Here I am, at home  on my region in Craft, the Friendly World, with the reality of a decision I had made flattening me like a Kansas farm house after the tornado;  What the HELL had I been thinking??  What would it mean for my grid?? For my friends?? Would I even have any after this?? What would my family say?? And most importantly, was a little girl in bright orange pigtails going to show up and kick my ass?? Sigh. It all started a couple of weeks ago…

Hello my dearest dearest dears! How marvelous, here we all are again ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of grids, many of which choose to be connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, which allows you to  endlessly explore these brave new worlds- making oodles of exciting discoveries, meeting people from all over the planet, and snagging enough fabulous free content  that you wind up collapsed like a wet taco in front of a burning building, where amidst a pile of  spinning vendors and a cuckoo clock, a tiny braided ninja descen- no, wait,  we did that;  hmm, note to self: deep seated psychic torment does not produce the most  coherent blogging.

If you  simply do not know how to get on OpenSim( and believe me, you are not alone), please read my “How to get on Open Sim in Six Easy Steps” page, located at the top of this blog, and don’t forget my “Newbie Glossary” also located at the top! Come on, it’s easy! Come spread your wings in the free metaverse!

For todays adventure we will be going well, all over the place. I was having the best time!   I  managed to squeeze in a visit to one of my favorite off the hypergrid destinations , The Community Library at Delphi on  Inworldz!

Who are having a Science Fiction Festival until August!! This is just a small part of the Jules Verne exhibit, isn’t it too deliciously booky?( If that doesn’t grab you, just look out the window. Lotsa teeth.) I can’t wait to come back and write about this!  But mostly I was working on my next post; for which I had begun to explore the 670 region, first French speaking world on the hypergrid,the not surprisingly named FrancoGrid -

…and holy merde, do they know how to Rock le Casabah!!! This is region Terra- Mater, the workshop of Linden Endowment for the Arts veteran, the oh so brilliant Cherry Manga.

But as great, and exciting as all this was, the best thing of all was happening out there, still a part of the metaverse, arguably virtual, but not really a part of any virtual world. It has literally changed my life, and I was so excited that I was Google plusing and tweeting and Facebooking about it like crazy; even though I was pretty sure I ,would be, as usual the last person in the world to know about it. To my shock, it was news to a lot of people. So I decided to blog about it all, just to be sure I spread the word as far as possible.

Remember that great moment in the London Olympics, when Tim Berners- Lee, the inventor of the internet, sent out the message,” This is for everyone.”? I had never actually  seen the man at the computer, but when my husband exclaimed”  Hey! That’s Tim Bern-”  my son and I jumped off the sofa and began shouting and applauding, and when the message flashed across the stadium, I started to cry. The internet has done so much for me. It has given me the ability to sit in my kitchen, exploring new worlds as I stir my soup and peel vegetables. I can see and talk to my family and friends on the other side of the planet every night of my life. And, from my  first and wildest dreams it has taken  the one where I become a writer with thousands of readers, out of my head, and  into my waking life. I how could it possibly do more?

Then I found the Internet Archive, a serious attempt to put all human knowledge online, in one brain meltingly massive freaking public library . “Universal Access To Human Knowledge” and they aren’t kidding.  The website itself, and the concepts it expresses, can be hard  kinda to get your head around, and  although I will  probably never understand it all, I wanted to share what I have found thus far.

Now let’s get started! Please go to the Homepage,  which I still find a bit clunky, and  so prefer to use the  main menu at the top of the page.  Do you see it? Up top, in the left corner in the black header- Web Video Texts Audio Projects About Account etc. Okay, the first thing I would recommend doing is going to Account and getting your virtual library card. It is free, you can use your avatar name if you wish, and it allows you, among other things, to BOOKMARK!! An enormously useful feature you will use again and again as you  wade through this ocean of information!So long as you remain on the Archive Website, there will be a little “bookmark” tab under the download options, on the left side of the page. You can  even share them with your friends- look, here are mine!

You are free to use the library without a card, but let’s assume you have one! Now, lets head on back to the main menu and go to Texts.  Scroll  a bit down the page to Sub Collections. Look at all the listings. Do you see the very famous free e book website Project Gutenberg? Notice how it is the second smallest collection! This gave me my first clear picture of the scale the Internet Archive is working on. Gutenberg is definitly the most user friendly collection, but if you are willing to work a bit, the other libraries will surprise and delight  you. Give it a whirl! And remember, all of these collections have  texts that are in the public domain, which means they are free to use any way you wish, because they are out of copyright; sometimes because the creator  (you can upload your work if you wish) has chosen to share them, but more often because they are 50 to 70 years old.

Now it’s back to the main menu, and Projects. These are the things that I have used a bit.  The very user friendly  Open Library is something I will eventually get into big time. Their aim is to have one web page for every book  ever published. They have documented 20 million, with one million you can download. This biggest ever card catalog is a wikia,  which means anyone may contribute, and as the cherry on the hot fudge sundae, they also have an Online Lending Library which has newer books!  Archive It! is a subscription service whereby organizations and institutions can upload digital data, websites etc. and keep it on the Internet Archive server, which has 10 petabytes of storage, and is growing. You may search these archives. For my fellow lo tech nerds, one petabyte equals one million gigabytes. Your PC probably has 300. The Wayback Machine, is something you may have heard of. It contains a searchable archive of the web in past years. The Internet Archive does these web “crawls “that sort of photographs the entire  internet for historical purposes. So if you are looking for a site that no longer exists, this is probably your best shot. And one last thing- the Internet Archive is where NASA stores a serious chunk of their imagery.

Now back to the main menu tab I have used the most- Audio. If you scroll down the page, you will notice the Radio Programs section contains, among many other things, a fine collection of Old Time Radio; my favorite Music and Arts section is the innoculous looking 78 and Cylinder recordings-  is a treasure trove of beautifully cleaned up early 20th century music, Edith Piaf, Lotte Lenya,Sarah Vaughn, Clifton Chenier, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Etta James, Billy Holiday, Caruso, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington…I find running a search on the eccentric Audio search engine, then carefully searching through the jumbled results for your highlighted term or name, and clicking THAT, works best. Audio Books and Poetry is the catagory I have been using the most. The LibriVox Free Audio Book Collection, is a huge selection of public domain books read, extremely well I might add, by volunteers. If anyone is looking for a nice slice of quality Americana, modern literary giant( Among other things, she won the Pulitzer prize and was the first woman to be granted an honorary degree by Princeton AND a young F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote her a letter apologizing for the similarity of a character in his newly released book ,The Great Gatsby, to an earlier character of hers. She didn’t know what the hell he was on about, and said so. He panicked. They corresponded for years.),Willa Cathers masterpiece My Antonia is a marvelous choice. Now I am just gonna say it. My Antonia is a better  book than anything Jane Austen ever wrote. Willa Cather is a writer of the same caliber as Jane Austen, and they both wrote about the lives of women, but My Antonia is a smart, intimate, yet unsentimental account of the lives of working women and children,  who rise out of real poverty; hard working,  intelligent, assertive,  and determined to help their families, and make something of themselves. And uniquely not ONE of these women defines herself, or is defined by the author, through her  romantic relationship with a man. Even today, that is a rare and refreshing thing. This last Audio section gave me kind of a hysterical meltdown- I was crying and stammering, my husband came home from work and shouted “What’s happened??!” The fifth entry down from LibriVox is The Naropa Poetics Audio Archive, a title which didn’t really get my attention. But the little picture of my idol, legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg, did. This section is 5,000 hours of class recordings from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. From back in the 80′s when most of the beat poets were alive and lecturing… dear God, another crazy dream of mine yanked out of my cranuim and served up by the internet. Five thousand hours of Allen Ginsberg singing Blake songs, speaking, teaching and remembering, reading his own poetry, Walt Whitman’s poetry, playing Jack’s poetry,  talking about writing and Jazz and Dharma with William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlavsky Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlengetti, Diane Di Prima, while  the great Anne Waldman leads panels disussions about women and the Beats, reads Emily Dickenson…And one last  yummy little gem. The only copy of the Internet Archive is stored in Egypt, at the New Library of Alexandria. Love my metaverse.

The sheer euphoria  of my good fortune affected my judgement,which some of you may have noticed wasn’t that spectacular in ordinary times, and  so, in a state of total sobriety, I went into my head,  fished around in my wildest dreams, and showed one to …

Professor Grey, Curator of the Arcadia Asylum Museums and Library in Second Life. I asked him what would he think about my turning my region on Craft into an an OpenSim Arcadia Museum and Library .

Within seconds he had promoted me in the group, given me  security codes to the conference rooms and was showing me how to pack items into boxes.  And after half a bottle of wine and the post event shock episode pictured at the beggining of this post behind me, I started to get excited. Really excited.

So this is virtualchristine, curator of  the OpenSim  Arcadia Asylum  Museum, inviting the entire Metaverse to submit items, stories, buildings, … I have no idea what I am doing, so if you have something to contribute, don’t be shy. I was thinking of a September opening. Come one, come all! This is for everybody.

I would like to thank Tim Berners Lee, Brewster Kahle, and the millions of people who have worked  create the Internet, and fought to keep it free; the great Anne Waldman, The National Endowment For the Arts, The Willa Cather Foundation, all the Internet Archive volunteers, Professor Grey, my family, and of course all of you, my beloved readers.  The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to you all! Until next time, Adieu!

Here I am gazing at a charming mural on the side of pretty, red brick Dele Cafe, the landing point for region Gati, located on Metropolis Grid, finally writing a post I have been thinking about for months-one that involves adult entertainment,  child avatars, roleplay, melee weapons,intense drama, sexual intrigue, keeping up, oh 10, 20 alternate identities,  a Peacock, gritty urban politics, romance,  street fights, helicopters, race riots, fashion, the existence of supernatural creatures and aliens, a barbeque party, social networking, American history, creative writing, jam sessions, improvisational theater, and of course, really neat free housing.

Hello my dearest  dears! How marvelous! Here we all are again, ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independent grids, many of which choose to be connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, allowing you to endlessly explore these brave new worlds, having unforgettable experiences, making friends from all over the planet, and snagging enough free content to activate  what appears to be some sort of browser intervention program, causing inventory files to relabel- “Objects” for example becoming “Seriously?” or ” This is just Pathetic Now” while “My Suitcase”  actually makes suggestions in  soothing tones “Modern Pharmacology has a variety of management tools for exactly this situation. Shall we open a window to Web M.D?”.

If you simply don’t know how to get on OpenSim,( and believe me, you are not alone), please read my “How to get on OpenSim in Six Ridiculously Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog, and don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top. Come on, it’s easy! Come spread your wings in the free metaverse!

This post is being written because a few months back, it appeared that my beloved hypergrid community was going to implode. It obviously didn’t, but the freaking scale of the upheaval turned all kinds of things on their heads.  One of the good things for me, personally, was that, in struggling to follow the often wild train of events, I listened to people  and  heard discussions outside my personal comfort zone.

I have been in virtual worlds a long time, and I am pretty much the same person there as in real life. I am not really interested in 90% of what is on offer. Fashion? Zzzzzzzzzz. Hooking up? Meet Chemical Billy!  Television? Nooo. Shopping? Sigh. Porn? Ick.”Adult” entertainment? Yawn! Roleplay? Sound like actors- Pinheads. Child avatars? Sounds infantile at best, sinister at worst. See Shopping and Television. I was a stodgy young broad, so why wouldn’t I be a stodgy old one?

Being more or less forced to hear people talk about things I had written off  for years seriously broadened my horizons. I had always equated the adult rating of sims with barfy pornographic content; as a result I have probably been on 3 adult rated regions in my virtual existence.  Now I know that people often give sims an adult rating, just to be sure everyone on it is an adult.  You wouldn’t want to wind up trying to role play a stock venture with a nine year old, would you now? I discovered that people needed child avatars to roleplay – whether they are  literary  heroes, like Hermione and Alice, the young heir to the throne in a medieval kingdom, or the handicapped child of a  struggling single mother, very few realities can make sense without children.  Best of all, I realized, to my astonished delight, that  the emoting roleplayers are always on about was more or less a creative writing jam session, improvisational theater, prose slam-it is oodles of fun to just sit and watch- I  could not believe the skill that went into the simplest scene- and with a little digging found that  some roleplayers are RL writers- good ones. And the person who is most responsible for my altered perception is Buni Chiku, who runs  Gati,  an adult rated roleplaying sim.

See, old dogs CAN learn new tricks!! Here I am at the Gati Meat Festival, kinda roleplaying a tourist who is thinking of writing an article about Gati!  There is tons of stuff to write about for a very simple reason- whereas most role play communities used published works, like Lord of the Rings, Dune, or Harry Potter to provide a context for their actions,  the Gati universe is the hobby of a real life writer! Yes Gati and Buni Chuku are the brainchild of Crystal Brewton,  The Indie Author Extraordinaire!   Witty, intelligent Crystal has spent  most of her adult life writing crime thrillers, horror, revenge, science fiction, short stories, semi biographical novels, erotica(“I do NOT write porn”)- she is simply unstoppable . Her sci fi book Caeli`s Daniachew   was nominated for the CBS Parallux award. She founded her own  online bookshop, Liberia Scriptor Publications, as an ecological protest, making the brave decision to only publish in the environmentally friendly electronic format.

And now, Crystal is on Metropolis Grid, cooking up great roleplay.

This is her avatar and character on Gati, Buni Chuku. Isn’t she pretty? Like a great many avatars (including me), Buni has her own Google+ page. “Buni” is Swahili for fictional, and “Chuku” for character…

…the word “Gati” is Swahili for stage. Classy, isn’t it? It gets better. This is from the introductory note card:

“Gati Island
Settled 1875 (10 years after the end of the Civil War by ex-slaves)
Incorporated 1888
Location: Due east of Chicago (3 hour IC ferry ride to Chicago/Lakeview, 5 hours to Milwaukee)
Size Less than a mile in any given direction
Motto:  Tutus portus (Latin for “safe haven”)

After the Civil War ended, many ex-slaves migrated to the north, settling in the major cities like Chicago and Detroit, even before the “Great Migration” of the early 20th Century.  Those settling in Chicago, besides the unpleasant reality that racism and discrimination existed even north of the Mason-Dixon line, were soon displaced on October 8th 1871 by what would become known as ‘The Great Chicago Fire’.  Heedless of race or class, many found themselves homeless.  For a small group of freed slaves, it was the last straw.  Aided by abolitionist and Irish Immigrant Liam Peacock, they rowed eastward on Lake Michigan, stopping and settling on a small Island they named Gati.

Liam Peacock aided in getting the island incorporated as a small Illinois island.  Today his memory lives on in the Peacock Building, built in his honor and completed in 1912, he lived in the topmost western apartment until his dying day.  Today the ancestors of his best friend, John Chuku continue to live in that historical apartment.

Many lives were saved when residents allowed shelter to be taken in the Peacock Building during the Great Lakes Storm of 1913.

There was a minor influx of African American residents after the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.

Gati Island is completely without ‘conventional’ electricity.  In 1902 the Wind Turbine buildings were built and, in addition to the conversion of the lighthouse to a solar power station, has powered the island reliably ever since.  Before that, fire and lanterns lit the island.”

I have always been a  history buff,  and as an American ex pat, a big fat slice slice of quality Americana such as this, will have me glued to my seat for hours. Gati may not ever have existed, but the concept is hip deep in spectacular cultural tradition. The word Maroon  a corruption of the Spanish word for fugitive, from 1512  onwards was the universal name for the hundreds, eventually thousands of African Slaves who escaped their European captors to found communities deep in the  jungles forests, swamplands and inaccessible islands of  the West Indies, Central, South and North America. And the resourceful Gullah people, of Sierra Leone, then Georgia and South Carolina,who managed to preserved their African culture to  an incredible extent, most famously occupying the Sea Islands Archipelago into the present day. After the American Civil War the newly freed slaves, often against staggering odds,  formed communities, established settlements,and founded townships. I like Tolkien  and co.well enough, but nothing gets me jumping out of my chair and bellowing “YEEAAHH!!!!” like the real life  triumph of the human spirit.

Unfortunately, Metropolis Grid was down for maintenance (gasp) while I was writing this post, so I don’t have as many pictures as I would like(sob), but I think we can make do. I have been to the island several times, and since you can’t fly ( reality oriented role play!) it is good to know that the system of winding paths  connecting the island begin BEHIND these houses! Buni and I are standing in front of the town hall…

…which is largly inhabited by NPCs, or non player characters. People folks talk about, but never really see. There is a list of the main NPCs on the introductory notecards.

Buni( it’s the name I met her under on G+, and I always think of her that way!) is constantly adding improvements to the island, but if you read the notecards, you will recognize a great many details- remember the Peacock Building…

…named after the abolitionist Liam Peacock? Buni really posseses a writers eye for detail, which makes the island a hoot to explore!

Gati is brimming with great stories of intrigue, romance, revenge.. you name it. Heck you can create it! Just grab a notecard from the group sign in the landing area, answer some questions about  your character, and  respond to a couple of “emotes”! When you have been  approved, you can join the main group! You may also want to check out The Gati Truth the google + community that acts as Gatis newspaper, or Gati and 20town Roleplay, and Dele African Coffee yet another google + community, where people chat about their characters, or do some pretty impressive, often hysterically funny, emoting, and Buni talks about the latest additions to the Gati universe. Ah, you finally noticed! “What’s 20Town” you ask? Well…

20Town is a fictional Chicago nieghborhood. Anyone who finds the island too small a stage, can base their character here! After all, Gatian children take the boat to school in Chicago most of the year, the adults are always picking up supplies, shopping, or going to the hospital..

once again, Buni’s…

… eye for detail…

…makes the experience truely immersive. Which brings us to your characters living accomodation!

These attractive brownstone houses…

… have two stories, and a 500 prim allowance. Of course if your character had an office or something, you’d get more prims.

The rather swank apartments have the same prim allowance…

…but I thought the best feature was the fantastic view from the balcony!

There are enough apartments to go around. There are also apartments on Gati, ranging from luxury to normal sized. I call dibs on anything in that cool Peacock building!

And now my dearest dears, I must love you and leave you! I hope you find this post to be useful, as usual, I had a blast writing it! Thanks to the gang at Gati Roleplay, especially  the  very astonishing Jamie Wright and  and the very kitten obsessed Chibo Ryder. Thanks to Buni for patiently answering  all my questions, for expanding my horizons , and for creating such a profoundly imaginative playground for us all ! And of course thanks to all of you for joining me on my small adventures, your company means the world to me- the sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers! Until next time, Adieu!

Here I am, after two weeks away from blogging and hypergridding,hideously jet lagged and probably suffering from some sort of freebie withdrawl, I finally managed to get back inworld. I was looking forward to a relaxing meander through some old stomping grounds on Craft and Metro. It was not to be. I wound up here  trying to  collect my thoughts in a motorised stone fish that was the least unnerving change to appear on a friend’s sim in my absence. When I left for my vacation, everything here was  all flowers, windchimes and winding paths in warm pastel colors; now, with a spider army and the paratroopers having it out on what appeared to be a Cambodian temple complex transported to another planet and/or back in time, Grouper Mama  was the most relaxing seat in the house. Two virtual weeks is a looong time.

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous! Here we all are again, ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independant worlds, many of whom choose to be connected by an amped up teleportation system called the Hypergrid. This allows you to endlessly traverse these brave new worlds, making friends from all over the world, having exciting adventures and snagging enough great free stuff to make your longest, wildest, most drunken shopping spree in Second Life seem like an ninety three year old Redemptoristine Nun’s  pre- vespers catnap.

If you flat out do not know how to get on OpenSim, ( and believe me, you are not alone), please see my “How to Get on OpenSim in Six Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog. And if you don’t understand any of this terminology, please don’t forget my “Newbie Glossary” also at the top of this blog! Come on, it’s easy! Come spread your wings in the free metaverse!

For todays adventure, we will be going first to Metropolis Grid , the hypergrids rapidly growing, 2000 region strong cultural powerhouse, who just finished their fifth birthday celebrations!!! Hooray!!!  An unmissable affirmation of the “free” in free metaverse, that Metro has come to represent to hundreds of people, including this blogger!!!Wheee!!! The metaverse event of the year!!! Yahoo!!!!  Right when I was way the hell up in the Rocky Mountains completely without inworld access!!!! Sigh.

The birthday region is called METRO. A world map search will get you there. It might still be up over the weekend, so you could check it out….

You land in the center…

Sigh. It really gripes my cookies that I missed this! You cross the bridges to the different islands, which are……

A big honkin tower with a really good  Metropolis Grid museum. I hope they put all this in the Welcome Area when they clear away the birthday stuff !!! Another island is…..

The building competition!!! Now, this place looked as though the a lot of the entrants had taken down their stuff….

But this exquisite, glowing little house, temple, whatever it is, really got my attention.

I spent a long time looking at it from every angle, …

Then I got a shock. I looked for the name of the artist, and found that it was someone named Exnoob Renoobed(  best name EVER!!!), whom I had briefly met two days before in the Metro public Sandbox( a great hangout, by the way). Small metaverse! He had been really nice, saying how much he enjoyed my blog, and complimenting my snakey headdress,  and not mentioning how much chunkier I am in  person.  So even though he was currently offline, I graced my gentle reader with a rather sophisticated critique of his installation:

“Exnoob, Hi there! This is virtualchristine, the blogger. We met the other day in the sandbox at Metro! I am looking at your building competition and I just wanted to say WOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!! I love this!!!! You are REALLY freaking good !!!!!:))))))”

He came online right away. I was really pleased; I just love getting to know readers! A former SL resident ( aren’t we all!) Exnoob has followed OpenSim’s progress for quite some time via Hypergrid Business, Basic Babble, and yours truly, and having finally made the leap, is now all of one month old and fairly bursting with ideas and enthusiasm! As an english( as a second language) teacher, he is experimenting with OpenSim as a means of engaging  his students, as a hobby RL woodworker he uses inworld models to test run projects, and as a new community member, as he teaches himself blender he makes these great tutorials on his youtube channel. He calls them ” very slow” tutorials , which are designed for non native speakers, senior citizens, and  the most untechnically inclined raw beginner. I make two out of three. Shazaam.

There are also three dance floors. One consisted of a lorry bed stage and a lawn, which I guess is all you really need. The others…

Right away I recognized Cyberbohemia’s signature chessboard pattern.

Sigh. I cannot…

…believe…

…I missed this party!

The last dance stage is a light show from Word from the Wise ,(best avatar EVER) and you need a mesh enabled viewer. I actually made the tail end of this party…

I wasn’t sure if my hippo viewer could see mesh. It couldn’t. So this was the first time I actually saw…

Wow! And the animation! When you walk into the dome something just grabs your avatar and whirls it…quick, just go see if it’s still there!

My next stop on Metro was my friend Minethere Always region, called  minethere. I always stop by, heck I had even blogged about it. The best social networker I have EVER met, Miney is always laughing, always ready to extend helping hand. As one of the lucky people to spin some money on the hypergrid, her Region Creations are beautifully crafted landscapes(RAW files) she will install for like 15 bucks( already on my wish list) AND she is continually creating FREE OARS, which are land with lots of stuff already there;  Miney loads up a professional quality landscape with the most beautiful and unusual free content she runs across and GIVES it away. Even if Miney wasn’t home, her workshop/region of gentle hillsides was always good for a stroll. So I popped in…

What..

…the..

…fudge?

I eventually found this sign. It seems that Miney has downloaded the Tomb Raiders OAR from her buddy, the mindbendingly prolific RL and Virtual Artist Avia Bonne.

So you can go to the link and download this bad boy and everything on it, or just copy the interesting bits, like this adorable Rhino, and the giant gekkos…

Finish lunch and come to Mommy !!

I suddenly remembered Miney had posted on our favorite social network site OpenSim City, that she had a  new sim or something. I remembered the name Cocoon…

Dear Lord!! I landed in the center of a MASSIVE complex!!! I flew around to see if I was in the right place.

Yep. It turns out Miney is now renting NINE regions on Metro from Zetamex Hosting whom everyone  and their sister is raving about!Regions Nymph, Emanate, Crisalida, Chrysalides, Epiphany, Pupae, Chrysalis & Butterfly do not not simply have very girlie names! They are samples of Miney’s…

…really spectacular creative process. The central region of Cocoon…

… doesn’t have the hypergates anymore, but still has good Metro group invites, translators and lots and lots of great stuff to copy. The raptors will love their new buddies!!

With an inventory in a hopless state of  rampant chaos(hugs Miney and Avia!) and a smile on my face, I returned to  my beloved home grid, Craft- the Friendly World. I wonder what if anything had changed there?

Craft’s newest Freebie regions of Sinus and Rainbow, have a LOT of new mechandise in shops, new shop owners, and new buildings!! Have a careful look all around the buildings I have marked in Sinus, then go to the building I have marked at the bottom of Rainbow.

This is, I think the most impressive addition. New Craft resident, designer Lynne Lunquist, has set up a wonderful boutique of really tasteful furnishings and deco from the American South West!

Like me, Lynne is a expat southern Californian, who’s best childhood memories  center around family holidays in the warm red hills and cactus of Arizona. I was SO excited to find these wonderful reminders of home!! Thank you Lynne!!

Above Lynns store, the pink building I have marked…

..is  very elegant fashion designer Chole Kegels main store. It would have made more of an impact on me  if I hadn’t already been to Chloe and her partner, Vins Watanabe’s…

Oh yes. This is region Venezia, a formidable collection of Linda Kellie freebies. There is stuff here I haven’t seen in ages.

Linda’s avatar  may have left virtual worlds, but she will never be truly gone…

… as long as her creations, which tell the tale of her remarkable talent, her wild humor…

… her passion for life, and of course, her seemingly endless  generosity, continue to be treasured and loved. I know I speak for a great many people Linda, when I say we all  wish you happiness and success in your new endevours!!

Of course, this would all have made a bigger impact on me if I hadn’t already been to Chloe And Vin’s……

…region ROMA.  This is an event/ freebie region.

Here I am with Vins, trying to find out why exactly he and Chloe are suddenly doing all this, but the translator just couldn’t handle the word “apeshit”. Suffice to say, that they have a club in SL named on a region named Cedar or Cedros, and they are just trying to contribute to the Metaverso Bella.

Roma is really big and beautiful.

You are welcome to come and relax…

…copying the pretty things scattered about…

Or going into the long row of freebie shops down the main street.

And now my dears, I will love you and leave you!I hope you find this post helpful!!   Thank you to Lynn, Vins, Chloe, Exnoob,Word, the Cyberbohemia Gang, The Metro admin gang, Miney, Avia, always Linda, and of course all of you for reading my blog even when I wasn’t posting, and then putting up with my rusty writing. Your company means the world to me!! The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers!! Until next time, Adieu!

Hello my dearest dears!!! I am on holiday with my family in the USA from March 21 to April 5!!! Hooray!!   A  Happy Easter, and a joyful springtime to you all!  Until next time, Adieu!

Here I am, in the belly of the volcano, bravely attempting to escape the shooting jets of  liquid flame  and  rentlessly grinding behemoth gears,  as the  crushing weight of my inventory finally overwhelms my fabulously tuned musculature ,  sending my hapless companion and I plummeting into the arms  of…yes I said  the weight of my inventory! What the hell other other weight would factor in? Exactly! I’m glad you acknow- no, wait; you’re mocking me now, aren’t you?

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous! here we all are again ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independant worlds, many of which choose to be connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, which allows you to endlessly seek out  these brave new worlds , exploring, meeting interesting people from every corner of the planet,and snagging enough free content to actually expand your physical  body ma- oh shut up.

If you  simply do not know how to get on OpenSim, and believe me, you are not alone, please see my ” How to Get on OpenSim in SixRridiculously Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog. And don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top. It’s easy, come on ; spread your wings in the free metaverse!

For today`s adventure, we will be staying on my beloved home grid of Craft-the Friendly World   for the fourth part of Craft’s big weird  exquisite corpse Vulcan event for the Intergrid Metaverse Arts Bienniel or IMAB. No, really, this is a real thing!

1) The IMAB thingie is an unprecidented-in- the-metaverse nine month art festival, that has staged events and exhibitions over six grids, including Big Daddy Second Life.

2) Craft , the smallest grid in the festival, has staged several events. One was Vulcan- Artists in Connection, a four part installation built by four individual artists,  each of whom worked in secret for a month, so the following artist would have no idea what they were doing. This method of collaboration  was developed by early 20th century surrealists and was based on a then fashionable parlour game  called The Exquisite Corpse.

3) Vulcan refers to the Roman god of  stuff like creativity and craftsmanship. He lived inside a really big honking volcano, therefore we have staged our event in one. Small grid, big fat ideas.

There have been a couple changes in the Vulcan event. Well known  artist  Oberon Onmura was scheduled to be the last slot, but RL obligations prevented him from participating in March. Sooo, at another Craft IMAB event,

our Second Annual Building Competition, which took place last January, Vulcan organizer Ger Orsini popped the question to..

…first place winner Eamon Kuhn!! (Sorry about your skin Eamon! I had a sucky connection!) Now, I didn’t really know anything about Eamon’s work before the Building Competition, whose theme had been “Escape”. But it was no surprise…

…that his unprepossesing  looking entry won the day. The title is “Escape Predjudice” . You click the blue hand on the front door…

…and teleport into this hellish room of tormented souls. Behind every door is a flaming hand print that represents a some form of bigotry-racism, sexism, nationalism, religious intolerance… look for the next blue hand….

…and you find yourself inside this genuinely breathtaking matrix , trying to make your way toward the light and the next blue hand…

… where a last blue hand rezzes the spirit of imagination and freedom; yes, that is a flying machine  from the mind of the original renaissance man, the eternal maestro Leonardo  da Vinci! I have been in virtual worlds a long time, it takes a LOT to make me gasp aloud. I was really looking forward to seeing what Eamon would do in…

…the big honking volcano. See  the long staircase that goes from the beach to the lip of the crater?

Just walk up the stairs, and jump into the lava!

This was the volcano interior four months ago. Do you see the roadblock and little fence on the right side of the picture?

Metaverse building legend  Lumiere Noir had hollowed out a chamber UNDER the floor, filled it with cooling water, and built a beautiful  reactor, to harness the creative power of the volcano. A” beautiful” reactor? reader arches eyebrow.

Then a month later …

Tosha Tyran’s Alienation  visibly drew power from Lumi’s reactor. It was an wildly interactive story of  crashing lightening, blood, smoke,

….the world’s  most vulnerable….

… struggling…

..to live their lives amidst a forest of  blades.

The next month, the volcano inspired Ruben Haan to leave behind the concepts of man made power and social strife, as well as his usual bright colors, to create…

” Dirt (free, as in public domain)”. Ruben’s signature “sharing” red arm appears to have simply tossed these seemingly unremarkable stones across the chamber floor…

I don’t know what was more impressive, the dramatic inner life of the stones…

…or how perfectly Ruben caught the spirit of the  great canyons, where you are privileged to view the  human race at a distance  reserved for angels and eagles, the warm breeze bringing you the scent of  Jurrasic pine and the song of coyotes, as you  chew a stalk of sweet dry grass, and contemplate the eternal, nestled in a  billion years of warm magnificent dirt. Free, as in public domain.

So the next month  I was all excited about the opening. It got complicated.

As you can see, everything was slow to rezz, and I thought part if not all of the problem might be my really- user- friendly- but- can’t -always- handle-  OpenSim Firestorm viewer. So I decided to log off and come back with my much sturdier Imprudence viewer. As a result, when I went into the volcano, I saw this…

See the bright yellow and reds on the floor, and the big gears?

If this is what you see when you enter the volcano, you are using a viewer that is not mesh enabled, and thus seeing  about one quarter of the build.

Of course I had no clue. I always use Firestorm, and had fogotten about that particular limitation of Imprudence.  And it was all sort of neat looking in a mildly psychedelic way. So I  blithely congratulated Eamon, asked him  what his build was about.

Eamon Kuhn:  It is called “Assembly Line”. Matter coming from the bowels of the Earth is  consumed by man, who day after day  despoils in order to draw energy. Who is master of energy is master of the world, and makes other men slaves to plunder the riches. But the Earth’s resources are not infinite, and already battling to steal the last crumbs. What and when to stop human stupidity?   I sure  hope it will not be the end of humanity, too.

virtualchristine: What is on the screens(on the floor)?
Eamon Kuhn: It  is a way to illustrate the media’s influence on humanity. And also to explain  the meaning of the work. Some videos are only fog, obfuscation of the mind. Others tell in short human history.

Eamon Kuhn:  The columns of fire are the energy of Earth’s pulse; the breath of the Earth. And the well pipes…

Now at this point, event organizer GeR, who doubles as my guardian angel(hugs), realized I was not asking the right questions. He asked me a few about what I was seeing, then told me to log off and come back with Firestorm.  It was getting late,and frankly, I didn’t think it was such a big deal, so I came back the next day.

Wow. From mildly psychedelic to Dantes Inferno.

Eamon had continued with Tosha’s violent sword theme, but whereas she had dealt with their effect in our society, Eamon tackled  their origins. Here, in a cacophany of   hissing steam and grinding  gears, again in a hellish scenario….

…where this time, there seemed to be no escape…

… not from above…

… nor on either  side; no inspirational idea  on any horizon to lift you away ….

… well, not quite:)

I wanted to know why  this particular work had been so disturbingly hopeless. So I IMed him. I had met the man once for ten minutes , and  didn’t think  “Dude! That bowels of hell thing is  a freaking DOWNER…” would be world’s greatest opener. Instead, I told him how beautiful it was (hey, it IS beautiful;  nightmarishly horrifying, but beautiful) and asked if he had a region on Craft. He said no. I was really surprised; and said  ” You mean you have no other builds AT ALL on this grid ?” He seemed to think for a while, then typed “Well, I HAVE been doing a little work on the quarter region I won in the building competition. Would you like to see that?” I was actually a bit nervous. What if the spiritually uplifting “Escape Predjudice”  had  been some kind of fluke?  Forget Dante; what if this guy was going to make Edgar Allen Poe seem cute and cuddly? Was this new build going to be some kind of  god awful dystopian slasher diorama I would see everytime I closed my eyes for the next six months?
-
Well, not quite.:)

virtualchristine: Well, you’ve been busy!

Eamon Kuhn: This build is called the 4 elements. The themes are  Fire, Water, Air and Earth. This is the landing point, Water. Come over here please.

Eamon Kuhn: At the centre there would be some kind of fountain. I am working on the scripts.

Eamon Kuhn: I thought about putting in seating, for music or readings, I don’t know. This sculpture should convey the movement of water.

virtualchristine: Oh, it absolutly does!

Eamon Kuhn: This is all the water side; the harbor, and an aquaduct.

Virtualchristine: What aquaduct?

Eamon Kuhn: Behind you.

Oh, THAT aquduct!

Eamon Kuhn: Follow me please!

We walked back over the platform with the beautiful stone columns.

Eamon Kuhn:  I call this the core. If you’ve seen it, you will understand that I like history and archaeology. The beauty and the geometry of architecture. But  also ruined and deformed.  This represent the inevitable end of every human work.

On the other side of the platform…

Eamon Kuhn : This side is that of fire. Behind you there are two temples; one is the Egyptian temple of Sesostris (Sensuret).  The largest is a Cambodian Temple  or rather Khmer; in the temple is a pit from whence fire springs. Or rather lava, from the volcano.

virtualchristine: What volcano?

Oh, THAT volcano!

Eamon Kuhn: Would youlike to see the other two parts?

virtualchristine: Oh, yes please!!

We walked back over the core.

Eamon Kuhn: This part is air. Plants breathe; they are the breath of the earth. This section is dedicated to meditation, and yoga. I am still working on the vegatation.

As we relaxed with a cup of green tea, I thought it was the right moment.

virtualchristine: Eamon, why was the Assembly Line so violent and angry?

Eamon Kuhn: Because I wanted to explain how the Earth’s resources  are used to produce products  which often serve also  violence. Exploiting the work of man to produce weapons  to kill other men.  And this is a violent and alienating system; those who rebel against it pay dearly. Rebellion is hard. It is hard to find a was of escape, through the chains, to get out of the volcano.
Eamon Kuhn : The volcano makes me think of the foundries where metal is melted and worked.): I thought about  the relationship between land resources and their exploitation. I thought about how many people in the world are  made to do very heavy work to produce goods like weapons: unnecessary and dangerous.  I’m a person who loves creativity but is also attentive to the world.  Yes it’s just a piece of work, but I like to remind people,  especially through artistic events,  to tie art at social commitment.  If they can communicate emotions  that give  constructive messages, that is success. But this place is different. You can do tai chi, and look out over the water. Behind you.

It was getting late, and as much as I was enjoying talking to Eamon, we had to get a move on. So we recrossed the platform.

Eamon Kuhn: This is Earth. I like stone monuments, like stonehenge.  Man made monuments, but express the force of nature. A stone forest. There is also a cave…

Eamon Kuhn: I’d like to make it more, well, fantasy.

virtualchristine: There is a lot of fantasy in virtual worlds.  I like the natural look. You should put bats in here with big piles of guano!

Eamon Kuhn: LOL. I like the idea!

And now my dearest dears, I must wrap this tome the heck up. If you would like to see a video of Assembly Line, here is a link to a short film by Caro Axelbrand. The Volcano itself is open indefinitly, and the event may not be over! Grid owner Licu has slapped on some bullit physics, ( be warned it is still a teensy bit laggy!) and we are hoping Oberon may find time in April to do a final part! The volcano is on region WATER. The Building Competition entries were still up last time I looked, on region SUQ, and Eamon has said he is happy to have visitors on his beautiful prize parcel, which is a quarter of region PITCAIRN. I think that was everything, so I will love you and leave you! Thank you again GeR, for always looking out for me, and thank you Eamon, for taking so much time explaining all your wonderful creations. And thanks to all of YOU, for joining me on my small adventures. Your company means the world to me!The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers! Until next time, Adieu

Here I am,  on the Water region of  Craft grid, in the belly of an active volcano, perched  atop an enormous stone  that is screening  an endlessly kneading giant hand,  looking out on a huge dead  tree festooned with dangling swords in a lightening storm, situated over the  main ventilator of a  pulsating underwater reactor system, that are each  chapters in a four month art project styled on a macabre surrealist parlour game . Love my metaverse.

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous, here we all are again, ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independant  grids! Many of these worlds are connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, which allows you to  traverse these brave new worlds, exploring, meeting   people from all over the world, and bagging oodles and oodles of cool free stuff !

If you do not know how to get on OpenSim( and  believe me, you are not alone) please see my ” How to get on OpenSim in Six Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog. And don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top of this blog.

For today’s adventure we will be staying in my beloved home grid Craft-the friendly World for the fourth part of our  Inter Metaverse Arts Biennial or IMAB event: Vulcan- Artists in Connection. For those of you who haven’t been following all the  cultural whoha, here are the broad strokes:

IMAB is a massive unprecendented  arts and culture festival that covering  grids, that has been going on for about nine months now!

Craft Grid has had several events. This one  takes place in side a big freaking  volcano. The whole thing is just dripping in classy  symbolism; Vulcan  and his forge have represented creativity for thousands of years, the volcano itself, reaching out from  deep in the earths heart to create  and renew  her children’s  home…   alright, I  was  bummed   that it wasn’t a Star Trek reference. Do you think you’re the only person who tweets Leonard Nimoy??? Multiculturality is the cornerstone of the Open Simulator project, and if the Europeans want to grind this bloggers  hopes into the virtual mud with an 8,000 year old cultural monster truck, then the needs of the many outweigh… I have had way too much coffee.

The Vulcan event is being staged in four parts, because it is something called an  Exquisite Corpse;  based on an early 20th century parlour game of writing part of a story, or drawing a picture, then folding the paper over, so the next participant had to create the following piece blind. Surrealists obviously loved the effect, and it eventually entered the artistic mainstream.All of the Vulcan artists have worked in secret, so the first three parts have only been open to the public for three days at a time!! The fourth and final part, in a surprise substitution  by Craft building competition winner Eamon Kuhn, will be be unveiled Monday March 4, at 9:30 pm CET.

Legendary Ivory Tower of Prims creator Lumiere Noir opened the event by  hollowing out the floor, and creating a massive underwater reactor complex.Thus the wetsuits. This is a shot of the reactor core.

Award winning artist Tosha Tyran’s part two was a wildly interactive story of violence and courage.

And this is the opening of part three, one month ago! Just behind me, to the right, you can see the very distinguished free culture  artist Ruben Haan ,whose work is about to be unveiled, and behind all of us, you can see the volcano. Follow the stairs to the top…

And jump in!

This thing is a bear to get in a wide angle photograph. Here is another shot.

You can also see the entrance to the underwater chamber, and the giant  reactor ventilator in the middle of the room. The new piece was titled ” dirt( free as in public domain)”Ruben just said” Not so much color this time. I wanted to play in the dirt.” Event organizer and primary monster truck driver,  GeR  Orsini was in hog heaven, happily flying here and there, chattering about the creative fire  and Vulcan’s mighty forge. He loves art events, and would never just see a pile of rocks, a wierd ass film and  a big floppy red arm. And neither  would  this gutted trekkie, actually. I may know squat about art, but I have always instinctively loved  Ruben’s work; I  even  had the  great pleasure of  interviewing him  for another IMAB event, which launched me into the mirror universe  of  being the person in the volcanic chamber who knew the most about the artist.

GeR Orsini : You have worked  with natural elements?

Ruben Haan: Yes. It is(textures) from my garden, off the grid(RL).

virtual christine: The garden with the clay!

Ruben Haan: Yes!:)

Ruben’s website says”Free Culture “artist, and he is not kidding. Ruben’s work is not just a PART of free culture, it is ABOUT it, which includes reusing and remixing his RL and virtual  work. Outstretched and supplicating,  giving, offering, helping, sharing hands, particularly these lovely, friendly  red ones, are one of his biggest repetitive themes.

Another one is identity and spirit; the area between where we present ourselves and who we really are. He does alot with glasses, goggles and eyes,which he calls the mirror of the soul, and these  big ol’socket shapes were ones I absolutely recognized.

He also creates his work with an eye to the viewer remixing it. His usual bright colors are normally set against a white background, but the stone textures did pretty well in my Brazilian windlight setting!

Now, I had a bad headache, and had to go offline shortly after the start of the event. So I came back the next day to get my head around Ruben’s seemingly unprepossesing pile of rocks.

I had honestly  wondered, at the opening of Tosha’s event, how Ruben’s gentle style would fit in with the rumbling of the reactor, and the fire and blood of Tosha’s angry statement.

What a stupid thing to wonder. At Ruben’s opening I had seen Tosha spend a long time inside the  sockets, and wondered what she was doing.

I had seen everyone slowly flying in and out of the stones themselves.

mm
I looked Ruben up a few days later.

virtual christine: Ruben, How the heck did you come up with such a beautiful, peaceful work for the volcano?
Ruben Haan: Ow.
virtual christine: Are you hurt?
Ruben Haan: Nope.
virtual christine: Why are you owing?
Ruben Haan: Like; I have to think how did that happen
virtual christine: Oh, it’s your thinking sound!
Ruben Haan: Yep haha!They asked me to make something at that collaboration.  Its a nice project so I said; “okay”. Then started like ow! No! What am I going to do now? Hehe!  I had no idea. A vulcano? I have nothing with vulcanos- never been to one.
virtual christine: But you did think of something eventually:)
Ruben Haan: I wanted to do something with soil or dirt
virtual christine: I love the name, dirt
Ruben Haan: I like playing with it, more than playing with mesh on grids.

Ruben Haan: those textures were from my garden, which is a little poisoned. That is bad

virtual christine: poisoned?
Ruben Haan: There used to be a paint factory
virtual christine: Oh, nasty
Ruben Haan: Maybe it is a   homage to dirt.
virtual christine: The way you could see inside the stones was fantastic; and the sockets, when you sat in them and looked out, it was like being in the Grand Canyon .I`ve spent a lot of time  in the desert, lots of dirt and sand.I thought you really caught the spirit of the canyons.
Ruben Haan: Wow! I’ve never been there!
virtual christine: Not in this life, you haven’t:)
Ruben Haan: It  was hard to find my place in the collaboration
virtual christine: Really?
Ruben Haan: but I hope its clear that vulcanic soil or mater or so is a link o_o
virtual christine: oh yes! You were the only artist to celebrate the stone. It was just masterful!
Ruben Haan: Thanks
virtual christine: The forms in the stones, was that the souls?
Ruben Haan: There was no architecture behind the shapes; more just expression.

virtual christine: so it is whatever we want it to be
Ruben Haan: That’s okay
Ruben Haan: I just like to play with dirt. I hope more people do.
virtual christine: Why?
Ruben Haan: It’s importand to love dirt, instead of “cleaning” it away. Its where we live from!The plants, the little anmals, bacteria; in the western world we learned to call it dirty and think thats bad. But dirty means its alive!
virtual christine: Unless we have polluted it!
Ruben Haan: Polluted places have less dirt- look at the wastelands we call farms! they have no dirt anymore! Thats why our food is bad, no nutrition
virtual christine: If they have no dirt,  what do they have?

Ruben Haan:They have dead soil with oil.

virtual christine: Oil?
Ruben Haan: They use oil to make the plants grow and remove animals they call pests. All pestisides are made from oil,so basicly we eat plants grown on oil unless we eat organic.
virtual christine: Can you recomend any reading on this?

Ruben Haan: You can read a lot ,but playing in the dirt is a more nice way of learning hehe
virtual christine: Haha, yes! I lived on an organic farm for a while
Ruben Haan: nice
virtual christine: The soil smelt soooo good!In the early morning picking veggies, it was a wonderful to smell and touch!
Ruben Haan: It’s that sensation what I wanted to show with this work!

virtual christine: You said at the opening that the indians had a fantastic way to live with volcanoes
Ruben Haan: I had just taken a course about permaculture,and there was said that the indians had a fantastic system.
virtual christine: What is permaculture?

Ruben Haan: Permaculture is a permanent culture, it means designing so that the culture can be  100%durable: It comes from an agriculture movement started in Australia. It looks at woodlands to learn how ecosystems work, and use that as inspiration to design. I find it inspirational

virtual christine: And you took a course on this for the inspiration?
Ruben Haan: Yep.I have a garden too.
virtual christine: Oh, for the garden, to heal the poor thing! Is it working? are you restoring the soil?
Ruben Haan: Yep, it happens pretty fast. But I hope someday the poison from the old paint factory will be removed.The plants and fungi have some work to do,  haha!

virtual christine: Those fungi are hard workers!!So you are using plants to purify the soil? And composting?
Ruben Haan: Yep and bringing on more mulch material.
virtual christine: Do you use seaweed?
Ruben Haan: I heard about that. Did you?

The composting conversation went flat out poopy, and ultimatley contained a little more personal information from Ruben and I than you probably want! Anyhow, on Monday evening, if you have some time to kill before the event, it is worth checking out one of Crafts newest regions! Just plug ESOC into your world map, and teleport!

Craft’s own meister builder, creator of  the UNESCO sim, Darmstadt and the incredible Tin Museum, Yoster Allen, and grid owner Tao Quan are a great team! I wish I had time to do a proper post right now- this build is FASCINATING!!  Grab your camera,  and swing on by!

And now my dears, I must love you and leave you! Thank you Tosha and Ruben and GeR and Yoster and Tao and of course Leonard, who  vividly remembers me from the 1974 convention, but doesn’t want to hurt his other 436,769 followers feelings by returning my tweets. What a guy! And thanks to all of you, for joining me on my small adventures; your company means the world to me! The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers! Until next time,Adieu!!

Here I am, being engulfed by a pulsating  fluid  golden emerald flowering reptilian behemoth that was looming on the lawn the last time I popped into Yoshiwara, one of 6  regions on Metropolis Grid belonging to the  cultural powerhouse Cybernetic Art Research Project…

where indescribable light  creatures…

are commonplace,

but  by no means the  main attraction.

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous! Here we all are again ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independent worlds, many of which choose to be connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, that allows you traverse this great frontier, exploring, making friends and  amassing  free content at a rate that will  eventually have  you  in front of a judge, charged with assaulting the two hundred and fifty euros an hour Jungian psychologist who insisted you were both connected  to a “collective unconscious”, yet remained  completely unable to tell you which inventory folder  contained the  twenty seven metal clad non rigid dirigibles you snagged on that dystopian standalone last July.

If you do not know how to get on OpenSim, and believe me , you are not alone, please read my ” How to get on OpenSim in Six Ridiculously Easy Steps “  page located at the top of this blog. If you do not understand any of this post’s terminology, don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top of this blog!

For today’s adventure, we will be returning to Metropolis Grid which I posted about a few weeks ago. As we toured some of the highlights of this 1000 region strong world, I breezed through the CARP regions, saying that  founders Josina Burgess and Velazquez Bonetto were such an important partnership in metaverse culture, that they reqired their own post in the near future- which has now arrived! Okay, it means we are all that much older, but I worked really hard on this thing, so try to show a little more enthusiasm than some over paid neo pagan  tdoc, who cannot  differentiate between an aerostat and a blimp… I need to get on with my life, don’t I?

Sorry, but this is the best wide shot I could come up with. Deceptively empty looking isn’t it? Now, from where I am hovering in the picture, I am facing region Rotwangs Labor, CARP 1 is under my feet, CARP 3 is behind me, CARP 2 to my right. The big metal structure in the water behind CARP 2, is the well known SL artist Rebeca Bashly’s moody IMAB build, Fabrica  which I  already covered  in my last Metropolis post. Now take a look at the map I made you below!

We will start our tour here,up in the far right hand corner of  region Yoshiwara. Where I go all Cheshire Cat on you; this region’s very odd name is taken from something old that took it from  something even older. Give up? The older something is the famous 600 year old Tokyo red light district Yoshiwara, but this region is named after the decadent nightclub in  Fritz Lang’s 1927 cinematic masterpiece  Metropolis,  after which this entire grid is named; which may be a trifle confusing, but not nearly so much as Velaquez Bonetto’s decision upon moving to here from the OS Grid a few years back, to have his Metropolis, and ONLY his Metropolis, avatar name be Fritz Lang.

OUR Yoshiwara is the simplest CARP region. It has…

… free stuff. These very chic glass platforms are not quite finished, but a great many of the small containers you see lining the edges have free textures, sculpties, and the like. The low flat building in the back left of the picture…

Josina Burgess’ wonderful wearable art. In 2006 real life Dutch singer and professional painter Josina De Burger took her grandmother’s name and went to SL in search of yet another creative outlet- and  did she strike gold! One of her many  accomplishments in her new medium is being the first person  in SL to use real life paintings as textures, making every individual skirt or t shirt a work of art! Bottom line, this little shop has some of the most sophisticated clothing in the free metaverse. Okay , now let’s skip down to CARP 1 the region that was under my feet, with the not- very- impressive- from -the- outside-big- red geometric shapes. You need to do two things to change this: 1) turn out the lights, 2) fly straight into the damn things.

Josina calls Velazquez not only her best friend and partner, but her mentor. I can see that; he loves ideas, and is really good at explaining them. For example,Vela told me that our brains function by turning the material into immaterial abstract representations, soooo, the more immaterial qualities an environment has, the more the brain feels at home. He said this was cognitive psychology. Whether it is a genetic flaw, or our best defining feature,as human beings we are perpetually attempting to free our fantasies from the prison of our skulls. Hence, we make stuff like language and art. Vela contributed this next bit in Switch, the new media journal from San Jose(which non Californians know as Silicon Valley) University.

“New media practitioners are experiencing many miracles today: Cyberspace, dematerialized virtual time-space, and a worldwide webbed society where people surf around at the speed of light. Artists that are not approaching this virtual universe as a challenge and goal do not deserve the distinction, avant garde. ART space Diabolus CARP Team stands, since its founding as experimental art in 2007, as the most contemporary medium of art today and does deserve this distinction. Our goal is to produce technically sophisticated and substantive art that explores all the possibilities of worldwide web virtual media. In one word, we call this: HyperArt.”

Now, since terms like ” spoiled brat” and “weak ass parenting”have gone out of fashion, we have all hear the word “hyper” rather alot. I personally had never thought of it as having another meaning. Okay ,there was the hypergrid, but I had always just bleeped over that one, as I am wont to do with any technical reference beyond “click here”. In the world according to CARP, hyper is unbleepable. Not only is their art “hyper ” they have a freaking CREDO about “hyper”functionalism, which basically lays out, how “hyper”form follows “hyper”function. Sooo we must look beyond the modern social dysfunctionality, and journey back to  the ancient Greeks, to whom “hyper” was a prefix that meant “over” “excess”or “exaggeration”; or perhaps the ancient Romans, to whom it meant “super”. Or we could just ask Vela.

Velazquez Bonetto: A simple example is gravity. In the real world you can’t turn it off. Here, it’s normal. Like Flying. Or drifting. There are many things that you can only do here . All is possible. That’s hyper.

The Credo is based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s beloved mentor, the father of skyscrapers and modernism, Louis Sullivan’s  seminal “The tall office building artistically considered“, published in 1896. It’s a credo that  basically lays out how form follows function. Vela has tweaked it for virtual reality. For all of us.

“It is the pervading law of all things
organic, inorganic or generic,
Of all things physical, metaphysical or virtual,
Of all things human and all things avatar,
Of all true manifestations of the intellect,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,

That form ever follows function.
This is the law in the real world.
That hyperform ever follows hyperfunction.
This is the law in the metaverse.”

virtualchristine: So can you give me an example of form following function?

Velazquez Bonetto: Naturally! A Dolphin can’t be a cube and be able to swim quickly. So it has a streamlined form.

virtualchristine: Cool !I had a swordfish metaphor in my head!

Velazquez Bonetto::)))

virtualchristine: So how does that apply to  virtual reality?

Velazquez Bonetto: In the metaverse, the physical rules don’t really apply. You can fly, and walk through walls. We can actually immerse ourselves in objects, put information in them, with scripting and animation. We can decide what their form  is with no relation to physical laws. The dolphin can be any shape we want and still swim. Whatever we can imagine we can create, at least visually.

virtualchristine: So where is the form?

Velazquez Bonetto: Everywhere. What else is there in virtual worlds other than our dematerialised ideas? The form only follows our brain’s output.

virtualchristine: Our imagination is the function?

Velazquez Bonetto: Yes.

virtualchristine: Hahaha! I can’t believe I got that!

Let’s leave  on this note of  somewhat hysterical triumph, and meander over to the left side of Yoshiwara!

This  beautiful,  wide open edifice has two entrances,  the western one on Rotwangs Labor, and this eastern one, on Yoshiwara, where we will start. Both entrances have rows of colored cubes. Start here, by clicking the little green cube by itself on the right!

This  is a totally different set of teleport cubes! The green cube is a return teleport. Zoom out.

These are the V jazz stages, another groundbreaker from CARP, where musicians improvise not only music, but objects that are steered by the music. Here is a blurb from a 2011 Virtual Jazz show that appears to have been sponsored by IBM, who do like to have their fingers in SL’s artistic A list. The cubes take you to the various stages, where you can fool with the controls, hehe. Back down at the main eastern entrance,  the rest of the teleport cubes zap you around the eastern side of the wide open building.I preferred walking to the teleports…

The sculpture is another one of Josinas flowers. The posters are…

…book covers. And not just of their personal work.

Vela and Josina have collaborated with a serious chunk of metaverse art heavyweights. There are three floors of these covers, which do not represent the entire NINETY volumes. Free volumes. You don’t have to join anything, or pay a cent. These sumptuous testaments to a living, vital metaverse culture, OUR culture, are all online. You are also free to print them out.

——————————————>HEREISTHELINK<—————————————–

Now let’s hit the Rotwang’s Labor entrance!

Rotwang is, you guessed it, a character from the film Metropolis,the mad scientist who became a cinematic  archetype; and Labor is, correct again, laboratory! There are quite a few teleports here.

The purple cube that says 4000 takes you to the architecure studio on the purple sign behind me. The red cubes area different type of teleport, you sit down, and click for a menu. Then you can teleport to any of the studios listed on the signs behind me, while sitting on the cube! The studios…

… are in fact way the hell up, and each  contains one or two pieces from the main set,a reproduction of the film Metropolis, which  you get to with the orange teleport  cube…

You will not believe the scale of this thing. And sorry, I am not sure if they have made a film or whatever with it yet or not. Now, back down on the ground at the teleport cubes…

These teleports take you around the eastern part of the wide open building.Let’s go see the first man!

Isn’t he friendly? These four floors are an academic paper written by mathematician and  system designer, Klara Geher, with an epilogue by Vela  under his RL name Lazlo Oerdoegh. You will see this name alot, because avatar history and Vela are rather intertwined .

Yes, that is Hendrix.Unfortunately, the text is mostly  in German, but there are chunks of English and  lots of pictures. I can walk you through the broad strokes. You have to follow the page numbers, but on every floor the new chapter begins where the writing is, and then you go around the BACKS of the panels, and follow those arrows. This is all very interesting, and rather important if you spend a lot of time in virtual worlds.

The pre history of avatars is the history of computers. The 20th century changed society, and the legendary 1960′s gave birth to much of the modern world. After the hideous trauma of the second world war, the holocausts, and the first use of weapons of mass destruction, a world longing for normality and hope, put it’s faith in science, which enjoyed an unprecedented period of freedom, which led to unprecedented scientific achievement, and an escalating faith in the concept of progress that spread to the social sphere. It is not a coincidence that virtually every society on the planet gave birth to various civil rights movements in the 1960′s. John Lennon is there, because Klara thinks the word “Imagine” epitomizes the era; and the gentleman below Yoko’s main squeeze is Vela’s big big hero, Nicholas Schöffer,  the massively important art theoretician, architect and father of cybernetic art. Schöffer said the 1960′s were the second phase of the french revolution, which laid the groundwork for the consumer society. That society no longer fought for material goods, but for immaterial cultural and aesthetic goods. It fought for a new dignity.

Nicholas Schöffer’s  legendary tower of light was the first artwork conceived as a symbol of pure intellectual power. It wasn’t possible to build it at the time, and then too expensive and politically incorrect. (After his death Schöffers widow, who is active in SL, ran across Vela’s work, and you know who built finally built a virtual tower, don’t you?) Computer generated art started almost by accident,  but as academic disciplines continued to cross over, accelerating computer development almost to light speed, cybernetic art was born.Cybernetic Serendipity at the London Institute of Contemporary Art ,was the first “cybernetic” art exhibition in history, the participants read like a who’s who of  western culture( John Cage, Schöffer…), and my buddy, the first man, was introduced to the public.

Walter Fetter called his creation, ” Boeing Man” as he was created on one of those big honkin’ old school computer mainframes, to work out cockpit design for Boeing pilots. Remember, back then they actually took off and landed manually. They had to  be able to see out the damn window.  Boeing man could only sit, and was the first digital  human representation on computer.

The second big leap forward in avatar history, came when a young  Hungarian engineer/artist got a contract to design an airport safety sytem. Oscar, who could stand, and be programmed with various charachteristics  was the first  avatar for the Personal Computer, or PC.  It was created by Lazlo Oerdoegh. As were, Anybody (1988-1990), Anthropos (1991-2001), Ergonaut  (1996-2001), Ergomax (1999-2001), IDO:Ergonomics (2002-2009), and CharAT Ergonomics (2002-2010). He also took part in the development of RAMSIS (1999-2001) at Techmat GmbH Germany. Vela designs industrial,or useful, avatars, for the relativly new field of ergonomics, which is the science of “work”- studying the effect different machines, from industrial tools to wheelchairs, have on the human body. Ta Da!! English speakers will now officially have a clue in hell what all the pictures are about! Now let’s hit CARP 2!!

This is the  entrance to Josina Burgess personal IMAB installation; the group opened the Inter Metaverse Art Biennial by staging an opera about the life and work of Nicholas Schöffer called The Change. Why did they open it? Well, this unprecidented multi grid nine month long celebration of the arts, was their idea!

virtualchristine: How did you come up with the idea for IMAB?

Velazquez Bonetto: We brainstorm alot.

Josina Burgess: Thinking out loud. Happy accident. Vela was thinking of a grid wide exhibition, and it grew from there.

virtualchristine: Are you satisfied with the outcome? It is like thewhole metaverse has IMABmania!

Josina Burgess: Oh yes! It is still growing like crazy! People  are still sending us entries!!

virtualchristine: How much say do the two of you have? I mean, would you ever say, “No, that is too stupid to be in the Bienniale”?

Velazquez Bonetto: If we really thought that, sure. But I always think , in matters of art, you have to be very liberal. Art history clearly shows this. How many people said Van Gogh painted  ridiculous bullshit? Look how time changed that!

virtualchristine:These paintings hanging on the walls, are they your RL paintings?

Josina Burgess:No, it is all digital art. I build 3D sculptures, script them and let them anime; move, rotate. change. I photograph it on high resolution, then rework that. Vela says they are Emot-icons.

virtualchristine: And inside the black box? What is that called?

Josina Burgess: Alienation. Last September my mother died, and this installation was the only thing I could make in honour of her. It’s like mourning. When it opened, Vela streamed Mozarts requiem.

virtualchristine: That must have been very powerful.

Josina Burgess:Very. Everybody knows how it feels to lose someone loved, so the emotion is the same, and the music even makes it stronger. Every emotion is an emotion and Vela and me both like to work with emotions, and try in also virtual work to trigger emotions. Color, forms, movement and music, all bring up emotions.  It’s called synethesia.

Let’s go inside.

It is very beautiful and stark.

You sit in the rings..

…which toss you and turn you in the cold forest. The rings ascend…

…slowly lifting you…

…out of the gloom…

…and back into the world, where you can see  explosions of light and color. That is CARP 3, Vela’s installation.

virtualchristine: What the heck is this called?

Velazquez Bonetto: “VJ. Virtual Jockey. This is like a giant light organ, and I am a musician of light. There is an automatic programm that is always running, but I can programme more sequences it from my computer. For a proper show I have to be here.  This is my relaxation machine.”

Excuse me…

…while I kiss…

…the sky.

Last little gem.Vela, who calls scripts the soul of the avatar, wanted me to tell you, that if anyone is having trouble with scripts for their artistic creations, or needs other technical advice, to  just swing by and ask him. Really.

And now my dearest dears, I will love you and leave you. I hope you find this post to be of some use, as usual I had a blast writing it! Thank you Vela and Josina for taking the time to talk to me, and of course, thanks to all of YOU for joining me on my small adventures. Your company means more to me than I can express in mere words. The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to you all! Until next time, Adieu!!

Here I am, mid jackknife in a gigantic interactive psychadelic tower that is one of forty equally um, what are the words I’m looking for; ah yes, FREAKING WILD exhibits at the Second Annual Inworldz Elf Clan Art Festival. You have one more week to completely wear yourself out climbing towers, going down rabbit holes, persuading the Doctor to pleeeeaaase let you into the Tardis, meeting Centaurs, trekkie dragons and political Ferrets, merfolk, feen, ballerinas,knights, pricesses, fireflies, whales, a talking horse, unicorns, giant goddesses, mad hatters, goblins, angels, Wilbur Wright enjoying a steaming cup of coffee over some blue prints… oh forget it; I’ll just show you!

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous, here we all are again ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independant grids, many of which are connected by an amped up teleportation system called the hypergrid, which allows you to travel from world to world, endlessly exploring, making friends and grabbing freebies with both fists until you are just dizzy!

If you do not know how to get on OpenSim, (and believe me you are not alone) please read my ” How To Get On OpenSim in Six Ridiculously Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog. And don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top !

For today’s adventure, we will be going to Inworldz, which, like many  OpenSim commercial grids, likes to have more control about who and what goes in and out of their world! So they are “closed”;  that is NOT connected to any other grid by the hypergrid sytem!  You must create an account, which is free, and log on with pretty much any standard  free viewer, or the Inworldz viewer, which is also free, then put an avatar together from the  excellent freebie stores in the welcome region.

I have already written  two posts to getting started in Inworldz . If you are not inclined to read them, there are a couple of points I think will save you some wear on your nerves:

1) The welcome area is great for free clothes etc., but there are no event posters or current cultural info. There are people with “mentor” over their names, but their job seemed to be answering technical questions from residents.Which means they ignore you. Some senior mentors appeared to see themselves as greeters who assist newbies, but it took ten days for one to ask me if I needed help.  Since no one inworld is likely to tell you, my guides give you the inz and outz of the welcome area.

2) As a grid, Inworldz is ill prepared for casual, unescorted sight seeing. The homepage has a basic event calendar, but doesn’t always give understandable (to the newcomer)locations. The landmark folders from the welcome area are an unintelligable repetitive mish mash, the world map search engine and destination guides are riddled with crippling spelling inconsistencies and if there is a logic to region naming, I haven’t found it. I  partially sort out the folders for you, and give good tips for navigating in my guides.

Okey Doke! Now we can get started! The first step in today’s journey, is our first step in any Inworldz journey- type Delphi into your world map and teleport…

…to the Community Library at Delphi!!  Welcome to the the beating heart of the Inworldz community. Founded by RL librarians Alexina Proctor and Prax Maryjasz , the Library is an exciting, intelligent, whirl of books and steampunk and art and fantasy and storytelling…. Pour yourself a coffee and be sure to join the Library group, so you can set this place as your home location! There are plenty of other useful groups, landmarks and info, as well as posters with landmarks to the latests big cultural events, including our destination today!! So click on this sign and look in your inventory( no window pops up to offer you the landmark, so look after the first click!) Use the fourth landmark in the folder to teleport…

…to the festival! I know this picture is less than spectacular, but for a second you need to focus on some details without um, distractions. Firstly, in case you wound up somewhere else, you can see the correct landmark for this location highlighted in my inventory. Behind me you can see two sets of teleports, on the left to  a few individual artists, and on the right to the three main regions, collaborations, where more than one artist was involved in the build, Cirque de la Luna, which is individual artists, and the QT art sim, which isan entire region devoted to Inworldz art powerhouse Quadrapop Tree , and the mer stage, where I believe the opening party was held. The strip we are standing on is Dreamz&Visionz. I think it is the best place to start because…

It is more or less smack in the middle of the  forty exhibits; so yes, this is all just over  one half of the festival! As you can see, there are bridges and paths, and for my money, using them to get around is the most fun. This fantasy art  festival is too damn big for someone with a day job to cover every individual entry and artist in one sitting.  As a result   someone who knows exactly  zip about art and doesn’t really like fantasy, will be giving you a tour of the festival  highlights.  Well, it’s not like I’m charging admission, or running for office, so what do you really have to lose? We will start on this side, to the east of the Dreamz&Visionz landing area.

The theme of the festival is “wishing”, and the most excellent Jeri Raja’s( founder of Dreamz&Visions and co organizer of this, and damn near every other festival on the grid) lovely, peaceful, Buddist Garden is entitled “Wishing for Serenity.”

This is in region collaboration, which seems to weave in and out of Cirque de la Luna. Or maybe I was  doing the weaving; at any rate, do you see the blue mushroom to my left? They are in front of every exhibit, you use them to cast your three votes for the people’s choice awards! Now, at first I wondered ” What Doctor? ” Then I was offered a notecard that said the build is based on a Doctor Who episode, at the point where the assistant drops everything in her life( didn’t they all?) to go gallavanting through the universe with everybody’s favorite time lord. You have to click all the stuff in the park, and I am still not sure what did it but…

Move fast and click on the ladder…

C’mon, show your stuff and get moving!! The Doctor won’t wait forever!!

Keep going! I know several people who voted for this in the people`s choice!

I noticed immediately and thought it was very commendable, that what were  obviously novice entries, and the entries of more experienced, including  some metaverse A list artists were all being shown together. I thought Jamie McGuire’s Tower Flower was a novice entry when I approached it on foot. The base had some cards about wishing, and all I could see were the undersides of flowers- I really thought, this is the worst thing here! After I climbed to the top I pulled out, hoping a long shot yield something; Et voila! Magnificent, isn’t it!!
Quite a few of the entries turned out to be better from the long view. But not all. Behind the Tower Flower, to the left, fashion designer’s Eleseren Grey’s Wishing Fairy is breathtaking from afar…

…and up close. Below…

…and above. The gentle, giant fairy’s body is in subtle motion, and can you see the dandilion seeds floating away?

A list time. Real life french painter and webmaster Ub Yifu‘s “Cloud Gate”…

…  was so powerful it seemed to have an odor of wet grass and night. A murder of crows flies through the gate and back again, as the hapless man is drawn in… Apparently a version of this was exhibited at SL9B, as a hommage to  director Tim Burton. Neat Ub fact- in SL his avatar is Don Quixote!

You may need to relax at some point, especially if you took a really close look at the grey man in front of the Ub’s Gate(chills). This is “……..a retreat for weary elves, fantasy critters of all sorts, biggies and tinies alike.  There are books to read…….lie on the cushions where the books hover and click on them for notecards of each story — a take home gift.  Sit in the rooftop garden and watch the fountain play in patterns.  Relax as the revolving windows on the second floor go around and around and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” Safe Haven is a  typically public minded  entry from librarians Prax and Alex!

Cy Celina’s “Infinite Wishes” is a huge hourglass  running backwards above a small hedge maze. A very interesting  sign that it was too laggy to read properly encouraged you to experience the ancient labrynth form, then teleport to the top; unfortunatly the lag made  the maze impossible to move in,  and the teleport would not work for me, so in the end I flew up…

Lag vanishes, and the tea party was lovely, but then I noticed that the flowers weren’t flowers…

In my opinion Cy’s little handless clock flowers…

… were the nicest surprise of the festival. I have since read the sign off a photo I made, and there is also supposed to be a universe in a teacup! Kudos Cy!

Kasha Selona’s “Wishing Star” was loaded with great poseballs…

.. from top to bottom. Definitly the friendliest entry!

I looked at Wishing for Wind by Taika Wirsing and Allod Tolweeny  from a distance all afternoon, trying to work out what the hell it was blowing so gracefully up on the hill.

So refreshing and unexpected!

I was so busy looking up, I almost missed John Mahogany’s great little Kitty Hawk build!

Quadrapop’s  very spiritual entry had this  handy teleport panel. The scale was just enormous, and I am not enough of a photographer to handle it. Go see for yourself.

This is the entrance to Kapi Kinder’s “Starway to Heaven”, which I found to be the most flat out fun of the festival.

Just walk in and start clicking the ascending animation balls.

The motion can actually makes you dizzy, and it takes a bit of effort to manuver your camera as you swoop all over this glittering psychadelic Cirque Magifique. Eventually a ball teleports you…

… to the roof…

.. .where you keep clicking! Keep an eye on the time, you can lose track of it in this entry. A great big virtualchristine standing ovation for Kapi Kinder!

Now let’s do the smaller half! On the hill directly behind the teleport panels..

This is Violetta Biziou’s “The Adventures of Roon” there is a notecard with a charming little story which will help you understand her  wildly oversized,incredibly elongated explosion of color entry.

This is the island over the clouds but under the balloon- wait a sec..

…there you go! Just read the notecard, it all pretty much makes sense!

The huge checkerboard platform on the horizon is Tadhg Muirin’s crazy fun “After Wonderland – Dark Alice” build he has been working on for a couple of years now, and enters in various shows at whatever stage of development it is in.  I had the pleasure of meeting the very charming Mad Tadder, and discussing how this build will shape up…

Tadhg Muirin: Alice in wonderland is my second fav book in the world.  (and I’ve read lots)  it’s very close to my heart.  And the concept of the sim is how Alice forgot her childhood when she grew up… but there is a happy ending for visitors on the sim… as they go thru to rediscover their inner child, they will travel up(!) a rabbit hole to a land that is back to how the original story was.  (A platform in the sky with vibrant colours and original etchings and another venue)
: yes, I put that last anim in… because I lost my mind making that house.  Now I expect I’ll lose the rest of me making the sim.
virtual christine:(the name) Mad Tadder is pretty good!
Tadhg Muirin: Thank you.  You smile me.
Tadhg Muirin: In the immortal words of Van Gogh… “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”
virtual christine: And now you are taking everyone with you!
Tadhg Muirin: Yes, but I give it back when you go UP the rabbit hole to a happy place again.

Sit on everything, click on everything. Do you see that little white rabbit on the hearth?

They are scattered throughout the house, posing you in…

…various states of unease.

There are a few entrances. Once you have worked out where this one is…

Oh yeah! This club isn’t connected to the house, but does have the same  meltdown causing white rabbits scattered about, so get clicking!

Back on the Cirque De la Lune mainland, we arrive at my personal favorite, soror Nishi‘s very elegant ” Wishing Tree and Fish”

soror  is an active participant in Second Life’s  a list art scene, she makes real life jewelry and sculpts with every material you can think of, has her own gardening business, and blogs about all this with humor and style.  The lady is also  interesting to follow on Twitter.

Sigh. Ethereal.

I will wrap up this post with a fantasy build, because it is a fantasy festival, and even if the genre doesn’t wow you, this lady will. The entry is entitled,” If Wishes were Unicorns”

And like all of  Julie Hathor’s work, it may glitter and sparkle, but there are complex ideas at the core. Click the lamp to teleport.

Can you see how the unicorn is purifying the water? Is my crummy photography bringing over the spine tingling detail of every tiny thing, or the grace of the unicorn? I was up here a long time just looking…

and taking picture…

…after picture.

And now my dearest dears, I must love you and leave you!Many thanks to Elf Clan Elder and Festival Organizer  Moontan Valeeva for taking the time to chat with me. She has assuredme that after the prizes have been given out on Feb. 22, you will still have a few days to look at the exhibits, and also that the novices and pros will be judged separately, which is as nice as showing them together. Thanks also to the Mad Tadder, Alex and Prax, Julie Hathor. And thanks to all of you, for joining me in my small adventures. Your company means the world to me; the sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers! Until next time, Adieu!

Here I am six months ago on Open Sim’s OS Grid meeting Arcadia Asylum. She just popped in suddenly, as is her way,  and gave me, a complete stranger, an intensly personal three hour tour of her magnificent autobiographal opus,” African Slums- Bronx Live in Africa”. I was already intrigued by the sheer mythology of the woman; after meeting her, I was utterly hooked on this tiny enigma wrapped in a conundrum.  I never saw her again. A short while later, I am not sure  exactly when, Arcadia and the slums simply disappeared.

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous! Here we all are ready for another whirlwind adventure in,well, NOT the Open Simulator project, a non commercial opensource software platform that hosts hundred of independant grids, OR Second Life, the 20 million user strong, commercial granddaddy of all virtual worlds! For today’s adventure we will be following the footsteps of the great lady of the metaverse, whom you could truthfully say is  something of a challenge to track down. Okay, people actually laugh in my face.  The Arcadia Asylum myth is  a malestrom of  wild speculation and urban legend, and what qualifies as actual fact is daunting.  She was in SL from it’s first San Fransisco peace and love brave new world incarnation ; a radical graffiti artist gone wildly successful digital designer, her combination of skills and politics caused her to donate untold hours to the world’s development, and fueled her rage as, in her eyes, that world became more and more overtly venal.  She had real stature; she used it to furiously expound free culture; her keyboard produced non stop  cutting edge artistic creations  that highlighted the ineptutude and vapidity of the growing commercial scene. Breathtakingly beautiful and insanely witty  barrios, slums, crippled orphans, the trappings of homelessness, rats, litter, sewers, mountains and mountains of garbage and toxic waste: while the rest of the metaverse sang the blessings of  techological culture, it’s leading citizen thundered about THE PRICE. Her refusal to see the sex and gambling industries as anything but the crassest exploitation, led to another epic battle, one that resulted in the departure of gambling, and clearly marked adult rated areas.There was one last blow out with the Lindens, and she vanished. There were rumors she was very ill. Old friends in OpenSim, where she cropped up and began furiously building, were afraid for her life. She told me she was living in a Swiss clinic, and seemed to regret having thrown an expensive keyboard out the window a few minutes before we met. She had a cat. She was bedridden. She said her fame often made it difficult to work, which is why she had five alternative or “alt” identities. People who know her say that  number is a low estimate. She told me she uses different language inflections with each alt, and will not even try to deal with  her 500+ IMs a day. And absolutely not one person who considers her a friend in Second Life or OpenSim knows, or expects to know, exactly where she is,  or what her plans are. The website she gave me was dated, and worse apears to be defunct. The museum  she had mentioned was closed, and no one could tell me what happened to hobo Mally McGinnis or the others involved, as though incognito was  some kind of damned contagion. On the upside, my attempts to cope with the unrelenting aggravation may have rescued the La Rioja district from  the Spanish fiscal meltdown. La vida loca indeed.

My luck started to change when I stumbled upon leading SL intellectual and philosopher, retired professor of psychology Selby Evans, known inworld as Thinkerer Melville, in the comment thread of a  G+ group. I remembered that he knew her back in the day, before she stunned everyone with her  disappearence from SL in 2007. I worked up my nerve and asked him a few questions. This  busy man very kindly told me to just search for Arcadia Asylum on his popular SL culture blog, virtual outworlding.  Eureka!!  She was definitly in SL using her old  Aley alt. There were four sites; TWO museums, neither of which were the one I had been looking for, Arcadia’s new build, the Pirate Town of Flotsam in the Diego region of the Blake sea, and part of her Bodega Build, in the Rags to Riches section of Calleta, run by Thinkerer Melville himself !!

Of course, I initially batted zero on Flotsam. All gussied up in my best pirate ensemble and my sporting beloved  snake Juju, I could teleport to the region next to it, see it sometimes, but never ever teleport directly in. I tried for weeks. Half the time Diego didn’t even show up on my world map! I assumed she had closed it. I was already familiar with the otherwise charming Hobo region of Calleta, and the- hoplessly- trapped- in- the- tar- pit- under – the- Wooly-Mammoth- lag, made me decide to try for the museums first. So I teleported to the region of Makazi, where the larger  museum with a huge, unmissable sign, was supposedly located. It looked simple. It wasn’t. Let me save everybody some time.

You land in a sandbox area, that has nothing at all to do with the museum. Just fly straight up. Completely hidden behind the blue tower and then utterly obscured by  the grove of  trees is..

Ta Da!! The huge unmissable sign! If you want to get to the  smaller Living Library, teleport to region Mieville Wells, fly straight up and…

Man, Second Life seems packed  like a tin of sardines after the big sky country of  OpenSim’s hypergrid!   Anyway, I had the simple intelligence to click  edit on a museum wall, which got me  into the profile of  the splendidly whiskered Professor Grey,” creator and curator of the Arcadia Asylum Living Libraries, located in Mieville wells and Makazi(see my picks). My goal is to help preserve the works of Aley (aka Arcadia asylum and Aley Aria) and to help distribute them for all to enjoy. I ask for nothing in return. If you’d like to help, please let me know.” So I sent the good professor an IM, after all, my luck  really did seem to be changing! Maybe someone inworld would finally answer me! And that ” see my picks” was intriguing… so I took a look. There was a teleport to Flostsam.  Well, what the heck; 5,000,000, 000 is lucky, right?

This will…

…get it’s..

…own…

…post.

Professor Grey promptly friended me.  A few days later…

Prof. Grey : “Welcome to the Arcadia Asylum Living Library main branch.  If you have the time I thought we might take a little tour, then talk a bit; and I think for your piece a little field trip might be in order.”

Yes Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!!

Christine321:” WOW!”

Prof. Grey :  “Hehehe, let’s start at the top. This roof top may not look like much but it is very important, this is where Dr. Waxen and I do a lot of the work related to sorting and putting  together the updates we send out. Some of the items are just too big to work on inside.”

Christine321:” Dr. Waxen?”

Prof. Grey: “Dr Waxen will be joining us momentarily. This way please to the third floor and a special room!”

Christine321: “Gosh, this is fantastic; a treasure trove!”

Prof Grey: “This is our resource center, it has been set up to help anyone that wishes to carry the Arcadia asylum line of items and offer them as freebies to their guests. All the latest available updates are here including all of the signs we have made, and even 1-prim freebie vendors are available upon request!”

Prof. Grey : “This is our second floor lounge area. It allows for informal meetings. The second floor is dedicated to other SL builders that share her philosophy of one source building:Punky Pugilist, Tooter Claxon, and Moard Lind. Ah, Dr. Waxen has arrived!”

Christine321: Did you take all this over from Mally Mcginnis?

Prof. Grey : No. Back in May/June of 2012 I was looking for an Arcadia item and when I went to the museum, it( the museum ) was  gone. I had just visited 3 days before and at that time it was there, for literally overnight it had disappeared. I contacted the(Arcadia Asylum) recovery group and no one knew what had happened nor did they know it was gone! Well it surfaced a while later that he had lost his land. The benefactor that paid his tier just disappeared with out a word.”

Christine321 “So did you have this place before Mally’s museum disappeared?”

Prof Grey: “No. In June of 2012 I was running a freebie center in Anilis on the Hector Atol and decided to turn it into a library of her works.I made the announcement to the recovery group and started the build on July 4th. But by November it was just too expensive to maintain the Anilis site, what with Linden tier and membership, so we went shopping for a new home, and found that Makazi was best suited for our needs.  ”

Christine321: “We?”

Prof. Grey: “There is a board for these museums. When we formed the new museums and exhibits group we decided more folks needed a say in say in how we do things. Troy Waxen, Myself, Perryn Peterson of the Mieville sims, Ming Manx; one of our board members is Conrad Evanier of Conrads creations, a fellow supporter of Arcadia. He is the creator of the freebie vendors we have and has donated them for use by those that carry Arcadias items. Grey Nacht has two sims; the Pala sim has a space platform that houses the Arcadia line. Basically anyone that’s willing to help will be offered a say in how and where we do things.”

Dr. Waxen : There’s no better curator than Professor Grey in my opinion.

Prof. Grey: “Let’s continue our tour.”

Professor Grey:  “The ground floor is dedicated to Arcadia Asylum, Aley Aria, and now the latest incarnation of that great lady Aley. resident.”

There is a secret project in the “remodeling” section.  After I swore never to breathe a word to anybody, I got a little tour. It opens March 1st. ( Psst! Heads up! Wear something  that won’t stick you with a hideous dry cleaning bill, no matter WHAT happens.)

And the evening continued! Next we teleported to…

The Mieville Wells Library!

Prof. Grey:” Now this center is solely dedicated to Arcadia’s works. The entire place, save this structure, is built with her pirate town.”

Christine321:” Yes, thanks to your picks I was there.”

Prof. Grey:” Did you know these buildings blow up ?”

Christine321: “Dear God, really?”

Prof. Grey : “Fun time!!”

The trick is to control the giggling enough to keep rapidly clicking the cannons.

Christine321: “You know, some people make fun of me for trying to find  Arcadia.”

Prof. Grey: ” They used to make fun of me too. Now I have better toys.”

Christine321:” Do you know her personally?”

Prof. Grey :” Hehehe yes. It was on July 4th I started to rebuild the freebies center in Anilis and this little mermaid shows up with a lot of other folks to help. Her name was Aley.resident. I had no clue.”

Christine321:” Is her health any better?”

Prof. Grey: “As to Arcadia, her health is fine from what she told me. She has been building and having fun here since 2010.”

Like  the mountain kingdom of Tibet, no matter how many maps you read or tours you take, Arcadia  remains untamed and mysterious!!

The Professor and Dr. Waxen, who are excellent company, took me to another Arcadia sim, but I would like to give that, and the other museum board members, as well as Arcadia’s own profile picks, their own post. Oh, and another time saver: as of this writing, the museums have no blog or website. I am also lining up interviews with people who knew her in OpenSim, as well as locations there where you can get her fantastic free content. If any body has anything they would like to add, feel free to contact me at virtualchristine@opensimcity.org

And now my dears, I must love you and leave you! Thank you Professor Grey, Dr. Waxen, and Selby Evans for turning  my luck back into a lady! A little mermaid lady. Thank you again Arcadia, for taking so much time with me that day. I know you don’t remember me, and you will most likely never read any of this, but if you ever object to anything I write, just tell me to shut the hell up:). And thanks to all of you, for joining me on my windmill tilting adventures. Your company means the world to me! The sweetest of dreams, and the brightest of days to all of my beloved readers. Until next time, Adieu!

Here I am  one month earlier in my good friend Tosha Tyran’s wildly interacive contribution to Craft Grid’s IMAB Project: Vulcan- Artists in Connection. Amazingly, the corpse in front of me is NOT the exquisite one in the title, it is  the most tireless and dedicated grid manager in the whole darn metaverse, Craft co owner  Licu Rau, who was moaning at the moment I snapped this ” Great! Now who is going to run the grid ?” Teary eyed at this  last expression of his selfless devotion to our little community, I  did my best to comfort him with my word of honor that the next day the whole of Craft would gather on the main plaza,  then head over to the OS Grid Goreans  and buy another slave.

Hello my dearest dears! How marvelous; here we all are, ready for another whirlwind adventure on OpenSim, the software platform that hosts hundreds of independant grids, many of which choose to be connected by the hypergrid;an amped up teleportation system that allows you to travel from world to world, endlessley exploring, making friends, and snagging enough freebies to  make the idea of organizing your inventory slightly less enticing than the prospect of simultaneously having a root canal and a  full colonoscopy , while  filling out your tax returns with a yellow crayon and no sharpener. Sob.

For those of you who have no idea how to actually get on OpenSim ( and you are not alone, believe me!) please read my ” How to get on OpenSim in Six Ridiculously Easy Steps” page at the top of this blog, and don’t forget my Newbie Glossary, also at the top! What are you waiting for?  Come on!  Spread your wings in the free metaverse!

For today’s adventure we will be staying on my beloved home grid Craft, my personal recommendation for the OpenSim Newbie. At 158 regions, Craft is small enough to be very warm and personal, while big enough to have lots of cool  stuff to see and do. We are the smallest grid to participate in the  ground breaking six grid InterMetaverse Arts Bienniel, but  we are more than holding our own!

Head on over  to Craft’s welcome area, Hydra Station, and get yourself a landmark from this poster! As you can see Ruben Haan is the THIRD artist participating in our really big flaming  IMAB event! And don’t be put off by the all the exquisite corpse  talk; that is just a term used for an early twentieth century parlor game, where you write a part of a story, or draw something, then fold the paper over and give it to the next player, who then has to contribute something etc. It became so popular that artists, most famously Andre Breton and William Burroughs, began using it in their work.  Craft achieves the corpsey secrecy effect thing, by only opening each exhibit for THREE days, so you have until Wed Feb 7 . to see what Ruben has cooked up! So, no actual dead bodies, but,

We weren’t kidding about that volcano! These events are actually being shown inside this bad boy, which is actually a profound experience if you come from  an 8,000 year old culture that is rife with fire metaphors and ancient gods. For the rest of us, chugging that last brew and hurling ourselves into the molten lava screaming “BAAANZAAII!!” will get the job done.

The volcano opened with a surprise from building legend Lumiere Noir, who hollowed out the floor, and built a massive fantasy reactor to “power” the other exhibits- it was very strange and cool.The pictures in this post  are from the second event, which featured the work of my dear friend Tosha Tyran.  Now let’s go up that big wooden  staircase,  and jump into the volcano!

Yes, that’s a sword tree. Tosha’s work can be tricky to write about at the best of times, not because of any sentimental ” we’re so close, it’s hard to be objective” twaddle,  but for the simple reason, she will not refer to herself by that handy little descripitve noun” artist”.  And despite having a completely original three region game on Craft, her own  jam packed nine showroom freebie region and workshop that she created from the ground up, a building competition award, an avatar of the year award, and three fashion boutiques, she gets hissy around  the words builder or designer. Up until the Volcano event, the best  you would get out of her is the word “bricklayer”,which is less than helpful  “JOIN VIRTUALCHRISTINE IN THE VOLCANO WITH A BIG HONKING KNIFE TREE AND A BRICKLAYER!! ATTN NEWBIES!!!” I think not.

So imagine my  delight when Tosha made  this really coherent little speech at the beggining of the event!

” I just wanted to say hi to everyone, and thank you for coming. A word before you go inside the volcano: you all know, I don’t consider myself an artist…. I am more a worker and maybe a story teller. So – I have tried to make an interactive story.Go inside, and I hope you have fun.”  Worker!! Storyteller!! At last, something  spinnable!

It is  a lot to take in. It was my second time in the volcano, but the scale was still overwhelming. Lightening is crashing, smoke is rising, and there is a massive gyser thing of photo cubes swirling up into the distant cavern ceiling. I was standing there,  gaping upward like a turkey in a rainstorm, when I noticed Ruben Haan…

… was floating away on one of the cubes.

I looked around, and  people were starting to interact with the exhibit, by clicking on things! But I’m me, so I went to read the ribbon of golden letters that were encircling  the edges of the build.

They spellt out  a line from the ancient Greek legend of Damocles, the courtier who was allowed to take the king’s place on the throne for a day, only to discover that amidst all the fabulous luxury, there was a large sword, tied to the ceiling by only a horsehair, dangling over his head. Damocles was unable to enjoy his new life, and begged to be allowed to leave the throne. The story was more often used to jusify the opulant lifestyles of those “burdened” with leadership, but the expression,”the sword of Damacles” has come to mean any close  threat , or impending doom.

These strips were running all over the floor, dedicating the whole shebang to  a Nicola and Bart. I was surprised, because I usually get what Tosha is talking about, and I had no idea who these people were. Tosha  seemed equally surprised I didn’t know them and explained they were two Italians immigrants who were hanged by… Aha!  say no more: Sacco and Vanzetti!  The short version: In the United States, before the  communist witch hunts of the 1950′s, there were the anarchist witch hunts of the 1920′s. A shoemaker and a fishmonger, who, like many in their community, had ties to anarchists, were the perfect targets for a shoddy case that was tried in the yellow press, and led to both men’s executions amidst international clamour. Today, there are three memorials to the unfortunate pair in their home state of Massachussets alone. When I asked Tosha, why specifically, THEM she said “Because they are great heroes of mine.  They fought for freedom – not only for themselves. and they must have done something right, because the claim for their freedom was international. and because they were such humble people, but so strong.”

Fair enough! Now all that is left is to go around the exhibit and start clicking!

You wind up in the most amazing places. I noticed that the photos were all women of all ages.

Virtualchristine: what are the female cube pictures doing?

Tosha: Men’s stuff is the violence, women can and should stand against it… maybe. I was very unsecure, to tell you the truth… I didn’t know if it was understandable at all…  I meant it to be telling a story about swords and violence and coming out of that… or something like that.. at some point it just “acted”…

Virtualchristine: Acted?

Tosha:Yes, like the whole thing steered me and not the other way around. you know, like it came alive and told me which way to go

The swords are everywhere, surrounding you, involved in everything you do. Playing…

.. tucked into your bed.

.. .relaxing…

…chatting with a friend.

…and then even the pretense of  normal daily life is dropped, and you are spinning out of control …

…in a forest of blades and smoke.

It takes a while to experience the whole story. I am very interested to see how Ruben will connect his gentle images of giving hands and angels wings to Tosha’s bold and bloody statement. If you have some time to kill before the event starts, or you want to make a night of it in Craft’s humming art scene, plug SUQ into your world map and teleport!

This sim is the home of Craft’s Annual Building Competition, which, this year, is part of IMAB! The theme was “Escape” and the prizes have already been given out- this is Dade Catronis  riveting second place entry ” Escape from Machine Control”

3rd place was Vins Watanabe wonderfully wierd “Escape Brain”

Jess Oranos “Escape through the Keyhole” was big fun….

…as was Barbara68 Resident’s “Escape”

Builder.War from clone Life Grid, dedicated his”Escape from reality ‘union in virtuality’ ” to Craft.

I could not get a decent picture of Andare Polantes funny, intricate brain thingie!

And I also didn’t really do justice to Jordan Hero’s”Let’s make our earth a better place”- a statement about the loneliness and futility of escapism.

Salahzar Stenvaag’s celebration of Craft’s birthday plays a Bach Sonata if you click on the pyramid. Sal later explained to me that the Sonata is a fuge, which means escape in Italian,(fuga) and , th with the geometrical lines going off into the horizon, the theme of the build was people trying to escape reality, and then finding a way to focus again.

Craft’s resident Fairy, Aria aira, said her ” A Jailbird escapes” was not about a specific story, simply a call for all of us to persevere in our quest for freedom. Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul…

Tosha’s hilarious “Escape 101″

Eva Noir’s ” Escape” Was a dark horse entry I had hoped would somehow make it into the top three…

Her very honest and compelling staircase of escape through  addiction leads to..

. .. choices…

The sign translates to ” A woman starts” Beautiful work Eva!!

First Place went to Eamon Kuhn’s ” Escape Prejudice”. I was glad that the top places hadn’t been completely dominated by tech and mesh, that heart had counted as well. You touch the blue hands to teleport. The first hand…

…takes you to a room of closed doors, which you click open. Inside each is a flaming hand print, that tells you the name of a prejudice, religious Intolerance, Racial Bigotry, etc. Find the hand print and teleport to..

…this dizzying passageway that gets narrower and narrower…find the hand…

.. and teleport to the fresh air of the roof. Touch the hand a last time, to rez this airship of Leonardo Da Vinci…

… and set out on a journey of ideas and imagination!

And now, my dearest dears, I must love you and leave you! i hope you find this post helpful; as usual, I had a blast writing it! Thanks to the whole Craft gang, especially Tosha for all her patience with my questions. And thanks to all of you, for joining me on my small adventures! Your company means more to me than I can express in mere words. The sweetest of dreams and the brightest of days to all my beloved readers! Until next time, Adieu!