Chestnut Advises: Back away slowly

Amase, Zach and me on Art Screamer last night planning upcoming events.  We are tossing around some great ideas! My art partners and our work are the only things that are giving me SLjoy lately.

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The past week has been terrible.  In no particular order, here is my Saturday morning list of why I am glad the past week is over:

• People have breaks with reality, walk into movie theaters and kill
• People on the internet act like fucking idiots because we all want to find something to blame and seek comfort in our own ridiculous ways.
• We are transitioning to a new financial system at work. It is my job to understand the tech AND deal with every one's mental breakdowns when things don't work perfectly on day one.
• I am the mother to teenagers - this should be self explanatory.
• I was supposed to have a biopsy of a lump on my neck this week, which got pushed to next week because my doctor ran late in surgery and my situation is "not life threatening" which is all well and good but when your doctor uses the words "mass" "biopsy" and "possible surgery" in the same sentence you try being calm.  For weeks.

All of which is to say, if I have been bitchy I am sorry.  If I continue to be bitchy, well I am sorry about that as well.

Given the likelihood of me being perfectly honest because I have NO filter lately which can and does ruin friendships, please don't argue with me about the following - we have had these arguments before and there is no need to rehash.

• Linden Lab's right to my creative work
• Your right to give your creative work to whoever you want
• Whether or not Second Life is dying
• (Fill in the blank) virtual world is better/worse than Second Life
• The impact of the LEA on the SL Art Community
• Avatar identity
• Mesh and the deformer
• What viewer to use
• Gary Vaynerchuck 
• Copying, imitation and stealing creative ideas
• Your need to know my RL information
• Griefing as performance art
• Guns
• Any damn thing that you say that pisses me off.

I think we will be OK if we stay away from these topics, but honestly I make no promises.  If you see me it is probably best to back away slowly - at least until the biopsy results come back.

From Cheerleader to Wackadoodle in 5 Easy Steps

Yesterday I had a twitter conversation that started with someone wondering how Linden Lab picks the SL picture of the day and quickly turned to Creative Commons licenses and what exactly "perpetual" means when you give someone a license to your photographs. One of the people who's writing and photographs I admire most in SL, Whiskey Day, wrote about the exchange and I would recommend you read her post.

My gut instinct is to not post any of my photographs to the Second Life Official group on twitter because of the group terms which read:

Submit your Second Life images for a chance at Second Life Pic of the Day as well as share your Second Life images and photos with other Second Life communities.

By submitting your photos or other materials to our Flickr feed you acknowledge and agree to the following terms 

By submitting my photos or other materials to the Flickr feed of Linden Research, Inc. (the "Company") I agree to participate in the Photo of The Day program (the "Program"). As a participant of the Program I hereby grant a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to the Company to the images, snapshots, screenshots, photos and other materials I submit to the Program.

Further, I understand that I have no right to any royalties or other compensation in connection with the rights granted above and waive any and all claims based on any such rights.

I have read the above release and waiver and fully understand the content thereof. If you would like your photo(s) to be considered for use as a “Photo of the Day,” please select the "Attribution" or "Share Alike" license in Flickr menu then submit the photo to the Second Life Official Flickr feed.

 If you do not agree to the terms above, please do not submit your photos to our feed. 

Somehow granting a "perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license" to Linden Lab just does not sit right with me. Please understand all of my blog images and everything on flickr are under an Attribution, Noncommercial Creative Commons license so anyone can use my work. Clearly, I have no issue with sharing what I do.  It is fun to share and if someone wants to link to my blog or use my images that is fantastic.

So why do I have such a negative reaction to sharing my photos with Linden Lab?  It isn't because they are a  for profit company really.  There was a time not too long ago where the idea of my photo being the picture of the day would have tickled me to no end.  How did I go from being a Second Life cheerleader to a wackadoodle who would rather hide in the shadows than participate in anything LL does, no matter how worthwhile?

I would like to blame the long list of ways Linden Lab has broken trust with the various communities that make up Second Life.  I would also like to point to the people who love to demonize those of us who dare to criticize LL or anything Second Life related.  As Feline says we are not the customers the Lab wants .  At the same time I and others are no longer the neighbors and friends others want.   With all of that feeding into the mix its a wonder we log in at all anymore.

I can't help but think not being valued by the Lab and being blamed (in some cases quite personally) for everything from the death of SLCC to the way Second Life is seen broadly, has killed put a serious damper on my enthusiasm.

Yeah.  I am tired as hell of being blamed for things that are not my doing.

Reflections within Diversity by Glyph Graves

Most of Glyph Graves art is impossible to photograph. His art is visually mesmerizing in that it moves and changes color and interacts with you. It is music and sound and movement and almost always involves the real world as well as the virtual world.  A two dimensional image just can't even begin to tell the story and for that I apologize.  This is one exhibit you really must see in person.

This morning I was at UWA looking at the 3D Art Challenge entries when I came across Glyph's entry.  I was reading the notecard (below) when Glyph messaged me. It was kind of confusing because I thought the message was part of the art work! But, no it was just my artist friend wanting to talk about his fabulous new work. I was lucky to enjoy Reflections within Diversity with the artist and if you follow the links below you just might see him there.  I encourage you to go because it is mesmerizing, soothing and oh so cool.

From the notecard:

Reflections within Diversity  (A language painting)
with 3 connected parts, gallery painting, Main build and Driftglass sculpture in Sydney Australia.

At the gallery level  (teleport at this link)
You see a reflection of the main build (exact in all ways, when a prim moves in the main build  it moves in the small language painting, when a prim changes colour from one mapped language to another, the respective prim also changes colour)

The main build (take TP to 1002 meters) 

Here people across the earth speaking different languages can come, As they walk the platforms the prims near them picks up the language of the avatar (operation system or as set by them in the viewer) and changes to the colour unique to that language.
It also creates a soundscape / avatar symphony, each prim is a full instrument that maps the nearest avatar's rotation to a set of individual notes (see details below).  Its best to walk slowly and turn often.  For those who want to sit you can find the spiky prims and touch sit.  It will move and turn you slowly.

The physical world sculpture

This is also a reflection of the main build in SL and also changes in real time.  20 of the prims in the main build set out in a regular grid across the platform each of the 20 sends  the language induced colour change to their own rgb LED embedded withing the glass sculpture that currently resides in Sydney Australia. (see details below).

The physical world sculpture (RL) can be viewed in real time via the prim in the center and is orientated in the same way i.e. the top left prim sends its colour data to the top left rgb LED in the physical world sculpture.

Of course if the prims are all showing one language then you will need to invite a friend with a different language  :).

If you have an older viewer you can see the live cam stream of the sculpture at
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/reflections-within-diversity

Reflections within Diversity (detail)
This piece is many things. Its a dynamic language painting displaying a history of the languages of those who walked through it previously.

As you walk through you add your own language track, combining with those who have come before. (SL has a function for picking up a persons operation system or viewer language).
Its a physical world sculpture (currently in my living room) that is a reflection in real time, of the language painting, reflected from the virtual to the physical world in real time.  This is then streamed back live into SL via cam

Its also a musical piece, a set of instruments.

As you walk through, as your friends move through  a sound scape is created by your movement/rotation... It is the song of those present.

When you walk through its like a pebble  dropped in water, you create ripples. of sound, of colour. These are ripples that also reflect through realities.

The SL parts:-  The main platform and a similar reflection of it down in the viewing area..
It crosses realities, has nodes of existence in the physical world,  first there is the participants behind the avatars, each in their respective countries, their thoughts of movement translated onto a song and their language into a  pattern of colour.

The other physical reflection, its  physical world node, where the colour of of the different languages seep into another existence, is a glass, perspex  and rgb LED sculpture. There are  20 of the prims scattered across the platform, each has a a direct real time connection with its own rgb Light Emitting Diode (LED).In each L.E.D. the colour is modulated in brightness by the distance of the avatar from the prim that is sending their language colour. These LEDs form the heart of a sculpture composed of glass. It has an overlay of drift glass changing the patterns of language into something else.

Driftglass
Is glass ..old glass, glass that had a life elsewhere .. shattered and transported by the vagaries of the currents and washed up onto distance  beaches as amorphous shards of translucent colour among the sands and shells of the sands.  And yes, it was chosen for the meaning it brings to the Soundscape.

On the SL Platform itself is the sound scape. Each prim is also an instrument with a full set of notes.  As you move through the piece it also maps the rotation of the avatar to the note set.
Its a good idea to keep walking around .. or stopping and turning if you hear something you like .. but you can also choose to sit on one of the spiky prims. these will show up on the smaller painting also moving.

I've created it to have different moods in different locations. It changes things from a conventional composition so its different movements are spatially rather than temporally distributed.  Ive done this by not only using different instruments but by varying the tempo for different prims but also using a counterpoint like technique where pairs of the same Instrument play in reverse order to the other.  It also is a reflection of the person walking through it,  their thoughts of movement.

In 2008 I described my piece Total Windsculpture as a form of Synaesthesia  because of the way it transposed the wind into colours, music and movement.  This is another form of synaesthesia.  Here the transformation is a persons language to colour and their movement to sound. A further transformation takes place when the individual prims are mapped to the individual RGB Leds in the physical world.

>Acknowledgments

Id like to thank Lorin Tone for the following note samples
Flutes
Crystal chords

Thanks to Juko Temple for assistance with various things

Also used in this piece is
Notes by
Dreaming Pad - Jovica (freesound.org)
Ambiant Drone by DJ Chronos (freesound.org)  highly modified and extended by me with audacity.
also Artee for kindly letting me use piano notes she uploaded.

I am the Judge of You (but not really)

Once again I have been asked to be one of the judges for the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge, which has 90 entries.  And, because I am so flattered to be asked that I can't say no even when the workload is crazy, I am also one of the judges for the MachinimaUWA V Contest which has 51 entries.SLurls to all 90 3D entries and links to all 51 machinima entries can be found at the UWA blog links.

When I landed at the 3D Open Art Challenge exhibit space the first thing I saw was the piece below and it captured my imagination right away.

Artist Name:  nexuno thespian

Name of Art Entry:  Looking Inside Myself   Teleport to this piece 

I always feel slightly uncomfortable judging these contests. Who am I to judge? I have no art background. I don't know anything about art history or theory and I could not tell you the difference between a Kandinsky and a Klee. I am just a person with an opinion and that is enough.

One thing that really bugs me is when art "experts" make other people feel intimidated and unsure about their own opinions about art.  It is, quite frankly, one of the reasons I am not all that fond of the LEA.  I am not a fan of the art elite and saying so probably just got me uninvited from a party or two. So be it.

Art is not for special people.  Particularly in the virtual world art should be accessible and appreciated by everyone.  One of my great joys in Second Life is exploring 3D art that allows me to play with it and become part of the art itself.  I have written about my experiences and pointed people to fun art and beautiful art and crazy lunacy that makes me laugh.  I guess that is enough to make me a judge.

So if you want to find me between now and the end of July I will either be at UWA or watching Machinima. Lucky me!  Its going to be great fun to see what the talented artists of Second Life have made this time around.

Please do take some time to explore the amazing art created by some of the best minds in Second Life today. I encourage you to be the Judge too! Your opinion about art matters.

Sim to Explore - Gra' Siorai'- Beautiful Irish Woodlands

I came across an interesting sim to share with you today.  I took these photos using the region default and the images are a bit dark but it reflects the slightly mysterious feel of the sim. I don't have a lot of time so I am going to post a few unedited photos and a SLurl. The rest is up to you.

The sim owner rents out cute cottages so if you are looking for a place to lay your pixel hat, you might want to check it out. The things we have to afford tier!  The rent is to damn high, people!  

SLurl to Gra' Siorai'-  Beautiful  Irish Woodlands

Lovely Art Sim to Explore: Song Bird by jadeyu fhang

I have been looking for something to inspire me for a while.  I am tired of me.me.me and blah.blah.blah and I kinda don't care about the mesh deformer or the latest LEA drama.  I am only entertained by passive aggressive anonymous blog comments for a few minutes.  Of course, I am interested in all these things to some extent or I would not have mentioned them and taken the time out of my lazy holiday to find the links, but none of this stuff is inspiring, you know?

I wanted to find an art sim that I have not seen before, which should be easy because I have barely been in Second Life.  But the trick is I did not want to go to the pre-authorized, good housekeeping seal of approval art approved by the LEA. So where do we find new art these days?  I started by looking at the Koinup twitter feed where you can find SLurls to cool places. Maybe.  It seems to me I had to TP to about 10 empty lots someone is trying to rent before I came across something that made me take a long slow breath and whisper to myself "This. This is what I was looking for today."

Song Bird by Jadeyu Fhang is lovely.  It is surreal and unusual and very much not possible in real life. Song Bird is the kind of sim that makes me love Second Life. It is inspiring. Please visit 

Creating the feeling of space in Second Life

Lately content creators have been building sims with huge vistas that actually make it possible to feel like you are enjoying large open spaces.  

Today I checked out Landscapes Unlimited and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw and more to the point what I felt.

I came across this group of friends looking out over the valley below and I really did have the sense of immersion in an outdoor space that Second Life has been lacking for me.  I could almost feel the breeze on my face.