Fleet Week video

The Third Annual Fleet Week in Winterfell is just over, and the place now looks sadly empty without all the magnificent vessels.  Loki Eliot has made this nice movie and placed it here:

http://youtu.be/LySyVaQo7_M?t=2m45s.  

One fun thing (for me that is LOL) is that my humble castle is clearly visible in the background!  Seems I need to turn down the lights a little bit...

Dark Night Of the Soul Indeed

I love sitting while I write...

Morgana Nagorski has an exhibit at the Palais Orleans (SLurl) you don't want to miss.

If you don't know Palais Orleans, it's a classy and classic contemporary art gallery, often housing high-quality exhibitions.  And this one is one of the better I have seen here.

I have real problem summing up these pictures.  As I walk around, I find myselves touched by each work, as if they spoke to me.  When I look at "Battered and Exhausted" I really recognize not only a battered avatar, but an exhausted human.  And combined with a wonderful lightening effect this is a true piece of art.

And then there is the screaming face of a woman clearly being abused by another avatar, titled "Don't Hurt Me" - it's just too strong for words really.

Walking further down, I find "Let's Go Get 'Em", a curious piece with a beautiful girl standing between torsos on sticks...  And futher down is "Empty", depicting an empty railway station.... I think you get the impression: This is an exhibit with lots of very different pieces that has one thing in common: A lot of work and care has been put into them, and they deserve to be studied as the great art they are.

It seems like every time I tire of the lag and the crashes and conflicts with RL and funny and useless new viewers from the Lab, I stumble upon something like this: An exhibit that showes the real power of virtual worlds: Great art that just would not be possible without virtual worlds.

Thanks Morgana, for giving us your art and talent.

Moving from ReactionGrid

ReactionGrid has been my "home" in OpenSim for two years now. During that time, I have really not done much building, but it have felt good to have a foothold outside of the somewhat varying strategies from Battery Street.

OpenSimulator today is a much more stable product than it was 2 years ago. So stable, in fact, that an installation on my basement "server" really fulfulls my needs.

In addition, HyperGrid has become useful too! Today I managed to jump out of my own grid for the first time . and I could even fetch some freebees from another grid. Awsome!

It does not really feel good leaving ReactionGrid. The people running it is just plain fantastic. Even though I messed up my credit card on Paypal and got my region closed, they restored it from backup to send me an OAR. The reason I move is just that I so love having full control from the server up; it makes the grid experience more fun for a geek like me:-) But I will probably miss that someone else is keeping my region up....

On the positive side: I now have 4 regions and as many prims I care to load my server with; lots of space to expand!

My grid is accessible from the outside - but I want a period of testing and some building before I publish the URL. After that it would be great to have some hypergrid visitors!

Disbelief and mourning

Friday afternoon we believed that Oslo was being attacked by an international terrorist organization. A car bomb was set up, blowing up a central part of the city. Then there where reports about gunshots being fired on the site of a traditional youth summer camp. And we wondered: What next?

Saturday morning I woke up and was given the answer to the question "what could possible be worse than a car bomb making my beloved city look like a war zone?". The brutal truth of more than 80 young people being cold-bloded murdered by a right-wing lunatic have made me cry all weekend, even though I knew none of them personally.

"If one person can hate this much, just imagine how much more the rest of us can love", one of the survivors said to cnn. I got an Im from an old friend in SL I have not met in a long time, asking if I was hurt. I have spoken to other friends as well. SL
Virtual worlds can really be an outlet for love as well.

In a somewhat crazy RL, that's a comforting thought.

Amilia at the Auggers - Artful and moving debut

Amilia Fixed has a debut exhibit at the Auggers photo gallery.  There are two series exhibited at ground level: Book of Anatomy and PostCards from My Dark.  On second floor (TP to Gallery 2) is the faun series and the reflections series.

The B&W anatomy shots are very real looking, but Amilia assures me it is her own avatar ("i preffer to use myself because i don't bitch about long hours").  She also tells me there is a lot of work involved, and that I don't find hard to believe.

There are more than technical value here though; the pics communicate emotions, and that is rare for these kind of shots.

The emotions comes throught even stronger in the My Dark series - they are dark indeed.  It may be that my background makes me understand them and really feel the pain, but I am also sure that the true understanding of the artist is very contributing to these qualities.

The Faun series almost made me cry - but then I guess I might be just too emotional for my own good?  A story of love - and loss.  

Even so, do yourselves a favour and check out Amilias exhibit - it's a truly artful public debut.