Snippets on Friday 03/07

Just a few short announcements this week since I'm writing on something else.

Magma Art Group

This weekend will see the opening of a new exhibit at the Magma Art Group by a man we all know and love: Stephen Venkman.


I'm curious to see what he has prepared exclusively for this exhibit. Grand opening on Saturday 03/08/08 from 11:00am till 2pm slt time. Hope to see you there.
Go there straight from here

Avatrait

Last weekend the Avatrait presented this months artist on display: Daequix Scarborough. The opening was definitively a resounding success.
Go there straight from here

Rezzable

Rezzable have enlisted the services of Vint Falken who actually traveled to London last week to meet up with the folks at Rezzable HQ. It seems a new exhibit is in the making featuring the art of the most talented Melodious Source. Looking forward to it!
I'm curious to see what else they have up their sleeve :-)

A Different Light

The Cannery opens its doors again on Wednesday, December 5th at 4pm SLT for "A Different Light". Curators are once again Shoshana Epsilon and Vint Falken. Featured artists this time around are: Andromega Volare, Isolde Flamand, Kimberly Mirabeau, Marianne McCann & Mylena Aquitaine. I'm happy to say yours truly will once again have some of his work up on the walls of the Cannery too. The new exhibit kicks off with a party starting at noon SLT on the 5th. I'm looking forward to seeing you all there.

A lot has been said and written about the the Rezzable Cannery Art Gallery. I had three pictures up at the first show and I have to say I never had any problems with the way Rezzable or those associated with it treated me or my work. Maybe that is because I don't take these things too seriously. Take the contract that got a whole bunch of people's knickers up in a bunch. Sure the original wording was vague and didn't really provide much protection for the artists but hey, everyone tries to get the best for themselves out of a deal and to Rezzable's credit it has to be said they did adjust it. The new version does take some of the concerns in account.

Months ago I wrote about the fact it's communities that make SL such a great place and not companies with their shiny clean sims where nothing ever happens and I expressed the hope that over time the two would intertwine. I think what Rezzable is doing is a good step in that direction. They are not there yet but the Cannery is slowly starting to be associated with a group of people, a community and that is a good evolution. A lot more could be done still and like I told RightAsRain I think Rezzable itself needs a face or some faces that can represent them. People with roots in SL who can be the center of a community and carry it. As curators to an extent Shoshana and Vint play that part but I have a feeling the distance between them and Rezzable is too big for them to really represent Rezzable. It's not their job either, on the contrary, being curators they should have some independence in order for them to maintain their artistic integrity.

Rezzable is not a charity and so in return for the given opportunities Rezzable expects something back. I think that is absolutely normal. Give and take is what makes the world go round. For some this seems to be pure blasphemy. I don't see why. If you want to be a patron of the arts, go ahead and spend your money on a sim and give the artists free reign to set up as an SL museum. Galleries on the other hand both in SL and RL are not museums, they sell art for the profit of the artist and the gallery. Why would it be any different in SL? What IS a problem in SL is the fact digital content is easily copied thus making it more difficult to manage. A RL painting is a single piece and it's easy to determin who owns it. For an SL picture it's a lot more difficult. If I mail a high rez version of my finished picture to Shoshana she now has a perfect copy of the work she can do with as she pleases outside the mod/copy/trans scheme inside SL. Does that mean I'll make her life difficult by insisting I will not give her a texture unless inside SL and only with limited rights? Of course not. I trust her with my work. Just like I would have to trust a RL gallery owner if I let him exhibit my work.

Hope to see you all at "A Different Light" and thank you Shoshana and Vint for including me once again. It's truly appreciated.

Oh ... and I so hope Nephie will play the opening party!

Sorry to say, but ...

I've been reading some posts and comments this evening here and here and here and frankly I felt I had to add a little something...

Prok, you bitter old hag (and I mean that in the most endearing way), you are loosing it aren't you? Wake up and smell the coffee, SL has changed. It's no longer the little playground we had all to ourselves 2 years ago. Business has moved in, hordes of new av's are roaming the sims and there are just not enough experienced residents around to help them find their way. A lot of them don't care about the politics and possible social impact the metaverse could have. People like Vint do!

Now, before I go on I have a confession to make that is important for the rest of my expose. I'm European, a friend of Vint Falken and some of my work graces the walls of the Rezzable Cannery Gallery. I'm just stating this so you can label me properly. (are you still reading ?) In my defense I can say I've often had a good chuckle reading your stuff in the past.

I have seen the mud going back and forth on both your blogs and I'm afraid to say you really missed a few points. I'm not going to bother with the whole rating, google ranks, en what else stuff. What I want to point out is your obvious lack of empathy and ill will to see things as they are. Take your "Vint’s blog is, again, as anyone can see, about fashion, and about her own builds". That's bullocks. It is not because she illustrates her blogs with original material it is all about "her own builds" whatever you mean by that. If she writes about Open Sim it is because she realises it is the next step in a larger metaverse and when she writes about "some html on a prim" (sic) it is because she sees the possibilities it holds. Mean time you whine you have "nothing to click on at Rezzable" which proves to me you missed the boat. That was Command & Conquer.

You complain about the style in which the Cannery was built but you fail to see the fact a company has actually given residents the possibility to set something up they might otherwise not have been able to. I for one prefer that over another Nissan, IBM, etc sim where I can click on stuff only to get info on how wonderful their stuff is. Style is per definition debatable. What makes Rezzable different is the interaction between a company and independant residents and that is an evolution I applaud even if the execution isn't perfect.

Another thing that bugged me in your comments is the whole US versus the rest of the world thing. English is the Lingua Franca of the industrialised world at this point, but your own legislators had to push a law to make it the official language of the US because the Spanish speaking community in your own country is booming and is expected to outnumber the native English speakers soon if it already hasn't. Oh, and let's not forget a quarter of the worlds population speaks Chinese.

Your statement that the whole (sexual) ageplay thing came from Europe is beyond the pale and I will not even dignify it with a reaction. Or maybe just one, to point out the proven fact that the concrete reaction against sexual ageplay indeed came from Europe, even if charges were recently dropped by the Dutch state prosecutor. The fact people emigrated from Europe to the US because of religious persecution bears no relevance when it comes to SL; those days are long gone. In fact anyone who lives in a country where creationism is openly advocated should shut up about religious zealotry anywhere else. Anyway, all I have to say about this is that, being European, I'm personally offended by such faux rhetoric.

Now last but not least, you call people amateurs as if it were a disease. Amateurs are by definition people who do something because they enjoy it or believe in something. They don't do it for the money. That spirit is what produces the best SL has to offer. I'm an amateur and proud to be so.

My opinion, no more no less. And no, I don't want the discussion to be continued overhere.

SL vs. RL Promiscuity Index

After reading Vint's blog on the SLex / RLex ratio a while ago in which she tries to catch the differences between people's Sl sex life and RL one in a formula, I was left with the feeling some things in her math didn't add up. Math is not my thing either, but being a bit bored today I started thinking about it. Since it doesn't always have to be serious stuff, this is what I came up with:

A sort of "Promiscuity Index" so to speak...

(RLA -216) / RLP
-------------------- = PI
(SLA x 5) / SLP

where:
RLA = your RL age in months
RLP = the number of RL sex partners since your 18th Bday
SLA = your SL age in months
SLP = the number of SL sex partners since rezz-day
PI = Promiscuity Index (I wonder is someone is going to turn up with 3.14 *grins*)

Now let me explain why I think this is a more accurate way of calculating or if you want more indicative of the differences between yourSL sex life and your RL one. First of all there is the fact that her calculation doesn't take in account we are more or less active during certain periods of our lives be it in RL or SL. At some stages in both our RL and SL we tend to experiment more. So I thought I should divide the time we are sexually active by the number of partners over that time in both lives. To compensate for the fact you can be active inSL from day one and not so in RL I decided (rather arbitrarily I'll admit) to deduct 216 from the RLA thus starting the count at 18 years of age.

Another thing that had me thinking is the fact that there is a difference in pace between SL and RL. Face it, what is the average life span of a relationship in SL? So based on my experience I set the value at 5. Meaning the pace of life in SL is imho about 5 times faster than in RL. I agree it's debatable and any good arguments to change this value are more then welcome.

What do we get out of this? I think it makes for a nice comparison of your promiscuity in SL as opposed to RL. Let's look at an of course completely fictional example:

A male 42 years old has had 15 sex partners since he was 18. In SL he has had 5 since he rezzed 19 months ago.

That makes:

(506 - 216) /15
------------------- = 1,02
(19 x 5) / 5

The conclusion in this case would be that his promiscuity in SL and RL are fairly the same.

index > 1 = RL promiscuity < SL promiscuity
index < 1 = SL promiscuity < RL promiscuity

This says nothing about the frequency of SLex or RLex. I guess if you would like to hazard a guess at how often you've done it in RL since you turned 18 and the number of times you engaged in SLex in SL you could replace RLP and SLP by those values but I'm not going to venture there :-)

On a side note, this equation also solves the problem Vint had with her calculation that could lead to an illegal "divide by 0".

I'm as always curious to hear your thoughts and reactions!
And your Indexes of course ;-)

PS In case you were wondering, no, it's not me in the top picture ...