New and Nu on Safari

This week a trip two regions with something 'nu' about them - first, New Hope, on Asgard, also known by its hg address grid.our-dawn, and to NUNA the spectacular sim on 3rd Rock grid. Complete addresses, as usual, at the end of the post.

the spectacular NUNA art museum on 3rd Rock Grid

First up Asgard, aka Grid Our Dawn, in some places called 'Starfleet', but Asgard is a shorter name so I'm going to stick with it. The story of the Asgard grid is a story full of Ragnaroks - although, not really, because that Viking term means the final destruction of the world, and this grid/group has survived not one massive upheaval but many, and with surprising resilience. We met on a community sim with two members of the grid, Thundergod Thor and Star Ravenhurst.

Thor and Star

Thundergod Thor: Originally we stated out in Second Life on a sim called Asgard Aito, but things got far too expensive, so we moved to Kitely.  Kitely is amazing and well run but again we ran into the issue of expenses. Our Grid Owner, Trude Odinsson, set up a dreamgrid and we eventually moved to our own grid. Castle Gimli, our primary castle - or at least the floor plan of it -  traveled with us from SL,  to Kitely, to MetaverseLife, to Axelle (Asgard). Not long after our 3rd Ragnarok, we settled here in Grid Our Dawn.  Unfortunately the god Ohess did not like the Norse gods settling there, so we were hit with yet another Ragnarok. Trude being a little miracle worker got everything back up and running. We had started to grow and had nearly 30 regions on this single 2011 server and then the server was compromised by someone we trusted. The worst of all Ragnaroks yet happened just as we were transferring all of our grid data and assets over to new SSDS - tragically we lost everything. Not being one to give up, Trude got to work and within a few days we were back up and running with help from Fred Beckhusen.

Arriving on sim New Hope (not to be confused with New Hope Grid)

Thundergod Thor: It was at this point we put out this region and named it  "New Hope" because that's what we'd found.  As the primary builder and grid admin I wasn't sure what to do with it, I just knew I could not go back to much of the older stuff we had and it was time to start building my own stuff.
Dabici.Straulino: kudo for resilience
Fitheach Eun: I think you have beaten my starting over record Thor ;)
Thirza Ember: wow that's a terrible story
Thundergod Thor: but all true

Star Ravenhurst: Which is why the whole grid has created good stories. I am from Texas and my region is Land Of Xzar.
Thirza Ember: BUT kudos also for not shutting down hypergridding as some grids do. How many are you on the grid? the core members
Thundergod Thor: we have roughly 16 core members, all on at different times and from all over the world. All of us are builders and creators. Star is one of our top builders and creator, does an amazing job. All of our grid members, family, work together and help each other with all kinds of things from builds, to decorations, to scripts. We have two amazing scripters, Zena Vickers and Misty Falls.
Thirza Ember: so you guys had a group vote to choose which region to show us? That's the first democratic destination we have ever had
Thundergod Thor: It was pretty much hands down since it's the most developed region, and it was the first to go up after the crash. I like to give our family a choice.
Star Ravenhurst: Well it was the first region, I hope you all will consider visiting other regions on the grid. All are unique

Our first stop was a B&B, a Victorian mansion in the tradition of the South. The building includes a vast reception room with cheery fireplace and musical instruments, and a huge kitchen. HG Safari's own Alan Scot demonstrated his harping skills.

Thundergod Thor: The bed & breakfast building is available in our Dageraad region which is where we have our builds available for people to take for their own regions and everything is free and full perm.

Alan Scot

Trude and Thor met in Second life on a sim named Asgard Aito. When they set up their Dreamgrid world, they offered free land to new people. That's how they met Star (through the late and much missed Spoiled Diva). At the lighthouse, I asked if just anyone can join their grid, or if they are picky.

Thundergod Thor: We do have a vetting process yes. When someone creates an account with us we send them an e mail with specific questions. Then the Admins determine if they'll be a good fit. If they are we approve their account and get them set up.

Star Ravenhurst: We have been burned before, but I like to believe most people in the world are good though

Thundergod Thor: Next stop is the Church/Hospital. The church is a great place for all kinds of RP including Weddings.

Lucy Afarensis: Avatars can get sick ?

Thundergod Thor: well in role play yes. If you want some good story lines, and then of course there are babies to deliver

Thirza Ember: some folks just like a bed bath... and beyond

Thundergod Thor: LOL Thirza

Fitheach Eun: /me coughs...

New Hope Church

Thundergod Thor: This school is actually made after the school I attended in Berlin Pennsylvania.

Dabici.Straulino: oh Canada Flag - good people there

Thundergod Thor: this is the school of New hope... our Grid owner is from Canada, so we have the Our Dawn Grid flag, the Canadian flag and the US flag.

Alan Scot: what's the region size?

Thundergod Thor: this region is a 4x4

The massive school

Thundergod Thor: Okay since we are running out of time....let's move on to the Freedom House Museum

James Atlloud: I toured an underground railroad safe house last summer in Milton, Wisconsin.

Star Ravenhurst: I bet that was interesting James

Nara Nook: I remember it as like an artist hangout. I was a kid so memories are hazy.

The Museum

But sadly, we were out of time, and didn't really get a good look at this part of the build. Something to go back and check out!

Star Ravenhurst: I hope you will consider visiting other parts of the grid as well

Thundergod Thor: thank you for coming

Aphra Hendrix: congrats, good work!

Wizardoz Chrome: Thanks to you :)

James Atlloud: til next time!

And whoosh off we went to 3rd Rock Grid - thanks to the 3RG staff for making sure it was HG accessible in time for our visit to the NUNA Gallery. 

The collection, which opened in 2019 on a dedicated sim on 3rd Rock, was built by Alia Soulstar - shown here in human form, although she guided us around the collection in Raven form. 

Alia Soulstar

The story of how NUNA came into being is a wonderful opensim tale. Alia was exploring the hypergrid, and she stumbled on a small gallery of modern art compiled by Cherry Manga. 

Alia Soulstar: I’ve seen Cherry’s artwork in SL and in OS and I am a Big fan, but this gallery of hers wasn’t her own very fine art. It wasn’t what most virtual galleries occupy themselves with at all—virtual artists strutting their virtual stuff. It was a glimpse into the wider art world out there. And it got me thinking about that wider context of art and how it relates to our use of virtual worlds. I wondered how we could use this Opensim platform to overcome location barriers and reach out to an uncapped audience. This gallery is large and still growing; far too big for us to explore even a single level in today’s 45 minutes. I can easily spend 2-3 hours talking you through any one of the floors below us and still leave as much unsaid. There is an interactive map here that shows you the gallery layout.

The Birdland auditorium

James Atlloud: Oooh awesome map!

Alia Soulstar: The floor we are on hosts contemporary exhibitions. and in the land around/sky above are the satellite galleries: Aurora & Synapse (which you saw on your last visit) and Rothko Chapel, while a whole 5x5 varregion holds HAL9000, another collaborative project between Lorin and I, an artwork that delves into the meanings and psychologies of Kubrick’s 2001. This exhibition around you was a book launch for Birdland, a recently published illustrated novel—its illustrations decorate the margins in that medieval tradition. Nuna Gallery Press is a small publisher of art books.

Raven Alia shows us the caves

There is an NPC guide who will help you visit the gallery, so make the most of her, if you visit. There are also really fantastic interpretive panels by each piece of art that rival and surpass stuff you see in many real life museums.

Nara reads the panel

Alia kindly picked a few highlights for us to visit,  and we tp'd around the building to see it -each special point in our tour was marked with a colored traffic cone.

Alia Soulstar: This detail of a set of paintings is deep inside Chauvet Cave in France. The paintings are surrounded by darkness, they were created in firelight. The scene depicts a pride of lions hunting among reindeer, horses, lions, bulls, and rhinos—a shadow world of movement and intent. The artist(s) stood close enough to these dangerous animals to accurately memorise their subtlest features and render them some time later in a dark cave. The work captures so much chaos and motion in the strong simple lines of a Picasso. This is not some accountant recording the local density of wildlife, it is the art of sophisticated minds, interpreting their world with awe.

 Chauvet Cave paintings

Alia Soulstar: Next - La Pasiega. This rock painting is from Northern Spain and is 65,000 years old. Wait a minute, our species arrived in Spain 40,000 years ago! …..We Did Not Invent Art!!! This is a Neanderthal painting. Remember those brutish “cavemen” from your school textbooks? They too were artists, capable of symbolic thought, drawing accurately, recording information in a pictorial language. They made art. I find this work staggering. We call ourselves Homo sapiens (thinking man), and neande is Latin for “no way”...  The key beside shows you how sophisticated this artwork is

James Atlloud: I learned I'm in the 5% of the modern population with Neanderthal DNA!  My people!

Thirza Ember: lol that actually explains quite a lot. [editor's note, for those crying 'fake news']

Dabici Straulino: James you must be the incarnation of early primitive symbolism

James sits on an exhibit, by La Pasiega. 

Next up, Alia showed us a piece of Renaissance magic.

Alia Soulstar: Among the paintings of the Florentine master Verrocchio is “Baptism of Christ”. It was common for master painters (Verrocchio was one of the finest painters of his time) to train promising young artists and the studio commissions they received gave those youths a chance to work on the smaller details of his paintings. A 14 year old apprentice to Verrocchio was one Leonardo da Vinci, who painted an angel in the bottom left corner and some background landscape. Verrocchio never painted again, so superior was the work of this child compared to his own mastery. 

Alia Soulstar: You can see that superiority even in his painting of the blue robes hanging from the angel figure compared to the stiff drapery on the shoulder of the Baptist. This is, in a quiet way, a painting that changed the course of art history and planted the seeds of the High Renaissance

Fitheach Eun: You can really see the difference in style

Onwards to the modern era, and another milestone. 

Alia Soulstar:  Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”

Fitheach Eun: I grew up near Chadds Ford,  There is a wonderful museum there with all generations of Wyeths - Brandywine River Museum.

Image by Dabici Straulino

Alia Soulstar: This is a familiar image, a famous painting. I assume you are all more alert than me but I viewed this work as a pretty girl resting in the grass in an American midwestern summer… until I looked closely. The savagely thin arms and ankles, the gnarled hands, the pose. A girl with polio who cannot walk crawls towards a distant farmhouse. 

Alia Soulstar: It is a painting of such immense pathos and harshness. And yet the painting is seductive at first glance. This is what art does to you. In the Japanese poetic convention, a Haiku contains a Kireji or “cutting word”. It cuts the poem and your thoughts in two and in its wake the Haiku’s meaning is revealed.

Dabici Straulino: Aliabird fits well with Christina's world.

Alia Soulstar: those are my teasers, I will leave you to explore with your pixellated feet. There are many stories on the walls of this gallery, in the images and revealed in their captions— a Cretan fresco that points to the real story behind the myth of the Minotaur, a urinal that changed the course of art for a hundred years and counting, and seats shaped as lips that whisper lectures on poetry, science or the theory of rhetoric when sat upon…
Thirza Ember: just choosing which images to use and which to leave out must have been an immense task

Alia Soulstar:  some demanded inclusion. Perhaps the hardest choices were among the moderns. I had to educate myself on ancient and contemporary African art, South American and especially Asian. The standard art history textbooks neglect non Euro-American regions. I am always looking to run contemporary exhibitions and build satellite galleries, so yes, when I find must have a work, it does alter the architecture... but already it takes a day to explore properly, and then there are the meditative spaces like Aurora where you can kill time all too easily.

We weren't quite done. I wanted a group pic, and the Dali exhibit seemed a good spot to choose, and it brought us full circle, back to the brilliance of Cherry Manga.

Alan Scot: alright !  the elephant in mesh !! where  did u get those mesh?

Alia Soulstar: I made the elephants, please take a copy if you want one. Persistance was made by Cherry

James Atlloud: If I sat here in RL I'd be banned!

Alia Soulstar: getting moved along from artworks is kinda my hobby

Persistence by Cherry

Alia Soulstar: most of the stuff in the gallery is free to copy and there's a gallery shop just over there with free stuff too

James Atlloud: The museum is fantastic.  It shows love and care!

Kelso Uxlay: Really enjoyed the visit, need to come back for hours

Mal Burns: i will be back for a leisurely stroll

Alia Soulstar: It's a please to have such a knowledgeable group touring. Please come back any time

Thirza Ember: thanks for your time, your talent, and your kindness in sharing.

New Hope region on Asgard grid    grid.our-dawn.com:8002:New Hope     

The Nuna Gallery by Alia Soulstar  grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:The Nuna Gallery