Greetings and welcome to my Second Life~ One can find me roaming the forests of my home sim, Dark Moon. SL has been my home for over four years & Neph has been quite active inworld. So, welcome to my world!
Now on display at UTSA Art Space is what I hear is Igor Ballyhoo's final build! Golly I hope not! But I must say it is SPECTACULAR!
Set to Beethoven's 7th, the installation is a dark, cyborg-esque aerial landscape. Floating islands create stairs up to various smaller works. Often they support rusty partial human figures that read like Bosch. In one floating island room two cynical rusty cupid figures guard an imprisoned time piece, or at least that is how it appears to me. Many of the figures appear mutilated and dangerous as they march time to the dramatic chromatic bass line of Beethoven's coda. It is a march to a dark future.
Now I usually do not like dark works, and I do not know that this installation was build with Beethoven's 7th in mind. The combination, however made me feel as if I was to accept some sort of futuristic doom joyfully.
The juxtaposition left my avatar dancing ballet dementedly amongst the floating islands. Also the tempered use of glow inspired Neph to dance in a small electric gazebo she found.
And although black, white, and red have been done to death, the blood dripping UP from the central chessboard platform was a reassuring reference to Alice in Wonderland, not to mention Steven King!
Remnants of Igor's Scissor Forest circle menacingly through the sky as if to say, "Remember me." (see my "Art & About" for pics of the scissor forest!). Gee~ I hope he comes back!
So this is my good friend Zola Zsun! You can see her blog, Zola Novela, by clicking on the link on the left of this page! Zola’s great! We talk quite a bit, and are constantly modifying our skirts due to the fact that we don’t want to be skinny like the standard Second Life avatars. Well, the human ones at least. Though I must say, I see very creative women about! Not everyone is anorexic. Now I am feeling like I should be saying something extremely intelligent about how avatars reflect our mainstream culture of sexist lookism, but actually, I just wanted to talk about Zola.
Zola Zsun
So there she is. One night we were feeling silly and made a little zoo. Absolutely no reason except we wanted to take all our animals out! Now, you got to realize, this was a very silly thing, nothing elaborate. But a few friends did finally drop by and we all chatted and sat on hippos and things. Sometimes SL is just about hanging out and being silly. Hell, in my case it usually is!
You know? That’s not really true at all! Zola had a great a idea a while back for a Role Play Exposition. She is an educational design and technology grad student who works here in SL. So the idea was to have different role play groups display and demonstrate their stuff. You will have to ask Zola, but I guess the idea is to use SL for interactive, immersive and synergistic learning, not just each student clicking on things alone. Actually, my sister, Elle Bellah is in the field too. Now she is working on machinima for nursing classes. Anyway, Zola had this idea, and I got to do the terraforming!
Zola, Miss Wright & Me
Dramatic Terraforming!
Zola in all her glory
More terraforming
Each role-play group needed a space that reflected what they did, and it had to be parceled for media and music. If I recall, ultimately it was Pandora, Deadwood, Antiquity, Pern, Toxian City, and Renaissance Island. It was quite a well-rounded sample: three different historical periods, fantasy, science fiction, and a dystopia.
Gianfar
Pandora
Renaissance Island
Antiquity's Tea Area
Deadwood
Antiquity's lighthouse at the site
Toxian City's Miss Wright
After getting commitments from all the role-play groups, terraforming, landscaping, parceling and setting up, Zola decided we needed a tour and party! So I got Ragnarok Dragonash, my good friend to DJ and we set up a fun dance area too! Rag’s a great DJ, btw, he does Celtic music, on Fridays, at Sarras Village’s medieval tavern. Rag and his partner Katje Broek are my oldest friends in Second Life, and own the sim next to Dark Moon. ANYWAY... the tour! Now that was a gas! (hahaha~) Zola got stage fright! But I tell you she came through! We were on voice, and I walked her through the first stop, Toxian City. After that, all I had to do was type in chat, “FOLLOW THE REDHEAD!” and everyone trailed after her.
The Party
Follow the Red Head!
The dragons of Pern were particularly interesting because they gave a live role-play demo of a dolphin healing a sick dragon! I don’t know about you, but that’s something I don’t see everyday~!
Tiny Dragon Advising
Einy Marksman & Me watch
Zola is happy the dragon is healed!
So, as I said, for smart fun, FOLLOW THE REDHEAD Zola Zsun! Kiss, Zola : )
The juxtaposition left my avatar dancing ballet dementedly amongst the floating islands. Also the tempered use of glow inspired Neph to dance in a small electric gazebo she found.
