Revisiting Susa

My name is Susa. We come in pairs.

'Susa Bubble', by Saskia Boddeke, text by Peter Greenaway

Confusion, conflict, and consequences;  love, life, and loss. That's the story of Susa Bubble, who went to bed single and woke up double. It's a very long story, stretching back to the golden age of art in Second Life. It is the brain child of Saskia Boddeke, in virtual worlds Rose Borchovski. From 2008, about a year after Saskia joined SL, she has been sharing chapters in this tale, via a symphony of multimedia -sights and sounds, video and music, images and objects, wonderfully woven together into unsettling and detailed Big Art.

And it is a family affair, with contributions by Saskia's husband the well-known filmmaker Peter Greenaway, (read more about their CVs here) and their daughter Pip.  The story of Susa stretches out over well over a decade, and well into the real world. Check out the pictures of  'Why Is It So Hard To Love?'  the 2020 installment of the Susa Bubble story, at the  MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

But Museums can't keep installations up forever. In virtual worlds, SLEA land grants expire, and Second life sims are notoriously expensive. You won't be surprised to hear that Two Fish, Rose's region there, is no longer online. That makes sense, as she is very busy in RL with film projects and installations in museums, galleries, and all over the place from Lithuania to Lucca

Thankfully, Saskia has preserved and made public a lot of her virtual work in the form of machinima - here is her playlist for the Susa Bubble story The installations have been captured by other great Second Life machinima makers like Larkworthy Antfarm and Iono Allen, the film shown here was featured at the World Expo in Shanghai, back in 2010.

Even more thankfully, you can still walk inside one chapter of the Susa story - The Arrival (2015).  

The build is miraculously still up, after all these years, over on grid Aire Mille Flux, owned by Marc Moana. 

Welcome sim, Aire Mille Flux

At first glance, there's nothing odd about two children going fishing; The Arrival is just a big fish tale.  

Soon, though, there is an uncanny reciprocity between the bubbles, and the Bubbles. Fish fly and float, rather than enjoying the freedom of the sea. 

At first blush, it's not clear how much that fish is enjoying its embrace. But to be fair, the baby doesn't seem any too happy either. Perhaps it's sending us a message...

The catch the fish, and quite simply, it dies. But there's nothing simple about this build. The merry-go-round, and the televisions, the theater and the jagged skeleton of an umbrella, and of course, all the Susas reacting to aspects of childhood that we all can recognize.

Being doubled is fairly standard for inworld people, we almost all have two names that we're equally comfortable with depending on the context. And notions of time, identity, trust, and serendipity seem to expand and contract wildly as we grapple with a global, anonymous, self determined and passionate online society. 

The childish joy and fear that comes with exploring both the inner and the outer world, that's a key part of Susa's journey. We are as lost and as found as the Susas, and our actions are often as casually consequential. That is what keeps it constantly fresh, eerie, enchanting. It's one of those eternal  universals - conflict. It's inside every one of us, and very much part of the world we live in.

HG Address:    hop://grid.aire-mille-flux.org:8002/The%20Arrival/108/34/21

Love & Peace on ArtDestiny

 Coming soon - get out your diary - a musical treat where you can show your true spirit as a lover of peace. 

Saturday, July 27 from 10am to 7pm Pacific time 

at artdestiny.de:8002:Lothlorian

When you arrive on the sim you'll find this convenient teleport board tht will take you to the concert venue in the sky.
These days, it's all too easy to get sucked into the latest round of name-calling and outrage, which doesn't help anyone. As a global community, let's stand side by side with our fellow residents of all nations, in a spirit of tolerance and love. 

One way we can do that is by attending the event on grid ArtDestiny, organized by Stormy Scorpio.

The concert venue style is borrowed from the famous Woodstock concert of 1969, held on a farm in Bethel New York, with the Catskill mountains as the backdrop. 

Today the location of that historic concert is called Bethel  Woods Center for the Arts. On Artdestiny Grid, Stormy has added a farmhouse in a valley ringed by green and snow capped mountains. It looks snug and cool.

Stormy is known for her beautiful fantasy and sci fi builds in the style of LoTR and Star Trek in particular.

World peace, and global solidarity, are far from fantasy goals though, and this will be a change for us all to come together, renew friendships and make new ones, and enjoy some great music.

 It will be a great mix of nationalities and genres, with DJs and live musicians. 

Katia Portugal,  Rogue Galaxy and the outstanding singer songwriter Moses Rau will all be performing live, and Loru Destiny, Madrul Smith, and DJ Richie will be spinning appropriate tunes for your dancing pleasure - and of course, to get you thinking positive thoughts!

Grid owner and popular DJ Loru Destiny explained the event this way.

Loru Destiny: The idea is - Opensim unites many nations, let's celebrate Love and Peace together like at Woodstock '69 with live singers and DJs.

Four Bits By Bink

Anyone who is well familiar with the Safari is familiar with the name Bink Draconia. I think the first time we had a proper group visit with her was back in 2016 on her grid Kroatan. 

That's a classy name for a grid, Kroatan. Grid names should be catchy, short, and imaginative, don't you think? 

In fact, that name was our first clue to the level of talent we were going to come into contact with, on her Halloween build, made in collaboration with the wonderful Kiki Bailey and with a storyline by Malon Wyngard - you can read about it here. 

Flash forward eight years, and Bink continues to deliver fabulous builds, now on Marlon Wayne's Pangea grid. 

You may remember seeing in 2023 Bink's The Good Place build, which is not just a triumph of landscaping, but a full-on game that shadows the plot of the television series. It's a brilliant synthesis of the story, with a decor so close to the real thing at times that you feel like you're inside your TV. 

But Bink has other fab regions on Pangea to visit, and this post highlights four of them, conveniently set close together in the Great Pangea Ocean. The region names are: Eternal Ice, North Pole, Koburk, and Needful Things. The addresses are, of course, at the end of the post - but what can you expect to see if you go there?

How Not to be Lonely in Opensim

Ever heard someone say 'there's no-one in Opensim'? Or maybe that was you, talking to yourself - hey nothing wrong with that!

Opensim can often feel like a wide open, empty place. Quite intimidating after, say, the bustling sims of SL. That's not surprising when you compare its size to that of Second Life. 

SL in 2024 by primerib1 aka Claire Morgenthau

SL is not small. This picture shows the main continents at the center of a galaxy of private regions, but if you think that's huge, Opensim is waaaay bigger - if fact, if you're wondering why there's no map of opensim here, that's because it's impossible to say how big the connected hypergrid universe is. 

A few people try to give statistics about it, but they do not, and indeed cannot, know the full extent of opensim, since it is a completely decentralized and unregulated meta-place where anyone at any time and for any duration can have a grid without reporting to any higher authority. 

That means there's no central control, nobody keeping complete records of all the comings and goings of our hyperverse - it just can't be done in a meaningful way. 

Creanovale: Tout Doux

 If you're in need of some R&R, far away from the draining drama of world events, and the vociferous, but luckily not too many, angst-mongers inworld, why not take a little time to enjoy the season on Creanovale.

This grid is built by Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay. They live in the French-speaking area of Canada, and their grid is based on the beautiful countryside, traditions, products and history of their part of the world.

Each year, they modify their VAR region to reflect the passing seasons, so you can experience everything from surfing to skating here, depending on when you come to visit. The sim is a resort, a wilderness and a fine collection of perfectly assembled tableaux, complete with appropriate sounds that bring the sights to life, and here and there animesh...

In the Mix

You won't find Abyssinia on a modern map, unless it's a map of Zetaworlds of course! After some time on the Science Circle Grid, Skip Dahlgren , known as Aba Brukh inworld, has moved his build to a new grid, and a new start. 

'Abyssinia' as a geographical place is more or less the current land territory of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

A term used in the West from around the 1600's, in the 1970s Haile Selassie nixed the name 'Abyssinia' because it has unflattering roots in an arabic word meaning mixture. 

Politics and deliberate slurs aside, this rich tapestry of an area, sometimes called the Horn of Africa, was undoubtedly enriched by the miscellaneous trade in goods, cultures, religious and philosophical influences, and DNA from three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, all passing through the area of the Red Sea. Not to mention a very mixed fortune over the centuries as powerful people came and went, leaving their mark on the landscape.

Lost Summer

 It was the year when we had a huge party to wish Bon Voyage to Justin when he left to go back to RL, Total Sorbet's Outbreak was the breakout pastime of  OSGrid,  and Opensimworld was in its infancy - before the highs and lows of Traffic Classification, and the Box with its merry band of prolix commentators. 

There was AvatarFest, and the gloriously Cherrified Fest'Avi. Inworldz and Twinity were still places you could go (hard to believe that Twinity didn't shut down until 2021), Blue Mars and Cloudparty were already gone. 

The idea that these were real options for the grid-trotter seems a little crazy nowadays, when hypergridding is so easy and facilitated with all kinds of directories and events calendars but back then, they were serious options. OSCC unveiled its treasure hunt, a super way to motivate people to visit all the expo sims, and there was much dancing during the event.... 

The year - in case you didn't remember it, was 2015. We were all so young and energetic! HG Safari trips had become a common event,  and somehow, not sure why,  for about two months this blog went silent.

Summer-palooza on AMV

 A long weekend of summer fun on AMV and it all begins on Thursday 11 July! 

Alternate Metaverse Grid is famous for its many festivals and special events, and this happening is bound to be a great one, with five VAR regions dedicated to getting your summer started with a swing. If the great outdoors has been nothing but heatwaves and downpours, why not stay inworld, where the best weather is always guaranteed?

HG Addresses, as usual, at the end of this post, and of course if you look here you'll find the calendar of events on the grid's website

Cat on The Arts

Cataplexia Numbers: OpenSim and its community are blessed with so much art and creativity! This is our way on Alternate Metaverse to celebrate that, and encourage more arts in every genre! We open our festival to all who wish to be a part of it! Join us on July 11th through July 14th - Help us celebrate and enjoy the arts!

Community Art exhibition

You've probably visited this festival in previous years, and will remember the names of the sims - The Arts, In Tribute, OpenMic Arts, AMV Special Events, and Festival of Arts. Having 5 regions allows for plenty of space for exhibits, fancy stages and unique venues for all the performers and presentations.

What kind of summer fun? It's fair to say there's something for everyone, from burlesque to community art exhibits you can tour by boat.