Dreams in Neon

Dreams in Neon

Recommend to set it to HD^^

Dreams in Neon is a movie made at Insilico in Second Life. Insilico is a vast place covering several so called 'sims' all done in a cyberpunk, near-futuristic style. Music is Max Waves, called Twareg Rose and made for it. Well that is my opinion. P

Well actually I had reserved the music with the idea of using it in a kind of vampire the masquerade: bloodlines way. That is a game in which you have to travel through sewers at one time and far of you hear the sound of chinese/japanes singing. Very eerie.

Stories of the unreal: Wildlife

Wildlife

A picture I made using Osgrid, Secondlife and real life pictures. The set is made in OSgrid. The animals are from OSgrid. The statues to the right have been made by Laughton Mc.Cry using sculptris. The fish are from the public domain and the advertisement  is from the Library of Congress. The avatar and the spot lights are from second life.  For my next step I want to be able to merge pictures from various sources into an overall picture. That way I won’t be depended on one source.

Two Nekos do Second Life -1: Insilico

I recently was in Insilico in Second Life to make a profile picture for Merit. Insilico is a role play place set in a cyberpunk world. For those who do not know what cyberpunk is: it is the world of blade runner.  It is  near future world where advanced technology has become part of human life, but society slowly falls apart. The individual becomes dominant and community suffers. Governments change from providing central services to all, to becoming repressive and undemocratic. On the face of it society still pays lip-service to democracy and equality, but in reality wealth and power determines everything. Central to cyberpunk is the notion that government tasks are being provided by mega corporations. They provide shelter, social services, security, health services, but only to their own employees. Their community is the community of the company and not of society of nationality. Ironically this world does not know discrimination on basis of race, gender, sexual behavior, religion or culture. The only thing that counts is whether one is a employee or not.

While this sounds like a bad world, it is also a world of opportunity. Enterprising individuals can carve out a destiny for themselves and there is still the possibility that the degrading of society can be reversed. Usually cyberpunk world assumes that space exploration has progressed and often planets like Mars have been colonized and often also the larger moons of various solar planets. Intergalactic space travel has not yet been achieved, but space travel in the solar system is well developed and expanding.

This then is the world where Insilico is based. It represent a large megapolis that is reminiscent of the city in Blade Runner, and the cities in Deus Ex, for those who are familiar with these games.  Insilico is truly a beautiful example of what one can do in Second Life and especially with the introduction of mesh the place has achieved a remarkable outlook.

Here are some pictures from Insilico.

This is my avatar Merit. I had her dressed up in a kind of cyberpunk look. This is a Hexatile look from Elixir.

A street at Insilico. Through blade runner the combination of these dark, empty streets combined with the bright  signs have become a kind of trademark. The contrast between the shiny colors and the dark grey streets dominated by towering dark mega buildings create an estranged feeling. It is like this single light bulb in an otherwise dark room. Typical Cyberpunk are the many signs with symbols that  convey no meaning. It is like the Asian text on the signs. People can not read them, they convey no meaning for them.
In Cyberpunk communications have improved, but at the same time it has not.

A bar somewhere in Insilico. Well I needed a closeup from Merit.

Typical Cyberpunk.. A robot looking like an insect is the barman at the Blue Ant bar. Don't you love that.

Somewhere in Insilico is the 7 Seas restaurant.

The inside of the restaurant is made to look like it is underwater. Look at the fishies. I am going to eat you little fishies!

In front of the entrance of the Seven Seas restaurant there are these two blue dragons circles around a large bubble.

Cyberpunk exist of mixing the old with the new, nature with technology. Maybe you remember the artificial snake  from bladerunner? Here is a statue of en elephant. The benches are located underneath a blue ultra modern looking device. No idea what it was for.

The Buddha Bowl is Noodle Bar in Insilico. The mesh stool degraded, but just imagine they are floating. In blade runner there is noodle bar scene. And thus the noodle bar has become a stock item in the cyberpunk world. The dragon like display in the back was beautiful.

Noodle bar close up.

Buddha Bowl Noodle bar.

Atomix Comic a shop for all tastes.. at least as far as the sign above the entrance seems to be saying. An interior shot with a mesh dude standing guard.

Street scenes in Insilico. The makers did their best to capture the mood of a cyberpunk city. Darkness all around, but always offset by sudden bright signs. Perhaps you recall that in Blade Runner there rain seems to fall making the street even more drearier.

At this point I had bought myself some cool cyberpunk glasses.

Even darker and therefore even brighter. A cyberpunk place is actually also a good environment for vampires.


Well uh, a lot of pictures. I hope you liked them. I even got more, but I put them on my website at: www.meritcoba.net.

Art by Second Life: kayly iali

It is not my intention to write about anyone who displays their art in Second Life. Not that such would be a good thing, but given the amount of art that is created(and use the word art  for covering a wide range of artistry) such would be a full time task. It would be fun to be able to do that and get paid for it, but at the moment I do not receive any monetary incentive  for what I write and who knows.. there might be reasons for it.
Anyway let's get back to what I do like the write about.. Which is simply driven by selfish interests. I have a interest in combining pictures with text to give voice to my stories so anything that sort of helps me with that interests me more. Although.. there sometimes things that are just beautiful.
Now it happens to be that I was looking at some art(istry)  displayed at a gallery and one set of art captured my eye, which is that of  Kayly Iali (A second life name).  She makes her art and displays it in  Second Life, using SL as a way to promote her art.
I took the audacity to copy her profile description:
I am a RL artist and exhibit in SL galleries. I work in oils, watercolor and pastels...using calligraphic strokes to bring about imagery[]
If you are interested in any of my rl paintings, please feel free to IM me. Or check out my website at marleneleeart.com. I'm also on facebook. Thanks.

To be honest I probably would not have shown her art because I am more aimed at showing art that has a kind of story in it, but I liked her studios that her art was displayed in. I know a very arbitrary reason to base your decisions upon. Probably you would say.. you need to show art that is great to be promoted, but is that not a personal taste? And if something is personal, would not any personal reason be enough?
In fact.. you should yourself see if you like her art. More can be found here: marleneleeart.com.

 I think that if you want to go and have a look.. then it would be her portraits that you should at least have a look at. Somehow captures human faces is quite a skill..

Second Life & OS Grid: Lord it over the prims.

All hail to the torus

Well,

That title requires some explanation. Especially for people who are not familiar with Second Life or the OS Grid. Second Life is, as you might have heard, a virtual world. OS Grid is another one. Both OS Grid and Second Life are based on outwardly similar technology. There are more virtual worlds that are based on this same technology. Here you can find more info about it http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page. (A note aside: do not try to find these worlds with the catchphrase virtual worlds.. you will get lost in the woods as you stumble over all kinds of game sites, sex places and what not. While I do not want to say anything for or against these, it is more fitting to refer to the worlds that are similar: the key word that let’s you enter the proper multiverse seems to be: open sim).
One aspect of this sameness is that primary objects can be manipulated in a similar fashion. In fact you can copy over the settings of one world to the other. A primary object, if you have not heard of it, is a basic object that comes in a basic shape that can be altered so to make it look different. Basic shapes are for instance: the cube, the sphere and the torus. The latter which is the subject of this post(or actually.. should that not be.. the object?).
Now all this technobabble aside this post is actually just to show that you can create fun things with the basic shapes available in virtual worlds. You do not need to be a highly skilled person to do that. You just make an object appear, add a touch of fantasy and start changing them parameters. Like, that prim is not going to bite you.
(A side note: i sometimes wonder if it is not much easier to lord it over them prims instead of trying to dominate other people.. which is something some people seem to like to do. Your control of them is total. Prims don’t have a mind of their own and you can do to them things you would want to have done to yourself and get away with it!)
Now I wanted to show some exampled of how the torus can be altered to create interesting new forms that can be used to create great new effects.

Oh, show it already!

The vehicle in this picture I made for a Burn 2 two event some years ago. It is almost completely made using torii. The vehicle was called Poetry in motion and that is what it did. It read out loud random poems and showed the text overhead as text on a picture. Oh and yes.. the one who actually built it was Taubie.. who you see on the picture above. She is  my other main avatar. Actually emotionally she would be THE main avatar.

Now some days ago I was finding some new shape to use and I found a nice one, which I so like that I showed it to Veleda Lorakeet. It is nice to be like a little kid sometimes. She like the shape to, copied it and gave it her won twist. And then she told Laughie who in turn changed it into something else.

Now this is the fun thing about inspiration.

Let me show

Shape I made using two tori, cut in half and one turned 180 degrees.

I use it as a display case.

Veleda Lorakeets changes

Result 1: layered tori in dept changed each one changed by Veleda with glow added to some.

Result 2: two tori changed by Veleda and some shine added.

Version made by Laughie

This is a version made by Laughie. Using the same shape but in full and three prims added to make a face. I thought it looked like a bear or dog, Laughie tought it looked more like a pig. It would make a nice sign or marker. Or a wall painting like this:

Tori butterflies.

What I liked about this is that people inspire and get inspired. It might not be superior art.. but it is fun and perhaps might lead to more.

Cheers!

Two Nekos do Urupe: Amsterdam

Hi,

Welcome to my two nekos do Urupe: Amsterdam.
I have a blog on wordpress but I am getting a bit annoyed with it because I can not display wide shots unless I pay another 75 dollars. Yes! I say another 75 for I already paid like 90 dollars for a premium account, but this did not include a theme that allows for wide shots. +
Blogger however does, without extra money.
I will therefore add blogger to show my wide shots.. Over time I hope to add more of my post I made on Wordpress.

Now Amsterdam.. that is that city I was born.. and we(= my avatars) went into SL when we found it existed. And exist it does.. I mean not in a small way, but actually there is a rather big place in Second Life that looks in a certain way as Real Life Amsterdam does. Although without the myriads of tourists plodding around and without, for some reason, the bars and the coffee shops pandering soft drugs. Yeah.. that is Amsterdam for you, yet it is not. There are coffee-shops there but it is not like every inhabitant is intoxicated.
I recall my friends and me had this moment in which we smoked pot and stuff like that. It started one day with someone bringing us a cake made with grass and a year or so later it stopped. Just like that.
Smoking lingered long after that. I mean one of those friends, he smoked until his late thirties, until one of his lungs collapsed and his doctor said: if keep this going...
If you were to say that one drugs lead to another.. it would be hard to proof. For nobody of the eight people involved ever touched any kind of drugs after that one year. It was this wild moment and it was over a year later. In fact.. studying at the university and doing soft drugs is not a good mix. I suspect most of us were to serious for that.

Now the picture above shows the dam. That would be the central square of Amsterdam in a way. I guess most inhabitants my beg to differ. I mean the Leidseplein is more of  a center for people who want to go out and have a drink. And the museumplein would be more of a culture place. And yet the munt, not really a square, would be more of a place to watch a movies. The dam however holds the most dominating landmarks that illustrate the dutch mindset: a church, a big shopping mall, monument for world war II, a palace which isn't actually a palace but rather a symbolic palace and also the gathering place for the ruling elite untill it became a democracy. And not far off: the stock exchange. For the three pillars of the dutch are: commerce, religion and a vague authority.

This is a picture that more or less show the damrak that is a broad street running from the central station(way  to the rear of the picture) towards the dam.(behind us in the picture). The building with the flag on it (the dutch flag: red-white-blue) is the former stock exchange. I am not sure what it is for used for now. You can have coffee in front of it as it has a kind of bar. It also seems to have some kind of stock exchange function, but what it is I do not know.
In the front of the picture are the typical trams.. the one you see is somewhat old, as nowadays they have a yellow basic look and somewhat more modern.

Ok I am sorry but I like the versions of the above place. Those show the typical dutch canals, called grachten. I think it's a nice example of how a gracht might look like in Amsterdam. However the grachten seldom ended in a way like this in the way you see here. Usually they either continue on into another gracht. A building that is located at the end of a gracht I have seldom seen.

Ok... not the greatest shot to end.. but still.. I captures Amsterdam. Perhaps the street  is to wide.:P