Is this a good thing or what? :-)

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I am probably one of SL’s worst travelers. Stay at home, mind my own business – pretty much. Not that I am alone in this, I imagine: All hardcore builders are probably more or less the same way, in the end. Stay put, get on with your rezzing – till the cows come home…

So anyway, I had been seeing this background image on the Emerald viewer for the past few weeks and from the first time that I did so, it aroused my curiosity. And yesterday, on a total whim, I clicked the “visit this location” link and found myself in one of the most remarkable sims I have ever been at in Second Life to date: Xeniversity, the home sim of a Mr. Xenius Revere, who apparently uses the place to teach people Maya and SL lighting techniques and who also sells furniture, sculpty packs as well as a very nifty range of goggles. So, essentially this is a learning and commercial sim. But, important as function and usage may be to the design process, Xeniversity is a location which has surpassed it’s design brief and has evolved into something quite beyond that. Something downright awe inspiring, I would say.

This is the sort of visuality, construction, design system, architecture, art – call it by whatever name you will, that makes my heart skip. And one that I hardly ever see in Second Life – or First, for that matter… Sure, I see similar efforts that somehow never manage to deliver quite what Xeniversity does with such impact: Not only is it a complex, intricate and yet liquidly harmonious design system which Mr. Revere seems to have rezzed through the usage of hundreds of cubes; but it is also incredibly, beautifully, finely, masterfully crafted. And, for me, it is this attention to detail and craftsmanship which makes Xeniversity work where so many other “minimalistic” efforts  seem to be failing so miserably.

Glorious textures! Just glorious! Really I cannot think of a lesser word here so I am going to stick to it at the expense of sounding totally bombastic – they are that stunning! So, what’s so special about texturing a whole bunch of cubes with an almost solid fill, you may ask? Ah… But you see it is not just a solid fill! Mr. Revere has added very delicate, soft shadows behind every cube he has rezzed! Either these are part of the actual cube textures, in which case he would have had to place each and every cube in exact proximity to its shadow, or these are separate alpha enabled png or tga files, which have been mapped onto very thin prims and then placed behind the cubes. I did not do a ctrl+alt+T to see if this was in fact the case while there. Never even occurred to me even. I was much too engrossed in admiring my surroundings to have all my speculative faculties engaged. But, whatever the technique involved has been, what matters is the result: Depth! Light! Softness! The breaking down of the rigidity of the construct (it is all cubes – all of it!) into something which creates it’s own “flow”. Becomes “nature” even, I would say: Cubes that metamorphose themselves into a remarkably powerful topography and (in one instance, at least for me) also flora.

Only 2 colors are placed within a tonal range which travels from white to black, incorporating a series of gradations of gray. The first of these colors is a brilliant blue which is emitted from light sources which colorize their surroundings and then, secondly, there is a vitriolic green. And this green could have ended up being such a god awful blunder had it been in the hands of just about anyone but Mr. Revere’s? As it is, it stands apart on its own little islet, manifesting in a tonal range which is mapped onto a rectangular variation of the cube system of the main island. Which seems to cling to a huge tree almost like some strange minimalistic novel plant form. A cubic vine?

I could continue on and on and on here, but I am not going to. Instead I would very much like everyone who stumbles upon this post (and who hasn’t been there yet, obviously) to go and visit Xeniversity for themselves. This place is a must see for all people who cherish design and architecture, virtual or otherwise:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Xeniversity/214/227/81

My hat goes off to Mr. Xenius Revere!

…

Two little additions: One is that I could not help but think of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat project as I was gazing at Mr. Revere’s construct. Not that this matters all that much at all by the way. Things do not have to always remind us of other things and we should not be groping for these associations to validate output. In fact, if anything, it is an odious little habit to always be doing so. However, in this case, Xeniversity really does remind me of Habitat and the association is strong enough that I feel that I should probably say it.

Second: I would like to create a “Xeniversity” avatar as part of my output for alpha.tribe. The place has really inspired me and I am now obsessed with inner images of how I could translate the architecture there to create unique avatar apparel, which may or may not be thought of in conjunction with Xeniversity. I have to first consult with Mr. Revere to do this, of course. And I had not even heard of him or Xeniversity until yesterday. So, I really do not know this person and I have no idea what his reaction would be – possibly not favorable at all, is my guess… But, I think I will pluck up my courage and contact him and ask for his permission anyway. And maybe he might say “yes, go ahead”. Who knows?

Oh and also! Very important this last one: These have been photographed with a custom sky preset, Mescaline Tammas’ London 2050, to be specific. However, I should probably also have added an image captured with the default SL sky into this series. This is the only case which I think I have ever seen in SL where an entire sim’s architecture actually (almost!) works even under a midday SL sky! That is how good the building/texturing of it is!

I am putting this here for the benefit of my graduate students, and particularly Onur. Although they do follow my blog, I do not think they venture forth as far as my Flickr, where I have already posted this a minute ago. I will not be seeing them until the third week of February and they may want to visit this before then. It is not going to be around for ever and may in fact already be gone by the time we all re-adjourn.

This was created by Selavy Oh in Second Life. What actually “makes” the work is the virtual earth itself, which reconfigures itself into an ever widening circle which wipes over an underlying earth spiral. And no, I will not be blubbering on about durée here (I think that that is what this work is all about), but simply link back to the wiki page, which explains it all like I never could anyway.

I am so glad that I can post this now, right after the last post. After having completely let loose about how I am so fed up with the mediocrity, the banality, the cliche ridden existence of contemporary art in general, it feels so good to be bowled over and wowed by this! Truth be told I am at the point where I no longer even bother, no longer go to art events, avoid biennials and such. I no longer want to be subjected to so much ado about nothing, to endless loops of grainy video with no tangible beginning and no end. I have had it!

And then along comes somebody and grabs you by the scruff of your neck and frog-marches you into the Haus der Kunst in Munich and you stand there gobsmacked, not to mention thoroughly ashamed of your all-encompassing big mouth from just a few days ago!

Well, maybe not straight off the bat, I have to admit. The first piece is gigantic and impressive. As I subsequently find out the massive construct was shown at Documenta where it collapsed during a storm and what I am looking at here is the relic corkscrewing onto itself in gigantic cylindrical segments. A relic assembled out of hundreds of doors and window frames torn out of old Chinese houses. Poignant, shocking. It is really quite stunning and I am duly stunned – and yet, and yet, I cannot help but feel that I am still facing “a problem solved”, the spectacular output of a master designer commenting on the “rape” of antique artifacts, in other words. Then come a number of three dimensional Chinese maps, delicately constructed wooden towers that are maps when looked at from above. Truly beautiful, but again, smells very strongly of a designer’s mind to me. Not that anything is wrong with that at all – I am one myself after all and have nothing but the deepest respect for my own trade. But art? Hmmm…. I wonder… I mean, I really am trying to co-operate here but at this early stage I am not yet convinced…

And then, we make our way into the central hall of the exhibition where a petrified forest awaits us and there I am totally blown away! This is certainly no master designer but an artist – a genius of an artist, in fact: This is the brink between order and chaos, a visual response to the question with no answer – presenting you with even more questions, even more riddles.

I am difficult by disposition (in the unlikely case that this might have slipped your attention somehow) and so inevitably some few details, such as the photos of the 1000 or so Chinese citizens whom Ai Weiwei brought to Documenta and which provide a background texture to the forest and especially the tent displaying their accommodations next door keep on niggling at me. I really do not want to see them. Why? Because again, they seem to bring in some kind of a “problem solved” thing which is so insignificant next to this sea of gigantic trees. Or to all of those heavy beams driven into those delicate antique tables on display in yet another room. And then there is a single table and a single beam in one other room and suddenly the whole exhibit, tree trunks and all, does a huge perceptual flip for me and I see Eros. Not Eros the cute little cherub equipped with bow and arrow but Eros the primal force. As in Eros the roof beam. But also the table. Many tables. The couplings of roof beams and tables. And then next door, huge chunks of trees, almost fossilized, arranged like the soldiers of the terracotta army. And also neolithic urns, thousands of them, so many in fact, that he has ground them into dust and placed them in glass jars. Some colored with aniline paint. Metaphors I almost understand and yet do not. There is a fight with human culture here – maybe. The insignificance of it – or maybe the significance – or maybe a contradiction grounded in culture. Really, I am not sure. But, am I glad I saw this! And at the height of my hatred of “contemporary art” at that!

So, who was it that dragged me kicking and screaming into the gallery in the first place then? It was none other than the human of Selavy Oh! There are very few people that I really seem to hang out with in SL, and Selavy is one of them. We first became associated while I was writing up the NPIRL blog post last June. Emailed back and forth about the work, met in-world a few times and so forth. After the post went up we made a pact: We would say hi to one another once a week. It seems that we are both very shy (yes, despite my loud mouth I am in fact very very shy and so apparently is Selavy), therefore unless we had had an agreement of this sort we would undoubtedly have gone our separate ways. But we have in fact kept up this pact and have hung out, mostly via email it seems. So, a month or so ago when I knew that I would be going to a conference in Munich, Selavy’s home town, we arranged to get together and have a coffee at least. Coffee turned into an almost 5 hour session, during which we first wandered through Ai Weiwei’s show and then through various streets and quarters of Munich, in and out of underground trains, punctuated by cups of coffee, a lunch during which I demolished 3 gigantic weisswuerschtl and Selavy’s human half a roast duck; more wandering, quite a few cigarettes (turns out we are thoroughly nasty old smoke stacks, both of us). During the entire time, I do not think that we stopped nattering even for one minute – or at least I didn’t for sure. And somehow Selavy’s human also managed to get a word in edgewise every so often, I guess. Which is highly commendable, of course: Shows persistence!

Not to worry. I am not going to go into any kind of a discourse over RL and SL and their respective merits and shortcomings now, would be very inane to still be doing so after 3 years of full time SL Residency anyway. Only one thing to say really: Human beings can smile. And avatars cannot.

Fact.

It may not be to everyone’s taste. How could it be? Klein is hardcore: Nothing cute, nothing pretty, nothing sentimental. Hard solid concrete. Confusing, bewildering – deconstructed… Emergent… Klein is virtual. In the absolute sense of the word. Not only in how it looks but in how it is. In it’s essence, it’s premise, it’s raison d’etre. In how it is lived and experienced. Nothing stays the same. Things added, things deleted, things transformed at a rate with which the Second Life map has a hard time keeping up with at times. Virtual = Change…

And then the times when it is abandoned and stasis sets in… No one there: Ka-na-da…

And then the times when it is alive!

…

Klein is desolation and hope. Destruction and rebirth. Klein is change. Adaptability. Growth.

I am not hanging out at Syncretia these days. I built it. It is done. Complete. Finished. Syncretia  is sooo not virtual. No room for growth, no room for shock. No room for emotion even. A pretty, inane little island. A nice place to visit, not a terribly inspiring place to live. A silly little showcase – just about sums it up. I will tear the whole place down and rebuild it this summer.  Hopefully along the lines of what I have learned at Klein.

Meanwhile, Klein is home.

…