Old Second Life: The Climbable Beanstalk

If you're a good student of Second Life history, then you know that the first resident was Steller Sunshine, who with a rezdate of 13 March 2002 just turned 11 years old. (Older than Second Life itself officially because some people were around during the Linden World alpha period, cool, huh? And even one day older than Philip Linden.) One of the most ancient things on the grid is one of her creations, the Climbable Beanstalk, which Hamlet Au cites as the first user created content. Located on the old sim of Welsh (and surrounded by a typically crazy looking mainland landscape), the beanstalk invites you to a challenge: climb the 80 meters to the top without flying. It's not easy. (I've never met Steller but it's great to know she's still active.)

Spring at :) BCC

When last I wrote about :) BCC it was winter, and the sim's pathways were dusted with snow. Now spring has arrived, and the new landscape shines with thousands of bright yellow rapeseed flowers. The signature photographic piece in the sim—a locomotive on its way to nowhere, its tracks awash with the sea—remains, and a new windmill spins lazily nearby.

On the northeast corner of the sim you'll discover a table set for tea and quietly grazing sheep, the sounds of birds everywhere. The :) BCC shop itself is now perched on hill that rises up from the water, and the sim is also home to three boutique shops—ADTL, Adelia and Honey Pang, all situated on little rocky outcrops.

Melusina Parkin's Visioni

Readers of this blog know that I enjoy the work of photographer and designer Melusina Parkin, and recently I blogged about an exhibition of her work at Art India Gallery. Now comes a larger exhibition with a broader scope at Ars Exhibendi, the exhibition space of the Master Builders Italy Group. Entitled Visioni, the show has just opened and will be on display through May 4.

There are four major sections to this exhibition: Simple Lines (top image), highlighting the photographer's ability to delineate line, color, shade and space; Old Lights (second image), which explores lights and lighting; Time Travels (third image), featuring images that hearken back to earlier days; and lastly Past Industries, which appreciates huge industrial objects and sites as works of art. As Melusina is also a designer, objects are also on display, ranging from furniture to lamps. As I write this objects aren't yet on sale, but should be soon.

The Scribbled Cliffs

Split Screen Installation Space, an art area curated by Dividni Shostakovich, usually features the work of two artists (hence the "split"), but this time presents a special solo installation by Scottius Polke entitled The Scribbled Cliffs. The exhibition opens tomorrow, Sunday, April 7, at 1:00 pm slt, and the work will be up for approximately one month. From the landing point, one sets off walking on a upward winding path from which a vista beautifully unfolds, the pathway then leading down to the heart of a volcano—not one spewing lava but rather spewing floating tubs. Click on the blue tub to rez a tan or purple one in which you can sit, and then you can grab the tub and fling it in any direction for a wild ride (with scripts by Desdemona Enfield).

Scottius's work is bright, bold, colorful and playful—I half-jokingly remarked to Dividni that he's Second Life's version of Eric Carle. But in fairness to Scottius that's not quite right, as you'll see if you investigate the artwork of his human, Scott Rolfe, who creates distinctive assemblages and other mixed media artwork. For this installation he created the textures with an online program called ScribblerToo, which I found rather addictive. If you enjoy his work, stop by his gallery at Ars Lunga in the Avalon Art District or the mushROOM, an "interactive illustration" at Gallery Graine.

Tyrehl Byk's Catharsis

Tomorrow, Saturday, April 6 at 1:00 pm slt, Tyrehl Byk's immesive work Catharsis will return for a single performance at the Eden Celebration sim. The 24-minute performance piece takes place within a specially scripted theatre in which one witnesses impressive, dynamic particle effects, and all from several vantage points as one's camera view shifts about. If you haven't experienced any of Tyrehl's works before, I can assure you they're more than worth the time—and I've never seen anything else quite like them.

Now for a few rules to follow: sit down when you arrive (the chair controls your camera view, so there's no best seat in the house), set your draw distance up (at least to 128 I'd say), set particles to maximum, hit the escape key to release your camera, and remove any major scripted things to reduce lag. I assume there will be a music track—I don't recall what the arrangement usually is for Catharsis. Other than that, just enjoy the performance.

If you'd like to see documentation of more of Tyrehl's work, he's adding material to his YouTube channel. I also have a small stationary piece of his, Aurora, on display at my Avalon Collector's Circle exhibition at Avalon Art District Exhibition Hall.

Calas Galadhon: Misty Mountains

When you're feeling like taking a hike or a romp through the woods, consider visiting Misty Mountains, one of the Calas Galadhon sims owned by Tymus Tenk and Truck Meredith, bordering Armenelos on the west, Mirromere on the south and Grey Havens to the southwest. It's a heavily wooded sim—so dense that it can be disorienting if you wander off one of the paths (which sometimes trail off and disappear)—and it also affords beautiful panoramic views of the surrounding sims, from which it's set off by waters.

Search long enough and you'll find some hidden spots: near the border with Mirromere, a Japanese themed area where you can swim (photo below), or a cozy brown and orange lodge house to the northeast, with a fire, a cat named Wilma, and a game of checkers waiting for you. Throughout, you'll stroll through daisies, across bedrock, along the shores and through beds of ferns. Do help support the Calas Galadhon sims if you can—as you might imagine the expense of the entire park is considerable.

Benjamin Glendale at 3Bears Gallery

I count Benjamin Glendale among the best photographers working in Second Life. He has a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, and you can explore his work at 3Bears Gallery on the sim Terra Ursa Major. The exhibition, entitled It never rains, runs through the month of April, and each of the images was created in a particularly rainy location. ("It never rains" was a comment left of the artist's flickr stream which he decided to take as an artistic challenge.) Indeed, it's raining in the gallery itself, although I found the precipitation sometimes made it a bit difficult to click on things (including the photos themselves—they're for sale for a very reasonable L$250).

If you like what you see, there are a couple other locations to visit: The Blue Moon Gallery and the Second Life/Facebook LGBT Artist Gallery, both of which have additional images of Benjamin's on display. At these two spaces the images are more portrait driven, and often overtly sexual without being pornographic (and not without a touch of humor)—I find the work at 3Bears Gallery (shown in these three images) to be his strongest. Please consider leaving contributions to support the galleries.

Neva River Extended

If you thought you missed out on visiting Neva River, you'll be happy to know that Neva Crystall has extended the opening until this coming Sunday, April 7. Alex Bader has added a lovely additional area to the west side of the sim, a little forest (an enchanted forest, according to Neva) that really is delightful. You can read more about Neva River on my earlier blog post.

April Fools House

Just when I had given up trying to think of a fun April Fools post (well, I was going to post a great news story on how Amazon had decided to accept the Linden Dollar as its virtual currency, but that was proving way too time consuming), Bryn Oh piped up in the Immersiva group and said, "They have made a fun april fools house at raglan shire...best to do if you have a tiny avatar." And indeed at Raglan Shire is the Second Annual Frog & Cat Productions April Fools House, and it's quite fun and silly.

My favorite part was on the top floor, where you'll find some exploding planets (sound up, please!)—in the photo below I'm the mouse (in my little explorer mouse outfit from Grim Bros.), and you can barely make out Bryn Oh (the very pixelated tiny) and Cica Ghost (the panda) in the orange of the explosion. Raglan Shire is a sim for tinies, and so a tiny avatar will work best here, but there were also a few "normal" size people roaming about. You'll find free gifts sprinkled about here and there. The house is open today through April 2.

P.S. You'll find more things outside the house, not to be missed (thanks to my friend Juno Angerona for noticing!). And Toady Nakamura, who built the house and many of the tricks (and who says "this year we worked on it for a LONG time"), adds that "the original organizer Clover Dezno is the brains behind the outfit." A tip of the hat to all involved.

3D Mandelbrot Fractal Art

Opening tomorrow (Sunday, March 31) from 11 to 17 slt is an installation on LEA27 by Mac Kanashimi entitled 3D Mandelbrot Fractal Art. The rather functional title says it all: the sim is filled with enormous Mandelbrot fractals that stretch from one side of the sim to the other, extending vertically up to 64 meters (or, in the case of a floating spheres variation, 96 meters). (The top image here is a view of the entire sim looking down.) Every twelve minutes (or five times per hour) a new shape emerges—Mac said, "There are 13 fractals with a total of 87 variations or so. Or was it 14?"—and he may add additional fractals over the course of the exhibition's run. The installation is quite unlike anything I've seen in Second Life.

When you arrive you'll be on a clear triangular platform looking down over the installation, but it's possible to fly down to experience the fractals immersively, and I found this to be quite delightful. On the platform, click on the narrow beam behind you to obtain a notecard filled with technical details of what you're seeing and how Mac generated the fractals. This beam also functions as a countdown timer so you'll know when to expect a new iteration—when the black bar reaches the bottom a new fractal will be generated.