Monday, November 16, 2009

ACQUARELLA Open Studio



Alizarin Goldflake will hold an Open Studio at Atelier Alizarin on Saturday, November 28, 3 - 5 pm PDT, for "Acquarella," her latest immersive art build. Win a L$1,500 prize!! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/204/203/333

"When I was a child, I kept an aquarium and I would stare into it for hours, mesmerized by it then as I am now by Second Life, a magical weightless world populated by strange and beautiful creatures." These memories were the inspiration behind the creation of "Acquarella." An aquarium on a cosmic scale, "Acquarella" is filled with swaying, lacey aquatic plants, schools of neon tetras, animated angelfish and goldfish, drifts of diatoms, and huge green lily pads that bob up and down in the invisible current. The build echoes with the songs of whales. Pose balls invite people to swim to their music, and throughout, there are traces of an untold story. A fragment of a submarine that torpedoed itself hints at an apocalyptic destruction that could possibly be a metaphor. Who is hunting whom with those ghostly sonar pings? Why does color sometimes creep into a largely monochrome vision? How to explain the fact that the black and white tetras school, while their rainbow-hued counterparts are solitary? Who is Acquarella? Is she a giantess or are we liliputian? People are invited to submit their own back stories via in-world notecard to Alizarin Goldflake or by leaving your story here in the comment box under this post. A panel of 3 judges will choose the most creative story, which will be published via an Art & Artists Network! group notice and will receive a L$1,500 prize on December 28.

There will be champagne and hors d'oeuvres for the realistically-inclined and salsa dancing to the energizing jazz flamenco land music. A careful search of the build will yield a freebie containing one of the exquisite digital drawings.

"Acquarella" employs highly-detailed digital drawings done with Corel Painter software and a Wacom tablet. It uses scripts, animations, and sounds to provide an immersive art experience that is intended to create visual and psychic pleasure for the participant.

Other Atelier Alizarin Attractions include: Orfeo's Oratorio, immersive art and musical kinetics in Sky Studio Night, The Particularium on the third floor, RL digital drawings on the second floor, 2-D digital collages on the first floor, and a beautiful sculpture park on the ground.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Caerleon Interactive Collaboration Opening



THE VANISHING - Invitation to the Caerleon Interaction Collaboration opening!
***Sunday, November 8th, at 1 pm PDT***

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/107/237/29

THE VANISHING is a Caerleon Island artists collaboration on the theme of Interaction. As we found, the ultimate interaction is creating with a group of your friends! Team leader: Artistide Despres. Artists in alphabetical order include: Alizarin Goldflake, FreeWee Ling, Lollito Larkham, Mencius Watts, Miso Susanowa, Pete Jiminy, and Pixels Sideways.

The Caerleon Interactivity Collaboration is based on the following plot line: a newbie enters a strange land called Second Life. Things seem familar here, yet quite different. Setting off down the path, our traveller tries to search for an understanding of this new environment but along the way mysteriously disappears. Follow his/her path. Enter the maze and discover the journal, look for clues, and try to find out what may have happened...

THE VANISHING explores the role that interaction plays in a virtual environment. We’ve created a story as a representation of how each of us may have begun our journey into Second Life. We invite you to walk through the various scenes and see for yourself what our avatar friend has discovered.

THE WELCOME AREA: your interaction begins by deciding the appearance of your avatar representative.

THE MAZE: confusion reigns at the beginning of our search. But if you read the clues you will find prizes!

THE FOREST: sounds and avatar-activated color shifts create a mysterious mood. Try dancing in the moonbeam for a nice interaction. Look for poses in other objects.

THE CANYON: see how interaction can occur from SL to the real world beyond.

THE MINE: explores the many interactions that can occur between objects.

THE FACTORY: creates a role that our friend experiences and leads us to a conclusion.

THE CONCLUSION: if you are able to find it you will discover what happened to our friend.

Other areas wait to be discovered, too. Look for hidden side paths. The road you take is your own.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

AOM in Orfeo: The Photos





Here are four photos of yesterday's performance by the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse in my immersive art build "Orfeo's Oratorio." It was an outstanding performance of truly experiemental music produced by virtual instruments created and played real time by the musicians. The four pieces showed a broad range of accomplishment, and the other-worldly mysterious sounds held the audience's rapt attention for over an hour, quite an achievement in the fast-paced SL enviroment. I hope to host another performance of the AOM, possibly for New Year's.
Here are the names of the performers: Bingo Onomatopeia, BlaiswDeLaFrance Voom, Carolhyn Wijaya, Gumnosophistai Nurmi, Humming Pera, Flivelwitz Alsop, and Free Noyse.
The pieces performed were: Fragula by Miulew Takahe, Ritual by Flivelwitz Alsop, PwRHm by Humming Pera, and Wee No Kresh by Bingo Onomatopeia. DanCoyote Antonelli contributed a spontaneous narration to Wee No Kresh :)

They can be reached on the internet at: http://avatarorchestra.blogspot.com/ and
http://www.avatarorchestra.org/