Safari starts at a fest and ends up in Jail

It was highly inappropriate, to be on a cathedral sized art installation doing a girl gangnam style dance but that's how we roll.
      Two trips, and a shorter safari than usual, yet it felt like we encompassed the universe in this our 79th outing. First up, a visit to AvatarFest. This four day festival, part show and tell, part concert, was a huge success both socially and technically.

Thirza and James sitting on the Safari elephant

But first some elephant action. And Teravus Plaza chit chat. Last week, James was accused of 'never sitting on the elephant' so this week, he made sure he got on board. Can't have Safari's premiere sitter accused of not starting the Safari as he means to go on!
Thirza Ember: I'm so glad we get to celebrate your Fest tonight
Han Held: I am too! I'm glad y'all are coming and that Truelie is performing for us. I'm really proud of everyone and the way we all came together.
Thirza Ember: this time, I plan to actually go look at the exhibits on avatarfest, not just dance
Han Held: I think a lot of people are, and I hope that they come by before the end of the month
Sunbeam Magic: it's such a nice small town feeling , easy to walk paths and not too many exhibits to overwhelm you. and Tom had his DJ debut there, he is great bluesy jazzy guy lol
Tom Frost: now that the Metro stammtisch [grid meeting] is only once every month I will have much more opportunity to be with the safari !

      From Caro Fayray's interactive Starburst install and the HyperEvents display, to the Avatar Rep theater and the Hypergrid Stories build, to Leighton Marjoram's charming rainbow tower, the Festival has something for everyone. Take a look in this photo, you have a Star Trek confection, a native American canine build by Timber Wolf,  and Hogwarts, all side by side in perfect harmony!

    And Ferd Frederix's pirate game is probably more fun if you are not trying to make a gif while playing it.

         OSgrid had a giant hiccup this week, resulting in such things as default clothing textures showing up missing from database, notecards not saving, and other weirdness which you may have thought was just you, or the new Firestorm Viewer playing up. The result for our Safari was patchy performance by the Landmark, which is why I always put the HG address on the notecard as well, because sometimes copy and pasting that into your map is quicker.
Han Held: AvatarFEST first and foremost is about the community which lives and builds out here, the renters and owners of standalones. Han Held thought of it in Sept and along with the hard work and skill of Eryn Galen, Isis Ophelia and Tom Frost ..as well as the Metropolis crew and a score of others made it happen. Over the course of four days we had an awesome display of Talent including live performances by Truelie Telling and Torben Asp, live readings and performances - DJ Strannick played for over 7 hours for instance. On top of that we had some of the hypergrid's most talented builders come out and display their projects for us, such as Sunbeam Magic, Ferd Frederix, Franziska Bossi, Eryn Galen, and Nara Malone as well as the 3rd rock grid's Star Trek project.

Han Held

Han Held: I left SL in 2005 but around 2007 I heard it had open sourced things (I didn't know what), that piqued my interest. I had been inworld for two years when I heard about inworldz and osgrid. I joined osgrid, fascinated with the idea of an open hypergrid, metaverse and struggled with making my own region.

HG memories - Photo of Han meeting the guys from Miki Kiti Tiki in the stone age of hypergridding

Han Held: There was a lot of nothing in those days, something  Linda Kellie changed. But before then -I was hanging out in lbsa a lot and one day ...strangers!...that's the photo on to my right -the first ppl I saw from the hypergrid. It was so rare I took a snapshot that you see over there.I went over with them to their grid, they had known each other since 2006, I had heard of the hypergrid back then but that was my first experience with it. They had 4 islands on a desktop, as I remember and I was fascinated. Since then, since 2013 really, it's been amazing to see the hypergrid grow from a few isolated pockets to a major social force, I'm always amazed when I see clubs with SL numbers of people in them.
James Atlloud: great photo

Truelie Telling plays for a super Booper audience

Han Held: AvatarFEST has had 30 ..often 40-something people in it, and it's been amazing to see our community grow from a few islands out on the net. I think our future can be bright and I feel lucky to be a part of it.

JadeYu Fhang

Our next stop - JadeYu Fhang's brand new build, Ego Jail, on  sim of the same name on Francogrid. The install opens officially on Saturday at 10pm Paris time, with a concert by Morlita Quan.

Foreground, Cherry Manga, with JadeYu dancing and Praline on the phone (left) and James Atlloud (right).

      Layers of greyness, and the counterpoint of man and machine, of the turning, almost grinding words, incomprehensible and unyielding, create a magnificent atmosphere. Something between oppressive and liberating, crushed and unutterably light, animated by some mysterious Morlita music.

Praline B, Cherry Manga, Gill Beaumont, Cendres Magic and of course, the Lady of the Moment and JadeYu Fhang were there to welcome us and joined in with the dancing. The frenchies are not big fans of typing on the whole, which presents problems of communication cross the language barrier.
Thirza Ember: Jade, please tell us here in chat something about your build!
Cherry Manga: Jade is thinking ahahaha
JadeYu Fhang: pffffffffffffffff
Praline.B: ahahahahha
JadeYu Fhang: bananaaaaaaaaaaaa
George Equus: This was VERY different...
Neo Cortex: first person view flying is really great here!
JadeYu Fhang: ça exprime ma vision de l'humanité
Cherry Manga: it expresses Jade's vision of humanity. Human beings stuck into his ego
JadeYu Fhang: il construit son chemin avec lui en pensant qu'il batit des cathédrales alors qu'il s'enferme dans l'illusion  ....univers sans couleur

Cherry Manga: Human builds its path with his ego thinking he is building cathedrals with it while he is closing himself in illusions
JadeYu Fhang: ou règne l'illusion et l'apparence
James Atlloud: oh - color is just an illusion it is said
Cherry Manga: where illusion reigns ...and I translate like a potato
Sunbeam.Magic: profound!
Praline B: the must to do is to fly all around ;))
       And so we did. camming, flying, absorbing the strange little angles and interesting combinations of textures and notes.
James Atlloud Is there a place to start exploring?
Praline B : no place, no limits, go as you feel it ... merge yourself in textures
Cherry Manga: no, visitors should be free to see by themselves, jade adds that she likes to fly through the moving textures, yet everyone is free to explore by its own point of view...  white =illusion = ghost, something we are imagining to ourselves to ....damn she says things ...

Praline B: For Jade, the difference is like something you imagine, you create to confort the illusion
Cendres Magic: côté obscur
Praline B: The dark side is on sl here it is the white side lolol
Cendres Magic: in opensim
Nara Nook: ahh

Don't miss the Saturday event, it is going to be very beautiful.

HG Addresses:
AvatarFest (open for a few more days only)           avatarfest.net:6000
Ego Jail (Vernissage at 1pm Pacific time, Nov 21)   hg.francogrid.org:80:ego jail