Video: Three-Ring Circus

updated: The Director's Cut

You Tube Link (better viewing)

All this began well before the last few weeks: last February Wizzy and I were poking around the LEA sims, which had been announced to great fanfare by M and then kinda... were pending... for awhile. So we wondered what was up with them, and having some idle time on our hands we took a map TP there.

We found the beginnings of what became Avatar Games, and since rez was on we left Bryn some of her dahls and took some photos - it was kind of a love-tease to Bryn Oh and Rose Borchovski. Honestly, it was a goofy homage or whatever. In the same vein I did this photo. I mean, they're dolls. You play with them.

It could have just as well been Rose's Susas if they were dolls. I can't begin to remember how many times I saw the "Phillip Linden Noob" dressed up and places in crazy places.

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After all, we didn't make the dahls; they were given freely by Bryn and Wizzy and I are just wacky. Since the dahls are high-prim (68 prims each) the LEA sandbox is about the only practical place to make such a thing, and that's what we thought the LEA sandbox was for, so we used it.

Read any darker meaning into this you want; the circus is just a weird play dollhouse. We played with the dahls before and had fun; like playing Barbies (especially because we can make all the props and outfits, not have to buy them).


You can read Crap Mariner's blog and see some great photos he took on Flickr.

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I've posted another small video of the build "Storming Heaven" done for Betty Tureaud's 'Tower of Babel' in Inworldz.

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Machinima, UWA last call, Art110 and friends

CITY

Link to You Tube: better resolution and size

I finally got around to filming CITY, which was first created in early 2009 and shown at the Brooklyn Is Watching open-rez area, where it remained for an (unusual) 6 weeks and was written about by Siri Woodget (who took fantastic pictures). CITY won Honorable Mention for Immersion in the January 2010 round of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge, and was shown once more at Pirats Art Network gallery in November 2010 (where my good friend Apmel amazingly bought one and has written about it several times). I even wrote a dab about it myself.

CITY is filled inside with light and movement and takes some exploration and some forebearance for the integral sound. Here is the display card for CITY:

"I lived in Los Angeles for 18+ years, most recently on Hollywood Blvd. & LaBrea, just one block catty-corner from the famous Mann's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Los Angeles is a stage show; a Hollywood production. The city looks lovely and shiny from a distance or on television, but that reality is lived by less than 1% of its population. Most of us live in a "behind the scenes" reality of filthy streets, unresponsive or missing police, no air conditioning, crime, mini-mall blight, high unemployment, racism, virtual slavery (undocumented but useful workers) and incredible noise. This city is never quiet. It is never still. It is not 'Baywatch' or 'The OC.' Everyone doesn't live in Santa Barbara or have a pool.

This piece is about illusion being just as much a part of "real life" as anything "illusionary" in SL.

The sound for this piece was recorded out my own apartment window between 12-3am on various occasions; at times the sound in my apartment exceeded 130db! The side photos were taken in my apartment and outside it. The floor and ceiling are overlays of traffic patterns on the all-encompassing freeways, as are the flowing parts of the "star."

To experience CITY fully, please right-click the glowing star and SIT; Mouselook is recommended."

I am very pleased to have learned enough machinima to help you experience CITY the way that I feel it. I have entered this machinima in the MachinimUWA IV : Art of the Artists contest.

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Note: because of some of the comments I have read on machinima pages, I'd like to clarify that except for the two whiteout transitions to the wall photograph sets, there are no special effects in this machinima - what you see is what you can experience yourself from inside CITY, especially in Mouselook mode.

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CITY: Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the machinima consists of the soundscape of CITY mixed in to an adaptation of a 138-track soundpiece of mine called "The Angel Is Aerodynamically Sound" which I have worked on now for two years. I have no keyboards, so everything is hand-done, note by note, sample by sample, in a sequencing program. It features many world instruments and voices.

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Big Winter

Big Winter is now showing at the last UWA 3D Open Art Challenge *sniffle*

I cannot begin to describe what Jayjay, Quadrapop and FreeWee Ling have done for the arts community through this program in three years. Beyond myself, I know that they have encouraged so many artists to show for the first time and brought much of the arts community in Second Life together to meet, view each other's work and to have a rallying point for community.

I am very sad it is coming to an end.

Corcosman Voom has also taken a nice photo of Big Winter.

PS: if you right-click on the figure, you will sit on the rocks and stare at her; good for photos :)

SLurl: Big Winter @ UWA

my good friend Apmel has written two very nice posts about Big Winter:

Heartbreaking Cooling [when she showed at Kelly Yap Galleries]

At the last UWA 3D Challenge, where he has awarded me the unofficial Gallery Villa Apmel Award in a tie with ush Underwood's Popeye the Sailor's Heritage ^_^

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Art 110

My students from Cal State University at Long Beach's Art 110 Virtual Art Galleries program are busy building the galleries for their artists; I can't wait to see them done!

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... and finally, just cuz, here's Trill Zapatero as the Magical Ballerina Horse...



... Wizzy Gynoid demonstrating her mastery of zazen by sitting on Rod Humble's Sparkle Pony Linden Bear...


... and finally, one of Lalo Telling's friends sent him this scan from a real menu:

Miso to go!! ^_^

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Machinima: The Zinn/War & Peace

In June, 2011 Trill Zapatero curated the War & Peace show at The Howard Zinn Center for Social Consciousness and the Arts, a fantastically-detailed build Trill did on the Four Bridges Project sim in Second Life.

This is one small film of the Zinn, which is still open and can be reached in Second Life at the SLurl given below. I urge you to visit and take in the fantastic work of Trill and the contributing artists and learn something about Howard Zinn and the work being done at Four Bridges in Second Life.

... or watch in better resolution on You Tube

Contributing Artists:

Em Larsson, Drumstick Ah, Igor Ballyhoo, Oona Eiren, Plot Tracer, Novia Halostar, Filthy Fluno, Chrome Underwood, Asmita Duranjaya, Trill Zapatero, millay Freschi, Pol Jarvin, Larkworthy Antfarm, Fiona Leitner, Mona Mendes, Aaron Hughes, Gamma Infinity, Bobbi Laval, pixel Reanimator, Newbab Zsigmond, Miso Susanowa

SLurl: War & Peace at The Zinn

Machinima: Creative Power

soror Nishi's beautiful build in Inworldz, "Creative Power."

Early VW machinima

W00t! Finally I am finding some of what has been packed away a very long time, including this early animation? machinima? of the virtual continent I created in 1996 using a program called VistaPro.

VistaPro was pretty spiffy for its' time: it supported 1024x768 rendering with Phong highlights, 4x antialiasing, VESA drivers and was capable of downloading terrain elevation maps from USGS ASCII DEM and USGS SDTS DEM files from the USGS, NASA, JPL, the US Air Force & Navy and other sources to recreate completely accurate maps of terrain... including Mons Olympus on Mars and the lunar craters (I had models of Mau'i and Big Island to trace my journeys there). Here's a nice review of VistaPro in its prime.

It was also capable of generating a camera path for an animated tour of the created world. The video you see here was a world - land - I made and used as the basis of several stories and chapters of my novel-in-progress 'Anna of the Sidhe'; it was also the source of +100 web pages of scenes from that continent used as backgrounds to roleplaying/writing with the VR co-op RP groups Virtual Camelot and Virtopia and where Anna was born.


Unfortunately, at the time I was creating and working in these worlds, technology was straining; even with a top-of-the-line tweaked and streamlined media computer, I was hard-pressed to make videos larger than 320x240, the compression artifacts were horrible and it took hours and hours to render even simple scenes.

In this flythrough, a lot of the forests and trees have been removed in order to not have the machine choke or gorge the hard disk or just plain quit; mostly the structural canyons and shape of the underlying geology is viewable. You will notice two areas of water; one a lake hidden deep within the interior of the continent and a river which leads inward from the other side of the mountains; these places were pivotal locations in the story of land and Anna of the Sidhe.

I'm excited to find these pieces of my early virtual reality experiences, artifacts and all.


... now if I can find some of the videos of early Burning Man and Big Bang/Moontribe events...

Iono Allen's State of Mind machinima

State of Mind machinima by Iono Allen

Iono Allen has made a beautiful and evocative machinima for my "State of Mind" installation. He has captured the rising tension and the feeling of suffocating in information which is an integral part of the installation. His use of the sound materials is masterfully supportive of the visuals; Iono has truly listened to State of Mind and realized it in this most perfect machinima. Please go to see it and let Iono know what a great job he's done and what a beautiful piece of work the machinima is in its' own right.


UPDATE: Iono's machinima made the swedish blogs! Yay!

And thanks to

Apollo Manga's Second Life Examiner review

Soror Nishi's blog




Further meditations on State of Mind

Yes, there is a lot of information in State of Mind. There are cross-connections between small, seemingly-isolated events, laws and trends. It takes a lot of time to understand these connections, these trends.

I am a researcher; a librarian; a datamouse. I understand the amount of time it takes to be current and to follow these issues. Too much for most people, who have a life to be involved in.
I keep up with these issues. When you try to talk to people about them, about what they mean to their lives; about what is really going on and how it does and will affect their free choice (like their choice and availability of music, movies, artworks and internet service) they think you paranoid.


That is why I needed to lay out State of Mind for my own mental health. I read perhaps 2-4 hrs. a day on the technical aspects of these issues, from technical forums; how the technology isn't secure; how it doesn't work as advertised, how it is misused by corporations to profile, how the idea of the "infallibility of computers" is used to disguise and cover an astonishingly large rate of failure/false positives...

We call it security theatre in the profession; in discussions among the people who actually install, set up and program these things. This is not "armchair philosophy" or politics. All of this... "think of the children" stuff is straight propaganda and deliberate manipulation and falsification of information.



Why It Matters

I live on the net. Anyone reading this is involved with the net and with information. These issues concern us all; our freedom to read and write our thoughts, and our freedom to think our own thoughts; our freedom to access information and make up our own minds, which is the foundation stone of democracy and freedom.

Orwell's Ministry of Truth or Brazil's bureaucratic, totalitarian government did not NEED to monitor every single person's thoughts; it was enough to influence them to monitor and censor their own thoughts. The point of propaganda is self-censorship and self-editing. It is a much simpler, easier and cost-effective way to control people than guns, bars, walls, barbed wire or Men In Black. You can rule great masses of people (take a look at China, South Korea and so on and etc) with much less trouble and effort, only needing your Influence Squads Corrective Thinking Trainers on the truly unprogrammable.


Yes, it is more comfortable to turn the mind away from these issues; it's much more comfortable to believe waterboarding is the equivalent of a "college hazing" than it is to actually view the uncensored photographs and material from Abu Ghraib. It's a lot easier to believe that these measures supposedly being introduced to keep you and your children safe are real efforts to protect you when in fact they are lies, mistruths and propaganda.




Thanks to the modern internet, we have access to a lot of information (although there is a debate current now that the positive glut of non-vetted and unverified information is a device to to hide by obscurity and overwhelming data; the Purloined Letter trick). It takes time and effort to research, as it always has, and to gather the information one needs to be able to have an understanding of these crucial and critical issues and make an informed judgement. It's just so... time-consuming! What's a mother to do?!?!


And yet... people will spend a great deal of time and effort puzzling out clues to the just-as-involved plotlines of television shows like "Lost," "Heroes" and their favorite soap opera than the actual, real things happening around them which affect their daily lives.



Such is the State of my Mind these days. I am not alone, and I am in distinguished company; that of Thomas Jefferson, Shulamith Firestone, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and many others who have given their time, effort and work so that I may enjoy the freedoms I have today (for now).



The links, the propaganda and the answering arguments and statistics are all in the installation. Laid out physically, with real links to verified documents, I am comforted in knowing that I am not paranoid. We were warned by Orwell and many others. The linkages and trends are real and happening now.

The STATE is now the Corporatocracy; the Plutocracy. Government is a brand; the flags are only advertising logos.

Since last March, the US vote can now be bought. The Disney machine continues to destroy and lock up our common cultural heritage by distorting and manipulating copyright for its own gluttony. Laws are being twisted to spy on schoolchildren in the name of protecting them; the drumbeat of fear is being used to encourage submission to the profiteers.

Our personal data is bought and sold without our knowledge and consent; banks entrusted with that information treat it with less security than you treat your car keys, and place the blame and expense on their customers, which results in cost to you for their lax and cavalier handling of your security... if they don't outright sell it to anyone for 35$USD (yes... google a bit; you'll find many such offers from these supposedly-legitimate banks).

Yet we let it go on. You trust people you shouldn't trust and give them your freedoms inch by inch. A little research would show you the truth, or at least enough information to make up your own mind about these issues.


I did State of Mind so I wouldn't start screaming.

M Show!

now it can be told!!

SLurl: M Linden's Personal Art Show - "Doodle Art"

SLurl: Alternate Location if full (front of Winthrop Clock Tower)

Saturday is a special showing of M Linden (aka Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon) 's first solo art exhibition in Second Life, "Doodle Art," which will simultaneously open in the outworld/RL venue of the University of Western Australia at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery on Friday.

Hosting the live outworld/rl event is none other than award winning West Australian artist Len Zuks, with whom I collaborated as detailed in previous blog posts. Len's physical sculptures will stand beside M's physical artwork, while inworld/SL my collaborative pieces Megabyte and Lil Eizenstein will stand beside the inworld digital representations of M's artwork. I also designed the logo/poster for the digital/rl event.

Here's the announcement:

If you follow Second Life Arts, you know that the SL Art Community is full of surprises. Today we are going to share with you one of the best kept SL secrets...

Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (known in Second Life as M Linden) is an ARTIST!

Now that the secret is out, the University of Western Australia (UWA) is proud to announce the grand opening of M Linden's first solo art exhibition in Second Life. This truly special event will showcase virtual editions of sixteen drawings selected from M's collection of doodles as well as two SL sculptures created specifically for this show.

* M Linden RL Art Show at the University of Western Australia *
In addition to this exciting SL event, the University of Western Australia is thrilled to announce a real life showing of M Linden's work at the UWA campus on Friday, March 26th.

The RL event will be hosted by award winning West Australian artist Len Zuks (http://www.culturalprecinct.uwa.edu.au/artists/zuks). Len has collaborated with Miso Susanowa to breathe a fresh second life into his sculptures, 'Megabyte' and 'Lil Eizenstein', in a first ever RL/SL collaboration between American and West Australian artists. His RL sculptures will stand alongside M Lindens works!


Commenting on M's works, Len said:
"It is not 10 minutes since my eyes first beheld an image of one of Mark Kingdon's artworks. I had been in discussion with Jayjay for several weeks on this anticipatory moment. If I had seen any other illustration, it would have been of a lesser impact. The unexpected image and the subsequent revealing insights was an unequivocal surprise. It is as if I had bypassed the artist's eyes and had a glimpse into the mechanism of the artist's mind. Wow! "


Credits:
The Curator: White Lebed
UWA Owner & Co-Host: JayJay Zifanwe
The Gallery builders: The Slingshot, Nyx Breen
Logo & RL/SL Crossover Builds by: Miso Susanowa
Promotional Machinimas: Chantal Harvery and Larkworthy Antfarm
RL Host at UWA: Len Zuks"

WOW IS THIS KEWL OR WHAT!!! Crossover! Ok sorry for all the exclamation points but i am excited!!!! Ok now i'm done :)

Many thanks go to White Lebed, JayJay Zifanwe, Len Zuks and Chantal Harvey, who did wonderful machinima of Megabyte, Lil Eizenstein and the Doodle Art Expo which you can find links for below, and Larkworthy Antfarm's beautiful machinima of M's works:

Machinima: Doodle Art Expo by Chantal Harvey

Machinima: Doodle Art of Mark Linden in Second Life by Larkworthy Antfarm

Machinima, Lil Eizenstein - By Chantal Harvey

Machinima, Megabyte - By Chantal Harvey

M Show Poster/Logo - large version