Scribbled Hearts: Winter

The last time I blogged about scribbled . hearts (also known by the sim name, Water Reserve), it was autumn—the leaves vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow, and the sun moving lower on the horizon. Time has quietly marched on, and now winter has settled over the land. The redesigned sim is blanketed in a tranquil carpet of snow, and the trees, now bare save for the evergreens, are dusted with white. Lights twinkle here and there, and looking straight up through the cold air one can glimpse the aurora borealis.

The *. emm [ shop ] and hello, september stores are here, of course, now offering items for the holiday season. As usual, I'll post some images on my flickr stream.

William Weaver's Build 013: the Phi Cube

Some of you may have seen this photo on flickr, which for me is the most jaw dropping image William Weaver has produced. Will gave me a copy of this build, 013: the phi cube, and I've rezzed it on my land at Catalana and have fiddled with it a little, trying to replicate that image. I've gotten close, but no cigar so far!

At first glace the build is a bunch of interlocked black cubes with white lines, but it comes alive using the right windlight settings and depth of field. These aren't very refined photos—just some quick images I took to give you a feel for it.

For the time being I've opened my place, so if you'd like to play around with the cube you're welcome to—it's a large piece (based in some way on the Fibonacci series, I'm informed) and I've rezzed it up in the air. To get there, land here and then walk inside Sextan Shepherd's observatory (which you're welcome to explore, of course, along with the rest of my half the island, although it's nothing too exciting!), and go through the little door that you'll see on your wall to the immediate left. And up you go! Please clean up after yourselves. :)

P.S. If you need to rez stuff, just ask—I can add you to the group.

Chess-Cherry

The materials in Cherry Manga's new work, Chess-Cherry, which opened today at the gallery organized by the Tanalois Group and the torno Kohime Foundation, are simple: black and white, a chess board, chess pieces, nude female forms, and images of classified advertisements from an early 20th century Minneapolis newspaper (these are wrapped around the chess pieces and plastered on the board and the surrounding floor). As a life-size interactive space, the board and pieces aren't something we think of manipulating with our hands (plus, it's clearly not our game to play)—these are more like statues, the women on them caught in poses that range from awkward to borderline erotic. (Skeletons show through the women's skins, putting a damper on their sexuality, unless you're into that sort of thing.)

Although the materials are simple the execution is not, and the result, to me at least, is enigmatic and compelling. I have been wrestling with what to say about this work, or what to think about it—the combination of materials, the immersive experience, the inherent battle going on before us (is it frozen in time?), the nude figures positioned on the pieces, and so on. In this case I'll fall in line behind the composer/artist John Cage, who remarked that art we don't understand is more interesting than art we do understand.

"I think white will win," I said to Cherry. "Let's hope," she replied.

Guernica

Second Life artists London Junkers and Lizzie Gudkov unveiled today a new exhibition in the sim LEA6—Guernica, a three dimensional expression of Pablo Picasso's monumental painting of the same name that stands in real life at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. The iconic original, created in 1937 and depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, measures an amazing 25.6 feet (7.8 meters) wide by 11 feet (3.5 meters) high. I'm not sure whether Mr. Junkers and Ms. Gudkov have created the Second Life model to scale or not, but one cannot visit this installation without experiencing a sense of the work's massive proportions.

Here, however, there's a new take on Guernica: this installation is three-dimensional, allowing Picasso's gestures to emerge from the canvas. We can wander and fly among them, seeing the work, quite literally, from new perspectives. I'll post some images on my flickr stream.

: ) BCC

Thanks to a photo by Ysé Ah, I recently visited the sim : ) BCC, created by Daisy (花になろう) (username vitamingirl) and home to her shop, also known as : ) BCC. Three photos won't do this stunning homestead sim justice—this is yet another region that's breathtakingly lovely and provides endless opportunities for photography. Ordinarily I stick with a sim's given environment settings, but here they've changed in the two days I've visited, so I've been taking the liberty of playing around a bit.

The watery landscape is articulated with sandy walkways that lead between the little shop areas. A stranded train that rests on long-decayed tracks stands at the center of the sim, while a beautiful little cottage with a watermill lies at the far northeastern corner. I'll post some additional images on my flickr stream over the next few days.