art:21 covers Second Life art!

"Creating on the Social Web" by Nettrice Gaskins, a most welcome and insightful article about Second Life art, appeared yesterday on art:21 ("art in the twenty-first century"), a PBS art news blog. Featured artists include DanCoyote Antonelli, Bryn Oh, Maya Paris, Alizarin Goldflake, and Vu Sosa in that order. It is gratifying to see the vibrant world of virtual art at last getting mainstream attention. Be sure to read the many comments the article has received - lots of info and debate!

The video that appears with this post can also be seen on art:21. It gives a taste of how I use my real life digital drawings to make Second Life art.

The article can be found here: http://blog.art21.org/2009/11/30/virtual-artists-immersive-discoveries-in-a-virtual-3d-frontier/
and Nettrice's web site here: http://www.nettrice.us/
and my RL (Martha Jane Bradford) web site here: http://www.marthavista.com/

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.

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.

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/

The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse performs in Orfeo's Oratorio

Saturday, October 31, 11 am PDT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/216/176/632

The most unusual Halloween party ever! This combination of talents is not to be missed: a spectacular AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE performance in Alizarin Goldflake's celebrated ORFEO'S ORATORIO. Limited seating - come early! Wear your most outrageous costume and prepare to be astonished by theirs!

The Orchestra is a globe-wide collaboration of artists that uses the Second Life platform as an instrument itself. Members conceive, design, and build their own virtual instruments which allow them to trigger independent sounds in real time. Visuals and animations are also included, making a performance of the jumping, hovering, dancing, twirling Avatar Orchestra Metaverse a truly spellbinding event.

Orfeo’s Oratorio is a virtual amusement park with an Upper World/Underworld theme, featuring other-worldly fountains, gondolas, coracles, dance pose balls, a mirror-like floor, blue-jetted ferris wheels, and a mysterious changing light. In the Underworld, where the performance will take place, flames shoot up from the floor, sconces crackle, and the fountain drips particle sparks from the ceiling like a giant chandelier. It was an NPIRL pick:
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ABOUT THE AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE

Avatar Orchestra performs regularly in Second Life and in mixed reality events at new media, music and visual arts centres in North America, Europe and Asia.

ACTIVE MEMBERS

Bingo Onomatopeia
BlaiswDeLaFrance Voom
Carolhyn Wijaya
Gumnosophistai Nurmi
Humming Pera
Free Noyse
Maxxo Klar
North Zipper
Paco MarianiXisuthra Lomu
Zonzo Spyker


INTERNET ADDRESSES

http://avatarorchestra.blogspot.com/
http://www.avatarorchestra.org/

Bringing Water to the Desert

Burning Life opens Saturday - come visit me at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Nightingale/26/98/25

UWA Design Challenge Ceremony Photos

details in the post below.