Sunday, January 31, 2016

Sunday Squee: Rain

The Sunday Squee is about things that make me happy and excited. From books to movies to television shows to podcasts, I'll highlight less commonly known things as a way to share what I love. If you want to join in the Sunday Squee, please link back to me, magnifying both of our joy.

Rainy City

I love the rain.

There's something about the sound, and the smell, and the fizzle of lightning in the air; it makes me happy down to my bones.  I like drinking cocoa at the window while it rains outside, and watching what the light does when it cuts through water and air, and the occasional rainbow arcing across the sky like a promise or a dream.

I love the rain.

Running for the Metro


Saturday, January 30, 2016

A Year of Weekly Themes: Dreams!

Softpaw Sommer is doing a Weekly Theme Blogger Challenge and I thought it would be fun to pitch in with an image for each week!

This Week's Theme: Dreams!

A Year of Weekly Themes: Dreams!

Dreams are a fuzzy thing. The natural ones are always set in shadows, misted with the vagaries of a sleeping memory. Times and places which are exactly what they should be but not what they are when you're awake. Long quests that require wyrd and obscure solutions. And then we wake up to a world more mundane, and yet somehow not any more understandable...

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 4: Dark Moderate Cyan - Lime Green

The Weekly Color Challenge is back this year with a different format, through the Flickr Group Colour! Colour! Colour! Each week is given an RGB code.

This Week's Color is R:55 G:163 B:134 (aka #37a386)

Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 4: Dark Moderate Cyan - Lime Green

 We make our own time in this world, with the work of our hands and our minds.

It's almost seven o'clock.

Snowy Secrets

Battery

There are so many events going on that it's a challenge to keep up, but I'm having fun pulling together pretty outfits, finding pretty places, and taking pretty pictures!

The 86 Aspects of Composition: Breath

Drawing from Mike Vargas' 86 Aspects of Composition, I'm looking at one aspect a week as it is reflected in the creations of Second Life Photographers and Artists. This week the topic is Breath, and the question is:
"Where is the alternation between tension and release, inhalation and exhalation?"

This one was a puzzler. Static art isn't like dance of music, where the breath is an integral part of creation, and although one breaths while one photographs, in Second Life that breath is one more step behind as one isn't even supporting the weight of a camera when creating images. Vargas' question about tension and release was an interesting one to me - how can both be portrayed in static art? What form could they take, both compositionally and emotionally? With that in mind, I looked through
my galleries of gathered images looking for images which seemed to combine both elements into one - a sort of tension and a source of release. There seemed to be two places where these alternative features could exist within a static frame - between a central figure and a (usually placid) backdrop, and between two competing figures with different reactions.

Arcana
Arcana by Aktar Oakesvale


In the Pink

Death from Above


For all the Lolita's out there - I found bloomers that work under puffed skirts. Check out Goji for them in a few different color packs and never worry about flashing your scants again!


Candy Lines

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Sunday Squee: Building Things

The Sunday Squee is about things that make me happy and excited. From books to movies to television shows to podcasts, I'll highlight less commonly known things as a way to share what I love. If you want to join in the Sunday Squee, please link back to me, magnifying both of our joy.


A while ago I talked about moving into my new home and the paint job I got. It's been a long while since then, and a lot has happened to fill up my time. I've begun picking up the necessary things for decorating my home, though, and I'm particularly happy about two builds I pulled off this weekend - a set of shelves and a new dresser for my scants. It too some work, a lot of pencil on the walls, and now I'm happily filling them up with things and unpacking more boxes - something I'd been avoiding because I had no where to put all of my decorations! Later today I'll be picking up some more organizational and display items, too, and with luck by tonight I'll have swept the floors and be ready for a busy week.


What brought you joy in your life, this week?

Saturday, January 23, 2016

A Year of Weekly Themes: Pink!

Softpaw Sommer is doing a Weekly Theme Blogger Challenge and I thought it would be fun to pitch in with an image for each week!

This Week's Theme: Pink!

A Year of Weekly Themes: Pink!

I once disliked pink - decrying it as a lot of young women who get discouraged by the limitations of sexism. One of the more interesting moments of my life was when I was forced to re-examine femininity, it's relationship to power, to color, to the ability to accomplish ones' goals. I still don't like the explosion of pink over all things girly, but I've learned to love all the many shades of pink and how they all layer together beautifully. From soft to bright to reddish to purplish, pink is a color to embrace for us all!

Friday, January 22, 2016

Iridescence

At the Edge of Eternity

Iridescence - the dream of rainbows hidden in other shades.

Jump Kick

Thursday, January 21, 2016

The 86 Aspects of Composition: Balance

Drawing from Mike Vargas' 86 Aspects of Composition, I'm looking at one aspect a week as it is reflected in the creations of Second Life Photographers and Artists. This week the topic is Balance, and the question is:
"How do the qualities and relative importance of the constituent aspects counteract each other, both inside and outside the system?"
Dancing all up in a line
Dancing all up in a line by Nivaya Barbosa

Balance was deceptively simple to begin with. During my first run through my galleries, I was drawn to anything symmetrical or centered, the strong figure in the middle offering up the sort of perfect balance which standing on the fulcrum of a see saw offers. Barbosa uses this symmetry of the background, using the room as a static base for figures in motion - the figures themselves defying the symmetry, and offering a repetition form of balance physically - everyone is on the same beat. One of the issues with strict symmetry is stasis, though; in the pictures above and below, subtle tensions and a sense of movement in suspension offer diversions from the still of the overall image, while the locked nature of the overall image gives a sense of eternity in both. More specifically below, the stillness is the point entirely - the title "Lost in Thought" makes it clear this is a person drifting within her own moments of stillness. Even then, though, she places herself off-center and the telephone poles in the background aren't quite even, two aspects which keep it from being too frozen while maintaining the overall balance of the image.

Lost in Thought
Lost in Thought by Marianne McCann


Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 3: Dark Moderate Blue

The Weekly Color Challenge is back this year with a different format, through the Flickr Group Colour! Colour! Colour! Each week is given an RGB code.

This Week's Color is R:55 G:111 B:163 (aka #376fa3)

Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 3: Dark Moderate Blue

The outfit this week is a blast from the past - a past I get to play with all too rarely these days - my deep and abiding love for the Lolita Fashion style. There are a few stores around which do Lolita, but the days of extensive stores doing full on Lolita - very demure lines, knee to calf length skirts, lots of frills - has seemingly passed under the weight of trying to rig large, round mesh skirts. In the deep dive for appropriate blues I went through my blues folder, thinning out the herd and clearing away a lot of the detritus, but I couldn't resist showing off this dress from Arsenic Lace, with it's layered ruffles on the side and pleasing textures all over. Someday, perhaps, we will see this style of dress rendered in rigged mesh but for now I'll enjoy it through it's flexi heritage and marvel at the skill of creators to take simple shapes and make beauty out of them.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Sunday Squee: Another Round

The Sunday Squee is about things that make me happy and excited. From books to movies to television shows to podcasts, I'll highlight less commonly known things as a way to share what I love. If you want to join in the Sunday Squee, please link back to me, magnifying both of our joy.

Another Round: Pigeons in the Park

If you love intelligent women drunkenly commenting on pretty much anything and everything, than Another Round (from Buzzfeed and regularly on Twitter) is the podcast for you!


Saturday, January 16, 2016

Roses Blooming in Winter

A Rose Blooms in Winter

My Alice Project hair is free until midnight, at which point it converts to 50$L - there's VIP gifts of the same style which will be available until the end of her Winter Love Gift Season.

My dress, from Sis Boom, is only 60$L through the weekend, and well worth it! I want it in every shade humanly possible.

Art and the Single Avatar

Stranger Things: Rich Harvest

Art exists as isolated forms and in relationship with people, but only in Second Life do the two intersect so powerfully. Due to confusions of size - even offline things at a distance seem very small - sometimes the full effect of art can only be expressed in relationship to our avatar's bodies. Something which in an isolated image appears small becomes enormous within the context of a virtual body. Size is relative, and nowhere is that more true than in Second Life, where people, things, and places can be made as large or as small as we want. In some cases, our offline assumptions guide us well, though. A tree that grows umbrellas as flowers is surreal, but in this case the umbrellas are roughly the size of golf umbrellas, a fact that setting one of them next to an avatar handily shows. The combination of the setting and my avatar illustrate those places where art and avatars meet up and interact to create something new - a moment where an umbrella becomes a boat.

Stranger Things: Rainy Days

Genre: Drag Queens

Genre: Drag Queens

Drag Queens get their time in the Genre spotlight this month, and the offerings are glitzy, glimmery, and utterly fabulous.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Vestige by Gem Preiz on LEA26


Vestige is a series of brilliantly colored, fractalated rooms on a meandering path created by Gem Preiz on Artist in Residence Sim LEA26.

"Welcome to 'Vestiges'. Follow the paths, let them guide you through fractals or doors."

Saffron Steps


Thursday, January 14, 2016

A Year of Weekly Themes: Glitter!

Softpaw Sommer is doing a Weekly Theme Blogger Challenge and I thought it would be fun to pitch in with an image for each week!

This Week's Theme: Glitter!

A Year of Weekly Themes: Glitter!

Glitter is an interesting thing to try to produce in Second Life but collabor88 offered up a bunch of different, iridescent glittery surfaces using a combination of textures and materials. Glitter itself I have mixed feelings about - I adore the look, I am less than fond of finding bits of plastic stick to my cleavage several weeks later! Virtual glitter is so much cleaner!


Wednesday, January 13, 2016

The 86 Aspects of Composition: Appropriation

Drawing from Mike Vargas' 86 Aspects of Composition, I'm looking at one aspect a week as it is reflected in the creations of Second Life Photographers and Artists. This week the topic is Appropriation, and the question is:
"How precisely and in what proportion to the whole have the ideas and constructs of others been incorporated into this creation?"
This is an excellent question for 2D art in Second Life's 2D world. Rare are the 2D artists who create everything within their images; Second Life 2D art is much closer to a collage of items created by other people than anything wholly original.

That is not to say that it isn't art, or that it isn't without merit, but the collaborative nature of Second Life is it's driving force, even when that collaboration is mediated through cash. I have struggled with calling what I do in Second Life art due both because I often took self portraits, and because I didn't really "make" anything but the combination of all of the elements. I think we limit ourselves when art becomes what is paid for and hung up in galleries, though, and bringing the deeper questions of art and communication into what we create can only be a net win for us all!

Set Me Free
Set Me Free by Sydney Black


Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 2: Dark Moderate Violet

The Weekly Color Challenge is back this year with a different format, through the Flickr Group Colour! Colour! Colour! Each week is given an RGB code.

This Week's Color is R:112 G:55 B:163 (aka #7037a3)

Colour! Colour! Colour! Week 2: Dark Moderate Violet

I'm having fun finding and layering colors. This weeks dress was a shoo-in - I saw it on Flickr and ran right out to buy it because it was simply perfect! And it was on sale! The hair was harder; Michan is a gacha prize, and the color scheme I wanted was a rare, so the choice was improvise or spend a lot of Linden. I obviously ended up doing the former - the left side of my hair is shaded a pale blond and tinted this week's color, a smashing improvisation if I do say so myself! Like int he last image, the floor and walls around me were all tinted this week's color and I love the saturation effect, especially with the rest of the almost-perfect shades of violet I managed to assemble.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Sunday Squee: Hamilton

The Sunday Squee is about things that make me happy and excited. From books to movies to television shows to podcasts, I'll highlight less commonly known things as a way to share what I love. If you want to join in the Sunday Squee, please link back to me, magnifying both of our joy.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

"I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine
So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane
You want a revolution? I want a revelation
So listen to my declaration:

'We hold these truths to be self-evident
That all men are created equal'
And when I meet Thomas Jefferson
I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!"

I've been obsessed with a musical for the past few months, sharing it with tons of people, and I just realized I never shared it with you!

Hamilton!

 "Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder"


White on White

White On White


Thursday, January 7, 2016

Colour! Colour! Colour! 1: Dark Moderate Pink

The Weekly Color Challenge is back this year with a different format, through the Flickr Group Colour! Colour! Colour! Each week is given an RGB code.

This Week's Color is R:163 G:55 B:120 (aka #a33778)
Colour! Colour! Colour! R:163 G:55 B:120

It's been a year since the end of the Twisted Color Challenge (My posts), another year since the end of the second Color Challenge (My posts), and Alyx Allero of Grafica Poses has resurrected the idea aknew for all of us to enjoy. These were the challenges which made me as a blogger and a photographer. Prior to the first Color Challenge (My posts) my posts were infrequent and chatty. Subsequently, I became a lot more regular and predictable in my work and made many of the contacts which I enjoy today. I have a lot to that that challenge for, and I'm looking forward to playing with even more explicit colors - this time named not by charming and often confusing names but rather by the RGB codes which we use on computers to quantify them. I love the idea, especially since it lets us explore what the color "really" is. In the image above, the floor, walls, and my socks are all tinted the same color, but the shadows and windlight make them very different shades. Darker and lighter, the variance of hues gives us a taste of how ephemeral color really is, even in a digital world the result of the eyes of the observer.

A Year of Weekly Themes: Birthday!

Softpaw Sommer is doing a Weekly Theme Blogger Challenge and I thought it would be fun to pitch in with an image for each week!

This Week's Theme: Birthday!

A Year of Weekly Themes: Birthday!

I actually have a birthday this year, so that's rather exciting. I have no idea what I'm going to do for it, and frankly I'm really dreading the planning process; I had thought of trying for another party, but I'm really not good at them. I think I might instead indulge in everything I like most, bake myself a cake, and having a wonderful day off chilling in my awesome abode. It's not a typical birthday, but it's a birthday that would make me very happy!

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The 86 Aspects of Composition: Abstraction

Drawing from Mike Vargas' 86 Aspects of Composition, I'm looking at one aspect a week as it is reflected in the creations of Second Life Photographers and Artists. This week the topic is Abstraction, and the question is:
"To what extent would two people from the same community agree about the meaning?"
When I think about "abstract" in the context of art, I usually thing of the information covered by the Tate's section on Abstract Art or the images and artists at The Art Story. This is a broader question, though - how do you know if you are in the same community? How can you know what can be known between us through the medium of art? Second Life in general trends toward representation perhaps because there is so much left open. In a world where the abstract can be created accidentally, can even be created inadvertently through lack of skill with the medium, what role does abstraction play within art and creation in Second Life?

Don't
"Don't" by Miles Cantelou

Monday, January 4, 2016

Stranger Things are Happening by Krystali Rabeni at LEA 6

Image Description: The Stranger Things are Happening Landing point in between three chess boards.

Stranger things are happening at LEA6, set upon a layer of sand and a thin skin of flowing water. The centerpoint is three chess sets - each one with a different theme - water, hedges, and bondage. It bears a closer look - the first impression is of blue, green, and black against white, but closer inspection offers up sweet details. The water board is dotted with sandcastles against which waves break. The hedges dark pieces are all of hedge itself, several shades darker than the bright and dark sod tiles. The Kings for the bondage set are half crucified, and there is a third king making her leaden way free - along with a few more pieces making their getaway, and the tilted remains of those who thoroughly escaped. Chess revisits at two of the four corners as well, this time entirely out of proportion with anything!

Image Description: Three female figures chained together and carrying a pawn on their backs.


Sunday, January 3, 2016

How NOT to make "Friends" in Second Life

It started innocuously enough. It's been a long while since someone hit on me, and this wasn't even "me" but rather one of my alts - specifically my neko alt. I'm largely uninterested in being hit on, but up for some conversation if it turns out to be good. Overall, this alt looks like a hot mess and is dressed up in a variety of free items from all over the place - one by one I'm outfitting my alts but it's the sort of thing which happens slowly.

Hyper Coy in Shadow

[Pickup Liar]: pretty outfit
Hyper Coy: Thank you.
[Pickup Liar]: your welcome
[Pickup Liar]: smiles
[Pickup Liar]: are them boots or hightheels you have on

I was in a non-viual viewer, so I actually had to check in my inventory for what I was wearing - in this case a rather nice pair of free boots from LeeZu. 

Hyper Coy: Boots.
[Pickup Liar]: may i see a close up of them
Hyper Coy: Ah... sure?

This is a weird thing to ask - it's really easy to look at something without asking in Second Life. This was a clear indication this person was not your standard random-hitter and an example of an escalation a la Pickup Artists. The purpose is to push against someone's boundaries and test them while being indirect enough that you can deny what is going on if directly responded to.