Particles and music

On Friday, after the Linden Tour, my good friend Annie Brightstar called me to watch a particle show. Being slightly traumatized by the several previous crashes, I hesitated a bit but ended up taking the taxi to LEA 23, and glad I did!

Venus Adored particle show with music by DJ Sunshine was simply breath-taking.The show spanned across LEA23 and 24 and was hosted by Betty Tureaud & Mandel Solano.

No pictures can translate the beauty of the whole show. Each song had its own theme and we were surrounded by light and music.

If you have a chance to watch the light shows by Venus, please don’t miss it. And if even I didn’t crash in a full SIM with tons of particles, no one will 🙂

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Alice in Wonderland

 

It has been a while since I wrote a post, but to tell you the truth I have been feeling kind of lame and haven’t logged in much into SL.

Last week one of my good friends in SL called me on my mobile (yeah I am that crazy, have virtual friends whom I speak with in RL :P) and asked me: “When are we going to Wonderland?”

All of a sudden it stroke me. I wasn’t logging in because I hadn’t anything to do. I have to always be involved in something or otherwise I get bored.

As usual, when me and my friends get together what starts with “lets throw a party” usually ends in building a complete scenery and associated with some photography exhibition at the Gallery. Chagal made this gorgeous dance floor and the garden walls, Flor had some great ideas and I took care of the landscaping. And Alice in Wonderland was born, squeezed in a 4096 sqm plot next to the gallery.

We tried to give it the magical ambiance of Lewis Carrol book. Drop by for a visit and if you want your pics on the theme displayed at my Gallery, please contact me inworld (notecard with your name please) during next week and I will provide all the information needed.

If you want to take a look at the place, go down the rabbit hole and enjoy your stay. Most of the pieces scattered are multipose, so bring your friends and have fun.

The place will be there forever, until we move to the next project. Party soon to be announced too.

“Alice: How long is forever?
Rabbit: Sometimes just a second!”

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Sun to Moon by Nexuno Thespian

Tonight I had just logged in when Annie Brightstar sent me an IM asking if I knew ArtEdLand and a SURL to go with it. How can anyone resist a TP from Annie? Not me for sure 😉

Landing in a dark room, I see the sign announcing the opening of the new art installation of Nexuno Thespian for Saturday, November 16 at 1PM SLT at Eduland.

I wish I could put in words what I felt looking around, first the surprise of a dark room with some fire figures on one side and on the other an amazing sculpture in a mix of ice and fire.

The beauty of the images is striking and it has been a while since I felt the wow factor in Second Life, but little did I know that this was only the beginning.

Nexuno Thespian is known to enjoy himself (and others) colouring the environment, like those of you who saw Dr. Moreau Seaworld at LEA6 this year sure remember, and this installation is one of the best I have seen lately.

Looking around I see this arrow pointing to a painting on the black wall

Walking on the lightning bolts I entered the painting and felt immediately overwhelmed by a wave of heat, figures dancing covered in flames, a strange and involving landscape of fire, keys scattered along the way, a flower up in the air calling “Fly with me”… and far in the distance a key hole. Can it be that the keys show the way to the heart? A heart kept by the moon, beating for the sun? Will you reach the heart of the moon?

This installation, inspired by the song “Sun to Moon” from the musical Miss Saygon, tells a story of an impossible love and the ambience in both rooms (sun and moon) will for sure awake emotions in anyone who visits. I will return on saturday for sure.

PS: Thanks to Myhn who showed me the way to the moon 🙂

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Time encounters – The Movie

The Coral Dance performance named Time Encounters, which celebrated Portugal and Brazil similarities and differences, was filmed by Janjii Rugani. Leave you here the machinima.

Hope you like it as much as we did.

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Burn Part II

Burn2 has ended, but the installations are still there until the end of next week, so if you didn’t go yet, grab the taxi and enjoy 🙂

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Time encounters @ LEA19-The Portuguese Way

We have been having several events at LEA19-The Portuguese Way since its opening in September.

This Saturday, September 26 at 3PM PDT we are having a coral cyber dance performance  in which everyone attending will take part.

All the guests will be provided for the event with a kit of some customizable outfits. Those are dance skins textured with paintings of Janjii’s “Just feelings” RL series. These outfits were conceived not only to reduce lag but also to embed the participants  in the whole environment. In case you wish to have the outfits before the performance, please send me an im inworld and I will send them to you.

In this performance we propose a meeting of avatars for a celebration dance: Portugal and Brazil united to celebrate the rediscovery in an exercise of mixed cultures arising a feeling of belonging through dance, music, language and culture. Of course this is not just for Portuguese speakers, since dance and music are international languages.

The scenery created by Wan Laryukov and Janjii Rugani is embedded in the water which represents that feeling and, at the same time, the Atlantic Ocean which has separated for centuries those two people who admire each other from overseas and that in the virtual reality are joined together in the same sea populated by Wan’s sculptures. These sculptures evoke the avatars’ cyber bodies representing the post human being that we are.

Thus the feelings and mixed cultures are the theme of this coral cyber dance that, inspired in the work of Rudolf Laban, becomes an interactive cyber performance where everyone is invited to participate, being free to choose from the different options and animations available. Each one can choose  to join the HUD of the choreographer Janjii Rugani or the several dance machines scattered through the platform, or even bring their own HUDs since the idea is not to have homogeneous movements but yet their diversity which unites us.

Here is the taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA19/132/146/25

About Laban and Coral Dance

Rudolf Von Laban (1879-1958) was a dancer and choreographer and is considered as one of the most important dance theoreticians of the 20^th century. He dedicated his life to the study of the systematization of the movement language in its several facets: creation, notation, appreciation and education.

Laban dedicated himself to dance proposals for the masses, developing the art of coral dance, where a large number of people move together in a simple choreography, allowing dancers and common people to dance together in a collaborative way. This part of his work is closely connected with his personal spiritual believes, based in the Victorian Theosophy, Sufism and Hermeticism, popular by the end of the 19th century.

The expression coral-dance leads us to the early years of the 20th century, when Rudolph Laban, after joining the “Ordo Templi Orientis” in 1914, directed some coral dance rituals on Verita Mountain, Ascona, Switzerland in the year of 1917 at a workshop where his ideas became popular.

More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_Movement_Analysis

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Burn2 2013

According to Wikipedia “Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September, which coincides with the American Labour Day holiday. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy, which is set alight on Saturday evening. The event is described as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.”

In Second Life the “Burning Life” event started back in 2003, at the time with land sponsored by Linden Lab, although the residents wishing to participate had to pay L$ 1,600 for a 40×40 plot, being that amount refunded after the event was over. The following years a lottery was implemented and the plots granted had a 512sqm area.

Since then, every year we have been having a Burn event which has been following the themes of the RL Burning Man, starting in 2003 with just 2 sims and in 2007 we see the event spread across 18 islands.

In 2010, the name of the event was changed to Burn 2 and due to the huge downsizing at Linden Lab, the event started to be resident supported and LL stopped supplying the sims where the festivities took place.

The RL Burning Man organization was aware from the beginning of the virtual event and, from 2008 on, some of the actual RL Burning Man organizers were inworld to guide residents and assure that the spirit and principles would be the same in both worlds.

I have to confess that on previous years I was lagging so badly that I barely managed to see a couple of buildings and taking pictures was definitely not an option, so I just surfed the web looking for photos and machinima (check it out, there are really great ones) and kicked my computer for the lack of strength to handle lag.

This year things are a bit better and Gemma Cleanslate was a dear providing me with a bunch of LMs and off I went.

I was just there for half an hour or so but I leave you here some of the pictures I took, raw from SL, except for signature. More to come. I’ll keep you posted… well, not you the pics… ok, whatever, you know what I mean 😉

There is a lot to be seen and it will end Sunday so hurry hurry, click that TPbutton and wear your shoes off on the cracked sand of Burn.

(Click pics for better view)

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PHOTO SAFARI @ LEA19-THE PORTUGUESE WAY

Me and my Team were honoured to see our Portuguese Way project approved for LEA.

LEA19 was build not as a big installation but more like a realistic landscape where you can hang out with your friends and (hopefully) have a lot of fun exploring everything and getting all the info spread around.

Hidden in a cave you will find a totally black maze which will bring to you unexpected feelings. We called it Blindness, based on Saramago’s book with the same title (click on the board above the entrance for a blindfold).

This said we are promoting a photo safari at the SIM so that we can see it through your eyes and here are the rules (nothing too complicated no worries):

1. The Safari will run through the whole month of October.

2. Everyone can join. For news and information please join free the Owl’s Bay Group or send Winter Wardhani an IM

3. The pictures have to be taken at the LEA19 – The Portuguese Way sim

4. The pics cannot be processed outside SL. You can use all the inworld resources for photography (windlight, photo huds and so on)

5. The pictures will be exhibited in November (exact date to be announced) at LEA19 Art Center for two weeks and will then be moved to my Gallery inworld.

6. Participants can send as many pics as they like, FULL PERMS, to Winter Wardhani or by email to theportugueseway.lea19@gmail.com until October 31. We will try to show as much as possible from each participant, in a minimum 2 of pics.

7. Please don’t forget to rename your pic (ex: LEA19 by Avatar Resident – your SL name, not screen name).

Disclaimer:

By entering the Safari you agree to let your pictures be shown in Second Life and other social media sites, credits duly given to the photographer and just for information on LEA19 activities.

The photos will not be sold or otherwise commercialized by any person or avatar related to the LEA19-The Portuguese Way sim.

Everyone is welcome. Invite your friends and lets have some fun.

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