Found this gorgeous sci-fi-ish sim ages ago and forgot to label the picture with the SURL! Now I don't know where it is! Anyone recognize this?
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Monday, July 20, 2009
Kowloon in Second Life
If you haven't been to Kowloon in SL you really need to make the time to see it. An incredible build. Makes you feel like you are really there!
Draven discovered it on a splash page of the Emerald (Greenlife) viewer and showed me around. Lovely architecture and, oh!, the neon!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
SL Places to Visit: Grendel's Children
Grendel's Children is a gorgeous sim for the inner monster in all of us. Visit their elaborate series of skyboxes and see what a talented builder can do with sculpted prims.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Ancient Lighthouse
I'd been decorating for the Christmas season at Valis, and went off in search of ice skates for skating on the pool at the base of our waterfall. But as so much in SL is transitory, I was not surprised the link I followed to a skating rink in Wollaston lead me now to an open field. I was about to turn back when in the distance, against the night sky, I saw an Ancient Lighthouse on a rocky promontory. 
Not being a girl to shirk off an adventure I figured I had to explore it.
After and arduous climb over rocks and across tumbled pillars I made my way to staircase on the side of the mountain. Treacherous and steep, I slipped, and found myself falling through a crack in the rock into a subterranean cave. It was a beautiful grotto with a tiny waterfall, but to my horror I found I could not get out. the only staircase in there led to sheer rock walls.
Then in a back corner I spied the trunk. No treasure, unless you could count a landmark that led me out as treasure. The night was past and dawn breaking by the time I made my way back to the stairs and began again the long climb to the top of the light house.
I made good time to a balcony about halfway up the towers. Some kind soul had left a bottle of wine and two cups there, so I fortified myself while I took a breather to look at the scenery. Back across the fields I had traveled I could see great statues of mythical beasts in the distance. To the north was a huge cathedral floating in the sky. Something to explore another day, I thought. To the west of the Lighthouse were some ordinary SL bungalows, and nestled at the eastern base of the Lighthouse itself, just on the other side of a waterfall that spilled from unknown springs at the mountain top, was a small shop (of course, there is always a shop, this is SL after all!) built among the beautiful Grecian ruins.
An iron-bound door led me to an interior room of lovely mosaic floors with a map and an impressive globe. This room opened onto a balcony where lovers (it was clear by the pose balls) must have sat to enjoy the view of the ruins below. But who were they, those lovers who built this place? I continued my explorations in the hope of finding out.
Twisting stairs took me past a room with an astrolabe and beautiful dolphin mosaics on the floor lit by the once again setting sun. Then up and up higher to the topmost room, where I sat and rested my feet and my mind. This lovely place, this seat, was meant for two and I could only wish that my beloved could be there with me. A peek at the architecture gave me the builder's name, Hacker Jannings, jewelry designer, and that of his lovely wife, Lillyanne Lustre, fashion designer, it is their shop in the ruins below. Ironic, I thought as what they had built so paralleled my own life and place in Valis.
I sat for a while and watched the growing dusk, thinking of all the SL lovers, all those who build fantastic places for their beloveds, and those who walk with their lovers in search of such treasures to share. With a smile I let my teleport carry me home.
Not being a girl to shirk off an adventure I figured I had to explore it.After and arduous climb over rocks and across tumbled pillars I made my way to staircase on the side of the mountain. Treacherous and steep, I slipped, and found myself falling through a crack in the rock into a subterranean cave. It was a beautiful grotto with a tiny waterfall, but to my horror I found I could not get out. the only staircase in there led to sheer rock walls.
Then in a back corner I spied the trunk. No treasure, unless you could count a landmark that led me out as treasure. The night was past and dawn breaking by the time I made my way back to the stairs and began again the long climb to the top of the light house.
I made good time to a balcony about halfway up the towers. Some kind soul had left a bottle of wine and two cups there, so I fortified myself while I took a breather to look at the scenery. Back across the fields I had traveled I could see great statues of mythical beasts in the distance. To the north was a huge cathedral floating in the sky. Something to explore another day, I thought. To the west of the Lighthouse were some ordinary SL bungalows, and nestled at the eastern base of the Lighthouse itself, just on the other side of a waterfall that spilled from unknown springs at the mountain top, was a small shop (of course, there is always a shop, this is SL after all!) built among the beautiful Grecian ruins.
An iron-bound door led me to an interior room of lovely mosaic floors with a map and an impressive globe. This room opened onto a balcony where lovers (it was clear by the pose balls) must have sat to enjoy the view of the ruins below. But who were they, those lovers who built this place? I continued my explorations in the hope of finding out.
Twisting stairs took me past a room with an astrolabe and beautiful dolphin mosaics on the floor lit by the once again setting sun. Then up and up higher to the topmost room, where I sat and rested my feet and my mind. This lovely place, this seat, was meant for two and I could only wish that my beloved could be there with me. A peek at the architecture gave me the builder's name, Hacker Jannings, jewelry designer, and that of his lovely wife, Lillyanne Lustre, fashion designer, it is their shop in the ruins below. Ironic, I thought as what they had built so paralleled my own life and place in Valis.
I sat for a while and watched the growing dusk, thinking of all the SL lovers, all those who build fantastic places for their beloveds, and those who walk with their lovers in search of such treasures to share. With a smile I let my teleport carry me home.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Dancing in the Airship
Originally uploaded by Tsai Dancing in the Airship--a rez-day present to Draven that makes a great hideaway above Valis. (Ship was created by Cara Rossini)
Monday, June 23, 2008
Places to See in SL: the Garden of NPIRL Delights
It is almost too late, this being the last day for this incredible four sim exhibit of fantastic and surreal builds, but if you get time tonight you must go see The Garden of Not Possible in Real Life Delights in Rezzable (click here for the SURL). Loosely inspired by Hieronymus Bosch the Garden is a masterwork of multiple talented builders come together in one spot to create what the NPIRL Blog calls: ". . . not a routine build festival. In fact, it is the first time that such a large number of mostly well-known and well-regarded artists, architects, and scripters have come together to not only embrace and demonstrate art and architecture and landscaping that is 'not possible in Real Life'or NPIRL, but also to construct it around a theme so surreal that a similar effort could not be duplicated in Real Life."
Here is one small example: Last night Draven found himself in a representation of a Salvador Dali painting there! Here's on the left is the original Dali painting, "Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)."
And below to the right is Draven posing on the build in the Garden (or as he put it: "Irish Catholic boy creates Franco-Celtic persona in virtual world and re-enacts The Crucifixion in a surrealist sort of way.")
Yes, you too can become one with a piece of art--only possible in SL!
So come out and see the Garden tonight, it's your very last chance!
Here is one small example: Last night Draven found himself in a representation of a Salvador Dali painting there! Here's on the left is the original Dali painting, "Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)."
And below to the right is Draven posing on the build in the Garden (or as he put it: "Irish Catholic boy creates Franco-Celtic persona in virtual world and re-enacts The Crucifixion in a surrealist sort of way.")
Yes, you too can become one with a piece of art--only possible in SL!So come out and see the Garden tonight, it's your very last chance!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Adam Ramona's Seventeen Unsung Songs
Second life is primarily a visual treat, and so art in SL tends toward the fantastic, the improbable and the impossible. On the island of East of Odyssey, however, Adam Ramona--known in real life as Adam Nash, a 3D artist, performer, composer and programmer who uses online space (and sound) as a realtime performance medium--has taken the visual and integrated it organically with the aural and even the emotional in a sim-wide installation he calls Seventeen Unsung Songs.
Nash's installations use a combination of color, prim transparency, and scripting to make interactive art such as this complex piece: " Unsung Song #4: Mitosis."
The central piece is an plant with a central shaft that responds to touch. Touch it enough and it ejaculates pollen which, if it falls into the cupped petals below, may turn into red eggs. The eggs hatch pink larvae 
which turn into blue bugs. Touch a blue bug and it falls to the ground as a blue transparent prim which begins to grow into a music tree, each square blue branch sounding a different chime when touched.
Another of Nash's complex pieces is "Unsung Song #16: Blue Sound Ground" a roadway made up of transparent blue prims, each of which sounds a different note when walked on by an avatar.
The columns sway and ooze particles for joy or shrink and pine desperately when rejected. They communicate directly, challenging each owner/lover/user to prove their love and loyalty. In this giggly theatre of cruelty, the Avatar may choose to support and “love”, to ignore or even to abuse the artificial life form that is now virtually “theirs.” Like real life lovers however, the Moaning Columns make heavy demands on the avatar, challenging us to differentiate between real love and merely dizzy infatuation. Thus we earn what Nash wryly calls “an endless amount of chances to practice emotional responsibility.”
I have to admit that after three days of my "Column" moaning at me I couldn't stand it anymore and I let it die--if nothing else, Nash has reminded me in a very concrete object lesson about the dangers of emotional entanglement in SL. A lesson many of us need to learn. The Unsung Songs of Adam Ramona/Adam Nash are not your typical artistic builds, they are a multimedia treat and a closer look at in our own mirrors, and at our own obsessions, all rolled into one. Go visit East of Odessey and see for yourself.
Nash's installations use a combination of color, prim transparency, and scripting to make interactive art such as this complex piece: " Unsung Song #4: Mitosis."
The central piece is an plant with a central shaft that responds to touch. Touch it enough and it ejaculates pollen which, if it falls into the cupped petals below, may turn into red eggs. The eggs hatch pink larvae 
which turn into blue bugs. Touch a blue bug and it falls to the ground as a blue transparent prim which begins to grow into a music tree, each square blue branch sounding a different chime when touched.
Another of Nash's complex pieces is "Unsung Song #16: Blue Sound Ground" a roadway made up of transparent blue prims, each of which sounds a different note when walked on by an avatar.The notes range from percussive sounds to voices to melodious chimes. Multiple avatars walking on this road thus literally make a unique song of surprisingly harmonious tones.
The most amazing and perhaps disturbing of Nash's pieces is "Unsong Song #7: The Moaning Columns of Longing." Dr. Lisa Dethridge (Lisa Dapto) says in her paper on Nash's work:
The artist leaves less room for us to negotiate space around his highly interactive work, the Moaning Columns of Longing. This is perhaps the most mysterious and emotive of the works. Here artist toys deliberately with the “hot buttons” of love and pain that drive us all, especially those enmeshed in virtual affairs . . . In response to an avatar’s touch, tall, white columns spawn instantly with a phallic upward thrust. These gently swaying prims define themselves as artificial life forms that exist only in relation to a single, specific Avatar. They are exclusive and faithful to a fault.The most amazing and perhaps disturbing of Nash's pieces is "Unsong Song #7: The Moaning Columns of Longing." Dr. Lisa Dethridge (Lisa Dapto) says in her paper on Nash's work:
The columns sway and ooze particles for joy or shrink and pine desperately when rejected. They communicate directly, challenging each owner/lover/user to prove their love and loyalty. In this giggly theatre of cruelty, the Avatar may choose to support and “love”, to ignore or even to abuse the artificial life form that is now virtually “theirs.” Like real life lovers however, the Moaning Columns make heavy demands on the avatar, challenging us to differentiate between real love and merely dizzy infatuation. Thus we earn what Nash wryly calls “an endless amount of chances to practice emotional responsibility.”
I have to admit that after three days of my "Column" moaning at me I couldn't stand it anymore and I let it die--if nothing else, Nash has reminded me in a very concrete object lesson about the dangers of emotional entanglement in SL. A lesson many of us need to learn. The Unsung Songs of Adam Ramona/Adam Nash are not your typical artistic builds, they are a multimedia treat and a closer look at in our own mirrors, and at our own obsessions, all rolled into one. Go visit East of Odessey and see for yourself.
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