Open through until the end of March 2016 is Retrospective: Barry Richez, an expansive exhibit reflecting the vast catalogue of work by this expressive artist, who works in both 2D and 3D.
Barry opens his introduction to the exhibit with the words, “Welcome to my Universe,” and thus we are thrust into an environment with a distinctly science-fiction edge to it, in which he has framed his work for visitors to appreciate.
This is actually a journey through three “universes” of art, undertaken via teleport, with the artist recommending visitors proceed through each in teleport order from the arrival point (teleport 01), with station 02 – 11 taking visitors through the Centaurus galaxy, stations 12 – 14 through the Tourbillon galaxy, and 15 – 20 though the Sombrero galaxy.
Station 19 is worth an additional note, as it offers a special exhibition of art by Barry’s partner Lou Robinson, in what I believe is her first public exhibition. The remaining stations are also split into two groups, with 21 through 25 presenting “relaxation places” with Tai Chi, meditation, and dancing, while 26 – 28 teleport visitors to additional poseball spaces in each of the three galaxies, where they can simply float around, meditate or observe.
For maximum impact, visitors should set their viewer to midnight and make sure particles are enabled. I’d also recommend Barry’s suggestion of running through the teleport stations in numerical order as far as station 20, and then perhaps taking more of a random look around.
The sculptures on display tend to be one per level, and some offer opportunities for interaction. The 2D art is displayed in a more gallery-like form, and everything is presented against a galactic backdrop of turning stars, the spaces filled with planets, space ships and space stations (some of which can also be explored at which may contain little treats of their own) alongside of the art.
This is a fascinating trip through the art and mind of the artist; the items on display a veritable kaleidoscope, but in terms of the use of colour and the narrative in the pieces on display, some of which share a gentle humour with the visitor, while others challenge our thinking. The inclusion of Lou Robinson’s art adds a further touch to the exhibition, and has certainly left me hoping we’ll be seeing more of her work in the future; Her fractal images are captivating.
Wrecks, which opened on Monday, March 7th, is the concluding element of a two-part immersive art installation created by Gem Preiz, the master of the high-resolution fractal landscape. It’s a piece, together with the initial part of the installation, Vestiges (which you can read about here), is presented under the over-arching title of Heritage.
“Heritage is the theme of the two exhibitions,” Gem explains of the pieces. “The heritage passed to us by our predecessors, and the one we shall bequeath to our descendants in the endless fight of life against Time.”
Vestiges, which opened in January, examined the first part of this statement: looking at the heritage passed down through the ages. We were cast into the role of archaeologists examining past (or perhaps even alien) civilisations; those which had come before us, as who influenced our existence. With Wrecks, Gem poses a question to us: what are we going to bequeath to those generations that follow us?
The inspiration for Wrecks comes from the recent global summit on the threat of climate change held in Paris at the start of 2016, and what will happen if we continue to ignore the warnings nature is giving us as to the consequences of our continued abuse of the planet’s ecosystem, presenting one possible future our descendants might face.
Thus we are taken on a journey into the 22nd century, and a vision of a world which has come to ruin directly as a result of our failure to act responsibly. We become a part of the crew and passengers aboard what is perhaps the last vessel capable of leaving Earth in the hope of finding a new home far out within the Kuiper Belt.
This voyage takes the form of a physical journey through 15 rooms, each one with one of Gem’s magnificent fractal pieces standing together with a journal entry. Some of the latter appear to be from passengers, other are clearly from the crew. All make soulful reading: personal fears, anguish, melancholy, even despair, at all that has come to pass, founded on a lament for an Earth thoroughly ruined by the hubris and folly of humanity.
What if, as one entry hints, as the space vessel Orpheus transit the Moon, we had heeded the gentle warnings of the first astronauts to stand on those desolate plains, only to look back at Earth and recognise it as a fragile, precious jewel of life suspended in a coal-black sky?
Meanwhile, the images serve to both underline and also counterpoint the essence of the text. While the landscapes and scenes presented may appear desolate and shattered, so to do they remind us that humanity and nature are powerfully creative forces: what might come from us combining our inane abilities with those of nature, rather than simply putting our needs before those of nature?
If this sounds an overly dark piece, rest assured it isn’t. Rather it is a layered, nuanced piece which aims to get us thinking about matter of ecology, climate change, and our relationship to this one cradle of life we have: Earth. Yes, there is the warning that if we don’t mend our ways, if we fail to act responsibly towards this fragile environment surrounding us, then we are ushering in the potential of ruin and heartache for future generations.
But so to is there a message of hope; a reminder that it is not yet too late. Just as the crew of the Orpheus, in the final chapter of their voyage, find the means to return to Earth, to reunite with those left behind and offer a way to recover and restore the planet, so to are we reminded that there is still time. We can still take the firm, committed step of ceasing our self-centred denials, excuses and procrastinations and decide we will act more responsibility towards this planet, and in doing so lay the foundations by which we can bequeath a rich, vibrant and healthy world to our children and those who follow them. All it takes is a little collective courage.
Officially opening its doors on Saturday, February 27th,but available to visit now, is Funky Junk, a collaborative environment t between Carmsie Melodie, FreeWee Ling, ElizabethWallington Resident and Dusty Canning at LEA 22.
Described as “a whimsical, post apocalyptic mini-world where trash, waste, bent and broken stuff are truly treasured. Everything at Funky Junk is made of, or contains, remnant ‘artyfacts’ from the human species that once lived there,” Funky Junk presents a strange environment wherein the stranger creatures have come up with some ingenious methods of farming and manufacturing goods based on the civilisation which preceded them. They also have some decidedly questionable approaches to construction, as visitors will note when touring!
As might be guessed from the description, this is a place where humour very much plays a role in things; it’s also a place where touch and listen is very much the order of the day, as interactive elements are to be found everywhere. The humour can be found at various locations, such as in the toilet paper orchard, where trees blossom with loo rolls, nurtured by grey water obtained by recycling used loo rolls, or in the garden centre, where efforts to grow household plants seem to have been strongly influenced by The Little Shop of Horrors.
This is also a place with a bewildering number of points of interest, So much so that the local blogger, Rusty Steele, keeper of the records at Funky Junk, hit upon the idea of producing a map to help visitors find their way around. Copies of this can also be obtained from the billboard not far from the tunnel arrivals must walk through from the landing point.
Funky Junk will be hosting events and entertainment throughout its run, including weekly dances (Wednesdays and Saturdays) at the club located atop a high rocky plateau towards the middle of the installation. There will also be light shows, sim tours, and hunts. Right now, the creative team are seeking performers, DJs; if you’re interested, you can apply via the website.
All told, this is a curious installation; quirky, with a lopsided charm about it, supported by a light-hearted website / blog. If you’re interested in joining in with events held there after the official opening, keep an eye on the Funky Junk events page.
The City is a sprawling 4-region build designed by Betty Tureaud at the LEA. It is a place which at first might seem a little baffling to the casual visitor and those familiar with Betty’s work, which is generally hallmarked by the use of bright, usually shifting, colours and interactive elements.
Here, however, one arrives on a vast desert plain, vast and flat, with only a poem by Betty, delivered via note card, and a whispered instruction to follow the footprints for guidance. Do as the latter instructs, and you’ll come (by way of a skeleton, which has a story of its own to tell when touched) to a DC3 belonging to Adventure Airlines. This will, by the magic of teleporting, carry you away from the desert and to the edge of a city, rising like Las Vegas from a flat plain, albeit this one covered by the first signs of Betty’s familiar vivid colours.
The City sits at the centre of the four regions, surrounded by the multi hued flat plain. To see this at its best, you will at least need to run your viewer with Advanced Lighting Model (ALM – Preferences > Graphics) enabled. This shouldn’t place too much of a performance load on older / less powerful systems, and it is necessary to have on in order to appreciate The City fully, with colours washing over the tall buildings and across the airships flying overhead.
Some of the buildings in The City may have various degrees of familiarity about them. The western edge is dominated by the instantly recognisable form of La Grande Arche de la Fraternité, located in the La Défense business district of Paris. Amidst the taller buildings one can also find New York’s Empire State Building, Toronto’s CNN Tower, Malmö’s Turning (or Twisting) Tower, Tapei 101, the tallest environmentally green building in the world and London’s Swiss Re building (often referred to as “the Gherkin” due to its distinctive shape), whilst the Guggenheim Museum, Copenhagen’s Opera House and more and be found as one wanders the streets (do beware of the trains!).
The building can all be touched, offering links to their respective Wikipedia pages in return. The CNN Tower also provides an elevator ride to it top. Other interactive elements can also be found as one tours – a football can be kicked around a stadium, seats in the parks can be sat on, and pink boxes scattered around the edge of The City offer a neat helicar designed by Betty which can be piloted and carry up to two people. As you travel back and forth between the regions straddled by the build, so to does the time of day change, allowing you to see it under different lighting conditions.
The City is very much an interactive installation, touching and clicking and having local sounds fully enabled is very much required when exploring. It offers an interesting way of discovering more about modern architecture and some of the world’s most famous buildings.
Dox Quixote – Words and Images opens Seanchai Library’s Crazy Eights series at LEA 9, 13:30 SLT, Sunday, January 31st, 2016
Opening on Sunday, January 31st is the latest chapter of Seanchai Library’s distinguished history of bring stories and literature to life in virtual worlds through the spoken word. Running through to May 31st, Crazy Eights is a full region installation located at LEA 9, where the Library will be presenting and hosting a range of special story telling events and readings from the world of literature.
The region has been beautifully landscaped by Caledonia Skytower with the support of Shandon Loring, to present a series of event areas, all distinct from one another but linked together and to the landing point by the Story Forest, where visitors walk between tall trees on a path apparently paved in the covers of books, and can discover more about stories, folk tales and more, as they stop at any of the 20 Story Stations lining the paths through the woods.
Crazy Eights: walk through the Story Forest to visit the themed areas of the region, stopping at the Story Stations as you go
The “eight” of the title Crazy Eights, refers to this being Seanchai Library’s eighth year of operation. It was founded in 2008 by Derry McMahon, a Master of Library Sciences in the physical world, after she toured Second Life’s existing libraries and found that while many were inspiring builds, most were empty and seemingly little used.
Derry realised that with all the rich immersive opportunities available in-world, people were unlikely to log-in simply to sit down and read a story or poem or extract from a novel on a note card or from a web page; reading simply doesn’t require a virtual space. It was from this realisation that she established Seanchai Library (“seanchai” – pronounced shawn-a-kee – being is a traditional Irish storyteller/historian): a place where people could come together and read and listen to stories from around the globe and covering all possible genres, giving literature in-world a voice.
Initially, Seanchai Library focused on gatherings which allowed this to happen, establishing a convivial atmosphere in which tales could be shared. But such is the nature of Second Life that it became obvious that more could be done to present literature as a living statement of the arts. Thus, Seanchai gave birth to Storyfests (now folded back into Seanchai’s core activities), which allowed staff and volunteers to organise special literary events, such as their Bard on the Beach and Halloween inspired Boofest series, without detracting from the Library’s core aim of brining stories of every kind to life.
Crazy Eights allows visitors to immerse themselves in both literature and traditional verbal story telling as an art form, and discover more about Seanchai Library itself. The Featured Book Area, for example, will be used to present a book a month through February to the end of May, using a 360-degree setting. The series launches on Thursday, February 4th at 19:00 SLT, when Shandon Loring, Seanchai’s Chief Storyteller, presents On The Island by Tracey Garvis Graves in a suitably tropical setting (see the image above).
Crazy Eights: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson feature large, through Seanchai Library’s popular Tea Time at Baker Street sessions every Sunday at 13:30 SLT from February through until the end of May, complete with the opportunity to learn more about those who have played the leading roles in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories on stage, film, radio, and television down the years
Crazy Eights also present the opportunity for visitors to attend one of the Library’s most popular series of readings: Tea Time at Baker Street. Here, in a setting inspired set of the ITV Granada (UK) television series The Return of Sherlock Holmes, visitors can enter 221B Baker Street every Sunday and hear of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson. The first story, selected from the series will be The Adventure of the Empty House, the first story in the volume The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, at 13:30 SLT on Sunday February 7th.
Southward from here lies the Library Island, home to the Information Centre. Here visitors can discover more about weekly events at the Library’s headquarters at Bradley University, and about major productions such as Explore the Great Gatsby. Just a stone’s throw from this is the Storyteller’s Workshop, will hosts the first session on Saturday, February 13th, at 13:00.
Crazy Eights: the lounge at 221B Baker Street stands ready to receive guests
Crazy Eights officially opens, however at the East Meadow, an area devoted to stories based on or inspired by art displays mounted in the meadow.
Here, on Sunday, January 31st, at 13:30 SLT, Derry McMahon and Bear Silvershade will present Don Quixote – Words and Images, where guests are invited to sit beneath a windmill and listen to the story of Miguel de Cervantes’s Gentleman of La Mancha. On display around the meadow are pictures by Derry inspired by Don Quixote’s adventures, which are simply superb (and which I had the good fortune to review in 2014, when some formed a part of that year’s Fine Arts Tour).
Crazy Eights: the Story Forest path includes 20 story stations to be discovered by visitors
If you’re already familiar with Seanchai Library’s activities in-world, then you are going to enjoy exploring and spending time at Crazy Eights. If you’ve never attended an event or session by Seanchai Library, then Crazy Eights offers the perfect introduction to a group and their activities in Second Life and virtual worlds, as they keep alive the great tradition of story telling in voice.
Maya Paris is a colourful, inventive and imaginative Second Life artist with a wonderfully wacky wit and knowing glint in her eye – as anyone who has visited the likes of Celebrity Blow Your Own Tits off, or Sauce will know only too well.
Now, at the invitation of Eupalinos Ugajin, she’s brought back a celebrated favourite creation: Le Cactus, and it is every bit as wild and as wacky as ever, offering news delights for those who have not previously paid it a visit, while those who do remember it can revisit an old favourite for a fresh dollop of fun presented in a way that only Maya can master.
“[It’s] a celebration of the extraordinary talents of cultural trailblazer Josephine Baker, queen of the trumpet Valaida Snow, the lampshade-hatted dancers of the Casino de Paris and the offbeat irony of Jacques Dutronc,” Maya says of the installation, located high above LEA21. “Throw a banana on your head, dance on a cactus and tickle a tentacle. Everything’s interactive, so click away!”
And everything is interactive. At the landing point there are seven vinyl records, each of which will give you a costume to don; beneath them sits a box offering a HUD and the helpfully entitled “Le Cactus: What to do here” note card.
The outfits are as imaginative and a colourful as the setting (which has a delightful Art Deco look and feel to it), and you can wear them with your avatar either completely masked, or with body clothed and visible. I went for fully hidden for most of the outfits, but showed myself whilst wearing the Valaida and Josephine outfits (see right, flapping away).
The HUD provides links to YouTube and short films about both women and a playback of Jacques Dutronc singing Les Cactus.
From here it’s off down the stairs to click, dance, spin, swap outfits – all to the early jazz of Radio Dismuke, if you have the audio stream on (and you should). Then, when you’ve had enough, drop into one of the bar-side sofas, or claim your drinks and refresh yourself.
Like any bar, the atmosphere at Le Cactus increases in leaps and bounds the more there are enjoying the place, so grab your friends, mash-up the outfits, stick and banana on your head and have fun.
When you’ve done with your visit to Le Cactus, don’t forget to drop-in at group level, where other things will be going on. Eupa revealed a little of Life on Jupiter to me, which is currently under construction and promises to be every bit as offbeat as le Cactus, and joined me at the bar for a time, suitably attired for dancing, but opting to wear a model of Skylab as floating headgear, rather than the suggested banana.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 