Gore Suntzu takes full advantage of the Fashion Research Institute’s build to show off his “Prim Abuses” - wonderful, kinetic, colorful constructs of fire and light.

Gore was one of the last (if not the last) artists that I actively recruited to come to Oyster Bay, and I only was able to show one of his pieces at a time. This collection of 10-15 pieces really shows his range.
posted by Morris Vig on Shengri La Peace using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Here’s a copy of the notecard Gore offered me:

The Prims Abuser - Gore Suntzu’s  Swirly Thingies Exibition

From 15 of May to The 15 of June

Reception (mean i will be there if u wanna come and say Heyya!) : Thursday 15 4-6 PM SLT

And now for (..bore you some more) your joy… some lines about my abuses and me

My  abuses are unreal prims sculpture made with sculpties , and with some lil scripting to make them alive, the best word i can use for describe them is “pulsating”, they have a meaning? boh i dont know, but if the music is nice, the moon is full sometime can happen that they catch the mood of the ppl that are looking at them.

Artist Statement (iz serious stuff really..)

I never considered myself the artistic kind of man,

Secondlife helped me discover this side of myself.

I don’t know if what i do can be considered art , for me is more an act of exploration looking for a a symmetrical dynamic movement, a metaverse heartbeat.  It  all start with a prim  abused , that’s why i call them prims abuses (but don’t worry  most of the times they don’t complain, to tell you the truth i belive they like it), than i look what happen.  I never start with a plan in mind, i believe that the prim know by itself where to go. (kai this line is sily lol)

I believe this is a good example how powerful Second Life can be ( and i hope this will not change in the future).
Without this place well i hardly imagine myself, in the quest of tryn to explain the meaning of my “art”.

and for finshing a quote that make all the note more intellectually appropriate

The object of art is to give (Second) life a shape.
William Shakespeare

————–Remember to set sun on midnight and glow on for enjoy abuses at maximum———————

Calli has another wonderful show up here…some wonderful “landscape” shots. I only wish that she had room for a few more pieces! That being said, the works that are on display are definitely worth seeing.
posted by Morris Vig on Rasczak using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

I’m excited to have finished a project that I’ve been working on since just after Oyster Bay closed - my pictorial history of Oyster Bay. I combed everywhere I could find to chronologically tell the story of Oyster Bay in pictures. There are almost 700 images in this 200-page publication (7″x7″ size, which holds 4 SL snapshots per page with no deterioration of photo quality) covering so much of the Oyster Bay experience. It’s a great walk down memory lane!

I used Blurb.com to publish the book, and you can order one in hardcover or softcover here. (You can also preview it at the link as well.) Because so many of the photos were not mine, I’m not taking any profit on the book - just letting Blurb charge what they charge.

Anyone who knows me knows that the history of Second Life is an ongoing preoccupation of mine. The Oyster Bay book is my way to ensure that at least a few of us who care have our own slice of history in this magical time of the 3D internet.

Enjoy.

(Oh, use the promotion code “istockphoto2008” through July 31, 2008 to save $7.00 on shipping. Yay!)

Wednesday’s walkabout found me stumbling upon the Koinonia Congregational Church just as they were about to begin their evening services.  Never having attended church in Second Life (I don’t count the First SL Church of Elvis as “church” — sorry, King), I thought I would stay and partake.

The service was very well attended,and felt like a RL church experience.  Sophianne Rhode, the pastor led the services, and she offered a beautiful sermon about the Holy Trinity.  The decidedly SL moment in the services was when she turned a particle generator on to visualize how water can have 3 forms - solid, liquid and gas - just as God has 3 forms.  (She joked afterwards that it was pulled from a children’s service that she observed…but, hey, go with a good thing!)

The build itself, by Troy Vogel, was just incredible.  Very Frank Lloyd Wright-ish, I think.  I found this to be a wonderful place of contemplation and reflection.  In fact, I liked it so much that I took some footage after the service ended and a few of us were sitting around, listening to some music.

It was a unique experience for me in SL, one that I very well might return to.  The Koinonia Congregational Church is building a beautiful community of faith.

Continuing the exploration of the grid that is my walkabout, I’m hanging at Fire N Ice Gardens and watching Chapi Paisley on violin and Charity Zipper on piano. Always nice to listen to Beethoven from a tiki bar!
posted by Morris Vig on Gypsy Roads using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

I’m hanging out in the new “Relic” build, which is deliberately being built for WindLight and renderglow, especially. What a darkly lush place. After playing with the WindLight sky settings, I think that this might be one of the best builds that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Each sky setting gives a totally different view, and the glow gets picked up in all sorts of ways. What a great place…highly recommended.
posted by Morris Vig on Templum ex Obscurum using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

UPDATE: A brief slideshow of some of the graet WindLight/renderglow combinations, using yours truly as the very compliant model…

Competitive pressures are mounting in the virtual world market…and it’s coming from within. Get this:

• IBM is hosting an OpenSim build where the sim hosts - I kid you not - 45,000 prims.  Three times more than a regular Second Life sim.  Ay caramba.
• After the megaprim patch was released, and Nicholaz included it in his Eye Candy viewer…Linden goes and “fixes” the grid to effectively halt the creation of megaprims.  That surely went over well.  Right, Nicholaz? Right, slConceptual?

Linden had better watch itself.  The genie is out of the bottle - it came out when they took the initiative to open source their viewer.  Reverse engineering should have been presumed, and it’s only a matter of time before the open source community makes an OpenSim foundation that will exceed the performance of Second Life.  The IBM prim count post shows that such developments aren’t that far away.  (Perhaps the reason is that IBM is using better servers…wouldn’t surprise me.  Point is, the technology is getting away from Linden Lab.)

Then, the megaprim patch is out there.  OpenSim will surely take advantage…they’d be stupid not to.  So when given the opportunity to get a “Second Life” (generically speaking) experience at the same or less cost, with the same or more prims at your disposal, and with the capacity to make megaprims - I know what I’d do.  How about you?

Sigh.  And I vowed to do less of this type of commentary…

That’s right, baby! Vig’s playing with mega-prims! I give you my MEGA-Multicolor Twist!  3 prims of total excess!

Over 50 meters high…that for sale sign in the corner is 10 meters high as a point of reference. And that’s me, standing on the base of the piece. Too much fun. Thanks, Nicholaz, for putting this patch into your Eye Candy viewer.

If Linden Lab wanted to put its money where its mouth is, it would offer a percentage tier refund to paying customers proportional to the amount of time that the grid is down.  As in, “We couldn’t provide service to you paying customers for 5% of the time last month, so here’s a 5% refund.  Sorry - we’ll do better next time.”

That’ll be the day.

It was another crazy day in RL today, so please bear with me while I vent as I review my NetVibes collection of Second Life-related blogs:

• The Second Life blog is old news. If you really want to know what’s going on in Second Life, you need to pay close attention to the Second Life Grid Status Report blog… especially with the “now you see it, now you don’t” approach to asset server availability. (As referenced here, here, here, here, and here…among other places. And, yes, those are all unique incidences of problems.)
• If you really (REALLY) want to know what’s going on across the grid, the Second Life Herald probably has as good an ear to the ground as any place. But I won’t admit that I told you, lest some reformed griefer plants me in a Bill Cosby “jello” prim while I’m AFK.
• Speaking of the Second Life Herald, they tell us that the Feds are onto the sweatshop that is Second Life. Or at least as it relates to the larger metaverse development companies, who often look at the Linden dollar to US dollar relationship as a 1:1 ratio. Yup, Sheep, you get to pay taxes for those serfs - errrr - employees of yours.
• Goodbye, Ritchey Sealey-RL Australian Artist. I finally followed the counsel of way too many talented friends who abandoned the spam of the Art & Artist Network; Creatives, Artists & Musicians and Second Life Artists groups. And my viewer (and email, when I’m not inworld) has never been more tranquil. It’s kind of funny, all this marketing from artists…to artists…in the hopes that artists will buy another artists’ art. Don’t you think that - oh - growing the circle of art enthusiasts might be better? (Leave it for me to say that; I’m a prime ex-group spammer. Did I tell you about the Madcow Cosmos “14 Days, 14 Sculptures” show in the last hour? What about “Hidden Starax”?)
• What happened to the discussion about intellectual property and content theft? Did the Linden inaction policy wear everyone out already?
• Dusan Writer is a megaprim tease. To tell the world that there’s a patch to allow users to make megaprims on their own? And not tell us how to get the patch? D’oh! (Don’t worry, Dusan, you’re in good company. The only other tease I’ve identified was Torley Linden, who somehow remains a WindLight tease even though WindLight is part of the standard viewers. But you CAN forward that patch to morrisvig <at> sbcglobal <dot> net…)
• The idea of offering a free Iron Man avatar in Second Life is freaking genius. That avi is so choice…and works GREAT in SL. I mean, look at this Flickr group. Or this machinima contest. (Thanks to New World News for the tip on the contest.)
• Dusan Writer is a megaprim tease, but Nicholaz is The Man. His latest “eye candy” viewer has the megaprim patch. Now, Nicholaz, just include support for my 3D Space Navigator control, and I’ll abandon that official viewer faster than you can say, “My viewer crashed again.”
• Prokofy Neva is right more than wrong. But don’t tell Prok I said that, lest I get labeled as some fascio-commu-liberal noob.
• Good luck to you business-types…just don’t interrupt my recreational experience that is Second Life. Or wonder why I don’t care that you’re inworld.
• Gwyneth Llewelyn’s avi has huge eyes. Really. Look for yourself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Whew. That was cathartic.  Back to the walkabout!