Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa, the blank slate, is a concept as ancient as Aristotle, and as modern as an empty sim. Often associated with the human mind in that magical moment before impressions, feelings, opinions and experiences have made their mark, the very words 'tabula rasa' can fill a creative person with the thrill of possibilities.

It's also the name of Ieko Catnap's art sim on OSGrid, and it's home to pleasant pathways leading between attractive buildings with a provencale feel.  In one corner, a little grey graveyard is enriched by this lovely fountain, with prim fish that say they were made by Virtual Christine, giving the place the feel of an authentic history.

Charming too are the little shops, a flower market, bakery, newspaper printers and more, the cutest has to be 'Chik' Ânes' with a bit of a Latin American vibe going on. 

Tina on Pangea

Tina Bey's life has been one of art for just about forever. The person behind the avatar is an award-winning artist with a wealth of academic knowledge of Fine Arts, and a long experience of working with galleries, patrons, students, teachers, and lovers of art in general. She got her first region on OSGrid eleven years ago.

Tina Bey: My first region was called "Araucana" (Antarctica in English) thanks to someone generous who lent me his server. I wanted to create futuristic constructions floating on the seas. Later I had, for many years, the "Araucana" region also in Osgrid. It had a purely science fiction theme, which I continued with for several years... until I started seeing and attending exhibitions, galleries and museums dedicated to art in the metaverse. It was almost a replica of my real world, in which I had navigated quite successfully, with a good resume, awards, scholarships, commitments with galleries and contracts to fulfill... too many things. When one has already gone through all that, the 3D virtual world opens up as a great breath of freedom, where a canvas can be walked and walked on literally without restrictions.

For the Love of Lucy

Lucy was always there for me inworld with a word of encouragement, a joke or a useful observation. Always the same, generous, funny, creative.

In virtual worlds, when you don't see someone around for a while, it is easy to assume that they're simply busy elsewhere, or perhaps not feeling up to sitting in front of a computer. That happened with me and Lucy. This summer came along, the Safari trips took a break, and so did I, from virtual worlds... life got busy, and I totally missed seeing the news on Facebook that Lucy (in RL Peter Jones) had passed away. Only today, going to check his Facebook profile to see how he was doing, did I find out what happened.

Lucy Afarensis

That's part of the paradox of the modern world where in theory everyone is in touch with everyone else and we all know everything. In reality, we only know what we know, follow what we follow. Information we need and care about doesn't always get through.

Lucy was key to the HG Safari tours around Opensim throughout the years. More than either of us ever put into words, whenever we got the opportunity to chat - I wish told him more often what our friendship meant to me. Lucy was in SL from 2007 and in Opensim not long after that (Lucy's regions faced onto the OSGrid Moat, close to LBSA),  and the choice of the name name 'Lucy Afarensis' was a humorous reference to age - by a person who was never a fossil by any means.

We had a memorable visit to Lucy's region, including the Grove Gallery, in May 2018. We visited her place on Francogrid back in 2016 also, enjoying a concert by Nazira Avro - Lucy was always a canny opensimmer, spreading the wealth of builds over different grids, so as not to risk losing all if one of them should fail. That's not a lot of Safari visits, you may say, considering how interesting these places were, but Lucy was always the first to give up a spot in the HG Safari calendar, in favor of some other builder or artist, so to finally get to bring the whole group over to experience the horseback trip across this vast landscape was an absolute privilege.

Pangea's Birthday

 This weekend there will be a big party event to mark the 4 years of Pangea grid.

There's a parade, a ballet, a party, on 12 October from 11.00 am SLT on region Koeln not to mention en exciting GoKart competition. Marlon Wayne and his merry band of builders, scripters, and artists are celebrating a big milestone. Here's an in depth interview with the man himself.

Marlon Wayne: My virtual life began in 2006 in Second Life. Back then, I was fascinated by the limitless possibilities of this virtual world, where one could build their own projects and immerse in communities. I was especially drawn to virtual Cologne, partly because of my real-life proximity to the city. I quickly became part of a special family in the virtual city and was passionately involved in the carnival, as well as in music and show projects.

When Second Life changed its terms of service (TOS) in 2011, I decided to move to Avination. I was allowed to take my virtual version of Cologne with me, which remains an integral part of Pangea today. In Avination, I met many new people who accompanied me on my virtual journey, and some of them are now part of Pangea.

After Avination closed in 2015, I began looking for a new, stable grid that could be a reliable home for my vision and the virtual communities we had already built. However, the search proved difficult because many grids at the time were struggling with technical issues and unstable servers. Although I didn’t have the technical expertise to run my own grid, I was determined to try. I rented a server, but I knew I would need support.

sim Koeln as it looks today on Pangea

Luckily, I had already met Kitty Sarrassine in 2010, an extremely talented server administrator and programmer. Thanks to her technical knowledge and tireless effort, I was able to bring my vision and long-held dream to life: creating my own grid. Kitty supported me from the beginning and played a crucial role in making this project a reality.

On August 31, 2020, the first avatar of our new grid was born—Kitty Sarrassine herself. She worked meticulously to ensure that every detail was set up correctly and that the grid ran smoothly and reliably. After weeks of hard work, it was finally ready, and on September 27, 2020, the second avatar, Marlon Wayne, was born.

Gino's Butterfly

Dale innis asked why we meet, and where we meet, before heading to destination 1 on Safari.

The 'why' is simple. If we all meet together before jumping to the first destination, then I can let the hosts know how many people to expect, so it's easier for them to know when to begin their presentation. Meeting at the Clubhouse means anyone new can make some friends beforehand, so they can ask for help if they get lost. Also, there are often last minute changes to the Safari, so if you come to the Clubhouse, you'll have the latest news about what's going on. Lastly - have you ever invited a group of friends over for a meal, and one person shows up waaaay too early, and you don't know what to do with them? We want to avoid that situation, which is embarrassing and stressful for our hosts.

Dale Innis and Karima Hoisean, on Gino's Butterfly

The 'where' is simple too. We meet at the Clubhouse on HG Safari grid and there's usually someone on the sim to welcome you half an hour before the event begins.

Thirza Ember: welcome Kjs, bonsoir Prodyck, grande soiree pour les frenchies ce soir!

Prodyck.Theas: hellooo... On va voir ça :)

kjs Yip: Hi, I know I'm early, but I don't want to be late...

Thirza Ember: omg Kjs sitting on that Hand chair I made... I feel very proud and happy now

kjs Yip: It looks very comfortable...

Tosha Tyran: incl. one finger for back scratching

kjs Yip: It's the thumb...

Kjs Yip on hand at HG Safari clubhouse

Thirza Ember: i hope it doesn't leave fingerprints on the clothes! I am really happy that Prodyck says he will be one of the French speakers at HIE in 2025. it's going to be a great event

Tosha Tyran: I am sure it will be! Hi Prodyck

kjs Yip: Hi all... I'm a newbee at the safari, please be kind ...I try my best to run behind you...

Tosha Tyran: if you want, kjs, I take you by the hand,  or better yet: Forest will, heheh

Forest Azure: you can always tp to Thirza's head, kjs, she likes pple landing on it

Thirza.Ember: I have big hair so it doesn't hurt me if you tp to my skull

Tosha Tyran: Holzkopf

Safari Goes Into the Light

 First stop this week, Dorena's World! We visited a beautiful art sim, more More Than Lights, in company with two of the creators, Miara Lubitsch and Kjs Yip. HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Our arrival point on More Than Lights

Every Safari begins with an avalanche of greetings... and some teasing. ON the practical side, here's how Safari works. The LMs and a notecard explaining our trip are located inside a giant prim, at the Clubhouse on HG Safari grid. Simply touch and 'Buy' the pack, which has the Week number on it. The weekly LM pack is generally left up from Wednesday to Sunday, for anyone who wishes to take the tour but wasn't able to join the group. 

This week, we had the nice mixture of first time Safari goers, occasional and regular Safaristas, as you know all our welcome, and we're very happy to provide TPs and help if you're new to this group hypergridding lark, so don't be shy - join us if you can.

Inside the theater - very comfortable seating!

Star Ravenhurst: Hi Yara and Alex

Yara.Eild: Hi Star, Loru :-)

Loru Destiny: -*- HeLlO-*- everybody :-) I hope I'm not naked

Forest Azure: hi loru .. and no

Loru Destiny: ahh great, a new experience when I HG

M is for Music

Morlita Quan's Second Life adventure started 16 years ago, and it was pure boredom.

Morlita Quan:   I even remember myself thinking : " Ok, I won't stay here more then two days". But as you well said, SL is a nest of creativity and very soon, I had the luck to meet persons there who used SL as a professional tool for art and music, and not like a simple social game. 

Morlita at her new, as yet unfinished, gallery on sim MorlitaM on OSGrid.

Sixteen years later, Morlita is still working on projects that overlap between the real and virtual worlds. Recently she has revived her interest in Opensim, and has an exciting new sim on OSGrid - address at the end of the post, as usual!  What, though, makes virtual worlds a special place to be creative?

Dreams on the 10th Dimension

All is like a dream

Star Ravenhurst's new grid Tenth Dimension is home to her art gallery Le Beau Retrouvé, and there's a big new show scheduled for September 29. 

You're still just about in time to participate. If you make art this could be your chance to exhibit alongside the likes of Tina Bey, Xenon Darrow, Remmy Ravenhurst (no relation), Savannah Joy, Forest Azure, Arcfury and a huge multimedia install by Cherry Manga  and Nico Kailani. The deadline to submit art is September 23, although the sooner you do it, the better it is for Star's nerves! Organizing art shows can be onerous, so why does Star do it?

Star Ravenhurst: It can be difficult to get into a gallery in the real world and most artists never get that opportunity. In fact, they are lucky if anyone beyond their family, friends, or instructors ever sees their work. Having my own grid, I can now give them more opportunities to showcase their work in virtual.

If you're a regular dipper-in to this blog, you may remember reading about Le Beau Retrouvé here although bear in mind, the location of the gallery has changed since then (just part of the way opensim is always in flux and keeping it interesting), and perhaps you caught the episode of Inworld Review where Star spoke about the gallery, among her many other projects. 

Star Ravenhurst:  What does the gallery mean to me? I am an artist in RL and have formal education in Fine Arts, Graphic Arts, Art History, and Design. During college, I worked for an art gallery and learned a lot during my time with them and also took classes in Marketing and Professional Practices to help me learn the business side of art. I do not have the funds in RL to open my own gallery, but in virtual, everything is possible. I have seized the chance to create an art gallery that is welcoming and supportive of new artists as well as established artists. 

Rural Retreat

In a corner of the gloriously rural Ruritania region on Littlefield Grid, is a beautiful old barn, converted by sim owner  Xi Shi into an airy art gallery,

It's a perfect little jewel set in a many faceted 4x4 VAR build that celebrates so many aspects of England that is will take you hours visiting and contemplating in order to take in all the delightful details, as it draws you back to another time, not just in the style of the vehicles and the road signs, which belong to the era of Dr Who's TARDIS, but also in the allusions and references to UK film and television, gently reminding you of classics like Brief Encounter, and the Two Ronnies discussing fork handles - or should that be four candles - to mention only two of the dozens of 3D throwbacks... make sure you have your wits about you, or you'll miss a lot of the fun. The HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Dan Banner's Rec-Creation

 If you're allergic to flashing lights, this post is not for you - but if  you're partial to a little bit of kaleidoscope every now and again, then Dan Banner's multi media experience over on OSGrid's Recreation Plaza could be right up your street. 

If you haven't heard of this sim, then add it to your list of must-see places, for it's a bit of a landmark in opensim culture.

Cherry on Hie

Believe it or not, we're halfway through the Safari trips for 2024 and this week was a special occasion for all fans of the Hypergrid International Expo, better known as HIE, that weekend once a year where we blend theater and lecture and outrageous displays of language-y excess, not to mention a huge amount of publicity booths with freebies and info about places all over the metaverse.  

The Safari crew, which seems to be getting better by the week, descended on Craft grid for our first destination, after of course the usual Clubhouse banter among old friends, plus new friends to Friend, if you know what I mean.

If you ever wonder why there is a pre-meet at the clubhouse, rather than me just giving out the addresses of the places we plan to visit in social media, it's because the whole point of our venture is to be there for one another, to be there for newbies, to check on oldbies, and to give our hosts an exact time when we will arrive. 

Because nobody likes people who show up too early for a party. 

If you're curious about what is involved in being a Safari destination, there is a whole page about that here on this blog. And yes, the 'six' is a lie, well spotted. 

Lifted Pixel in human form... wha????

Anyway, HIE. A mix of static booths advertising everything from gorean worlds to education sims, with the main event being a weekend of music, art, and interesting talks. If you don't know much about this annual event, spanning the whole of opensim, here's the HIE website.  Oh and here is a vid of this year's booths.

Taarna and friends check out the booths

The most recent edition of HIE was about a month ago, so this week the Expo park was closing, and we had one last chance to go around and grab all the goodies we might have missed. Some of the participants made massive gift items, some didn't have much more than a nice poster, which was great, because they balanced each other out with the lag. At least, so we told ourselves - perception is reality!

SIWAS and SoA BAD at their booth, CCI grid.

Revisiting these 103 booths was fun, there are individuals, projects, regions and whole grids represented here, so probably everyone got to see something in opensim that they had never heard of before. We will be doing this all over again in 2025, so if you want to participate, stay in touch via this blog and both the HG Safari and HIE social media so you won't miss out.

So after a bit of final freebie and LM-gathering we all went into the HIE auditorium, the ever fabulous Cherry Manga agreed to do an encore performance of her spectacular "Variations monochromes autour d'une coordonnée". 

Snowglobe effect at Cherry Manga's show on HIE

All of the talks and art performances of HIE were filmed live and can be watched on the HIE Youtube channel (go into settings and choose the Closed Captions in the language of your choice). Don't forget to Like and Subscribe ! But to actually be present during one of Cherry's performances is really something special. About 25 of us lucky mortals enjoyed the 20 minute mix of mesh,music and special effects. 

Cherry Manga: hi Forest! And hello everyone... salut les frenchies :)

Jeff Kelley: salut l'artiste

Thirza Ember: please everyone, toggle your sound, to make sure you will hear Cherry's soundtrack, by Morlita M, during the show

Cherry Manga: The show will start in few seconds...

I can't lie, I think the tables are the best bit.

Twenty minutes of sensory overload / bliss later....

lifted pixel: lovely every time thank you cherry!

One andOnly: Great!

SIWAS S [de→en]: fantastic

Cooper Swizzle: Absolutely awesome

Jeff Kelley: BRAVO !

Petlove Petshop: Amazing!

Angelic Kisses: *** APPPLLLAAAUUUSSSEEEEEEE***

Ms Cal: : ҉❥•APPLAUSE•❥•҉   ҉❥•APPLAUSE•❥•҉

Kimm Starr: whispers: That was pretty awesome!

Roffellos Kisses: brilliant work!

Harthelie Atlas: grandiose bravo

James atLLOUD: Yay - so cool!

Francisco Koolhoven: incredible!

Cherry Manga: See you next year , hopefully :)

To see the full show on video, please watch it here, and again, just a reminder that you help other people to find out about HIE, about Cherry and all the other participants, and about opensim in general, when you feed our algorithm by liking videos and subscribing to the channel. 

More Arts, More Friends!

Victoria Logan's OSGrid "Arts And Friends" adventure has a new chapter, this time it's all about 'We are OSGrid'.  

The inaugural party will be late May, so keep your eyes open for the event details which will be listed on opensimworld.com ad elsewhere on social media.

Lots to see here and also plenty of places for partying of course! 

Le Beau Retrouvé

 Tomorrow Sunday 28 is the grand opening of Star Ravenhurst's new gallery called le Beau Retrouvé. It's on Genesis RP grid - the Address is as always at the end of the post - and it's a project she has spent many months putting together. It's beautiful!

Lampi's Legends

Lampithaler Artist's latest build Cloudshead Worldheart is an enchantment of pixels. To have a heart as big as the world, to have your head in the clouds, that describes the perfect intersection between childhood dreams and artistic inspiration.

The region is all islands, of improbable shapes, and the main party is inside the biggest, almost pumpkin like, but with a distinctly bark-like feel to the outer shell.

Inside, in the base, is the dance floor where we foregathered to enjoy dome tunes ably dished out by DJ Marlon Wayne. 

The Journey of Pat Babii

The final meetup of this first season of 2024 took us to a brand new grid tor the HG Safari and the tourists were out in force to visit SharingIsCaring grid, and discover some lovely and thought provoking art. The full HG Address is, you guessed it, at the end of the post.

Pat Babii: Welcome to the Gavezdois Virtual Museum. 

lifted pixel: Thank you for having us Pat! :D

Pat Babii: My oldest avatar on Opensim is already 11 years and many months old, and in SL, where the surname Babii came from, the avatar has existed for 17 years. The person who gives life to these avatars is Brazilian by birth and Portuguese by adoption, and I spent most of my life in Sintra, Portugal. I don't say much more than this about my RL. This museum, which was once a museum exclusively with exhibitions of classical art, is now set up more like an art gallery than a museum.

Pat Babii outside her SharingisCaring gallery

Pat Babii: What is on display now is a current type of art, composed exclusively of images made by Artificial Intelligence software called Midjourney. To obtain images in this software, the user needs to describe in text what they want to be in the image, which may vary in styles, reference artists, materials, eras, colors, etc. The options are endless

Pati's Party

 Yesterday evening, Portugal time, was the grand opening of the new AI generated art gallery of Pat Babii on her sim Gavezdois.

Pat Babii

You may remember this interesting sim in another life, when it was located on Craft Grid. Now it has found a home on SharingIsCaring and over a dozen people joined the fun in the spectacular sky dance hall, with its constantly moving wall art. 

Gavezdois

Andron Rae DJ'd the event with all kinds of Ai generated music, mixing singers and styles and songs that created a colorful, curious,  crazy and sometimes quite philosophical. 

Tosha's Bilbao Wow

Wow, just like that, from Louisiana to the northern coast of Spain, and some of the most interesting modern art remade in the virtual, all thanks to the spectacularly talented Tosha Tyran. Craft grid veteran and self-confessed 'bricklayer' Tosha has created some of the most amazing opportunities for opensimmers who want to tour world heritage sites without ever leaving the house. From her Taj Mahal to the Hopi Indian village, her interest in architectural heritage is truly global. We arrived on sim The Caravan on craft to a nice welcoming bit of graffiti on the plaza. 

Thirza Ember: i find it so fascinating how art could change a city and change people's lives

Tosha Tyran: yes! for example that wonderful Zubizuri, and all the new metro stations, they really are like this, and a new university building, and a lot of art and theater and music all over the city of Bilbao.

Forest Azure: was fighting with the terms of agreement

Unadecal Masala: having to sign gdpr... for what, there is no personal information collected beyond an avatar name, a mac address and an IP address. People need to get off thinking that an IP address is in any way private information

Lucy Afarensis: what is a GDPR ?

The Daqtheion Empire

By light, we see light

It's a little bit Alice Through the Looking Glass, a touch Whovian, a smidgen Minecraft, and plenty Mobian; it will find worlds unique to your mind and echo them back to you, with interesting sidelights. But of course, whatever allusions fly, this is  the Daqtheion Empire, and the mindworm of Knight Knox, the creator of Phos, a region of crystals and cubes, space and sounds, towers and tunnels and teleports and trees.

If you want to fall in love all over again with Opensim, then take a trip to Mobius and visit this region; this is no game, it's an expression of art, on an imperial scale, in the magnificent opensim style of immense space coupled with total freedom of movement. HG Address, as always, at the end of the post... You make your own adventure.

Master of Art: Gianni Spada

Lu sule, lu mare, lu ientu 

'The sun, the sea and the wind' have shaped Apulia, the 'heel' of boot-shaped Italy. It's a peninsula of a peninsula, reaching out across the Adriatic towards Albania, a land of olive groves, rocky beaches, with mountains in the north and vast tracts of fertile farmland, timeless villages, and busy ports.  It's the home of Gianni Spadavecchia. His last name means 'old sword' in English but inworld, he shortens it to just Spada - way easier to type.  

Gianni Spada at the HIE conference in October.
Apulia is called 'Puglia' in Italian - don't let that g fool you, it's pronounced Pull-ya

Italy has the most UNESCO sites in the world, and there are 1.5k museums in the country. So much history! There are about 300 recognized archeological sites, but you'd have to add several zeroes to that figure if you were to count all the places with notable archeology. With so much out there, it would be completely impractical to make them all accessible. There just aren't the resources to preserve, protect, excavate and investigate every single one of them, so many of these treasures remain buried, or otherwise undeveloped in terms of a visitor friendly  destination. And of course, not all of us can take a day trip to Italy to check out these fascinating treasures.

Nyx by the Numbers

 You have to admire a man who's bold enough to wear short shorts and if his shorts are short, that's the only thing he's short of. Space, time, energy and talent - Nyx Breen has got a lot of all of it.

This is Zahlensymbolik, on one of the Immersive VAR regions of Pangea grid, one of 6 grids where Nyx has a presence in opensim. Zahlensymbolik is a German word that suggests a lot of ideas - numerology, the symbolism of numbers or aspects of mathematics, the magic in counting. Deep stuff! However, never fear, this is not a superstitious sim, more a place where numbers are made to dance and delight.

Nyx Breen: The name sounded fun after I had used google translate English to German, more of play on the sound of it than the meaning. I'm a numbers person, yes - but more on the math side than the numerology side.

Nyx Breen

 Zahlensymbolik (let's just call it 'Z')  started as a sim months ago, and then the effects took on a life of their own, with fewer prim and more effects. There are 8 sections here, each different.