and no pun intended here – the overall fidelity of the avatars in terms of looks and capabilities. He’s well-placed to do so, being an ex-Pixar animator.
One of the problems here is that the more real in appearance and capabilities they get, the closer the avatars come to the Uncanny Valley, which has led HiFi and Ozan to look at a number of avatar styles, from those which are very human in appearance through to those that are more “cartoonish” in looks.
A 2014 video showing Ozan’s work in improving the rigging around a more “realistic” HiFi avatar to more actually reflect mouth forms and facial movement when singing. High Fidelity now use Faceshift for real-time facial expression capture, rigging and animation, using either 3D or standard webcams
In discussing the Uncanny Valley, and particularly people’s reactions to avatars that are somewhat less-than-real (and we can include SL avatars in this, given their inability to naturally reflect facial expressions), Ozan raises the interesting question of whether people who critique the look of such avatars actually want to have a “realistic” looking avatar, or whether it is more a case of people wanting an avatar look that is appealing to their aesthetics which they can they identify with.
This is and interesting train of thought, as it is certainly true that – limitations of the avatar skeleton aside – most of us in Second Life are probably more driven to develop our avatars to a point where they have a personal aesthetic appeal, rather than in wanted them to be specifically “more realistic”.
Currently, HiFi is leaning towards a somewhat stylised avatar as seen in Team Fortress 2, which is allowing them to develop a natural-looking avatar look that doesn’t come too close to the Uncanny Valley. They use Adobe Maximo as their avatar creation tool, which Ozan views as a capable workflow package, but which may have some creative limitations. However, as an open-source environment, HiFi does offer the potential for someone to script in “in-world” character modelling tools, or at least to offer upload capabilities for avatar model generated in tools such as Blender. Avatars can also, if wanted, by uploaded as a complete package with all required / defined animations, such as walks, etc, included.
Chris Collins has very much become the voice of High Fidelity on You Tube, producing a wide range of videos demonstrating features of the platform, together with short tutorial pieces. The video above is one of his, demonstrating how to code interactive 3D content, using the Planky game as an example
While Ozan and his team work on avatar animations and rigging using real-time capture, Ryan Karpf reveals that by default, an avatar’s facial expressions are driven via the audio more than by direct capture: the mouth movement, for example, comprises 3 positions based on the audio, while a rising of voice or tone can result in the avatar’s eyebrows rising and falling. Ryan also touches on the Uncanny Valley issue of people’s increasingly discomfiture the closer avatars become to looking “photo-realistic”.
In talking to Chris Collins, an ex-Linden Lab alumni who headed the former SL Enterprise division, who now wears a number of hats at HiFi, Drax discusses how HiFi deals with the ever-changing face of the emerging VR hardware market, where headsets, input, tracking, and so on, is in something of a state of flux. Chris points out that while open-source, HiFi does have a set of strict coding standards and licensing, and offer external libraries to help support third-party SDK integration.
One of the powerful elements of High Fidelity is the ability you to have full agency over your environment, if you so wish; using the Stack Manager, you can create your own server / world / space, and control who might access it. The scripting tools similarly allow users to download and tweak elements – such as walking animations, a basic avatar appearance, etc., quickly and easily.
Opening on Sunday, July 5th at Kate Bergdorf’s Berg by Nordan Art gallery, located overhead of her home region, Nordan om Jorden, is an exhibition of images by Harbor Galaxy.
Running through July, August and September, the exhibition is called Undone, which is described as, “An examination of the physical loosening of restraints: collapse, contemplation, release, surrender.” On display are nine nude studies of the female form, the majority either seated or reclined, set against minimal backgrounds which serve to drawn one’s eyes directly to the figure on display – and I do use the term “display” deliberately here. While most of the poses are natural enough, it is clear that they have been carefully set in order to emphasise the various aspects of the exhibit’s subtitle: collapse, contemplation, release, etc.
Not that there is anything wrong with the images being so poised in their execution – that is after all the case for any life study. Here, however, the posing draws us deeper into each image, encouraged to consider just what it is being contemplated or what the collapse signifies and so on. Some of the pieces also seem to have a subtle, layered context as well, offering more than one potential interpretation, which becomes clearer as one re-examines them.
Undone – Berg Gallery
The artist behind Harbor says of her work:
Through Harbor and the creative possibilities of SL, I have been able to explore my own creative impulses and give form to the pictures that have been swirling around in my head for years now.
I do want to add that I see my pieces as a collaborative work, dependent upon the countless creative energies of others like myself here in SL and I am grateful and in awe of those energies.
Quite who or what the creative energies are isn’t entirely clear, which is a little regretful. Does the reference mean the models featured in the pieces? Comments and support from others? The influence other artists may have had on Harbor’s work? All of the above? It’s an enigmatic and intriguing statement; just as this is an intriguing and intimate exhibition.
Undone – Berg Gallery
Nudes may not be to everyone’s liking, but this is an exhibit worth seeing, one very well suited to the warm intimacy of Kate’s gallery space. As noted above, it will be running through July – September.
Officially opening at 12:00 noon on Friday, July 3rd, is the latest exhibition at Max Butoh’s marvellous Dathúil gallery. Distributed Pieces of Self presents a series of images by Second Life (and real life) artist and photographer Amona Savira.
The title of the exhibit – chosen by Amona – is inspired by a line from 5th stanza of the 2004 poem Over Time, by Martha Collins:
Moon covered, un- covered again, cold. Cold and hot, very and both. Disturbed the Sea of Tranquility. Distributed by the Moon Shop. Distributed self in pieces. Oh my broken.
On offer is a series of image, each evoking a mood or style or approach, or a combination of all three; self-portraits in full or in part, each emoting both a story and a response.
The settings are minimal – Amona indicates she tends to use her own sets, although some of the images in this exhibit were posed using a set by the talented William Weaver. Post-processing is used with each image; again, Amona regards such editing, tuning and refining of her raw images as an integral part of her artistic intent.
The rest is a series of highly individual pieces that perfectly fit the title of the exhibit, and which offer the observer a glimpse into the world of the artist-as-subject. Each image presents an individual frame of life which, depending on how you view them and what comes to mind, might either by seen to complement one another, offering a collage, if you will, of images and emotions that come together to lend a “whole” to the “distributed story”. Or perhaps they remain framed in one’s mind as individual pieces, each standing alone in its narrative, moments frozen and distributed across time.
All told, this is another fascinating exhibition highlighting the work of a talented SL photographer (Amona also has a Flickr photostream I would suggest you check-out). If you like the works you see within this exhibit, do check Amona’s permanent exhibit spaces at East Art Gallery or at Harmony Garden Gallery.
My thanks, as ever, to Lucy and Max for allowing me to preview this exhibition, which will remain open through until the end of July, 2015.
JayJay Zifanwee of the University of Western Australia (UWA) informs me that The Sci-Fi Film Festival will once again be held in Australia, hosted and sponsored by the Parramatta City Council.
Taking place over the three days of October 30th through November 1st inclusive, the Festival will once again include the Project Sci-Fi Challenge, in which film makers and machinima makers from around the world are challenged to create a short sci-fi film in just 30 days.
The UWA is once again partnering with Project Sci-Fi organisers Screen My Shorts, and will cover the Challenge entry fees for any machinima filmed in Second Life. There is a prize pool of AU $5,750 on offer, and according to JayJay, Second Life machinima makers should be eligible for the Animation and International Film categories as well as the overall prizes.
“We feel that in a SciFi category, those filming in Second Life have a huge advantage over those using conventional filming methods, and we hope that all of you machinimatogtraphers and filmmakers in Second Life use this advantage fully,” Jayjay said.
It has certainly been fertile ground for SL machinima makers in the past. In 2013, Tutsy Navarathna was the best overall winner in the machinima category of the 2013 Challenge (then sponsored by Western Digital) with his brilliant The Residents, a remarkable tale of worlds within worlds, and a clever twist involving SL (seen above), with Erythro Asimov taking the 2nd prize with Looking Around (below), as well as several other prize-winning entries.
So, if you’re interested in applying, take a read through the guidelines linked-to above, and make sure you read the Project Sci-Fi Guidelines and the official rules to fully understand the requirements of entry and the competition time line. When you enter, please consider letting Jayjay know, either via in-world contact or via e-mail (jayjayaustralia-at-hotmail.com), and good luck!
