Control

I have a good friend (Bill Ellis) who did a great image on a T-shirt showing a chair turned upside down.

Under, it read, "Guilty Of Art", which was a slogan I used in conversation with him at a time when we founded Pullit, an art collective in the early 90's, (subsequently closed by the authorities.)

This came to mind reading Botgirl's blog where she brings up this question of protection of children, far more clearly than I ever could, (no surprise there).

I was taught at college that the politics of power normally goes, broadly (understanding that there are all shades of grey between black and white), that the Right Wing is fearful of the Mob while the Left Wing is fearful of the Individual. Following on from this it is necessary for governments (and here I include LL in this grouping as they are a governing body) to curb the power of Individuals and Mobs as much as they can.

Protection of children and "homeland security" are just two very good excuses used for curbing of civil liberties, as to disagree with these lofty principles would be like siding with paedophiles and terrorists.

Now the reason I mentioned Bill Ellis' T-shirt is because there is something innately anarchistic about art, artists, designers,... in fact the whole creative process.

Mob and Individual are what built SL and the Internet. Neither was created by respecting traditional values, they are in essence revolutionary.

Revolutionary Councils, when they take power, have as their main aim... to stop further revolution, thus becoming Institutional Hypocrites.

But when those in power, whether it be the Australian government or our own LL government, try to control the uncontrollable there are only two outcomes.... one is that they fail, and the other is that they fail.

The creative anarchy of the human condition is revolutionary and irrepressible.

If LL stifles SL in its feeble attempts to control ("clean up"..."protect children"....etc) it will merely be sponsoring OpenSim. If the Australian government thinks it can censor the Internet.....hahahaha.........fools.

We are all Guilty of Art, and proud of it, it's in the genome.

:)))

The Little Prince vs. The King

Second Lifers, maybe more than many others, should have some idea of just how complex the human psyche is. Avatars, Alts and Humans all displaying different nuances of the same being. No surprise then when the personna (your job, status,standing in the world) is at odds other parts of the psyche.

Michael Jackson had, probably, very bad luck finding fame and fortune at such a young age. This exaltation of the personna to King status is surely a tricky situation for anyone to handle, most of Jung's clients were rich and famous, successful people who had lost some part of themselves when the personna dominated and stifled the psyche.

This doesn't explain why some find the loss of innocence so difficult to handle. Many people lose their childhoods and don't necessarily spend their whole lives trying to re-find it. We are all thrown out of Paradise and have to cope. The combination of his Peter Pan complex and this extreme fame, however, made it impossible for him to accept.

The world is always poorer when someone dies and our own mortality rears its threatening head, but we can also thank the gods that we have been entertained, enriched and enlightened by great artists and sponsors (MJ sponsored some great video artists, musicians etc) and enjoy their contribution to our culture.

Seen in this way MJ was a great cultural icon, his anger and sorrow at the state of the world was funnelled into a massively creative body of work.

His creativity even extending to his face and colour in a way that avatars understand..... altho the RL success of this particular venture is questionable.

One of my very favourite sayings is Bhudda's Diamond Sutra "goodness is just another name" ......these words could just as easily be paraphrased......"it don't matter if you're black or white."

I wrote recently..." I am totally disinterested in whether the artist is a fascist mass-murderer or saint." and I stand by that.

byeee xxxx

:))

A good night out.

Dancing the Lime Jelly with Ceorl, Daveypup, Betty, Morgoth, and Delphina....




...with Crazod giving us an example of flora that escaped SL6B's regulated biodomes...

Now thats what I call Art.

:))

SL6B.

This is my latest piece, its called Asteroid Indigenous Flora and is on show at SL6B on my plot .....here

So pop over if you are in the neighbourhood..:))

:))

Aurakyo Insoo... a last chance to see....

Aura, like a lot of us, is finding SL a very expensive hobby. She is closing her land on the 28th ...so its a last chance to see her builds in place.
Luckily we won't be losing her.
Aura, for those of you who don't know her work is a great sculptor and texture artist. Her builds are thoughtful and well built and definitely worth a visit.
Her textures are a treat.







These two are from a tiny part of her build called Temple of Hearts Laughing...




...this one small image from Inner Garden




...and this beautiful piece is one of many things to see and enjoy at !Gitano Park

Do pop along if you can....you will enjoy it more than SL6B which opens tomorrow....:))


:))

Goats in the machine, or pizza....

Hmmm, well, i was in the middle of selling some stuff when I got thrown out along with 50,000 other people, wow, LL sure knows how to treat its customers....and couldn't get back in, it's no wonder I'm a bit pissed with LL at the moment...still I guess it's loads better than it used to be, in the good old days.

Got in eventually, sent, bald, to the Grey Party as my region was as available as a Utility Company call line (on hold).
Korea, well, why not, never been here before.....south korea hopefully....

After all, LL bombed, so I shouldn't need to be....?



Not really much point tho when you can't tp anywhere, or find your hair...(In the good old days you knew exactly where your hair was...:))))

So while I was waiting there...this came up on chat....
[15:38] Mommy-to-be Hallie Torricelli: 's baby is due in: 35 week(s) 6 day(s) 6 hour(s) 43 minute(s)
and, I'm sorry to say, I find it all rather sick. I know people have children in their invents etc, but I can't help thinking its just sad.
It seems to me there's enough people in RL who have children for the wrong reasons, (like status and to complete the "happy life" picture) I just don't feel good about it even tho I know it's a free world......it's like an Object... doesn't feel right.




Went round to see Aliz's new commission build last night and, standing under 4 meters of water, the word immersed was appropriate for once.....:))))

Well up to her high standards.

and....got an early night as everyone was still offline, figured I might as well....

:)))

clarification ... SL6B and institutionalised urbanism

If you are not a regular reader of these pages then my post on SL6B may have caused some confusion, and, reflecting on what I wrote (as I do), I decided some further clarity was needed.

My lecture at the LandExpo was meant to show, politely but clearly (questionable, in the end, how clearly the point came across) that, compared to the energy and manpower that has gone into the development of avatars from the duck-footed Ruth to the current day, Flora has been left a bit on the side-lines.

3 photos on a stick still is the current offering in the Library to newcomers as “tree” whereas all manner of dodgy avatar costumes are provided.

Second Life has a bias towards the urban sprawl, and Public Works sees the provision of roads, for example, as an improvement to the environment.... Bay City is another poor example, the assumption being that Mock Human housing is what is needed.

So...we come to SL6B.
An asteroid where vegetation should be caged... Flora is secondary in Second Life (at best). The ‘story so far’ could just have easily involved the destruction of all biospheres as suggested by Barney, or the terraforming of the asteroid shortly after its colonisation. Escaped plant species could have morphed and colonised the entire surface, leaving little space for buildings...
Any number of alternative stories could have been envisaged where Flora was not relegated to glass jails, but, they weren’t (envisaged).

Why? Well...this is where I shouted “stupid”, (to clarify), because this nonsense is so ingrained in LL that it is “institutionalised urbanism”.

Now, for 4 million or so years we survived very well on this planet as a species without roads, dodgy architecture, in harmony, more or less, with the natural world.
This connection with nature is deep in our individual and collective unconscious, thats obvious. Not in SL tho. Thats the stupid part.

Stupid not to use vegetation as an important part of the SL experience, but to relegate it to second best, symbolised by the caging of plants at the sixth birthday.

Six years and still no real change in attitude to Flora.

:))