Tag: LEA Reviews

Open now at LEA 9, and running through until Sunday, April 26th, is a new BubbleTheatre® play by d-oo-b (Eifachfilm Vacirca). It’s a delight to see. Shows commence every 5 minutes throughout the day, and last for around minutes.

PimperPuppets®: Being Beautiful in the Art Scene runs for about 20 minutes and, as the title suggests, is a piece of puppet theatre, beautifully executed with the help of some tidy scripting. The puppets are avatar-sized creations, and the story unfolds across a series of skyborne sets the audience is carried to by means of automatic teleporting, with cameras specifically placed to follow the story.  To watch the show, simply sit in one of the numbered chairs set out at the landing point and tap ESC a couple of times to free-up your camera; a countdown will inform you when the show is due to start.

The story is a satirical take on the world of creatives, and I rather suspect that elements of it might ring uncomfortably true for some involved in SL if they see it! I won’t dwell on the plot too much, as it is fun to see it unfold. Suffice it to say it takes place in the art world, where one artist, offered the opportunity to provide the focal art piece in an upcoming show, struggles mightily with his art (and his angst), such is his need to impress, to create pieces that “give
new dynamics” to the places where they are displayed; meanwhile, another artist finds her work isn’t regarding as needed for the exhibition, and as she considers the first at best over-rated, sets to work on a Machiavellian plan to ensure her art is selected…

It’s a story that is beautifully told, both rich in humour and also darkly prickly in places. Both artists central to the unfolding tale (although not the only characters, the cast is quite broad) are equally pompous when it comes to their own work.

For example, In one delightful scene, the “disregarded” artist – Lucia – sets about describing her work in a manner befitting Arthur Dent when asked to describe his thoughts on Vogon poetry: “It was a physolactic entrocalypse of the etheric dimension … an animophobic introclecstate of profane dialectics, a submorphic frame that stimulates subcutane erections that induce in the cervocularic consciousness a feeling of reanimation.” Later, as the play draws to a close, the other artist, Serge, reaches his point of enlightenment via a soliloquy worthy of Hamlet, one delivered under the an arch formed by two curved knives which themselves carry a strong symbolic undertone…

The puppets, created via a combination of Blender, GIMP and the magic of SL scripting are marvellous creations in and of themselves; they move as required within the individual scenes, and their movement, combined with camera  shifts within some of the scenes helps draw the audience further into the play. They’re also available to buy on the Marketplace.

The end of the show will carry you up to an events area, where you may well encounter d-oo-b himself, along with the cast. Live entertainments are scheduled to take place here throughout the show’s run; please see the d-oo-b’s blog for events and times. Should you wish to re-trace your steps through the story, or re-visit individual scenes for the purposes of photography, do note there’s a manual teleport system available as well. Look for the teleport tablet on each level.

As noted, this is an excellent little show, perfectly executed and making clever use of a number of SL capabilities – scripted camera control, teleporting, etc., and all without Experience Tools. I have no hesitation in recommending it for a visit, particularly if you are familiar with the art / creative scene (there are a few of what might be regarded as “inside jokes”) – but do remember, the show ends on Sunday, April 26th.

Related Links

• PimperPuppets®SLurl (Rated: Moderate)
• d-oo-b’s website

Officially opening at 13:00 SLT  on Thursday, March 26th at the LEA, is Haveit Neox’s newest full region installation, City Inside Out.  It’s a breath-taking and, at first look, bewildering build, huge in size, confusing in complexity and powerful in narrative.

The simplest way to describe the theme of the installation is to take the description from About Land:

Walking into any interior reveals only exteriors. The sense of personal space is absent. How is a city experienced when there are no comforts for the soul, no home?

The description of the build, found close to the landing point adds a little more detail:

To someone without a home living on the streets, the bustling city becomes one united exterior. “City Inside Out”, explores a world that lacks interiors. Some pedestrians throw coins into the beggars’ hats, others bark insults to their faces. Joggers, dog walkers, groups of boisterous friends, clean people in new clothes, romantic couples, cell phone conversations, shiny traffic, wash their daily tides of health and prosperity past the homeless.

And thus the world around us starts to take shape: this is a city we’re asked to see through the eyes of the homeless, the dispossessed; those who have nowhere to be, nowhere to go. For these people, the city is a very different place to the one we know. It’s a place where everything is strange, alien, and threatening. A place bad enough in daylight, but as Haveit further explains, becomes much, much worse at night…

Late each night, the people living on the streets are confronted by another kind of crowd, dangerous as the sharp knife and gun. They are defenceless, even within their own bodies. Sensations abound, prickly as lice and poisonous insect infested clothing, blurry as sight without glasses, with ringing ears of imaginary voices, and resignation to untreated illness. The survival test is administered without consideration for those who will see the next day.

Armed with this narrative, it is possible to make your way down and through the installation, crossing bridges, descending ladders and – in places – flying – and see various elements and aspects as they are meant to be seen: as a frightened, forgotten nameless … lurker … in a city were “ordinary” life passes one either side of you and renders you invisible. A place where, when you are noticed, it can feel terrifying or threatening.

Witness, for example,  the portrayal of the man taking his dog(s) for a walk; is it really a pack of hounds he’s struggling to control, is is that home the mind of the lost, homeless individual conceives it, when in fact to the rest of us, it is simply one man and his dog? And, nearby, look how the figure dropping small change down towards you literally towers over you, massive hand outstretched, face a mask…

Then there are the horrors of the night and of living and sleeping rough, portrayed in nightmare images of bottles and guns and more with insectoid legs climbing towards you, or seemingly skittering around or even looming over you; parasitical, ready to suck the life from you.

If all this sounds dark, it’s not; there is a magnificence about this build that is enthralling – and such is its size, I doubt a single visit will suffice to appreciate it all. Time is needed to explore the various levels, the heights and depths and to appreciate all the imagery and metaphor that is layered throughout this amazing city. And do be prepared to play with your camera position and rotation; this is a city where gravity knows no constant in places.

From high in the air to below the water, City Inside Out is an incredible build from an incredible architect of cities of the mind. Not to be missed.

Related Links

• City Inside Out SLurl (Rated: Moderate)

Currently open to explore, although the official opening doesn’t take place until Sunday, March 15th, is The Paradise of CyberPolis, by Asmita Duranjaya and Sable (snakeappletree) at LEA 12. It is billed as a “a grey-scaled story and game-based art installation”, and comes with a narrative storyline visitors are asked to follow whilst exploring the installation, solving clues, with the explanatory notes reading:

Crash-landing on an urban planetary system …

A researcher is slowly awaking from unconsciousness, starting to explore the environment of an ancient, abandoned cyber-city and to solve its mysteries. Seven letters need be found to experience the last surprising solution.

The starting point is the researcher’s crashed aircraft, complete with unconscious space-suited researcher. A HUD is also offered, and you’ll need this in order to unlock (literally) the mysteries and make your way to the surprising solution.

The HUD actually takes the form of a journal (available in English or German), written by the researcher, describing their initial examinations of this world and the discoveries made. Your task is to follow the clues in the book, re-trace the researcher’s  footsteps and learn all that they have learned, and in the process find the seven letters mentioned in the introduction. Four of these will be required to unlock the gates of the cyber-city proper (your initial investigations taking place outside of the city’s core), while all seven are needed to unlock the final secret.

Along the way you’ll encounter a curious environment with mixed influences from the worlds anime, cyberpunk and dystopian sci-fi, in a story with something of a spiritual slant. Most of the landscape is a muted greys and whites, but there are splashes of colour scattered throughout, which form visual cues to places you might want to investigate more closely.

As a game, the idea almost works; you read the book, you riddle the clues, you uncover the required letters. But there is a problem. Of the seven letters to be discovered, only three actually require you investigate the city due to them requiring direct interaction with in-world objects to properly identify the letters in question; the other four can be discovered just by reading the book. Thus, it is possible for some of the visual context of the story to be lost as one simply reads ahead, identifies the letters and goes directly to things like opening the gates of the inner city; and sad to say, I’m not sure that much would be lost from the experience in doing so.

The build itself, while interesting to explore, bears a strong resonance to the NeoCyberCity both artists recently built at Asmita’s own Space4Art / Port Lyndus region (indeed, the two builds appear to share many common elements). As such, it’s actually quite hard to determine why there was a need to utilise an LEA region to produce this particular piece, rather than incorporate it into a pre-existing and similarly themed environment already operating.

Related Links

• The Paradise of CyberPolis SLurl (Rated: Moderate)

FreeWee Ling is perhaps best known for her tireless work on behalf of the University of Western Australia (UWA), and co-organiser and curator of the UWA’s art-related projects, activities and galleries within Second Life. She recently – and rightly – gained recognition from the Australian Department of Education for this work when she was awarded her an Endeavour Fellowship at the end of 2014. This has allowed her to travel from her home in the eastern United States to spend four months at the UWA in Perth, Australia, where she is based with the UWA’s Department of Physics.

In conjunction with her time at the UWA in the physical world, FreeWee has been granted the use of a LEA Artist in Residence region, where she has established FreeWee’s Laboratory v.8.0: Music, Myth, Magic, Light, Shadows, Physics, a unique combination of workshop, study space, laboratory and gallery focused on helping her demonstrate the potential of virtual worlds to students at the UWA.

When you arrive in the region, it may look somewhat chaotic and perhaps even feel half-finished. Don’t let this put you off; this is a workshop / lab, and what is on offer more than makes up for chaotic the appearance. Keep in mind as well, that elements within the installation may change over time in order to meet FreeWee’s evolving needs as a part of her work at the UWA.

As FreeWee is working with the Department of Physics at the UWA, many of the items within the region explore the nature of physics in Second Life, be it through movement, light or colour.  Just up the ramp from the landing point, for example, is her award winning nanoprim physics lab from 2010, together with a rocket that will take you up to her Solar Observatory, which I’ll have more to say about anon.

FreeWee is a musicologist by education, with a specialist interest in the history, use and physics of music. Together with fellow musicologist Oriscus Zauberflote, she formed the Kithara Associates, which is focused on the creation of musical instruments in SL that are reasonably authentic in appearance, in order to enhance the immersive experience of the platform for the purpose of learning and research, and this work is also present within the installation, in the form of the Theatrum Instrumentorum.

This is, in essence, a museum of musical instruments featuring photographs and information boards of the instruments in the physical world, and samples of instruments built in-world, some of which extend to the creation of hybrid / fictional instruments depicted in works of art. Several of the pieces are playable, and I particularly enjoyed using the carillon to play a melody I’d had to learn many, many moons ago when starting to learn to play the piano. Also on offer within the Theatrum is a teleport up to Swingtones, a demonstration of the effectiveness of sound in helping to create an ambient, immersive environment.

The Solar Observatory mentioned earlier, and which can be reached by rocket, is spread over two levels. The lower level presents visitors with both an introduction to elements of solar and stellar astronomy and also provides insight into the peculiarities of the SL “solar system” and day / night cycle, with interactive demonstrations throughout, as well as well-written information cards and links to external sources.

The upper level, reached by elevator, offers the chance to study the Sun first hand, complete with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), sun spots and the flow of the solar wind. The elevator is guarded with a firm caution about the risks of blindness and exposure to gamma radiation should you opt to take the elevator, but both both sun screen (SPF 1000) and sunglasses are thoughtfully provided to mitigate the effects of both 🙂 . At the top of the elevator is a platform allowing you to view the Sun Sunshine-like, or if you’re feeling particularly daring, you can rez a chameleon flyer and fly yourself around the Sun. However, if you opt to do the latter, do try to keep in mind the story of Icarus, and what happened when he flew a tad too close to the Sun …

Elsewhere in the region you can find a novel “get away from it all” rezzer system, interactive art pieces, a gallery of FreeWee’s own art and, in what is another superb demonstration of SL’s capabilities in the Projection Room (a large white building on the east side of the region.

This focuses on the use of projected lights in Second Life. As such, you will need to have the Advanced Lighting Model graphics option enabled on your viewer (you do not need to enable shadows, so any performance hit you may experience shouldn’t bee too great), and keep in mind that none of the figures in the room are actually textured. What you see as you move around and active the lighting sources is purely the result of using projected light sources and textures.

All told, the Laboratory makes for a fascinating installation, one in which it is easy to become absorbed in the individual elements on offer, allow of which are provided with informative note cards which not only provide insight into what they are and how they work, but often explore the creative processes involved in creating them, and provide a glimpse into FreeWee’s mind and thought processes, further enhancing the time one takes in exploring the installation.

Highly recommended.

Related Links

• FreeWee’s Laboratory v.8.0: Music, Myth, Magic, Light, Shadows, Physics SLurl (Rated: Moderate)