28 December 2014

William Weaver's Light Build 001 (slightly NSFW)

A couple weeks ago, William Weaver and I were chatting about this and that, and he handed me a few of his builds, which explore light. That is to say, they're experiments in the possibilities of light in virtual spaces — he works in other virtual 3D spaces than Second Life, too — and can be delightfully fascinating. His work reminds me of that of the artist James Turrell, or that of the composer Alvin Lucier, which investigates the physics of sound in much the same way. A couple years back, I had rezzed William's The Phi Cube 1 over my land at Catalana (no longer there), and several photographers came to explore it — here's a photo I took of Jessica Belmer's foot as she was working on a shot of her own, and here and here are a couple more samples from that build.

So now I've rezzed a copy of William's Light Build 001 over Babele Fashion (teleport here). To really "see" this build, you'll need to have advanced lighting model on, and shadows showing sun, moon and projectors at a minimum — otherwise it's going to look like an empty space — and the Phototools windlight presets (available in Firestorm) are ideal. (The one shown here is Phototools - Save Me Light.) The colored areas you see in these images (click to zoom) look like textures of different hues, but they're not — they're actually areas illuminated by projected colors, and you can see illumination perhaps most clearly in the lower image (we do appreciate the human form, don't we?), where I'm lit by three different colors of light: my left hand and forearm are in a whiter light, most of my body in green, and my right thigh in violet or red. You might find other sections of the build that are just as interesting, and I look forward to seeing what photographers might create with the build. I'll leave Light Build 001 up for a few weeks, and then will swap it out for another of William's creations.

4 comments:

  1. This is exciting Ziki. A few years ago William was giving away some of his builds to everyone (on marketplace maybe...) and I took one out yesterday - the build04 - and played with it. The lighting in it is amazing, and I'll be visiting the builds you put out. It's so much fun to play with. Thank you :-))

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  2. Yes, thanks for mentioning that — there are several builds by William available on the Marketplace:
    https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/112469
    They're great for experimentation.

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  3. Is there anyway to purchase this build?

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  4. I don't think there's a way to purchase the build, but it's still there.

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