Category: Reviews

The Drax Files 24: let the virtual world be our stage

Posted on by Inara Pey

ART-logoThe 24th instalment of The Drax Files takes to the boards to bring us a story of the theatre, performing arts, Shakespeare, plays, stage adaptations and more, as offered to the virtual community through the remarkable folk at the Avatar Repertory Theatre (ART), the oldest and longest-running live theatre company in Second Life – and probably the metaverse as a whole, as we currently regard it today.

Storytelling has been a central part of humanity’s development since pre-historic times, and has fulfilled many role: as a means of preserving history, educating the young, providing cultural structure through mythological / religious tales, and, of course, as a source of entertainment.

As such, it’s really no surprise that theatre is an art form which we have brought with us into the virtual realms. Like the spoken word, as exemplified by the likes of the Seanchai Library, or the use of film to provide machinima and episodic series like The Blackened Mirror, live theatre is presented with many opportunities and advantages within virtual environments which are not so readily available in the physical world.

For one thing, virtual environments offer any incredibly cost-effective means of presenting a stage production. Where else, for example, can a repertory company with an interest in Shakespeare establish its own reproduction of London’s Globe Theatre in which to stage their performances? How else could they recreate scenes for a production that can completely surround and immerse the audience itself?

The Avatar Repertory Theatre Company's reproduction of the Globe Theatre in Second Life
The Avatar Repertory Theatre Company’s reproduction of the Globe Theatre in Second Life

Then there’s the fact that the virtual medium has such a global reach, couple with a unique way of bringing people together. No longer is a company’s members or its audience constrained by geographic location, virtual reality truly makes a theatre production a world-spanning event.

These points are beautifully and engagingly made by MadameThespian Underhill, an actor / director with ART, and an actor in the physical world. Not that ART is made up entirely of professionals; another great power of the virtual is the way in which it forms a melting pot of creative talent, everyone working together equally to present a production to a live audience.

Through Madame Thespian’s eyes and words, we’re given an insight into the creative and technical complexities in bringing together a virtual world production which, as well as potentially offering greater immersive richness for the audience, present broader technical challenges for all involved – the actors, the backstage staff, the musicians, and so on. Actors, for example must bring together voice acting talents and controlled pupeetering of their avatars; gestures must be developed and tested, musicians must work to produce suitable pieces which can be pre-recorded and then added-in to productions at the required points, and so on and so forth.

Madame Thespian Underhill: "When people ask 'what's the purpose of doing theatre in virtual reality?' Well, we as human beings relate to each other by telling stories ... this is another avenue that has been opened-up to live storytelling
Madame Thespian Underhill: “When people ask ‘what’s the purpose of doing theatre in virtual reality?’ Well, we as human beings relate to each other by telling stories … this is another avenue that has been opened-up to live storytelling”

The virtual realm perhaps offers one of the richest environments in which technologies such as facial expression translation, motion capture, immersive headsets and so on all have a real and far-reaching use. In short, it’s an ideal testing-ground for such capabilities, as Madame Thespian notes towards the end of the video.

More than that, taken together, live theatre and these emerging technologies offer audiences something even more unique and not so easy to be translated into the physical world – they could potentially become part of a production, fully immersed in what is happening, and even – to a degree – participating in in as extras. The Basilique Performing Arts Company, for example (the subject of the Drax Files #18), used scripted pupeetering and custom-made avatars  to make the audience of Paradise Lost an integral part of the story.

There’s also a very human dimension here as well, growing out of the freedom of expression virtual environments like Second Life give to all of us.  “I’m ageing out of most Shakespearian roles,” Madame Thespian notes. She continues:

But then again, in Second Life, I don’t have that problem, because we have these avatars that we can make look like anything we want them to be. That levels the playing field when we interact with each other. The value for older people, not only for actors, is wonderful! The ability to be able to, from your home,  interact with other people from all over the world of other ages. You are being judged by what you say … the pure essence of who you are.

And that’s a powerful thought on which to close.

If you’d like to see the Avatar Repertory Theatre live, in addition to their scheduled productions, they offer an ongoing series entitled Plays Around, a kind of “open workshop in which the company performs a ser­ies of staged read­ings, mon­o­logues, drama and im­prov­is­ation. Generally held at the company’s theatre, Plays Around takes place on Fridays at 17:00SLT, and members of the public are invited to come along and watch.

Coinciding wit the release of The Drax Files World Makers on Friday, November 21st, the ART company is hosting a special Plays Around event, Shakespeare By Request, which you can read about here.

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Transcending Borders: the Grand Finale and L$115,000 audience participation prizes reminder

Posted on by Inara Pey
The UWA-BOSL Ampitheatre
The UWA-BOSL Grand Amphitheatre

The Grand Finale of the University of Western Australia’s Transcending Borders 3D art and machinima challenge will take place on Sunday, December 14th, 2014 – and you can be a part of the audience.

The event will be held at the UWA-BOSL Grand Amphitheatre, starting at 06:00 SLT on Sunday, December 14th, when the winners, as determined by the judges, in both the 3D art and the machinima categories will be announced, and where all 39 machinima entries will be shown continuously in the 24 hours leading up to the event.

The challenge presented by Transcending Borders has been for entrants to interpret the title of the competition in any fashion they deem applicable, and produce a 3D artwork (in no more than 150 prims) or short film based on their interpretation. So the title might be seen as transcending borders between space and time, or the past and present or the present and future; it might be interpreted as divisions between dimensions, real and virtual; or borders separating nations or cultures or languages; it might even combine several of or all such idea, or something else entirely – such as the many borders we encounter as we navigate our physical and virtual lives.

by Giovanna Cercise
Saudade by Giovanna Cercise

And there is a total prize pool of L$115,000 (L$57,500 in each of the two categories) on offer to those members of the audience who participate in a special additional competition.

All you have to do is visit the art exhibits on display at the UWA gallery area and / or watch the machinima entries and then submit a list of the entries you think will finish in the TOP 10 in order 1st – 10th as decided by the official judging panel.

  • Entries should be submitted by e-mail to  jayjayaustralia-at-hotmail.com or via note card submitted to Jayjay Zifanwe in-world
  • All entries should include your name, and be titled either “Transcending Borders 3D Art Audience Event” or “MachinimUWA VII Audience Event”, according to the category being entered
  • You can enter the art participation event or the machinima participation event or both (make sure you submit one “top ten” list for each category in the case of the latter).

The 5 participants in each category whose list comes closest to the final order decided by the judging panel, will win for themselves between L$20,000 – L$5,000. In addition, the first prize winner will also be invited to be on the panel for the next grand art challenge and ALL 5 will receive in the mail a special RL pack.

Simply follow the links above or at the end of this article to view the art entries and watch the films. Entries for both of the audience participation events should be received no later than Midnight SLT on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014.

Remember, this is not a popularity vote. Your top 10 entry / entries should be your prediction of who the actual top 10 will be according to the official judging panel. Good luck to all those who enter – and I’ll see you at the Grand Finale event!

Inside the UWA-BOSL Ampitheatre
Inside the UWA-BOSL Ampitheatre

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Note: the art image included in this item should not be taken as any indication of my personal preference as a member of the  Transcending Borders jury. It is included purely for the purposes of illustrating the article.

Do not leave me: the emotional power of art and lyrics

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas

I received an invitation to preview Canary Beck’s new exhibit which opens to the public on Thursday, November 20th in the attic gallery space at the Arts & Culture Community (A&CC) on Wanderstill Ode (when you arrive, go into the gallery and climb the stairs all the way to the top).

This is a highly personal display of 20 self-portraits married to lyrics from Jacques Brel’s 1959 classic Ne Me Quitte Pas (Do Not Leave Me), a song many may more readily recognise under the title If You Go Away, with (alternative) English lyrics by Rod McKuen (and which, while powerful, doesn’t measure up to the raw emotional content of the original).

Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas

The best way to describe the display is to use Becky’s own words:

I have aimed to express what I am only now able to express coherently in words. I’ve even lifted the titles for the pictures from the verses of Jacques Brel’s plaintive poetry set to music, feeling unable to write them myself.

These very personal pictures are the result of two months of taking hundreds of similar pictures on my bare white platform – most of which I obliterated soon after I took them. I never planned to share them. As I’ve reviewed these works for showing; however, I see them now like heavy pages in an old diary; a shabby book that reflects a threadbare me, depleted by gravity and, I hope, now hardly recognisable.

Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas

Even without the use of lyrics from the song, the pictures arranged around the walls of the gallery’s loft carry a powerful story. One doesn’t need to read the artist’s notes to understand the depth of loss and grieving represented in each picture. Yes, they are nude studies, but this also adds to their emotive strength; this is not the nudity of sensual posing for the camera – it is the nudity reflective of vulnerability, of being exposed to the world, defenceless, lost.

When taken with their titles, as drawn from Brel’s lyrics, each image becomes more emotionally intimate, drawing us into the artist’s thoughts and feelings: Je t’offrirai des perles de pluie – I will offer you pearls of rain; Je ne veux plus pleurer – I will cry no more; Laisse-moi devenir
L’ombre de ton ombre – Let me be for you the shadow of your shadow. All offer an emotionally charged reflection on the lyrics, and the tumult evident in the artist’s thoughts when taking the original pictures.

For me, the fact that we cannot, in any of the images, see the Canary’s eyes brings further depth of feeling to each piece. Shadow hides them from view, yet in many, shadow traces what might be the flow of tears from them; black pearls of rain traced over pale flesh.

Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas

All told, a remarkable exhibit, and one I cannot recommend highly enough. As noted, Ne Me Quitte Pas opens on Thursday, November 20th, and will run through until Saturday, January 201th, 2015.

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A winter’s scene and art in the sky

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nordan om Jorden; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrNordan om Jorden (Flickr)

Fellow blogger Kate Bergdorf recently announced that following a winter make-over, she was opening her homestead region, Nordan om Jorden, to the public. Ever the one to explore pastures new, I hopped over to take a look.

The layout of the regions is deceptively simple, presenting a rural environment suggestive of a coastal farm in the midst of winter, snow heavy on the ground, trees pointing naked, gnarled branches towards the sky. A hardy, and late-growing crop sits within a field, offering a warm splash of yellow against the cold white of the snow, while a tractor sits on the edge of the field, the conditions on the ground not entirely conducive to harvesting the crop.

Nordan om Jorden; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrNordan om Jorden (Flickr)

Beyond the field, horses wander through the snow, hay bales offering them something to munch on, while a rutted track, the snow within it furrowed, leads the way around a tall rocky outcrop, a gap within in providing access to the far side of the land.

Here sits a beach house sitting back from a sandy beach not entirely lost to the encroaching snow. Lights hang from the boughs of trees and a panic bench offers a Thermos of something hot to drink from the hamper beside it. Inside the beach house is a place to sit and a warming fire for those feeling the pinch of the cold.

Nordan om Jorden; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrNordan om Jorden (Flickr)

As noted above, this is a deceptively simple design, which offers a number of little winter vignettes with the fenced crop, crows wheeling overhead, the tree-lined track, the horses wandering across the snow, and sheep penned by walls and fencing …  all present their own photo opportunities which at the same time coming together to paint a complete picture. For those who are feeling active, there are a couple of rezzers which will provide you with a sled on which you can ride across the snow, while the beach house offers a quiet place to sit and talk.

At the time of writing, one part of the region is closed to visitors. This is the southern part of the island, reached via a stone bridge. Called Floodwood, it is currently still being worked on (hence being closed) and I understand that Kate plans to offer rentals there for those looking for a place to live.

Nordan om Jorden; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrNordan om Jorden – BERG gallery (Flickr)

Another point of interest for visitors lies not on the ground, but up in the air over the region. This is Kate’s new art gallery – BERG. This is located in a cosy skybox offering an intimate space in which work by invited artists can be displayed. You’ll need to use the SLurl in the link above to reach the gallery (at least for now), as there is no direct TP from the ground. At the moment, examples of Kate’s own work are on display, but the plan is to feature artists on a three-month rotational basis. The gallery will likely focus on – but not necessarily be limited to – fine art photography, fashion photography, landscape photography, erotic photography and portrait photography.

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Art in a park – and it’s me (at least in part)!

Posted on by Inara Pey
Art In The Garden - Kirsten Smith
Art In The Garden – Kirsten Smith

OK… time for full disclosure. The following is a mini-review of a place I previewed earlier in the month, and which is now open to the public. I have a vested interest in re-visiting and covering it, as it features some of my work, in what amounts to my first gallery-style display with art for sale.

At the start of November, I wrote about the redevelopment of Holly Kai Park, a public space on the region of Holly Kai, to the north of Blake Sea. As I noted at the time, the new and expanded park offers a lot of amenities to visitors: one hour quayside rezzing time (so you can leave your boat safely moored while exploring), a beach area, parkland, trails to wander, an events space, and places to sit and rest.

Art In The Garden - Kirsten Smith - Marga
Art In The Garden – Marga

The Park is also the home for a new gallery space – Art In The Garden, and I’ve had the honour of being invited to participate in the inaugural exhibition, which had yet to go on display when I first visited the park to write my preview about it0.

Artwork by Yany O’Real, Kirsten Smith, Em Larsson, Elvira Kytori, Marga, Mirabelle Sweetwater, RickerR, Io Bechir, Carelyna, Madi Fray, and Bambi Foxdale is on display throughout the park, together with efforts by yours truly. Taken together, it offers variety of themes and styles, ranging from photography through painting to pen-and-ink, featuring landscapes, portraits, wildlife, and a touch of abstract.

Art In The Garden - Yany O'Real
Art In The Garden – Yany O’Real

Pieces are displayed so that they encourage visitors to explore the park, following the various paths and trails, with each artist being displayed in a specific location, almost like individual display spaces within a gallery. While all of the art can be seen whether you start from either the west or east side moorings, I’d recommend starting on the east side of the park (if there is space to moor there, should you come by boat), and then follow the route as indicated on the maps there.

If you’re looking for art for your home, all of the pieces on display are available for sale, and I believe all are modify, and so can be resized, offering flexibility of placement. There is also an Art In The Garden group, with free enrolment, you can join to keep abreast of events and activities related to the gallery.

Art In The Garden - Yep, and yours truly ...
Art In The Garden – Yep, and yours truly …

If you’re looking for a new gallery to enjoy, Art In The Park may well offer you exactly what you’re seeking, complete with the opportunity to meet with friends, chill out under the park awnings and even, should you have one available, rezz a boat and take a trip around the local islands.

I admit to feeling very privileged at being included in the gallery’s first exhibition, the pieces on display from the other artists are of an amazing standard (and I’ve quite fallen for Yany O’Real’s sea and sailing paintings). My efforts aside, a great place to visit.

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Imagination’s golden autumn

Posted on by Inara Pey

Autumn [Imagination], Intouchable; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrAutumn [Imagination], Intouchable (Flickr)

A year ago, I was drawn to ARNICAR India’s beautiful region, Imagination. Back then I described it as “a perfect haven for those wanting to escape the trials of the world or who are looking for a place to soothe their tired minds. Predominantly water, the region has a number of small islands scattered across it and, in one case, floating over it.”

Now called Autumn [Imagination]  and having been relocated to Intouchable, the region offers an autumn-themed design which sees a subtle shift in presentation whilst retaining all of the beauty and tranquillity I discovered there in 2013, with much that remains familiar within the changes made.

Autumn [Imagination], Intouchable; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrAutumn [Imagination], Intouchable (Flickr)

Water still forms the predominant feature, hence one reason for my continued attraction, and if anything is far more prevalent. The landmark will deliver you close to the middle of Imagination, where a familiar large fob watch sits with a broken face and gears hanging out of one side of the case, a reminder that while here, time holds little importance. Three tree-lined paths form a Y around the landing point, presenting the visitor with a choice on their arrival. Which one you take – if any – matters not; all three will lead to discovery and delight as you explore.

Walking beneath the golden arches of each is worth the time, as each path has its own character and contains small motifs from earlier designs for the region, giving those who have visited before a pleasant feeling of familiarity and comfort. Keep your eyes peeled as you walk, as there are some wonderful little touches and details that are oh-so-easy to otherwise miss.

Autumn [Imagination], Intouchable; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrAutumn [Imagination], Intouchable (Flickr)

A small island lies a short distance through the ankle-deep water from the paths. Here children play, Wendys and Lost Boys in the long grass, their laughter sprinkling the air as the chase one another or fly kites. Nestled against the rocks of the island is a tented boat – perhaps their home; certainly a place for visitors to sit and forget their worries.

Another island floats serenely at the end of one of the paths, the waters of the open sea washing against the rocks of a breakwater beneath it. You’ll have to fly up to the little house atop the island (or at least I didn’t find a teleport). If you do you’ll discover a lovely collection of bonsai trees and more places to sit and snuggle, or to dance. Platforms scattered around the island – on the water and in the trees – offer similar retreats from the worries of life, or places to share with friends.

Autumn [Imagination], Intouchable; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrAutumn [Imagination], Intouchable (Flickr)

For those who prefer not to walk, rideable horses wander through the region, simply right-click on one to mount it and you can set off on your wanderings. One thing I would recommend is that you try keeping to ARNICAR’s chosen windlight for the design (seen in all the images here); the dark skies, rippled by the odd wave of cloud and with the sun dipping towards the horizon perfectly complements the rippled waters below whilst also brighting the golden colours of the trees to the fore.

The description for Autumn [Imagination] is a quote from George Bernard Shaw: Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. It’s perfectly apt for this place, imagination brought it into being, and it is turn stirs the imagination as you explore.

Autumn [Imagination], Intouchable; Inara Pey, November 2014, on FlickrAutumn [Imagination], Intouchable (Flickr)

Do keep an eye out for the hippos! 🙂

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