The exhibition opened to great fanfare ‘way back in August (ahem…), it’s been a resounding success, and if you’d like a tour of the SL installation on our Gallerie della Memoria sim, IM me in-world.  I’ve set up a replica of the exhibition site, with the two tunnels containing a rich collection of streaming media prepared from archival material by Second Life media guru Media Hax. Nearly all of the photographic content from the book published to accompany the exhibition is available there, along with four feature-length films produced for the exhibition, slide shows of construction and inauguration, and other bits and pieces.

For those of you who speak Italian, I am delighted to direct you to a presentation by FilmWork of Trento, Italy, co-producers of the exhibition.  This video, entitled Gallerie (Extra), and the other visual materials presented on their website present a comprehensive chronicle of this historic project. View it here.

Update: View an English-dubbed version of the project video.

This project was realized by FilmWork, Studio Terragni Architetti, and the Stanford Humanities Lab, under the auspices of the Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino.

Not your everyday sort of place, this exhibition is to be constructed in a re-purposed highway tunnel in Trento, in the Dolomites, just south of the Austrian border.

That location has much to do with the forthcoming exhbition’s content and reason for being. It’s an area with a heavy cultural investment in the World War One period and years just preceding: border disputes with Austria, the Irredentist movement in Italy, challenging topography, wartime martyrs …

So there’s going to be a long-term exhibition, a bit of deconstruction of some wartime mythology and a lot of community participation and interaction. Part of the interaction will come from parallel constructs in Second Life, which we’ve used to good effect already in winning this award.

The team in Italy sourced a mountain (heh…) of CAD and topo data and sent it our way. Based on this data and their architectual renderings, I put together a mock-up of the exhibition site on our Gallerie della Memoria island, including some of the projected displays and imagery. This mock-up was used as part of our walk-through presentation to the panel of judges, on April 28. After three weeks of deliberations, we got the word: the project is ours.

So now I need get to work.

Eric Joyner and Bibi Bayliss: a conversation at MoR

Now Count and Bibi have put together an art exhibition of the work of Eric Joyner, based on the artist’s forthcoming book, Robots and Donuts. On the evening of Monday the 15th Eric was on hand to open the exhibit, graciously taking time away from his Famous Artist Duties to present a talk, and then engage in a Q&A with the gathered throng.

So you missed that bit, but chin up: the exhibit will run through August, so just go browse the collection, ok? And take a look at Eric’s website and blog. Maybe read this article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the man’s work. See what’s up at the San Jose Museum of Art, where Joyner is a part of current show “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon“. Or pick up a copy of Robots and Donuts (in pre-release) on Amazon! This is seriously fun stuff. Seriously.

A “Type One” island freshly transformed with Hotgates’ RAW terrain file.

Sundeck, Buddha garden, and beach pavilion in place: first things first!

So far, so good. Y’all come!

Speedlimits is a mixed-reality exhibition focused on the pivotal role played by speed in modern life. The exhibit will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Italian Futurist movement, whose inaugural manifesto proclaimed “the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”

We’ll begin teaming with the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA), with an installation in their museum in Montréal. In a reversal of normal procedure, this real life exhibit will serve as secondary source support for the primary show, a virtual-world, extended version of the real-world exhibition spaces. Following the CCA show, we’ll move on to the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami, to be followed by other venues in North America.

The images here are of a model of the Montréal CCA space I’ve set up on Hotgates, SHL’s island in Second Life. I’ve populated it with imagery relating to some of the themes we’ll be examining within the broad context of the modernity/speed equation. When it’s complete, in addition to the replicated RL galleries, we’ll present a number of virtual galleries with no physical equivalent, some curated by critics and scholars, and others reserved for visitor-generated content and curatorial concepts. We’ll be conducting international design competitions for this part, and we’ll have some kind of “press kit” with guidelines for content development (tech specs, genres, curatorial aims…). I think this is going to be a lot of fun, expect to hear more on the subject in the coming months.

Saturday morning: everything in place, waiting for the crowd.

The MotoSL awards party finally got taken care of this weekend, after a couple of delays. The first season’s event happened the same day as the last race, down by Les White’s bait shack on Misp. That was a logistical nightmare, getting trophies and plaques engraved with names of riders whose ranking in the championship wasn’t decided until that day!

Season two was a bit more organized, with a week between the last race and party time. I hosted the event on Hotgates, Vince did some nice trophies, lots of people showed up to collect their gold, and a lot of us stuck around afterwards to soak in the hot tub and schmooze.

This year, planning was a bit more “relaxed”. The last race of the season was at PSU, on March 8th, and management took an extra week to get all the loose ends tucked in. Worth the wait: we had nearly 30 avs on hand at Hotgates this time, celebrating the new champions. I’ve put up a few more pictures here, hope you enjoy them. See you all next season!

Over 3 months without a post, and it feels like longer. It’s been a busy time, but for one reason and another it’s been hard to sit down and do an entry here. The biggest news, I suppose, is that health issues in RL have had a significant impact on my SL self. My racing season went downhill in a big way starting in January, when I lost a good deal of hand dexterity and sensation and also quite a lot of time, in hospital and unable to practice. Not the way I wanted to end my MotoSL season, certainly. And I never imagined it would actually mean bowing out of RaceSL competition completely, but that’s been the upshot. So for now I’m an ex-racer, but I’ll continue to be involved in the racing scene, with some sort of series management duties to be determined. And maybe by the time MotoSL4 comes around, I’ll be back in the saddle again.

In the meantime, I’ve found that all those hours I’m not spending at the track looking for a tenth of a second to shave off my lap times are actually pretty useful for getting other things done. I’ve got some interesting new building projects to talk about, so stick around, and I promise the next post won’t take 3 months to appear here.

Silk was offered space to set up shop in this virtual Portland as part of their small business incentive program. She graciously offered me the chance to lend a hand with building her clinic, so I put together a minimalist structure that suited her needs and fit in with the local theme and architecture. This is the first thing I’ve built in SL that isn’t for my RL lab or some research project! So now all you stressed out, bothered and uncentered avatars can go to Silk Bamboo Health for your reiki treatments: “energy healing and balancing” by a true professional.

Here Silk is administering the clinic’s inaugural treatment to Ty Magpie, the driving force behind the creation of NW 21st Avenue, Portland Oregon. This sim is a treat, visit!

Teammate Silk was on Crippy Oh’s tail in the drivers’ championship going into the race, only 4 points behind, but a 6th place finish spoiled her late-season run on 4th overall. I was too far back from Jafo’s championship-leading points tally to catch up, and in turn I was out of reach of any contenders for my second spot for the season overall, but I managed to throw away what looked like a sure race win in the closing laps. From first to fifth in a heartbeat! (You can read Les White’s race report here, and review the final point standings here.)

Well, that’s racing, and this season provided some of the best. OMG Magazine finished second in the team ranking, after making a run at Archer in the latter part of the season that saw us pull well clear of third-placed Codename Denmark. I ended up second overall in driver points, Silk in fifth. We’ll be baaaack!