A Date to Remember

This week has been busy in terms of dates, and it's fantastic. Yesterday, Norah took me to Rose Borchovski's in-world installation, The Inevitability of Fate. I had been before, but much more briefly and it became apparently very quickly that I had only seen half of what the sim had to offer. Norah's quick wit and considerate, empathetic brain deepen any and every experience, and I just love spending time with her.

but then the war came

Borchovski's piece is part installation, part experience, and part memorial. The Holocaust has had, now, a lot of artistic treatments, and there's always a danger in approaching a subject as painful and enormous as this with any kind of creative lens. It's too easy to dismiss, to belittle, and to appropriate. Of photographing atrocities, Susan Sontag wrote "people want the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance", but looking at a photograph of a past event is passive and in many respects, too safe to provoke anything more than compassion. 

That isn't to say that compassion is useless or pointless - not at all - but it is an "unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers". Compassion for the victims of the Holocaust has a limited ability to manifest itself in action because the event is past and, as I have said, attempts to create additional memorials are fraught with difficulty. 

At no point during the installation is the word "Holocaust" used. We are introduced to the characters of Beth and Lot, whom the narrative follows, and at no point is it stated that what becomes of them is a fate that was forced upon anyone else. It is obvious, though, from the semiotics and "the war" what this is about. In the subtlety, there are no label-boundaries, nothing separating the audience member from touching, if you like, the horror of what one might otherwise claim as a Jewish experience. At the same time, sitting before my computer, I know that I was not a part of this event, that I hold no claim over anything pictured on the screen before me. It is a flaw of empathy that we struggle to negotiate the ownership of suffering - and that, in my experience at least, we seem to find it easier to respond to the plight of an individual than to the mass murder of a whole.

I am tiptoeing, here, around my own explanation and analysis. I am wrighting, as opposed to writing, it out. If I can keep my foot out of my mouth, that would be a good start.

Beth reaches for Lot

Empathy and sympathy are dangerous, too, in that experiencing them whilst forcing ourselves to look at images of atrocity make us "feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering". If we look beyond the individual, do the multiplication to make the many Beths and Lots, we begin, too, to feel that "the sufferings and misfortunes are too vast, too irrevocable, too epic to be much changed by any local political intervention". Both of these systems allow for personal detachment, both from the event itself and from any responsibility to do anything other than remember it. "Lest we forget", we mumble as we file passed - and then we go home and put the kettle on and watch reruns of QI.

What the Inevitability of Fate does, then, is offer us a way in to the whole through the individuals Beth and Lot. There is a narrative to follow, but there is little to stop you wandering from tableau to tableau in any order you choose, doubling back to see them again or working backwards. It is still a flat image, yes, contained by the computer screen, but it utilises the liminal space of the virtual as best it can, and employs movement and sound in really interesting ways. Things spring up out of nowhere, other things drop down. You dance, you fly, you hide, you climb. You are bombarded, literally. You are given space to think.

 

There is no accusation in the installation, not pointed fingers. From the beginning, Borchovski has really worked to make the audience feel watched, but that watching is done by a faceless, nameless power that seems to be omnipotent, omnipresent. Placards fly up from the ground bearing the new rules for the new regime, and the voices that repeat them are heavily distorted, inhuman. You are watched by floating, disembodied eyeballs.

you are not allowed

A real effort has been made to include the audience in the narrative, with countless poseballs dotted through the tableaux allowing you to literally insert yourself into the frame. You do not, at any point, however, take the place of Beth or of Lot in any (virtually) physical sense. We are alongside, witnessing, sometimes joining in.

Happy Birthday, Lot!

 

up

 

in happier times

There are no images of atrocity, no reliance on the familiar photographs of the Holocaust that we have come to accept as part of a social consciousness (although there are some photos on display in the sim, they are not emblazoned across the walls and floors and burned onto the retina). Nothing about the scenes feels familiar in any boring, dismissive way, and there is so much going on that the act of looking and exploring never gets boring. At no point, either, does it become too much. The semiotics, as I have said, are recognisable, understandable, but not stale. 

Ultimately, I think the sim works because it can be understood as an expression and memorial of grief - Beth's grief for her daughter, Lot, who goes missing and can safely be presumed dead. We aren't asked to appropriate the horror that befell people who died before most of us were even born, and we aren't told to take to the streets and hang the descendents of those responsible. We aren't asked to imagine that we ourselves have been tortured or killed. We have all, at some point or another, felt the fear of potentially losing a loved one, and the personal horror of that is easily transmutable from the all-too-human and contorted faces of the models before us. 

 

Honestly, I think their expressions are the most human things I have ever seen in Second Life.

Lot and a forbidden book

Beth, in grief

 Again, personal grief is an individual route into an otherwise enormous and difficult subject matter, and taking such a personal interest in an event that categorically did not happen to you has criticism.

 

So much more could be said about this sim, and where it might fit within a canon of memorials and installations. I haven't touched upon the props we are given and told to wear as you follow the narrative (and which have an afterlife as they remain in your inventory when you leave the event). I haven't talked about the use of light, or the installation walls which are covered with names we assume are the names of the dead. I haven't made any kind of list of symbols for further analysis, and I haven't reached for any text books beyond Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others from which I have source all of the academic quotes in this post (if you'd like specific references, I will gladly give them). I haven't touched at all on the performance of guilt, nor on the significance of a memorial in an ephemeral realm. There is criticism in abundance of everything I have brought up here, but I wanted to focus now on what the sim achieved (which I think is a lot) and not what it may have wrongly assumed or been lacking in. But I think, for now, that I have written more than enough.

 

no chance

Thank you so much, Norah, for taking me here and letting me experience it with you. If you would like to visit the Inevitability of Fate, you can do so by clicking here - here! If you would like to share your opinions, comments are always welcome.

Miscellany

it's dark in here

Sitting in my unsorted screenshots folder is a small collection of random pictures I have snapped for various reasons that, by themselves, don't have enough weight to have their own blog post. I like to let them mount up in the corner, then post them all together in a swirl of dust. So here goes.

Chipped nail varnish

I am as big a fan as anybody of the SLink add-on hands, and the grid seems now to be awash with people making virtual nail varnish. At the Cosmetic Fair, I found this advert for chipped nail varnish. I'm not exactly a fashionista, but I'm aware that chipped nail varnish is 'a thing', if you like, in the real world, and so I suppose it wasn't going to take too long to make an appearance in the virtual world. I didn't buy the chipped nail effect, so I can't tell you first hand (lol) how good it is, but it looks pretty cool from the pictures. Nail varnish is something I own quite a lot of in real life, and this love hasn't been lost between realms. 

It's also worth mentioning that these varnishes, and the other make-up on sell by this vendor at the Cosmetic Fair, was all modelled by men. I didn't notice anything else at the Cosmetic Fair using male models, and I thought it was pretty cool. At no point did I think 'this must only be aimed at men, then', and I started wondering whether the appearance of more male models would open up the forum, and allow men to look at female models and still consider the product for themselves as I did. 

Unfortunately, I'm an idiot and I didn't note down the name of the shop selling these. If you have it, pop it in the comments? Thank you.

Moving on.

Apple for teacher?

Another fair: I snapped the above picture at the Enchantment Fair. The Enchantment Fair is offering fairytale themed items, and the first three months' are about Snow White. The first stand I came across when arriving at the fair was this one, selling necklaces featuring this wonderfully made poisoned apple, amongst other things. I just thought it was all kinds of wonderful. It was made by aisling, and I really, really want to buy it.

Do not adjust your screen

Yup, that's right - I found toothbrushes. Toothbrushes that sing to you. I have no idea where I was when I found these, except that it was at yet another fair that was selling a lot of things aimed at children. I'm not sure how legal these are, since they use what look like straight-lifted Disney pictures and no, I didn't buy one, but they did make me laugh. Dental hygiene is clearly very important to beings whose teeth are fake and who cannot eat, drink, or get gum disease or bad breath. I'm filing this one with the toilets and the washing machines that originally informed my original essay and the opinion that our avatars are nostalgic for a world we want to escape (which is an intellectual Chinese finger-trap).

Let's not linger here, we're not dentists:

Fighter pilot Vespers

I found a wonderful picture of this little space rocket on Flickr (which I am struggling to find again - sorry!) and, realising that I'm becoming a little bit of a hermit, decided I would go and explore the sim it was in. Norah Vespers came with me, which always makes any trip twice as fun. We found the pictured rocket and, of course, Norah hopped in it. Dressed as modern space-girls as we were, we made the rocket seem dated, retro, rustic, and I like the idea that we became a portrait of nostalgia on several layers.

On the same sim, we found these:

Got milk?

 Police golf cart milk float Robin Reliant things. Yup, wouldn't you be just petrified if one of those was coming after you? With our fit space-girl bodies, we could almost definitely out-run those things were we to get into trouble - which, of course, we never ever do.

And finally, a werewolf tried to scratch me. No, really, it happened!

see dialogue top left

Except that, because of the way SL almost pedantically upholds social maxims (namely, thou shalt not do anything to anybody else unless they give you expressed permission), he had to ask me if he could cut me up with his claws first, and I of course said no. I have no idea where this guy saw me to even attempt to attack me, but attack me he did. I was in the comfort of my own skybox when I saw the notification, and that seemed to make the offer simultaneously more funny and more scary. I've written a little bit about Bloodlines here, which I shall lazily paste a link to rather than explain again - here. Personally, I think he might have been more successful had he forced the action on me using the /me function, but I'm also kind of glad he didn't do that, for obvious reasons. Polite werewolves are definitely a thing now, especially since Anne Rice is writing their life stories. Being English, and a lover of Anne Rice, I appreciate politeness ;).

Yes, Kitti is wearing cat ears in that last picture, but is that really the oddest thing in this post?!

Bold

Yesterday morning, I logged onto Flickr and found someone had left a comment on a photo I had uploaded back in February. The comment was a request to do a pile-up, and it was the first such request I have ever received and, of course, I said yes. 

Often, people post their SL shots with a green background (like a green screen in film, I understand), and other people download that image and doctor it, usually by adding in a background. This is a pile-up. The wonderful thing about pile-ups is that your original picture could have been taken in a forest, but I could take it and put you, instead, on the Moon. Alternatively, I could just edit the colour of your hair a little, or crop it in. There are no real rules attached to the creation of the pile-up, and as I said, it's a pretty simple idea. In the end, you end up with a collaborative image that adds something new to your original concept. From all angles, it's cool.

When I posted my picture - with its green background - I didn't have a pile-up in mind. In all honestly, I'm not sure what I had in my mind when I posted my picture, except that I was having fun with the beautiful make-ups from chelle and I wanted to have lots of arms. And I realised that I could join in the SL naked party without revealing too much because my hair totally had it covered.

See this, my original image, full size on flickr - here!

I had no idea what to expect from my first pile-up, or from Crystal, especially since I don't actually know her. She began following my Flickr stream yesterday, I believe, and I am now following hers.

Thank you, Crystal, for taking the time to look at my pictures, and then for taking the time to make a pile-up of me!

What Crystal created is absolutely brilliant, and I love it. It is so vibrant that I wonder that I ever thought the green of my original image suggested anything of life at all. She added something utterly new to the picture, and linked it to a song that conspires with the new colouring to make Kitti into an LSD acolyte, as well as nymph of free love.

See on Crystal's image on Flickr - here! - and on her Tumblr - here!

And wouldn't you listen to every word she said? I think she makes a most persuasive disciple.

Stripped

I've been finding more and more lately that I'm photographing Kitti wearing fewer and fewer clothes.

Upon my request, Sian Pearl made these wonderful bracers (full mech arms make me nervous), and when I came to photograph them, I found that they actually looked best when Kitti wasn't wearing anything else at all. "I'm going to take this picture," I said to Sian, "And then bury it." I knew I had to have something somewhere within my inventory to go with the bracers, and eventually I found it - though, admittedly, the outfit is still a little on the naked side. Somehow, posting the nude wasn't an option, despite the fact that it is still, even after I found an outfit I was happy with, a better photo.

Braced

A couple of weeks ago, I took photos of Kitti on the shore at Winter Moon wearing, once again, only a necklace and a pair of pointed elf ears. I wasn't trying to create a fantasy pin-up, only something that seemed ethereal and beautiful. I only shot from the waist up, and had to summon all of my bravery to post the pictures on Flickr (you can see them here - here!). When my mum saw the pictures (Hi Mum!), she posted a comment saying "Hmmm", and when I spoke to her on the telephone, I laughed, a little sheepishly, and asked if she disapproved. I can't remember what her exact words were, but they were basically to the effect that it was unlike me to post images like that. When I told her how difficult I'd found posting them, she laughed and asked why - "it's not your real body, it doesn't matter!"

Does it matter? I think it does. This is the only body that many people are ever going to associate with me, and I'm not sure that I want to show all of it to everyone. On the other hand, why should I hide my body, virtual or tangible? Is my reticence based on archaic, patriarchal, Adam-and-Eve-esque self and sex shame? Is nakedness reserved only for sex and porn, and thus can I only be naked when I intend to arouse? Is there something wrong with wanting to take pictures that do or do not arouse the viewer? Can I not be naked for the sake of being naked? Is my picture somehow lesser if I want it to arouse you? Is my nakedness a gift I can only give to a few before it gets worn out?

I don't think that the pictures I took at Winter Moon are particularly arousing, and when I took Kitti's clothes off this morning and realised she looked beautiful and powerful and vulnerable all just as she was, it wasn't to create an image that I would label as pornographic. I appreciate that this is the internet, and Rule 34 of the Internet states that if you can think of it, there is porn of it, and I accept that arousing images and pornography are subjective. What I am trying to say it that creating something pornographic was not my intention. Can I honestly say, however, that I didn't want Kitti to look sexy? That I didn't want her to look beautiful? No. I wouldn't even try. It pleased me that Kitti looked beautiful, and, as I have said, strong and vulnerable all at once. Combined with that Jessica Rabbit -esque hairstyle, Kitti did look sexy.

The atmosphere of the naked picture is soft, and I could imagine that it was taken mid-stride as Kitti made her way over to a wardrobe to don the rest of her gear. In the images I have posted here, I tried to keep that strong/vulnerable aesthetic, but I lost that sense of movement, of direction, of intent in the bargain. Kitti's lacking attire is now on purpose, her outfit already complete, and it looks as if she has paused to consider something, rather than having been caught mid-stride. The tunic with its red buttons forced me to bring more colour into the picture, tying in the red with the blue that had previously been the focus of the picture. Now the blue pops because the red makes it - which, don't get me wrong, I love, but it all adds up to make a different photo. And has, arguably, a much more sexual agenda.

Braced II

All because I didn't think it was right to post a picture of my virtual body naked on the internet.

Feminism isn't, truly, about papering the streets with images of the naked female body and expecting everybody to simultaneously notice and appreciate but not be aroused, and just accept it. Sometimes, I think the feminist message gets confused in that way, and it's not helpful for anybody. Feminism is about having a choice, and being able to make it and have others judge you on the merits of you and the choice, not their pre-defined idea of what you ought to do based on what you have between your legs. It is also about feeling confident and stable enough to defend your position when challenged, and to not let the opinions of others sway yours without your consent. If somebody else came to me with this conundrum, I would tell them to follow their instincts and their heart, and only do what made them comfortable. Whilst I don't think I am the kind of person that lets others beat me with pre-conceived notions about my gender, I don't know what makes me comfortable in this situation. I am stuck in a limbo between guilt and more guilt. 

And as you can see, I have not posted the picture here. Perhaps I will yet. I honestly do not know.

Le Jardin Electric

Le Jardin Electric, Hangars Liquides

On Thursday, I went to my first virtual poetry reading. Sian Pearl performed 'l'objet petit a' at le Jardin Electric in Hangars Liquides. It lasted for half an hour, and more avatars turned up than my laptop would render. There was a great, friendly atmosphere, and reading poetry is what Sian does for a living, so everything went pretty smoothly. Including the audience seating, which, at le Jardin Electric, spins.

Occasionally - and, judging by what others were typing in the local chat, this happened to most people at some point -, the voice feed would cut out, and then cut back in, either at the point it broke out (suggesting I was now listening at a delay), or with some of the cast missing, creating something slightly more disjointed than Sian originally anticipated. But since such is based heavily on our individual connection, the performance each of us heard must have been slightly different, individual. The technology involved in making a live virtual performance pushes the idea of individual reception and experience. 

And, somehow (I'm not sure how, my sound cut out at this moment), Sian managed to work two of my favourite of her poems into the performance, and even read one she says was inspired by me/Kitti - and told everybody that is was so, so we had a little blush is-everyone-looking-at-me moment (they weren't).

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at the event, so I don't have one of Sian in her outfit, or Hangars Liquides' own Lawrence Celestalis, who looks awesome in a suit, or any of the other lovely (and wonderfully dressed) people that turned up. I went back after to get these shots, which I would advise to any SL users because le Jardin Electric really is a wonderful space. But I'll save my ode to Hangars Liquides for another post.

Inside the space

The Theft of a Virtual Body

Boo

I posted this on Flickr the other day, but decided it deserved a post of its own. Please click here - here! - to go and see the picture there.

Sian Pearl has been writing recently about the idea of pornography stealing the nude from art. You can read her post here - here! - and it's worth noting that some interesting ideas have emerged in the comments beneath the post. It has opened, I think, some interesting questions, but also made me think about a few things.

I don't take particularly provocative, shall we say, pictures of my avatar. I wouldn't say she dresses massively provocatively in the first place. Maybe the odd sci-fi outfit with a bare stomach or whatever. But this is about as naked as Kitti gets. 

I don't know why that is. I seem to hold the same rules about self nudity in SL as I do IRL (maybe with some lessening - I wouldn't wear those sci-fi outfits IRL! Though maybe I would if my RL body defied gravity the same way Kitti's does). That wasn't a conscious decision, just something I have gone along with. Maybe I should examine that.

So here. I tried it. I tried to be provocative, whilst only being as naked as I ever really am in SL. Maybe you could say the outfit in the previous picture (entitled Pearl House) is more revealing, but somehow this outfit feels more naked. 

I am, temporarily, stealing the (semi) nude from Sian Pearl, who is brave in all the ways that Kitti isn't. I also took this picture in her house, when she wasn't home, and she didn't actually know I was doing it - just so it felt like real theft :P

From Jealousy Born

I seem to spend a whole awful lot of time at the moment talking about getting dressed. There's a point to be made here. I have probably spent more time dressing my avatar in the past three years than I've spend dressing myself in the past twenty (I don't imagine I dressed myself when I was two. Maybe I did. My mum reads this - hi Mum! - so she'll no doubt tell me). I have a couple of friends in-world that only log in to dress their avatars. Dressing your avatar takes more time than perhaps it should.

But anyway. 

Yesterday, I found a picture online that stole my heart. It was uploaded by VictoriousVocabularly to illustrate the word 'thalposis' and offered a link back to the original as uploaded by the artist, 'thienbao on deviantART. When I found out that it had been published in Imagine FX magazine, I went on a mad hunt trying to track it down and get a copy, but I had little luck. In the end, I decided that I was going to try to re-create the image in SL using my avatar. This is the first time I have ever attempted such a thing. It felt kind of momentous.

'Plume' by 'thienbao

It got old pretty fast. I dragged my avatar all across the virtual world, making her try on more demos for items than I can count. I trawled the Marketplace (accessible through the browser - a kind of virtual Amazon, if you like), looking for corsets and boleros and feathers and windswept hair and all kinds of things. What I hit upon was something I had come to suspect, but had no proof of; that, despite the extensive length and breadth of Second Life, despite the hundreds of designers and creators and genres for clothing and items, the virtual world has not yet made everything. 

You might well laugh - I am laughing as I write this. In a logical way, I knew that Second Life could not be home to everything. But there is a certain frustration to be felt when I can type into the Marketplace search, right now...hmm, let's see...let's type in 'toilet seat'. And there we go - a whole page of just about every kind of toilet seat for just about every purpose you can imagine, and probably some you didn't want to imagine. Okay, let's try something else. Let's put in, I don't know, 'glass slippers' - ta-dah! One more (and I'm trying to be as random as possible here). Let's go with a 'steak dinner' - now, would you look at that! I can even get a bucket of KFC. But when I put in the components I wanted to recreate this picture, I could not find what I wanted.

I almost gave up - but I'm glad I didn't. I substituted a few things, and decided that my adaptation had to be true in spirit, if not in details. Because of the change in the make up of my avatar's costuming, I couldn't recreate the pose from the picture, either, so skipped over to Del May to pick up some new ones, and then skipped off to one of my favourite places in Second Life to take the pictures - the beach at Hangars Liquides. 

Here are the results.

From Jealousy Born - click here to view large on flickr

In these pictures, Kitti is a pale shade beside 'thienbao's creation, but I'm pleased with her. I think I created something unotherworldly, and beautiful - if it isn't arrogant to say so myself. I was going to mess with Kitti's shape, distort her face a little and widen the gap between her eyes, but as I've said in previous posts, the controls to do such in SL are difficult to manipulate, and I don't think they are elastic enough to manage to hold those proportions without making them seem grotesque.

If anybody knows how to get hold of back-issues of that magazine from 2009 (most of which were missing, even from the pdf downloads), please let me know. I think I'm in love.

Something to Say: SAVE THE ARTS

Aye my lord, honest

Those of you will peripheral vision might have noted that I graduated last Summer (2012) with a BA Hons in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, England, UK. I have been involved with drama clubs since I was seven/eight. They were run by my school,  and allowed Key Stage Two children the opportunity to be involved in Drama beyond the kind of hot-seating exercises labelled as 'Drama' in our English classes. I picked it up again in high school, and have been studying the subject ever since. 

The most wonderful things about studying a subject like Theatre and Performance (as opposed to Drama, which is mostly the study of written theatrical texts) are the diversity of subject matter, and the people. You cannot avoid getting to know people when you are forced to work with them on a show. For the duration of rehearsals, you practically live together, and you begin to learn everything about them from their strengths and weaknesses, to their body's pliancy, and just how much of a jerk they are when they've skipped a meal. During my degree, I have studied everything from Victorian Britain to the American Avant-Garde to Islamic culture to Guantanamo Bay. I have written for the stage, devised, planned interventions, given presentations and delivered project pitches.

Remember the light and believe the light - nothing matters more

I know I have only flagged up Drama/Theatre here, but the arts as a whole are important. There have been so many studies done now that show the benefit of creative outlets - particularly Drama - to everybody from toddlers to those with learning difficulties to criminals. I'm not trying to suggest that the world should become actors, but we really do need to consider the role the arts play in our lives and our education, development, and rehabilitation, and make sure that they aren't allowed to fall by the wayside. 

Cutting funding to the arts during the recession is understandable, but still not acceptable. It's a cheap shot that fails to take into consideration how integral they are to our education, personal development, and mental well-being. Because the big musicals continue to run in the West End, most people don't see the damage the cuts to funding are doing. In the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s, the UK had a fantastic reputation for Theatre that did not rest on musicals, but on potent new writing that sought to deal with real-life issues that faced real-life, every-day people in real-life every-day Britain, and across the world. And when the Conservative Government cut funding to the arts in the 80s to almost nothing, we lost that reputation. We lost our gritty dramas, we lost our clear-headed and cutting new perspectives. The writers and the actors crawled under the kitchen sink and stayed there. 

I'm sorry said the soldier

When you turn your television on, you're watching art. When you see beautiful buildings going up, landscaped gardens, stunning clothes and inviting signage inviting you into shops and cafes and museums...when you pick up a book, buy a picture for your wall, download wallpapers for your computer, watch a film, decide you might have a trip to the theatre, listen to your favourite song...this is art. This is the arts. This is made possible by the arts. This has been inspired by the arts.

Next time you see George Osborne, or whoever his equivalent is in your country, standing there, taking cheap shots at the arts, take note. He has said he wants more cuts, and we'll be damned if he isn't coming to cut us off. The arts, and again Drama in particular, are being pulled out of schools, pulled out of the national curriculum, like so many weeds. The arts isn't a weed. It's the concrete between the building blocks of our society and culture. 

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, wants to cut arts from the curriculum. This argument in the Guardian dated 22/01/13 seems to think those that want to save the arts want to do away with all other subjects, and that is not what is being said at all. It's a childish attempt to discredit art and those that champion it. Yes - childish. This article in the Telegraph dated the same day is more grown-up, and highlights what is at the heart of the problem - that the arts, despite all of the studies being done, are just not valued enough. If this doesn't start to change, I think Tracy Emin's prediction of a riot might well come true - and I reckon I'll know a good handful of those who'll be standing in the ranks of those marching on Downing Street. Maybe I will be there myself!

SAVE THE ARTS. Encourage your children. Petition the local schools. Write to David Cameron. Support local amateur dramatics groups. Support your local theatre. Support the London theatres. Go to the cinema. Buy your music. Buy painted pictures, prints, photographs. Go to exhibitions. Find time yourself to write and draw and try getting involved in something performative in your area.

This public service announcement was brought to you by The Concerned Bloggers Association. For more information, please contact Marleen Vaughan.

 Read other posts on saving the arts: 

Empower your Children, Devil's Tools, Arts in Education, The Arts in Education. 

These are the ones listed on the Concerned Bloggers Association site at the time of posting, but check here - here! - for more.

Wannabe

In real life, I consider myself to be something of an amateur photographer. My photographs have been used for online maps, theatre funding application forms and information packs, and foreign-language textbooks - and I got paid for those last ones. I'm hardly a photographic genius, and it isn't a hobby that is going to put bread on my table, but I enjoy it, and I'm not bad at it. 

When I came to Second Life, however, as I have lamented before, I found myself to be a pretty poor virtual photographer - and my below-par graphics card could only take so much of the blame. I didn't give up (don't be rude now), but kept trying, and I thought I would make a report on my progress.

Good SL photography is all around me. The first virtual photographer I was introduced to whose pictures have turned me green was Sian Pearl - but then I also stumbled upon the flickr streams of Croon Nandahar, Strawberry Singh, Harlow Heslop, Laverne Unit, Harp Purr, Veritable Magic and Petra Messioptra - to name but a few. They are enough to make you sick...in the best way possible, of course.

So, tonight, I really tried. I even got Kitti dressed up, and spent quite a long time (read: far too long!) searching for the right place to take the photos. This is something I never do in real life; I am very much an in-the-moment snapper. I went through the rather exhaustive list of lighting settings to choose the right one. The shots have been been post-edited, just a little, and now here they are.

SL photography, in my opinion, is much more difficult than real life photography. Controlling the camera, positioning your avatar, having too many lighting options, people walking into your shot, leaves falling right in the middle of your avatar's face...somehow, I never seem to have these difficulties in real life. Real life never suffers lag. The upside is, however, that Kitti can and will pose for as long as I make her without me needing to worry about whether she's going to faint from standing up too long, or if she needs a toilet break.

Well...I think I'm getting better!

Doppelgänger I

Doppelgänger II

Doppelgänger II

 [Click here to view the set on flickr][Alternatively, click on one of the images to enlarge, and use the left and right arrow keys to scroll between them]

Out-takes:

Doppelgänger Out-takes I

Doppelgänger Out-takes II

Coming Up

I wanted to have a clown-face. So I had one. Possibly influenced by Slava's Snowshow, possibly not.

 Happy New Year! 

Kitti and I would like to wish you all the best for 2013, and every year here after, and to thank you for reading If You Die in SL... A lot has changed since this blog began, and posts are perhaps not coming in as thick and fast as they once did, but we are still here, and we are still interested in what Second Life has to offer. I graduated from university, the reason I entered SL, in July (2012), and will hopefully be bringing my interest in performance in/of the digital, and digital-based performance, into my real life work in the not-so-distant future.

Clown-face and shadows. What a start to the year.

Today's screenshots were taken in Kitti's new (jointly-owned) skybox home, the frame of which was designed and built from scratch. There'll be a blog about that coming up. Also coming up: Kitti's obsession with hair, Kitti's obsession with owning virtual cats, a post for the Concerned Bloggers Association on Saving the Arts (an issue understandably close to my heart), Kitti's "fat" thighs, and, hopefully, some more comic-type-things for Kit 49.

So, here's to 2013!

And I Feel Fine

So it's that time of year again. All of the SL bloggers are out in force, posting Christmas themed posts, and here I am, thinking I'll come and talk about building or buying more cats (which I have done) or Kitti's 'fat' thighs (more on that later), or, I don't know, rambling on about my ginger anxiety. I'm not going to talk about those things, however. I am really just going to post a picture and wish you all a merry Christmas. 

But there's a catch - ha ha! My 'Christmas' picture...well...it isn't so Christmassy. It's wintry, though, and I think Kitti's looking pretty bad-ass here, so that's got to count for something, right? 

Posing with me here is Carmine Chris. He's pretty new to SL, and is taking to it like Rudolph to the air on Christmas Eve (oh, come on, I tried). He's a whizz of a builder, and is turning his attentions to scripting, now, too. Keep your eye open - he'll be opening a shop before you know it. 

This is Carmine Chris' first photoshoot. He was very patient, and even suggested posing in other locations, but pickings were pretty slim. Everything is covered in flashing lights and cute scarfed penguins and stuff. Second Life has gone all-out, it would seem, to make its virtual inhabitants feel a bit of the Christmas spirit. Which is nice and lovely and sweet, but not what I wanted, here.

I feel pretty relaxed about Christmas this year. Everything is ready, almost. My family will be arriving on Sunday, and in the new year, I've tickets booked to see my absolute favourite stage-show for what will be my fourth time.  Sounds pretty good to me! There's got to be a catch here, too, right? I've yet to find it!

Anyway. I think we look like incarnate spirits of Winter.

The Winter is Coming!

...well...it might be here already...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Or Happy Holidays. Enjoy whatever you're celebrating, or enjoy the peace.

Oh - and that other thing that (isn't) happening today. You know. The end of the world. We're pretty relaxed about that, too.

And I feel fine

Being an R.E.M. fan, my first stop would, naturally, be to start blasting "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", but I have refrained.

Instead, Kitti and I are listening to: this / this / and this. We're not dead yet.

Acolyte

I thought that it was time for another creative response style post. They're kind of fun to do, and mean that I get to go and explore places I perhaps wouldn't have considered visiting before. This is just a short one, and wasn't at all what I had in mind when I began. When I began, what I really wanted to do was draw, but, alas, my hands and their lacking skill in that department betray me. I ended up with this. That's the way these things work, I guess!

In other general housekeeping news, I have found a new place to take shots for the Kit 49 comic, and am hoping to start working on the next strip (anew, I didn't like the old bits I had) very soon. 

Acolyte

 Acolyte, hide the questions in your eyes.

You're not supposed to look into the light and ask why.

[view full-size on flickr (where it looks better)]

Daredevil

As you may have noticed from my last few blog posts, my avatar has a new skin. It's a couple of shades darker than my usual, but I really like it, though it has meant I've had to darken her hair by a few shades, too. She's still ginger, though - to keep my anxieties at bay. What a new skin usually means is a whole new set of images - profile pictures, blog banners - and this time has been no exception, as you may have also noticed by the shiny new banner at the top of this page. But here it is again, because why not:

Oooo, shiny!

I'm quite pleased with my banner, not in the least because it proved itself to be so difficult to make. I did try to replicate the old one, going to the Blade Runner sim and using the fall poses, but it wasn't quite working out for me. So I went to one of my new favourite places, Hangars Liquides, and began throwing myself off buildings.

That isn't a joke. There are, at the present at least, no handily set-up falling poses in Hangars Liquides, and I wasn't sure how else to get a falling shot. I made Kitti fly - HL is one of the few sims that actually lets you fly! - up high above a road, then positioned the camera just above the road, looking upwards. Then I hit the 'stop flying' button, meaning that Kitti would plunge to her death. I think I get brownie points for the idea, but no matter what I did, I couldn't lie the camera up with Kitti and she would end up landing just behind where I'd positioned the camera. At the time, I didn't think of doing a blog post about it, so I didn't keep any of the out-take images. Sorry. 

After a few tries, I gave up, and went onto the marketplace to look for a set of falling animations. I found one, though the animations in the pack seemed to have more agency than simply 'falling'. They were all 'falling-on-purpose' or, like the one I ended up using for my banner, 'jumping off a ledge'. But I figured that, with a pretty cool sci-fi outfit and a pretty cool sci-fi city like Hangars Liquides, jumping off a ledge could be. Well. Pretty cool. 

There were a few hiccups. Positioning my avatar right on the edge of the bridge-thing proved difficult, and sometimes Kitti fell off. But then I realised that I could activate animations whilst flying, so I could fly up, position myself just off the ledge, and use the jumping animation to make it seem (hopefully) as if Kitti had just leapt off.

These were the shots I ended up with:

Looks like I'm virtually on the edge, right..?

...I wasn't. Oops.

An attempt to use a falling animation whilst flying...didn't quite look right, though the rain looks pretty cool!

Somehow, I seem to have positioned Kitti just on the outside edge of the rain, lol!

Getting somewhere!

The image I used for my banner :)

To become a fan girl, just for a moment: I really do love Hangars Liquides. Before I got my new laptop, there is no way I could have gone there and seen all this. It is a beautiful build, created with such attention to detail, and, in places, such a sense of humour. It's stunning, and this section with the rain is, at the moment, my favourite. The builder, Djehan Kidd, is incredibly talented, and incredibly nice, and the sim owner (I believe that's what he is!) Lawrence Celestalis is kind and charming and full of fun. 

Lawrence and I, best viewed on flickr

 He spied me whilst I was trying to position Kitti for these shots and was giggling at me and asking if I needed him to come and catch me. Hilarious. Once I'd finished, he offered me a teleport link to join him and Djehan in a different part of the sim where he had decided to rez a tank and take us for a ride. A tank, ladies and gentlemen.

I also asked Lawrence if I might take shots here for my Kit 49 comic, which has been suffering since I have run out of places in the original sim I was using to take shots. He said yes. Exciting!

Kit 49 - Part Four

My real life trip to Southern California is coming to a close. This time tomorrow, I'll already have been on the plane for an hour, provided I managed to navigate LAX alone successfully. It's not LAX that haunts my dreams, however. I've never flown alone before.

Anyway: I give you part four. I had a lot of fun putting the outfits together for this one and trying to work out what looked cool and what just looked like poor Kitti had fallen into a charity shop basket. Don't get me wrong - the fallen into a charity shop basket look isn't bad, it's just not what I was going for here. And it was quite interesting trying to make Kitti look like several different people without once changing her shape and/or bone structure (I'm still not really brave enough to mess with that!).

View on flickr - here.

Though I've enjoyed making all of these installments so far, I think I'm perhaps losing some of the sense of play that I started with. I felt a bit repetitive, since many of the shots I have used so far have been taken in the same place, and that place isn't all that big. For part five, I have taken some shots across a couple of sims, and I'm trying to find a way to put them together seamlessly. I'm planning a longer strip, too, perhaps more akin to the style of part one. We'll see what I end up with, I guess. 

I'm not much of a comic-book reader. I am familiar with the general style, of course, and I have read quite a few manga books now (namely, Hellsing and Death Note and some of Black Butler), but I'm really just playing with the images I have and what I'm capable of doing in Paint Shop Pro, which is my photo manipulation tool of choice.

But more on that soon, hopefully!

Kit 49: part one / part two / part three on flickr.