Sunday stuff

Pixi has built her shed in SL and i popped over to see her new bot-bellied stove... v cool. Like all these things, unless you are AM Radio, you have to stop somewhere on the detailing cos of the prim count....tho...I may go mad one day and do a multi hundred prim tree, just for the hell of it.




Well, Sunday is one of those days when I get to catch up a bit on what other people have been writing about in their blogs and here's a few things I have seen.

NPIRL, Bettina has drawn my attention to Frank Biocca ...now this is not light entertainment..its a 'paper' and I would need to read it a couple of times to get the full gist of everything he's saying, but like all these sort of deep thoughtful pieces they get me thinking and, cos of how my brain works, it takes a while for stuff to hatch properly.
It's worth a read tho, it's about us, people with virtual lives (on top of 'real' ones) and how we experience where we are....its called "presence"... like we are present at the computer and present in SL, and apparently, a third place is in our imaginations....so theres three types of 'location'.

He talks about how we are extending our body/world interface and using the machine to do stuff we used to use our bodies to do.....this is kinda catchy....
"The cyborg's dilemma: The more natural the interface the more "human" it is, the more it adapts to the human body and mind. The more the interface adapts to the human body and mind, the more the body and mind adapts to the non-human interface. Therefore, the more natural the interface, the more we become "unnatural," the more we become cyborgs." (Frank Biocca)


On the subject of paranoia tho I am a bit less sympathetic, cos I think Landsend Korobase is making too much of a big thing about it...after all, in a world where you can write (and looove this about SL) "Would you like to be my friend"....surely its just as easy to ask...."are you pissed off with me?"... so...wheres the need for drama??


Then I also saw in passing some stuff by ACHARIYA REZAK on working on photos in photoshop..and tho I haven't yet had time to try it out, I thought it could well be useful for some of our budding photographers. It's always nice to see people passing on skills, I think.

In local news, I have a tree at Raglan Shire, they are doing their Art Walk this weekend...and that'll be worth a visit especially if you have a tiny avi as there will be clothes that fit for sale and some other tiny stuff....also my Nishi Taglatelle sports coupe is there as a freebie (mod/copy) in the woods for all and sundry.

I went to Quadrapop Tree Gallery last night for a reopening.... its on Dragonfly Dreams sim... Alizarin Goldflake, Sunn Thunders, Glyph Graves and many others have work showing there......

And....Alizarin Goldflake has a blog now too.... so....worth following if you are a fan like me.

Meanwhile the discussions continue on the mess this new Adult thingy is gonna cause, and apparently the new viewer has bugs....and design faults....so nothing new there then. I have not been tempted to download it.

In my workshop the latest tree is nearing completion and this is one of those that I have had to texture several times to get it right...and I may redo it all again before its released....I don't know if it's me getting more fussy, or my standards have increased.... maybe a bit of each...anyway..it'll be a biggy, over 100 prims and I like it so far......

Have a nice chilled day dear reader...xxxxx

:))

Second Life Healing and Alchemy

The fairly common image of the ailing King in folk tales and the "wounding" of mythology have their equivalent in Alchemy known as the Nigredo. The Nigredo descends into the Mortificatio, often pictured as the king being buried in a coffin, ....so that's pretty ill.

Jung saw this as an archetypal image depicting the meeting with one's shadow as a result of the quest for self knowledge. That means that when you look in the mirror to see who you are, you can see both angel and devil. Seeing the devil looking back at you is a bit rough.
This Chaos situation is brought about by the unconscious (all our buried psychological baggage) rising up and flooding us.

I'm not really surprised that we all suffer from this to some extent as our Christian tradition (which permeates our culture, laws and education) has this nasty habit of branding the unconscious as evil and consciousness as good, unlike an Eastern tradition where Yin and Yang are understood to be equally necessary and no moral values attached to either one.

Jung suggested using a technique called Active Imagination. In this process you take a dream image or a phantasy and develop it, bit by bit, fleshing it out, changing and upgrading, recording it as you go,(or it just turns into day-dreaming).

Why?

Well, Active Imagination is a process of consciously dialoguing with our unconscious "for the production of those contents of the unconscious which lie, as it were, immediately below the threshold of consciousness and, when intensified, are the most likely to erupt spontaneously into the conscious mind."

It's like getting the microscope trained on what is trying to break through into our consciousness.

Everyone in Second Life is doing this.... from day one when you choose an avatar, even if you stay Ruthed forever.... you are involved in this process....
...the choices you make, the people you meet, the places you go...all of these factors are a development of your "virtual psyche". Your Virtual Psyche is a part of your unconscious made visible.

And so..... where does all this lead, and why should I be interested~??

Well, to put it quite simply, in amongst your unconscious baggage is some hidden treasure, and SL will help you find it.

It's a healing environment.

:))

Chill

Well, just as there is written "Do Not Panic" on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide, so these words should be engraved on your SL computer screen from time to time...

Chill and Do Nothing.

xxxx
:)))

Oh dear...

Ahhh...well... I hit the "stand up " button and ended up levitating like in some strange hypnotists show...

so...I relogged... and lost 5000 items from my invent... then I relogged again and seem to have a couple of hundred more items than I thought I had... oh well....

and while I was waiting to clear cache (which always takes ages for me....) I signed up as a Plurker, and after all those things I said about Twits it is a bit daft as I am never online apart from being in SL, so this may all be a waste of time, but I guess its curiosity that has driven me.....




meanwhile, back at the ranch...... well, I have started on a new tree...but have yet to get my head around the fruit or flower decision....
also I signed up for the Raglan thing...will probably show a tree... (surprised?).....

and Pixi blogged me....thx a lot, Pixi xxx

ahhh, yes, confirmed, it seems, my talk on "Hand-Made Textures' at Angelgate on Monday 25th at 12, noon SLT.... a good amount of the stuff I will talk about is in my Texture Workshops, to be found in these hallowed pages (use search)... but there are things I am learning all the time...so maybe a few ideas going that could be useful....

other news is sorta all in the realm of maybe's.... so I will have to wait and see, but it looks very much like I will get to do a book cover for a friend (RL) ... so all sorts of things happening....

:))

Sunday, sunday

Yes, one of those very sunday-like sundays.... I went to the Show and Tell with the Builder's Brewery folks, and showed them my Steam Funk Tree. There is a vote at the end and I won third prize..... I voted for the tapir above....here ridden by its creator, Bloodsong Termagant (who won first prize...well deserved.)

I went to catch the end of Aliz's new show, Wizzy bought a piece, which is great. Aliz has done these amazing pieces with music and visuals...well...Flivelwitzelsnitsel..... (why?? he could have called himself Fred???) has done the music..... and Aliz has done the moving images. Its at her gallery In Huntsman.... find it in Alizarin Goldflake's profile picks. (or IM me)...

Then I caught up on some blogs...a good haul this weekend..... Bryns very funny video... which I loved, .....Pixis new flower is a stunner..... and Botgirl touches on an interesting point about communication..
I hope to follow up with a bit more on this soon....just as soon as I get my self organised enough.

I started on a new Pine tree, although it is still early days, I am hoping to do something slightly different with the textures on this one.....and sold a Chemist's Tree to Alex, he is getting a quite extensive collection of my work together.... luckily for me..:)) thx....

:)))

AngelGate , AG3

I went over to Angelgate, scene of last months Primavera, so well curated by White Lebed to check out the new shows she has opening.

On the green floor Special Jewell has some photos of Second Life scenes on show, and, as you may know I am not a great fan of this type of work normally, although some of them showed a nice composition and colour sense.

My main problem with it is that as most of the textures are photographic, we end up with photographs of photographs ...which is why I haven't taken a photograph of the show....it would be just too much, although the surreal possibilities have yet to be explored...e.g. if I had done so....then maybe I could have photographed my blog pages and hung them in a gallery in SL....:))

On the violet floor, however, is a show that I am a bit more supportive of, as the artist, Hephaistos Semyorka, (don't you love these simple names) is a Jung fan and her talk was quite interesting.

Her collages (yet another art form I am a bit negatively inclined towards) of gods and goddesses and general mythological entities is "right up my street". She has used this art form in the same way that some people doodle, and for her, as a type of Active Imagination (a technique suggested by Jung to enhance/develop images from dreams or fantasies) to try to get a bit nearer to the Archetypes.

They are worth a bit of time just staring at, and, for the more intellectually inclined theres lots of words written alongside.

So...of course.... I got to thinking a bit about Archetypes and stereotypes. As a comedian once pointed out...the Jesus who looks like a member of the BeeGees inside your head is nothing to do with a short sun-tanned guy who may have lived 2000 years ago. He would have, in fact, looked more like Danny deVito.

Danny deVito could never be the saviour of mankind....such is the power of the stereotype... :)) a six foot tall blonde BeeGee could....such is the power of the Archetype...:))

Well....that last sentence doesn't really make sense, its a bit too Oscar Wilde for that.

but hey....the show is worth a visit..

:))

Rezz Boxing Day

Today was my Rezz Boxing Day and some people came over to see the new Chemist's Tree.... and some very nice compliments....thank you all..:))




Pixi went off surfing.....





and Wizzy was doing push ups on her hands... (v strong)....

such an amazing group of imaginative people.......wow...

v nice to share time with you...xxxx

:))