UWA IV: $L20,000 Audience Participation Event

Tutsy Navarathna Joint-Winner UWA III - Photo by PJ Trenton

MachinimUWA IV has attracted over 80 entries. Pretty impressive!

A $L20,000 prize pool has been allocated to the three audience members who most closely decide the order of the top ten finalists as decided by the judging panel.

Simply email your top ten to jayjayaustralia@hotmail.com or drop a notecard on Jayjay Zifanwe in-world.

Here is my personal Top 10 (listed alphabetically by film name)  Two of the entries have already been posted on this blog:

1. Tutsy Navarathna's Welcome to the Other Side (which I am proud to appear in!) 

2. Iono Allen's Virtual Love.

I believe each one of the machinima listed below have something valuable to offer - for learning from and for improving our own work.


All are definitely worth watching, if only because they are good films!

What order I finally rank the ten will forever remain a secret between JayJay & I!


Before I get to my list, I especially wanted to draw your attention to the entry from Nina Camplin (Fuschia Nightfire in Second Life). It is both unique and stunning.


Nina is a mural artist from the UK. Her UWA IV entry had her deconstruct "the art of the artists" and reconstruct them into RL paintings. She filmed the painting process as it progressed and used the footage to create this truly amazing machinima.


If you decide to watch only one of the eighty entries, then this is the one I would recommend. The soundtrack, incidentally, features  the singing voice of CoMa whom we blogged in June 2011.

My Top Ten (Alphabetical by Film Name)

• A Placid Ocean of Uncertain Liberties - Cecil Hirvi
• Art of the Artists - Nina Camplin
• Artwashers - Friday Siamendes
• Dual - Veruca Vandyke
• Futurism Vs Art of the Future - Spiral Silverstar
• Qubit: Cognitive Distortion - SpyVsSpy Aeon
• Sad Robot - Urban Steampunk
• Virtual Love - Iono Allen
• Welcome to the Other Side - Tutsy Navarathna
• Yeah - Hypatia Pickens

Good luck to all contestants!

When Iono Met Igor...

Igor Ballyhoo was one of the first artists whose work I was introduced to when I joined Second Life in Feb 2010.

(click to enlarge images)

'Christ from Abu Ghraib' by Igor Ballyhoo (click to enlarge images)

His work remains amongst my favorite of all the work I have now seen in SL.

'Christ from Abu Ghraib' by Igor Ballyhoo

Indeed I see the sculpture pictured here, 'Christ from Abu Ghraib', out of my caravan window each and every time I log into SL and, further, his work has appeared in two of my films: 'No Self Control' and 'Personal Jesus'.

View of Igor's sculpture on my home sim

Igor currently has three major exhibitions at the University of Texas at San Antonio's (UTSA) ArtSpace sim.

• "Metamorphosis"
• "SnowCrash" (with Rebeca Bashly and others)
• "Forest of Scissors"

The Forest of Scissors has already been filmed by such luminaries as Osprey Therian, Debbie Trilling and, I seem to remember, ColeMarie Soleil (although I cannot find the link to CoMa's machinima right now).

Each of them presents a quite diffferent spin on Igor's fabulous work: Osprey's vision is stark, cold and metalic; Debbie presents us with melancholy and resignation - a literal and emotional sense of 'slip sliding away', suicide; CoMa with an ephemeral and fleeting existance with a dark unconscious undercurrent.

The Forest of Scissors

The Forest of Scissors inspired these filmmakers to produce three very emotionally different films; Igor's work caused a different vibration or resonance in each of the filmakers which, in turn, resulted in three very different outputs.

It is therefore appropriate and very perceptive of UTSA to run a contest inviting machinimatographers to create a machinima focusing on one of the other two of Igor's exhibitions at ArtSpace - Metamorphosis or SnowCrash.

It would be very unsurprising if, again, we see very different emotional outputs being created by different machinimatographers as a result of being stimulated by Igor's work.

The closing date for entries was yesterday, 1st September, with the winners announced on 15th September.

Here we present Iono Allen's entry, 'The Red Zone'. I found both visuals and sound to be exciting and it kept me on the edge of my seat! I would also recommend watching at 1080 on YT.

Retropolis and ColeMarie Soleil

ColeMarie Soleil IM'd with a recommendaton to explore a sim called "Retropolis"

Retropolis was fun and enjoyable but quite difficult to navigate (deliberately so, it should be said). It has quite a few hidden surprises and a very tricky maze!

ColeMaria (CoMa) is both a prolific machinima maker and a noted singer/musician. In both these disciplines she has forged herself a distinctive and recognisible style.

I first met her at Bryn Oh's exhibit for Burning Life 2010 where we chatted briefly. We met again recently at Rob Danton's screening of 'Me and My Avatar' .

CoMa's work and YouTube channel are always worth checking out; her individuality, creativity and uniqueness are inspirational.