New Basic Viewer for Virtual World Second Life: Video Glimpse

There is a new easy-to-use viewer--the program you use to access a virtual world--for Second Life. This means that a person can get going in a virtual world faster. Once you're comfortable, you can move up to the other viewer and learn some more functions. I think this is an excellent development, and so I made a quick, hopefully fun machinima video that shows the features of the new viewer that people can use for their students, friends, or anyone. It takes advantage of one of the amazing things about machinima (or the moving image in general): the ability to be able to show people what you have experienced or seen that they have not without them doing it themselves--yet!

IceOpal: A Virtual Interpretation of Amy Lowell's Poem, "Opal"

My virtual art piece, "IceOpal: A Virtual Interpretation of Amy Lowell's Poem 'Opal," is at the University of Western Australia's monthly 3D Art Challenge in the virtual world Second Life, along with 70 or so other entries. The UWA art sims are the happening places in Second Life these days, with the most interesting art and artists converging on them. There is a sim where the past monthly winners are on display for the year, as well, so it is a terrific place to see some of the best virtual art (although it certainly is not an exhaustive collection, and pieces are limited to 100 prims, so are small-ish in scale in that way, and do not include performance art, or the performing arts). Some pieces (including mine) have sound and also machinima or video.

Above are some still images of the scultpure, and here is the machinima that plays on the little sphere in front of the big sphere, but the video does not include the sound that an avatar hears within the sphere, other than the music in the video itself.


Slurl in Second Life, only for a few more days!

SOUNDS ON

MEDIA ENABLED AND HIT PLAY

YOU CAN SEE MACHINIMA ON THE SCREEN IN THE LITTLE SPHERE IN FRONT or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFWvxvV-JQ&hd=1

Sound in machinima: The music was created with rjdj's reactive music app for iPhone, which turned my recording of icicles dripping into music. You can hear the icicle drip sounds recorded at Drumlin Farm Audubon Sanctuary at the end of the video.

CLICK ON THE POSEBALLS AND HIT ESCAPE

Disclaimer: Not responsible for damage caused by falling icicles, cloudy vision, slippery situations, or irresolvable paradoxes of the heart or mind.

****

Opal

You are ice and fire,

The touch of you burns my hands like snow.

You are cold and flame.

You are the crimson of amaryllis,

The silver of moon-touched magnolias.

When I am with you,

My heart is a frozen pond

Gleaming with agitated torches.

Amy Lowell, 1919

Ice Textures: SkyBeam Designs

Flower Textures: from photographs by L1Aura Loire

Freeze & Melt poses by L1Aura Loire

NMC Virtual Art Exhibition: EXPERIENCE ART

The NMC, which does an excellent job in everything it does, has a new show at @ Ars Simulacra on the NMC Campus, curated by Tayzia Abattoir.  It brings together some of the best SL artists, including Misprint Thursday, Oberon Onmura, Glyph Graves, and Alizarin Goldflake.  Above, pics of Misprint's and Oberon's installations.  Here is the slurl.

Land!

There's not much there yet, but I bought land in SL.  Here is the slurl.