Here I am having a great time messing with my windlight settings and generally fooling around in what appears to be- a storm of ideas? a language twister? that is located in kind of the virtual storage shed for an Istanbul University , on New Genres Grid.
Hello my dearest dears! How enchanting! Here we all are again ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the non profit software platform that hosts hundreds of independant worlds, many of which are connected by the hypergrid, an amped up teleportation system that allows you to endlessly explore this incredible free metaverse! If you do not understand any of this terminology, or just want to get on OpenSim,please read my easy to understand OpenSim posts, and don´t forget my Newbie Glossary at the top of this blog! Come join the fastest growing virtual experience on the planet!
Today, we are going to NEW GENRES GRID , which is a very different OpenSim experience. New Genres isn´t really a world in the sense of most grids- the regions mostly seem to be workshops of the various extremely accomplished artists, builders and intellectuals who belong to this grid. One area appears to be kind of a storage shed for the inworld part of an international symposium on electronic art. Although they occasionally do have sort of standard museum exhibits, these folks are very clearly on the hypergrid hoping people with their level of education and professional achievement will have a look around, and decide to join them. So there isn´t too much information aimed at the layperson, inworld or on the Web. Liquid, flummoxed and experimental indeed!
In spite of all this, New Genres is still tremendously interesting to explore!
This is not a community in the conventional sense, there are no offers of groups to join, or schedule of events or meetings, and I have yet to even see anyone. There are a few freebies in the welcome area, aimed at getting a simple avatar up and running. The world itself seems to change quite a bit- the HYPERICA listing and the artists own pictures and descriptions are not exactly what are on the grid at this moment. And while they have some things around from other grids, that you are free to copy; their own work, which is stuff like thesis material, is not. As you have probably noticed if you followed my link to their blog, these people are just the eensy teensy tiniest bit full of themselves. Their “official” NGRID BLOG actually had me giggling. But after reading more of the material scattered across the web, particularly the individual members CREDENTIALS, I decided to be a bit more ELIZABETH BENNET about the whole thing. It is not unreasonable for this group to be so proud.
I know this makes it all sound like a big snooze; I am probably doing a bad job describing it- let´s just head over and take a look! There are gates to New Genres Grid at the Sanctuary Eld, on the far left, and Hyperica Upper in the Major Grids and Education section. Or you can type the address: hg.ngrid.org:8002 into your world map search engine and teleport! The most excellent Snoopy of Dreamland Metaverse is in charge of their techno stuff, so they tend to be online, with little to no lag.
And virtualchristine Cartography Queen, has once again wheedled and cajoled a map out of her Paint program for the benefit her beloved readers. It was accurate as of five minutes ago. What the Grid will look like tomorrow is anybody´s guess. as always, I will type region names in UPPER case letters.
1) This is the welcome area at UBIK.
Named after the really creepy sci fi horror novel UBIK by Philip K Dick, this is the Welcome Area´s current incarnation. I am the tiny figure standing in the center. Next to me is a red triangular prim upside down on a blue triangle. Look out for these in every region you go to; they offer teleports around the area, and are sometimes the only way to a particular section.
This is position” High” on the teleport menu! It appears to be a mesh sandbox.Run your cursor over everything and if the arrow turns into a hand CLICK ON IT!!! Especially the eyeball boxes above me! Also, if there are chat instructions above some items, give that a whirl too. Now lets go back to the “ground” floor of the welcome area, and continue our little tour.
( Oh I nearly forgot! After you’ve done some eyeball clicking, here is a link to NOT POSSIBLE IN THE REAL WORLD, Bettina Tizzy´s marvelous SL Arts blog- It´s all a great read, but especially note the fourth picture down on the page!)
To my far left are a row of teleport panels to various regions around the grid, to the left behind me is a the NGrid logo and notecard giver. On the far wall behind me is a black square with LPDT, these are teleports to LA PLISSURE DU TEXTE 2, and you will see them here and there. We will cover them last, and I think you should go there last; but if you decide to jump there first you might want to have a crack at ROY ASCOTT`S LPDT1. It would be a crying shame to see something this amazing and have no idea what it is about. On both sides of the the LPDT2 teleport are freebie avatars,the rows of boxes to my right are some more clothes animations, etc. from metaverse powerhouse ELIF AYITER akaALPHA AUER aka Felix Ringtail. Now let´s zoom out completely, something you should always do everytime you teleport.
Isn´t it impressive? Something else you should always do is swing the camera all around, in this case to your right.
2) This region is named KLEIN, the German word for small. Really.
In the region list on New Genre´s METAVERSE TUTORIALS blog, KLEIN is listed as an example of Grid founder Max Moswitzer (MosMax Hax) and PETER SCHARMÜLLER´s kleinbau architecture, which , as far as I can make out, is a term they have coined and copyrighted. Kleinbau literally means small build, but after reading New Genre´s KLEINBAU MANIFEST a couple of times, I think that here, it must mean minimal. The feel of kleinbau creations is supposed to be monumental, which is is one of those things they could tell folks up front. As this homegrown movement seems to be central to the grid´s philosophy, the manifest is worth reading before you head out any farther.
3) This is the SANDBOX region, which is really fun, there is lots of cool stuff from around the metaverse that you can copy, things are jumping and spinning, and remember..
Run your cursor over EVERYTHING, and if the arrow turns into a hand CLICK on it. All kinds of stuff happens.Now let´s move on.
4) This is region MAX. Behind me is The White Noise Museum.
MAX is described as Max´s Museum Sim in the Metaverse Tutorials regions list. Max is Max Mowitzer aka MosMax Hax.´ Don´t get too excited by the word museum, it is not a standard exhibition with mundane things like explanations. Here is a link to Max´s website dedicated to his many impressive projects, among them his award winning, ground breaking, WHITE NOISE build. The museum appears to be bits of his various works. There´s a teleporter outside, at the very bottom. Let´s teleport to level 2000!
This level is really just two rooms, but the effect is very powerful.The ceiling and floor are in motion, and the whole thing kinda looks like the picture above the kleinbau manifesto.
It also looked a bit like the WHITENOISE CHURCH and some other stuff from the SL days. Have a gander.
In Level 3000 is “Little White Noise” , a very scaled down version of Max´s famous SL build, where he constructed a huge “snow palace” out of whitened freebies. It won a major SL architectural prize. Torley was all aflutter.
Click everything! Once I got what I think is one of his Whitenavatars to appear!
Or was it one of THESE bad boys?
Level 4000 is a sky platform. I think it was also a backdrop for some of Alpha Auer´s wonderful films. Great place to mess with your sky/ windlight settings.
The black and white wallpaper Max seems to favor is, according to the German language article on the White Noise blog main page, something called VECTOR GRAPHICS which involves way too much math for me to deal with this time of night. He created the pattern from images of his many avatar identities, to adorn the outside of his METAVERSE INSIDE box, an exhibit about the evolution, meaning and future role of the avatar.
5) HABITAT CITY, the corner of which you can see below, is a freebie area, consisting mostly of Linda Kellie and Arcadia Asylum creations. Fly straight up from the parking lot, and find this cool diorama of a field in a storm. From up here you can see next door to…
6) HYPERSIM, Synthetic University, is MosMax Hax wonderful game sim! He blew up the first one in SL. Blow up as in explosion.What? He did so!!! There are pictures and a writeup in the eyeball clicking link!
This is a Simon Says game. The games are for between 4 to 28 players, with all german instructions, but the wording is simple enough( I live in Germany) that I think you would be fine, cutting and pasting into a translator. With one exception!
The game with the little chessboard behind the caterpillar and mushroom, is a German language word game. If you can´t actually speak german, I don´t think it´s do able. Now let´s click on that teleporter!
This is teleport position Wasteland. Look up.
There is an english language Mario game, a little television studio and one of Max´s big white scupture things.When you are finished fooling around, go back down to the wasteland platform.
You may notice there is no teleport back down. So jump!
Just fall, and then hover and look around for a bit. Once I found this! Still no teleport, but fun to explore.
If you keep falling and looking you might hit this, an empty shell of the Ouvoir Museum , our next stop. There is a teleport to the ground here, or you can just jump off and keep falling to the surface.
7) This is the renowned OUVOIR build.
MaxMos Hax built this for his friend, the very important French filmaker, photographer, multimedia artist, the “prototype for the twenty first century man” CHRIS MARKER, who was also active in Second Life. Bankrolled by the MUSEUM FÜR GESTALTUNG OF ZÜRICH ,the Ouvoir, which is French for workroom, is a museum and kind of playground for Marker, whose avatar is his favorite cartoon cat, a likeness he drew of his RL pet. When reporters wanted interviews, Marker used to just hand them the cartoons. This POST BY ALPHA AUER is a terrific introduction the museum. There are just two small points I could make!
Do you see the little orange figures at the bottom of the pictures? They are the cartoon cats, if you click them, sometimes they will give you a nice bit of info about the exhibition, and sometimes they just growl. So it helps if you read the biography link!
You go from room to room by dropping through holes in the floor. Alpha mentions this, but I am saying it AGAIN because the holes are the ONLY way out.
You can see from the NGrid blog PHOTO, the sim is not as elaborate as it was, although if you look around, a lot of the pieces are there in different locations. There are also a couple of cinemas on the sim showing excerpts from Markers films-and of course there are cats everywhere.
Always look up! In the sky is the Atelier Ouvoir
8) 8) Is Shinyuku, where they seem t be building a Japanese village from the fifties, when Marker was there making documentaries. He did a thing on Akira Kurosawa, which gets my attention in any reality. The region is scattered with little things that only make sense if you have a bit of biographical material.In the sky above is a white spaceship auditorium thingie; a piece of Peter Scharmüllers zerodimension build, that used to occupy the sim that is now 1o) ZOO, an empty Island. 9) Is called twelve owls, but is also virtually empty. But that could all change tommorow!
Okay, now let´s mosey on down to the southern archipelago!
11) Is the ALPHA SEAS, which makes me think it is Alpha Auer´s build. There is a giant octopus on the surface, and the sea itself has a very few fish, and this not terrribly interesting habitat complex, . In my opinion , you can easily give ALPHA SEAS a miss.
12) SHAPESHIFTER is a spectacular return to form, for a woman whose talents truly seem to know no bounds. I am becoming a huge fan.
Here are some better PICTURES from the New Genres Gallery.
13) This is LEA ISEA .
ISEA was the 2011 Istanbul Symposium on Electronic Arts.One of the main sponsers was Istanbul´s SABANCI UNIVERSITY is where ELIF AYITER teaches. The dots connect. LEA stands for Leonardo Electronic Almanac, jointly produced by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts Sciences and Technology and MIT Press. Yeah, MIT. Sabanci University is also a partner. They published the results of the symposium. What you see behind me was the setting for some of the inworld events. With the exception of the big black and white striped pillars coming down from the sky. They had nothing to do with the ISEA, but why change the sim name- it´s just a workshop now after all!. They are my favorite thing. You have to fly up to take a look.
Elif Ayiter calls this her “normal /crazy city” which is the second worst name in the history of Art. The first was when Tennesee Williams tried to call the Glass Menagerie “Wooden Schnauzers”. He did, look it up.
There is almost no information about normal/crazy anywhere.
She just says this is something she is fooling around with.
Here is a LINK to the lady getting serious. It is a film she made of our next destination, LPDT2, which is now possibly 3 or 4. I loved it- and I would have even if I didn´t recognize bits from all over this grid in the film. I loved the Whispering Plateau, and the avatar angels.
14) And this my dears is the grand finale, LDPT2 or 3 or whatever the hell it is now. This was really the reason the Isea was here on New Genres.
Below me is the ground level of LDPT2, the SL incarnation of Roy Ascott´s media artwork “The Pleating of the Text”, shown at the Paris Museum of Modern Art in 1983. The very broad strokes are, the work was about interactive nature electronic communication turning George Orwell´s dark 1984 totalitarian state into the greatest expression of democracy in the history of the known universe. It about distributed authorship, a phrase coined by Ascott during LDPT 1´s creation. It is about the pleating , which is layer upon layer of contribution to the text by people from all over the world. It is about the point where the reader becomes the writer, a concept Ascott didn´t invent, but is packing a much bigger wallop in the age of You Tube and Word Press.
This is the New Genres male Avatar by the way. Speaking to these Non Playing Characters, or NPC´s were originally one of the ways to interact with LDPT2. Your text would appear across your screen. People were also SMSing. Then there were various storytellers positioned around the entire planet. Nobody knew what the others were writing.The masses of writing tables all have one sheet of paper with a few story lines. See the teleport just above the NPC´s head? Let´s look around!
This is level red.
Zoom out.
Level Blue.
Level Pink
Level 5000 is just a small platform in an empty sky.
Ye Gods! Look at the time! I absolutely have to get some sleep now! Thank you so much for bearing with me- this post was more than a bit above my pay grade! Not to mention my level of education and little grey cell count! You encounter something like this and you realize how many of the blighters you have lost over the years. But I had fun exploring this grid and writing this post, it made me see our culture, real and virtual, in a somewhat different light. And I am now officially following the very brilliant Elif Ayiter. She paints too..no you google it- I am just too fried. Thank you all so much for joining me in my small adventures. Your company means more to me than I could ever express in words. The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all my beloved readers! Until next time, Adeiu!
hi christine,
and interesting blog.
lovely posts
just want to mention that on HYPERSIM its all students works – not my one.
cu
mm
HOLY MOTHER OF ALL THE GODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DOES EVERYBODY SEEE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MOS FREAKING MAX READ MY BLOG YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you!!! We are totally tickled pink and delighted by your wonderful review!
One teeny thing however – I would also like to add the name of our dear collaborator Selavy Oh as one of the inhabitants of NGrid. Selavy, together with Max, is one of the two architect of LPDT3, which is what we are now calling this new version of the build.
Again – than you!
Well isn´t this just the most thrilling damn thing ever. Wow and wow again. I am completely at a loss for words, which you probably picked up is not my normal state, although my family is probably enjoying it. Okay, I am mentally slapping myself. Ouch! That´s better. It shows a lot of real kindness and, well, good old fashioned class, that folks of yours and Max stature not only took the time to read a blog by someone like me, but actually communicated the fact. I will make all the corrections when I have calmed down a bit more. Which may take a couple days. Thanks again, Christine
Oh, just saw the image of Alpha Sea: No, this is not anything that any of us built. It is a full underwater sim that Max found and that we rezzed there to play around with. I think it was originally made by a US university as a learning domain to teach kids about ocean exploration or something like that.
And Alpha Sea is called that in memory of Alpha Auer, who still continues to exist in SL however is only a rare visitor at NGrid. New world = new self = FeliX Ringtail…