Second Life Sim - Two Fish Cariacou

A vaguely surrealistic landscape installation by Rose Borchovski called "Two Fish: The Susa Bubble Story" featuring anxious avatars, giant eyeballs and fish. There's also poetry although to be honest I generally can't take such online poetry seriously. It appears to be some rumination on multiple realities/personalities. Be warned that it is easy to take the step off the platforms and fall right into space, so you will need your finger on the teleport button so as to get back to someplace where you can actually see something. The region was very very laggy after a while though.

SLurl: Teleport now to Cariacou

Second Life Sim - Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology

Institut Catalá de nanotecnologia, Barcelona - "Metavers Nanotecnòlogic creat a partir de textures reals de nanopartícules"

SLurl: Teleport now to ICN

Second Life Sim - Meshtriciattolandia

Meshtriciattolandia is a beautifully constructed sim in the LOL region, with big plants, giant flying LEDs, and a giant resistor swing by Pallina60 Loon. I love the giant electronics and this looks great both at night and at day.

SLurl: Teleport now to Circo Loon

Second Life Art - Chromutate

Chromutate was an installation in the region of LOL by Opensource Obscure where avatars could play with a number of interactive elements, and external users on the internet could control the appearance of the world (and introduce new objects into the sim world via an external website. The installation isn't up anymore but you can still play with a small corner of it here at LOL. This area of LOL is also festooned with UFOs and other strange things.

SLurl: Teleport now to LOL

Second Life Art - Arctica Dreams

Rebeca Bashly's Arctica Dreams is a great big ice world with translucent walls, misty columns, and flowing water. You start off on the top of a big snowy plain with a hole in it, and then you have to jump into the hole to see this icy dreamscape.



While walking through Arctica Dreams, some folks landed right in front of me and started editing their appearances. One thing I rarely understand about Second Life is why so many people like to dress up like skanky hoes. LISTEN HONEY, IT AINT SEXY, ITS SKANKY! Or is it simply that many people's sexy fetishes actually involve them dressing up as skanky hoes? Oh well...



While walking through, you may not see the embedded sculptures all at once. This really depends on the angle at which you are viewing the walls. This makes good use of the transparencies and that "blind spot" that you get sometimes where different layers cannot be seen at certain angles (the same way they sometimes hide the money in those money trees).



There were also some more traditional ice sculptures.



And the centerpiece of the exhibition.

SLurl: Teleport Now to Arctica Dreams

Second Life Art - InterAct! (Linden Endowment for the Arts)

I flew in to explore LEA, the Linden Endowment for the Arts. On first glance, it looks like nothing but sea, but one can walk on the watery surface to explore several different installations in the area.



I saw a great big spinning sculpture by Glyph Graves entitled Diversity - A Tapestry Spun - I sat on a box and watched the petals spin around and around...



This installation may not seem exceptionally out of the box in any particular way, however, Glyph Graves is also responsible for another great work in which he uses kinect to capture his face and instantiates it in 3D in second life - read here or here, or see the following video for more:





And a sound installation by Lorin Tone. You can touch the speakers to change the sound samples attached to each one. The execution is simplistic and perhaps a bit too literal for me but I am sure you can see the applications of this method for other sound works...

Read more about the Linden Endowment for the Arts

SLurl: Teleport Now to LEA

Second Life Art - Kuru Kuru World (Musei di Roma Capitale)

Kuru Kuru World is a pop art exhibition at the Musei di Roma Capitale, by Japanese artist Mikati Slade. An immersive, phantamagoric series of neon tubes, faintly static noises, and 8-bit characters float and rotate around in a beautiful light show. If you liked the opening to Enter the Void, you'll like this too.

From the notecard: "Kuru kuru" [Japanese expression used to describe rotation]. Kuru Kuru World is about the cyclical nature of human history and civilization. Different parts of this art exhibit describe the development, destruction, and rebirth of human life and societal systems. The exhibit is built using 8-bit console game pixel graphics, primitive symbols of today's technology.













Entering some of the rooms is like entering a piece of graphic design, where colours are solid and bold, and no shadows are cast. Although there are no interactive elements here, there are many different rooms to explore, in which you can pretend to be a small thing, awed by the strange and bright lights.

SLurl: Teleport now to Musei di Roma Capitale