Inworld Review Returns

 As many of you know, this summer we lost Mal Burns, the creator and host of Inworld Review, the talk show on his Metaworld Youtube channel. His death was a blow to his friends and to the many people who knew and admired him through his projects, all aimed at helping Opensim to be better known and appreciated.

Mal explaining something technical on Inworld Review

For the past months, Inworld Review has been offline, and this was a decision by the team who helped Mal keep the show on the road over many years. This was out of respect for Mal and his family, and also to give some time for reflection to those who had helped Mal make the show over the years. 

Interviewing Lampi, Marlon and Tutz from Pangea Grid

In the end, the team felt that the real way to respect Mal's legacy is by continuing to let people know about all creators and innovators who call Opensim home, and the great places and projects they have brought to life here.

Safari Gets Desolate

Tosha Tyran: I just woke up, am still somewhat uncoordinated

Cherry Manga: coffee?

Tosha Tyran: I got myself a beer - more appropriate I thought, haha

Thirza Ember: can I have a red bull instead of coffee?

Cherry Manga: omg, lol! you both are savages!

Yes,  we are savages, which is a good thing because the second destination of this week's HG Safari tour - the Fall season premiere for 2025 - was on a sim that savages thrive on. Well, to be fair, anyone who loves post apocalyptic landscapes, zombies, aliens, elephants, or witty posters, or an adventure playground, or lovely grungy freebies including some great PBR materials would like this new sim Desolate Expanse by Cherry Manga ... yeah I guess that is pretty much everyone. Just about two months old, it's a concept sim constructed with the help of visits by Cherry to some of the best loved Freebie purveyors in Opensim. And while it's desolate, it's definitely not despairing. You'll need to be wide awake to tour this sim without missing all the lovely details, and gifties too.

It all started with a small disappointment for many of us.

Free Expression

 Summer time, and the livin' is easy... if by living you mean taking a wander around Opensim and seeing some beautiful and meaningful art, and being able to snag a lot of gorgeous original freebies. The talent and the generosity of this artist are so well known in Opensim, and you probably guessed who's being featured just by looking at the photos. 

Cube, Cherry Freebies, Pangea  Grid

In her fifteen years in Opensim, on Francogrid and here and there on a dozen other grids, not to mention her years in SL before and during her Opensim sojourn, Cherry Manga has never failed to delight us and amaze with her spirit and her vision of both the Opensim community, and of her own RL battles. So many can relate to her artwork expressing the frustration of illness and the toll it takes on mind and body. Despite that, her art is capable of wild flights of fantasy,  of beauty and tenderness,  of dreams and nightmares, into the past and into a techno future.

The Stars of Exupery

 There is a kind of law of the shortest distance to the image, 

a psychological law by which the event  to which one is subjected 

is visualized in a  symbol that represents its swiftest summing up.

                                        Wind Sand and Stars, A. de Saint-Exupéry

He fell out of the sky in 1935. 

Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born into a noble but impoverished family of Lyon, France in 1900. He became a pilot in the years between the world wars, transporting people, mail, and goods around North Africa and the Med, frequently flying over the Sahara. That desert, and its peoples, were so far from the modern hazards of life in Europe in the 1930's, that they captured his imagination and, along with his other adventures in far flung places, gave life to a series of books, rich with limpid prose, exquisite descriptions, and timeless reflections on life and love. 

It was in the Egyptian part of the Sahara that De Exupéry crashed, during a race from Paris to Saigon, in 1935. Of his many plane crashes, this one - and the 4 days that it took him and his copilot to be found - were the most influential on the rest of his life. Hope and fear, mechanics, mirages, and hallucinations, coffee and oranges, and a passing Bedouin got him out of the situation, and no doubt led to Saint Exupèry's career as a writer. 

The best loved and most widely distributed of his works is The Little Prince. It's one of those books that everyone should have read, and once read, you will probably decide to read it again. It's a short read, most people can get through the whole book in about an hour.

The planets

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. 

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.

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. 

HIE - Art on Craft

 The Hypergrid International Expo is an annual event where people whose first language is not English get the chance to speak about their grid, their projects, their inventions and their opinion- in their own language - with subtitles for the rest of us - about places in Opensim.

While the emphasis of the presentations is to give non-English speakers a voice, the HIE Park is full of publicity booths that celebrate and inform you about all kinds of places in opensim. 

Safari Calendar 2024

 Another splendid year of opensim fun has drawn to an end and another is just gearing up - grid hopping in virtual worlds has never been more rewarding or reliable!  To celebrate the new year, here's a calendar that celebrates just a few of the loveliest people and places. 

This calendar is an inworld object, available at the HG Safari clubhouse, and if you hit the Calendar Info button, you will receive a Notecard that gives you the HG addresses and LMs to each of the places featured in the pictures. A big thank you to all the artists and builders who agreed to pose for the calendar, and to snowbody Cortes for invaluable help on the script. 

So who and where does this year's calendar feature?

Our cover artist is Luna Lunaria, seen here on her region Luxor, on Wolf Territories Grid. An absolute genius when it comes to texturing Luna is well known for her

Missing the Sky

 Are you the kind of person who can't wait for the next update in the Firestorm viewer, and eagerly test its many windows and menus? Or do you wait until you think it's been tweaked into reliable behavior - maybe even wait till you absolutely are obliged to update?  As grateful as we all should be by the people who do the testing and reporting of problems, it's probably fair to say that the majority of us just want the thing to work, and are not entertained by bug hunting. 

Firestorm 6.6.8 (68380) was released this January. When I finally bit the bullet and changed over to it,  it seemed a pretty painless transition. 

With one exception - all the Windlight settings were gone. Urk. 

For a few weeks I just let it slide, but eventually I had enough time to check around to see what was up with that and found this thread on the SL community page. The new way - well, not all that new, but never mind about  that - to make skies is called EEP (meaning Environment Enhancement Project) and you may have seen some stunning EEPs around opensim like this beauty...

Dew Drop Islands, by Azi Az and Danger Lytton

and this one:

Anatomy of an Artist

Something special has been brewing over the past few months. Cherry Manga, one of the most respected and admired artists working in opensim. The region is Anatobotanica, on Pangea Grid. This opening was timed for the conclusion of this season of the Safari, and it really gave the WOW factor to our trip.
At the end you'll find the HG Address spelled out for you - and just to say THANK YOU for reading this blog, for following it, for visiting the destinations whether with the Safari group or on your own - it means a lot to our kind hosts! - and for all the comments, suggestions, help and support. It's been a great season, and there is so much more out there to see.

Anatobotanica is a golden artefact, hanging on a mirrored ocean, with an inland sea of molten gold.

The highlands are spheres, bubbles, bodies - a hive of creativity, golden like the rest. That golden glow is everywhere; the lightbulb of an idea, the first rays of sunrise, the glistering of passions, thoughts, challenges, and pure creativity. It flows through virtual spaces, out into the real world and then back, directly through the fingers of, and the idiosyncratic imagination of, Cherry Manga. 

Cherry Manga 3: OS and SL

Throughout the years, Cherry Manga has accomplished the rare feat of maintaining a notable presence both in SL and Opensim. Her 'extrametaversal' experimentation includes forays into Tilt Brush as you can see in this video. Google has discontinued Tilt Brush but there is an Opensource version if you are interested in trying it yourself. It's a brilliant way to augment inworld art in further layers of surreality.

(By the way, please take a moment to watch all these videos in Youtube, like, subscribe and comment if you can, it's a nice way to show your appreciation for the hard work of the machinima makers.)

The Gift

– Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est très simple :

on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur.

A secret, a heart, a book, a voice, a concept, a collaboration, and a sim. A gift.

It began with Unadecal Masala. He runs a region hosting service, where you can rent a fast, efficient region connected to OSGrid, and I think other grids too, but you should ask him. He has always been a supporter of the Safari and Opensim Arts in general, and he offered a space for a project by and for the Safari. 
The idea of doing an event  this season to mark the 122nd birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery was already on my mind. His most famous text is The Little Prince, written in French but translated into over 250 languages and dialects, making it one of the most international and best loved books in the world.

But who to take on the job of imagining the book for opensim? It could only be one person, Wizardoz Chrome, machinimer, conceptual artist, word lover and a brilliant and delightful collaborator, not to mention one of the founding members of the Safari. She soon involved others, including Tina Bey, Art Blue, Venus Adored, and Cherry Manga, who presented each of us with a white animesh rose, freshly invented by her, on our arrival on sim Exupery. A truly international group to celebrate these sublime words that have resonated in hearts all around the planet.

Corn-o-graphy

 This week is Cornflakes Week, a festival of fun that is exclusively OpenSim. Only a handful of grids are  participating this year (we were up to 11 grids back in 2017) but maybe Cornflakes 2023 can prove to be BIG for original OpenSim silliness, if the world doesn't end up a cinder before then, 

Put it in your calendar just in case, February 22-28, 2023.

The idea of Cornflakes Week? It's not morbidly focused on one late lamented person. Goodness knows, so many dear companions, fine artists, and generous friends have left this virtual life and we miss them all. No, the idea of the week is that it's an open ended festival, in the sense that you can have your own home grown Corny party, it can be adapted to the style of any grid or region, it's not affiliated with the weather or time of day, or the local religious, cultural, social, or political goings on of any one corner of the planet. What the world needs now is more gentle silliness, more than ever, and Cornflakes Week is all about that in a uniquely OpenSim way. 

Just to show that the concept can be modded, brought forward from the aughts to the twenties, and from pure prim to magnificent mesh, Cherry Manga took a journey through the creations of Cornflakes and came up with her own take on gentle fun. The build is still visitable in the sky above our clubhouse on OSgrid, and guitarman Whirli Placebo agreed to sing for us. But before that, we popped over to see fireworks conjurer Wordofthe Wise, who kindly invited us to see a copy of the region where all the Corn fun began. 

As always, the addresses of the destinations are at the end of the post.

Chasing the Safari

RL comes first, we all know that, and for a lot of people, that makes joining the Safari impossible. Same happened to me this week. But while some weeks, the group visits specially opened sims or one-off events, this week's destinations are all easy enough to visit when the fancy takes you. And very worthwhile too. Just grab the LMs from the Safari clubhouse, for your convenience they are available at Teravus Plaza on OSGrid, as well as at our usual rendezvous, HGSafari sim on Francogrid. If you made a  LM to our Francogrid clubhouse more than two weeks ago, it will no longer work, as the sim has been moved onto another server. But if you put our hg address into your map, you will find it OK. That address? hg.francogrid.org:80:hgsafari
This week the first destination was something of a load test for the group, and by all accounts it stood up well to the onslaught of the safari waifs and strays. The grid in question, Sailonbye, (full HG Addresses at the end of the post) is a mini grid that brings together three of opensim's greatest virtues: a sense of place, a talented builder of original content, and a generous heart.

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 !

     

Safari Summer... of Arts

        Plans change, and sometimes that's a very good thing. This week the plan was to spend just a little time taking a look around the Summer of Arts region on Metropolis, and then move on to a music event. 
        Apart from the general insanity, and the opportunity to make new friends, the underlying purpose of the Safari is to practice grid jumping, that's why we usually have two three or even four different destinations each week. But due to a last minute cancellation, the 72nd consecutive Safari was all Metropolis all the time. And boy, what a fantastic time it was too!
        As usual, the Safari began on Teravus Plaza, OSGrid. Teravus is a residential sim, we occupy the south west corner of it, right next to the waterfall. You will find the Group Joiner poster by the elephant. Every week a new Notecard + LM folder is prepared and you can get your copy from the sign marked LANDMARKS by the main entrance to the Clubhouse. I usually only do it at the last minute when all the panic has subsided. If you belong to the HGSafari group in Metropolis or OSgrid, you should also receive the information via group notices. Events are posted in a community on G+ called Hypergrid Safari, and a  group in Facebook, so find us there, if you use suchthings. 

Fun with the Frenchies

          What keeps a grid alive? A sense of place, a sense of purpose. That is the secret behind Francogrid's longevity. The grid is founded on good old French ideals like Liberty and Fraternity, and they mean it. Freedom is paramount on the grid. A free exchange of knowledge. Creativity given the freedom to grow. And free space. The grid has an impressive history of sims donated to creative people. Freedom too from the humdrum cookie cutter architecture of the past.

Accueil, Francogrid's welcome area, with TP parlor. Build by DJ Phil and Cherry Manga

The English language is, obviously, a crushing force for communication in the metaverse. In Francogrid, just about everyone makes an effort to speak English if they meet a non-francophone, however, this grid does a little bit to push back and remind us all that there are other languages out there. 

Safari In Wonderland

Wizard.Gynoid @hypergrid.org:8002: this is starting to look obscene

Clustersled!

 Not one Wonderland. 

Three. 

On three different grids. 

Because this is OpenSim, not merely SL. We saw Alice, rode dragons, made new friends, honed our ability to grid jump, and thoroughly came to terms with the instability - and beauty - of hypergridding. 

Cherry Manga's new Alice build on Francogrid

First up, a Winter Wonderland, Canadian style. L'Hiver du Grand Nord is on Dabici Straulino's VAR region full of snow and fun, and oh boy did we take advantage. Kelso Uxlay and Dabici herself were on hand to welcome us when we arrived, via a gate she supplied, although the Safari Landmark seemed to work OK for most. The HG Addresses are at the bottom of this post, and of course, the LMs and explanatory Notecard (not reading the NC can make your life more difficult) are still available on both the Metro and Francogrid bases, and in Group Notices on Craft, Francogrid, and Metropolis. 

L'Hiver makes you shiver

Creanovale is the biggest little grid, and has a gallic smart ass bot called Jean-Givre on hand to keep you company if you go over there by yourself. If you're into festive stuff, there loads of decorations in the winter market. James ATLOUD found what he described as an HG Wells lost underground vessel (an excellent excuse for another visit) but that's not why we came.