Norden Art Vanishes Into Thin Air

A facebook post from Aino Barr showed up in my inbox just now: http://on.fb.me/zIPgRw Yesterday the bad news was about PiRats likely closing ... today Norden Art is gone. Poof. And Flora along with it. I went from Aino's post to Flora's blog, where I read the following epitaph:

"I have left Second Life. I have deleted my avatars and removed everything from Nordan om Jorden, including Nordan Art. The Nordan om Jorden group will be inactive as will this blog. Second Life was an incredible experience for me, it is just time to go. Goodbye, everybody.
Flora" http://nordanomjorden.wordpress.com/

I couldn't believe it, so I logged in to Second Life and looked for Flora on Search: none found. I took the landmark teleport to the Nordan Art gallery location: bare earth. Just last week I de-installed my December-January exhibit there, and the gallery was a whirlwind of activity with the next show going up. Just yesterday at PiRats (possibly) last opening, I noticed Flora's name online on my friend's list as usual. All gone now, and it is very hard to accept.

In fact, the whole trend is deeply troubling. So many galleries have closed, along with the art sims of wonderful universities like UTSA; so many artists have moved to other grids or left entirely ... it seems like the beautiful virtual art community is draining from Second Life at an alarming pace.

Flora Nordenskiold, Merlina Rokocoko, Newbab Zsigmond, constructivIST Solo are all consummate professionals. It was my very great pleasure to work with them. Pioneers, they have advanced virtual art in profound ways, and the loss of their talents is a loss for all of virtual art.

And where is Second Life itself headed? I don't believe the people at Linden Lab care a bit about the astonishing art world that grew up around them, and their lack of concern about the diminution of their product bodes ill. InWorldz anyone?

============================================
Links:
DIGITAL ART: Martha Jane Bradford
Web Site: http://www.marthavista.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
MJB Blog: http://marthajanebradford.blogspot.com/
VIRTUAL ART: Alizarin Goldflake (Metaverse avatar of Martha Jane Bradford)
Atelier Alizarin (Second Life studio): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/222/189/35
Blog: http://alizaringoldflake.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alizaringoldflake/
YOUTUBE VIDEOS: http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake
Anza Borrego Oak:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/1/5s_KRMi55v8
Acquarella:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/a/u/0/u-lo6JosN0M
Acquarella:the Fable ( a Chantal Harvey machinima)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1eFMtjV6U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhO2Rf88uM (Chinese narration)
Metemspyche's Garden:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/2/GfQGuNXWvLo
Requiem for Fukushima Daiichi:
http://youtu.be/2H_ne2XbcNs
Studio Tour:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/3/XDjrLmPpopA
The Maze:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/4/OEa9rtEiINE
The Mysterious Forest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/5/c6Xv_pAf0Qc
The Winter Bear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMYSYJNkm1E&list=QL&playnext=1

Pictures from the Grand Opening of Acquarella: After the Apocalypse

It was a wonderful party!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alizaringoldflake/sets/72157628011874342/

Many thanks to host Jeri Rahja, to the musicians Chandra Deed and DeclanG, and to all the lovely people who showed up to celebrate with me. Exhausted but happy .... :-)

GRAND OPENING for "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse

My first full-sim immersive art creation, "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse," opens on Saturday, October 29, 12 -3 PDT, on Jeri Rahja's Nexus Central sim in InWorldz. Enjoy music by Chandra Deed noon to 1:30 pm PDT and Declan G 1:30 - 3 pm PDT. Feast on sushi, ride a pink seahorse, come see a story as told by a sim!

http://places.inworldz.com/Nexus%20Central/211/49/25

The installation is based on "Acquarella: The Fable," a machinima written and staged by Alizarin and filmed by Chantal Harvey. The machinima was shown at the World's Fair in Shanghai in September and October 2010 under the auspices of Aino Barr/Christina Garcia Lasuen.
links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1eFMtjV6U (English narration)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhO2Rf88uM (Chinese narration)

The sim has been terraformed into four containers, and this InWorldz version of the story is told in four parts, one for each of the quadrants.

The first quadrant depicts a time when The Age of Man has ended in a blaze of fire, famine, and warfare.

In the second, the Age of Acquarella dawns. The mighty goddess begins to repopulate the seas with outposts of aquariums filled with creatures that survived in the cool depths of the oceans. Hoping to avoid the violent excesses of her forebears, she plans for these mini-oceans to be peaceful and pure, hence colored only with the purest of colors, black and white.

Alas, as they say, if you want to make the Devil laugh, make plans. The third quadrant shows one of our aquariums as a dead zone, all the life squeezed out of it by the goddess's rigid reliance on purity.

At last the goddess softens her ideas, and the fourth quadrant blooms in a burst of color and fecundity. There are fanciful plants, brilliant fish, pink seahorses, showers of multicolored diatoms, masses of ikura eggs, and dance balls everywhere. It seems like paradise, but there is a hint of the sinister in the sushi pavilion, where it appears that the aquarium has succumbed to cannibalism. Even more sinister is the black spy monster lurking out of sight overhead and manipulating destiny to travel full circle like the merry go round that marks the passage back to the disaster quadrant. In the end the story of the sim asks whether moral progress is possible.

I am a digital artist in Real Life and I used the following RL software in the creation of the work: Corel Painter (digital drawing/textures), Photoshop (textures), Blender (sculpties), and Audacity (sound). I also relied heavily on my experience with virtual tools, including prim editing, texturing, and script modification. The sim was begun in February 2011 and finished eight months later. Although bits and pieces may make it to other grids, "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse" in its entirety is unique and always will be to Nexus Central in InWorldz.

Many thanks to Jeri Rahja for granting me the use of the sim, to Elenia LLewellyn for technical support, and to Zauber Paracelsus for help with scripting and lag.

Prior to opening, Acquarella has received some most welcome publicity.
**The first quadrant was featured on on Treet.tv, Episode 120.
** An interview by treasured friend Nazz Lane appeared on August 1, 2011: http://laneslist.blogspot.com/2011/08/preview-of-alizarin-goldflakes.html.
**And another by the incomparable Thirza Ember on October 19, 2011 : http://pingsfromtheafterlife.blogspot.com/

============================================
Links:
DIGITAL ART: Martha Jane Bradford
Web Site: http://www.marthavista.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
MJB Blog: http://marthajanebradford.blogspot.com/
VIRTUAL ART: Alizarin Goldflake (Metaverse avatar of Martha Jane Bradford)
Atelier Alizarin (Second Life studio): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/222/189/35
Blog: http://alizaringoldflake.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alizaringoldflake/
YOUTUBE VIDEOS: http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake
Anza Borrego Oak:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/1/5s_KRMi55v8
Acquarella:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/a/u/0/u-lo6JosN0M
Acquarella:the Fable ( a Chantal Harvey machinima)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1eFMtjV6U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhO2Rf88uM (Chinese narration)
Metemspyche's Garden:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/2/GfQGuNXWvLo
Requiem for Fukushima Daiichi:
http://youtu.be/2H_ne2XbcNs
Studio Tour:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/3/XDjrLmPpopA
The Maze:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/4/OEa9rtEiINE
The Mysterious Forest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/5/c6Xv_pAf0Qc
The Winter Bear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMYSYJNkm1E&list=QL&playnext=1

Wonderful review by Thirza Ember of Acquarella: After the Apocalypse - opening soon!

Many thanks to Thirza for this sensitive, insightful, and appreciative coverage of my first full-sim installation: http://pingsfromtheafterlife.blogspot.com/

More to come soon!

Museum of Science Boston blog post link

Since for some reason the bitly url doesn't work, here is the long form of the link to my post:
http://marthajanebradford.blogspot.com/2011/09/digital-virtual-art-exhibit-at-museum.html

Digital-Virtual Art Exhibit at the Museum of Science Boston Thrown Under the Bus

My typist's Digital-Virtual Art Exhibit at the Museum of Science Boston has been thrown under the bus. Details here: http://bit.ly/rkKb7k

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