Pixie And The Dalai Lama

On Christmas Day 2011 I published a blog-post describing a very moving encounter I had had watching a film of the Dalai Lama.  Little did I know when I wrote that blog-post that only four months later I would actually meet him personally, in Second Life!

Today the Dalai Lama came to Second Life and gave a talk at the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit healthcare organisation with a presence in SL.

Tutsy heard that the Dalai Lama was in SL from a Group Notice sent out by Bryn Oh. He tp’d straight over. Sadly I wasn’t online for the talk itself, and only arrived just as the talk was ending. Tutsy excitedly tp'd me.

The Dalai Lama and the audience were still there when I arrived. I managed to snap off a few pics and then cheekily walked stage-left to stand next to him and take a photo of us together.

Everyone said we make a lovely couple. That isn’t for me to say, but, I do know this….at least one of us is going to remember this experience for a very long time indeed.

We chatted a little bit too. Not earth-shatteringly deep, I grant you, but still, for me, special.

[2012/04/24 09:51]  Pixie Rain: Hello Dalai Lama. Thank you for coming. I think your Real Life smile is nicer than your avatar smile :))

[2012/04/24 09:52]  Dalai Lama: Thank you

Busy Mode

“The Resident you messaged is in 'unavailable mode' which means they have requested not to be disturbed…”

Second Life Viewer, Feb/March 2012

I have been working on a film for a few months now - an experimental work using relatively straightforward concepts in what I hope will be an entirely new and exciting way. Certainly it will be a first in SL adult films and I am not aware of it being used yet in other machinima.

As an experimental piece (to practice using Adobe Audition and dynamic-linking for a University module), I do not expect it to be especially popular or “award winning”. I am perfectly fine with that. However, I do hope to “set the bar” for anyone who wants to follow-on and create something similar.

The problem is, I am getting nowhere quickly! I keep getting distracted on other projects, all enjoyable, but also all very time-consuming.

For example, I spent approximately six weeks chairing the judging panel for THE SEXIEST® machinima awards; blog-posts like Innsmouth or Bryn Oh will typically take up all my weekday evenings over a two week period. All this is on-top of my Uni studies and homework which, of course, takes priority.

Over Christmas I had three weeks holiday which I had originally intended to devote to this experimental film. As it happens, I actually spent one afternoon; the remainder of the time was spent on other productive but unplanned tasks.

It used to be that I would log into SL and dance on one monitor while working in Premiere Pro, After Effects or Photoshop in my second monitor. However, nowadays, the constant stream of IMs – from the very moment of logging in until I log out - makes that nigh impossible. They are all lovely IMs from lovely people but, it has to be said, are very distracting from a productive and creative point-of-view.

So….until this film is finished, I’ll be logging into SL less and will not be publishing any “in-depth” blog-posts. This is a shame because I find both activities immensely enjoyable and satisfying but if I don’t do this I fear the experimental film will never get completed.

As soon as the experimental film is complete, I’ll start work on my UWA5 entry. Problem is Bobo is still away on his world cruise and that ‘ole salty seaman is the star of the film!

We don’t know when he gets back but he is greatly missed at Lar’s.

Pixie xx

I Fell In Love One Afternoon...

“I fell in love one afternoon
And wrote your name on a white balloon…”

The Rabbicon Story, Bryn Oh

With the help of endowments from a number of patrons including British filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and a grant from the Canadian government, Bryn Oh is in the process of re-creating all three chapters of the ‘Rabbicorn Story’ on a resurrected ‘Immersiva’ region.

‘Immersiva’ is Bryn Oh’s Second Life studio. She will be using it for the purpose of creating a movie and real life exhibit of the Rabbicorn story.

(click to enlarge images)

For those unfamiliar with the story, the three individual machinima can be found here:

·        The Daughter of Gears (Part 1)

·        The Rabbicorn Story (Part 2)

·        Standby (Part 3)

The Rabbicorn story is a narrative expressed in poetry, images, speech and text. Byrn clearly understands her story, what she wants to say (via her characters) and how she wants to say it.

For me, Bryn’s work always has a feeling of desolation and abandonment. There is darkness there, a definite but undefined sadness.

When I look at the individual sculptures I sense the pain that many of us carry inside of ourselves – an emotional pain we attempt not to impose upon others because we intuitively understand that they themselves have a similar and equivalent pain.

We can never be quite sure of the type or degree of pain that our neighbour harbours; we can be only sure that such a pain surely exists.

How many of us in our quietest, most personal and most insecure moments feel as Munch’s ‘The Scream’?

Byrn’s work, for me, often expresses the as yet incomplete process of the “mechanicalisation” of the human spirit. By that I mean that we appear as a civilisation to be increasingly implementing processes which tend to robotise thinking and feeling – and in fact, in some cases. making them entirely redundant. We seem intent on having our human interactions and friend selections overseen by a series of computer algorithms and programming sub-procedures.

The phrase “Human Resource,” for example, is now a literal truth. Surprisingly this term has not yet captured and sanitised by the guardians of political correctness because, within this ubiquitous term comprising two innocuous words, lies a deep literal truth about how the corporate world views its employees – a “resource” which just happens to also be a human being, as opposed to a desk or chair or any other item of stationary. Within the methodologies and terminologies of the corporate world, the difference between a human resource and, say, a hole punch resource is largely one of functionality and expenditure.

Ironically, the term “human resource” has grown to be one of the most dehumanising words of the Western world.

Now, in some senses the most interesting thing about the above statements is that we have no idea if Bryn knowingly endowed her installation with these qualities or not. That is, those are my ideas and reflections that arose from interacting with Bryn’s work. They may or may not have been in Bryn’s mind as she was creating. Furthermore, short of actually asking her, we have no way of knowing.

We have touched on this subject before on this blog, when we explored the Innsmouth region. We noted then that once an artist releases their work to the wider public they relinquish control over the “meaning” of the work. Although the artists’ fans, academics and art dealers will always consider the artist to hold the “definitive meaning” behind the work, the simple fact is that anyone can project whatever meaning they wish onto the work. This may be a deliberate and conscious act or entirely involuntary and unconscious but, regardless, it is now wholly outside the control of the artist.

The result of this is that the artist will likely discover interpretations of their work that they had never previously considered. Some of these interpretations the artist will find interesting and instructive – others she may well find to be bizarre and bewildering!

In my experience most artists find this process of re-interpretation of their work to be at worse mildly entertaining and, at its very best, enlightening.

We have previously attempted to examine the dynamics at play when we considered the ‘Daytime Dreams’ region. There is a “union”, we suggested, between the subject and object of consciousness – the seer with the thing seen – which sometimes results in the generation of a third element - the creation of an entirely new idea or concept; one quite independent of the original artist, albeit obviously inspired and ignited by their work.

All aesthetic considerations aside, it might be that the primary importance of artistic installations such as The Rabbicorn Story is their ability to gently prod us into thinking for ourselves, to subtly nudge us into feeling emotion.

Regular readers of this humble blog will know that I am not overly optimistic about the long-term viability of our civilisation in its current form. Many different civilisations, nations and cultures have arisen, peaked and fallen over the last 4000 years. I have seen no evidence why our civilisation should prove any different.

However, this viewpoint is not rooted in the logic of “immanentizing the eschaton”; it isn’t something I actively *wish* or pray for; it isn’t motivated by any political or religious ideology. Rather it is a belief based on the observation that those who have not learnt the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. 

But, even with this belief, I am most certainly optimistic about the future prospects of Life itself, and of the resilience and fortitude of DNA to star-seed distant corners of the cosmos. I just happen not be too species-concentric about it.

Entwined in the weft and warp of this admittedly gloomy forecast for the short and medium term is in fact a positive, hopeful and life-affirmative message. It establishes the idea that in the long term at least, élan vital, so-called by Henri Bergson in 1907, will prevail; that the process of evolution is fundementally creative and progressive.

And, again, I believe I can detect similar sentiments in Bryn’s Rabbicorn Story. I see ingrained in the narrative, in the textures and prims the idea of the vanquishing of dark forces; of prevailing against the odds.

As we advance through each stage of the tale, we come to realise that running parallel with the emotional-mechanical-artificiality of the human condition - represented by the gears, the cogs and other motorised components - there is actually a sense of the triumph of the spirit, a reunion with natural humanity, a reclaiming of human resources for ourselves.

In summary, what finally emerges from one afternoon at Bryn Oh’s installation, is Love...

Pixie xx

Credits:
All ideas, concepts and artwork relating to the 'Rabbicorn Story' and  ‘Immersiva’  belong to Bryn Oh.
Photography in this post of Bryn Oh's original work is by Pixie Rain.
The opinions expressed in this post are Pixie Rain's alone and are not intended to represent Bryn Oh.
Bryn Oh and Pixie Rain are real avatars in a Virtual World on a lonely planet orbiting a really rather ordinary G-Type star. How cool is that!

'Tis Sometimes Better to Receive Than Give

Dream Worm Shoulder Pet by Madcow Cosmos

I was brought up in a secular family.

Hitchens and Dawkins were, and still are, discussed far more than, for example, Mohammed and Christ. It is not that anyone in the family is particularly disrespectful of religious figures, not at all – it’s simply that they are not considered important enough to warrant any serious discussion outside of mythological or other academic studies. In our house, Mohammed and Christ are considered in similar vain as, say, Osiris or Mithras. 

As such, I am rarely motivated by religious festivals.

Dali clock & baked beans by Dave Vellhi
Hand drawn sketch  & Xmas tree by Tutsy Navaratha

Yesterday and today I watched a 20min film shot by a close personal friend of his meeting with the Dalai Lama, (or to use the official title ‘His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama of Tibet’).

I found the film to be deeply moving in a strange and quite unexpected way.

'The Creature' by Markus Inkpen
Asphalt & Shovel by Dave Vellhi
'The Watcher' from Tutsy Navarathna 

It seemed to me that the Dalai Lama radiated humanity and warmth, a natural love and empathy for his fellow man which is often spoken about in religious circles, but sadly rarely ever seen in my, admittedly limited, experience.

Today, for possibly the first time, I seriously wondered if there may actually be “Holy Men” on this crazy planet that orbits a rather ordinary and nondescript G-type star.

Stilts by Heb Dexler

My only other exposure to such ideas as “Holy Men” was an in-depth documentary about the Hindu Kumbh Mela pilgrimage held every 12 years on the banks of the Ganges. Although fascinating for many reasons, proof of the authenticity of “Holy Men” was certainly not one of them.

Ground mist/fog from Bazz Soulstar

So did my friend’s film of his meeting with the Dalia Lama cause me a personal epiphany of sorts? No, I don’t think so. But it was nevertheless emotionally beautiful - causing bodily streamings from the crown of my head to the base of my spine, as mentioned in traditional yogic texts describing the ‘Chakras’.

Violin from Lar Jun

I am at home from University for Christmas, staying with my parents. The best thing about being home for Christmas? Central heating. Oh, and on-demand hot water. Seriously.

We have a Xmas Tree in the corner of the living room. It is really pretty with delicate blue lights playing against the silver tinsel. But there is neither star nor an angel or any other symbolism remotely religious on it.

Latrine by Dave Vellhi
Shopping Trolley by Bryn Oh

I am sitting here wondering if that is a deliberate policy of my parents. If so, how much influence has it had on my professed atheism, if any?

On Christmas Day, while my mum and I cook dinner, dad and my brother will go to the local pub for a few pints.

Ciggy by Squonk Levenque

We exchange gifts on Christmas morning and that is the subject of this blog-post. Or rather, *receiving* gifts is the subject matter.

This last year I have been blessed to have been given some extraordinary special gifts in Second Life from some extraordinarily talented people.

Comic book speech bubbles by BobE Schism

Some of these gifts, like Madcow Cosmo’s ‘Dream Worm’ shoulder pet or Lucia Genesis’s beautiful outfits are free to anyone who visits their sims.

Others, like Byrn Oh’s shopping trolley or BobE Schism’s comic-book speech bubbles are props they have used their in installations or films and have generously given me a copy of.

TV slideshow by Lollie Razor
Portrait by Jinx Jiersen

Other gifts have been made especially for me - like the pile of asphalt, baked bin tin, latrine, Dali clock and lots of other things by Dave Vellhi. Or the hand drawn RL sketch from Tutsy Navarathna.

Shopping trolley by Bryn Oh

Squonk Levenque and Miuccia Klarr of Kamikaze generously gifted me items from their store; Lisa, owner of Warm Animations, overwhelmed me by giving me a copy of her whole store’s stock after noticing one of her animations being used in ‘Rapture’.

Cello from Lar Jun
'The Watcher' from Tutsy Navarathna
Ciggy by Squonk Levenque

Other gifts have been purchased for me – Lar Jun brought me my violin and cello, for example; Tutsy ‘The Watcher’.

I have been extraordinarily lucky.

Not only to have received the gifts themselves, although that as well of course, but to have found myself in the right place at the right time.

2012 Machinima calendar by Glasz Decuir

In almost all cases, I could not make these gifts as well as the Creators have. And, even if I could, they would not have the same meaning to me or be as special as they are.

These gifts make my Second Life special and meaningful to me.

I am incredibly grateful.

Rocking chair by Dave Vellhi

The biggest single gift is that Debbie Trilling and Adec Alexandra so generously let me live on and share their beautiful island. It is such a privilege that I hardly know where to start. As I student, I could never afford to live on a sim like this with no prim policing forced upon me.

Debbie & Adec

I love my corner of the Metaverse; I love my existence in the Metaverse.

I am so, so thankful to all the people who have helped me. I wish I could return more than just my thanks and my love. But I, being poor, have only my dreams…and you are helping me realise them.

The gifts that people have given me are special. They help me feel good about myself, my work and my life.

And, because of that, ‘tis sometimes better to receive than give.

Happy Christmas to you all, regardless of your beliefs, religion, timezone, skin colour, mental health records or any of the rest!

Pixie xx

A Healthy Dose of Mikati Slade

 I logged in to see a group notice from Art Gallery Diabolus (home of the Cybernetic Art Research Project) announcing that the latest installation by Mikati Slade would be opening in a few hours.

I knew I would definitely be pulling out all the stops to be there!

Mikati is a Japanese digital artist who studied classical sculpture and drawing at university. I first met her at Burn2 2011 and said at the time: “Now, if I had to isolate just one exhibit for you to go see…just one, then, without doubt it would be Mikati Slade’s simply stunning ‘Popscape’. It is a gigantic, no-apologies, no-compromise celebration of Japanese popular culture”.

(click images to enlarge)

Her new installation, Kuru Kuru World maintains the Japanese Pop Art style of Popscape but, believe it or not, is actually even bigger than Popscape, is even less apologetic than Popscape and makes even fewer compromises than Popscape!

This is a tremendously good thing!

Such is the respect for and interest in Mikati’s work that at the opening I saw Bryn Oh, Scottius Polke, Marcus Inkpen, Fuschia Nightfire, Claudia222 Jewell – all of whom I admire and have previously blogged – prolific art photo-journalist Tim Deschanel, noted art blogger Quan Lavender and many others also attended.

However, I was the only person with the depth of fashion sense to proudly don Mikati’s “Popscape” hat!

There is something decidedly uplifting and healthy about Mikati Slade’s work. It is brain candy; indeed, it is チキンスープ for the soul!

Mikati’s work cheers the heart on a frosty day! It provides colour, comfort and warmth in an increasingly gray, disturbed and cold world.

Is there a deep meaning to this work, Kuru Kuru World? Probably, yes. Almost certainly Mikati will be able to share with you some philosophy or idea behind her installation. And this is all good.

But, you know what? The work is - in and of itself, as a visual structure in its own right - enjoyable enough that there is no *need* to overlay a secondary layer of significance.

I love it just how it is.

I mean, you don’t play Pacman and expect to discover supernatural life, right? Or amuse yourself with Super Mario Brothers and expect each coin to turn into the Higgs Boson.  Or even while away a few hours on Street Fighter II Turbo and expect to fight Titian as the End-Level Boss! Of course not.

But nevertheless each of these activities is thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile in their own right, without any need for further explanation or justification.

And so it is, I believe, with Kuru Kuru World.

There is nothing “shallow” about this installation. On the contrary, Mikati Slade proves herself to be a digital sculptor of formidable knowledge and talent, with a deep understand of colour and shape. It is just, simply, that Kuru Kuru World is so enjoyable an experience that it doesn’t *need* any vindication other than to be what it is.

Kuru Kuru isn’t, in my opinion, a cerebral installation.  Nor is it a sensual installation. It is a visceral gut-level injection of innocent joy.

And for that reason alone, I sincerely hope you visit it.

Pixie xx