Phigitting at the MdM

 Light and compact, brightly colored, with three prongs in play, and never still for a moment... the buzzword 'phygital' put fidget spinners into my mind ...oh, the naughties! 'Phygital' is a portmanteau term is used to describe, until someone thinks of a less clunky term (and please do!), the fusing of activities going on at the same time in the physical world and on digital platforms. 

Come to think of it though, the Museo del Metaverso is compact, brightly colored, with three prongs in play - it's active in Craft grid in Opensim, and Spatial, a corporate-facing immersive VR platform, and in Second Life. 

Judging by the past year's activities at the Museo del Metaverso, called MdM for short, its founder Rosanna Galvani has been spinning up a huge success story with art shows, workshops, exhibitions, presentations, and conversations that bring together the realities in a masterclass of organization and commitment to education and art. 

Seen here at the Museo, dressed in dark business slacks with her signature top hat, Rosanna cuts a typically modern Italian figure of elegance with a touch of whimsicality that lifts the mood. The HG Address of the MdM is of course at the end of the post, where it belongs.

Rosanna Galvani

Rosanna Galvani: 2025 was both a fruitful and transitional year for us. My vision for virtual worlds is that they should be more than just a "niche" space but that they should take on greater cultural density: artists, curatorial projects, transmedia collaborations—all of this is growing. Over the past year, the Museo del Metaverso has become more 'phygital' with a range of voices and languages and different events. These include digital clothing, 3D installations, and live discussions between participants in real and virtual worlds.

A Life in Review

 Earlier this summer, the virtual world community was saddened to learn that Mal Burns had died. News aggregator, creator and presenter of Inworld Review, co-founder of the Hypergrid International Expo and extraordinary contributor to the Opensim Community Conference, Mal was a well known face and voice around Opensim and in Second Life too. 

He was also a much loved member of the HG Safari tour group so we wanted to celebrate his virtual life with a gathering of the kind he would have approved of - an opportunity to dance, hear some Jazz, and also hear the comments of a few of those who knew him well, whether they had been guests on his show, fellow tourists on Safari, or colleagues from other projects.
About 40 of us gathered - some were friends who rarely get into Opensim these days , like Fuschia Nightfire and Wizardoz Chrome, names anyone who knows the Safari from way back will recognize immediately, just to mention two out of a really exceptional list of attendees. Good thing James filmed it!

The region where this party was held was built by Mal to be his new home for Inworld Review, but also a park and place for him to experiment with the various treasures that he found when out and about on the hypergrid. 

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 ?

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.

Birthdays, Borders and Bunnies

        HG Safari is a hypergrid tour group. 

Every Wednesday we meet on the HGSafari region on FrancoGrid. About 15-20 people join each week, trips are organized in advance so we can meet grid and region owners. We go to two or three different grids each week, spending about an hour on each. The entire event lasts about three hours, some people stay for the whole thing, some people come and go, depending on other commitments. 

To make it easier for people to join us partway through the Safari, event details are posted on opensimworld.com, G+ and Facebook.
To keep it interesting for all, there's a mix of destinations, from social to sporty, from arty to educational, from technical to theatrical. No one grid is promoted above all others, though we tend to spend a lot more time with people who are not in virtual worlds for the money. Cuz if we were into that, we would just have stayed in Second Life.
You will find the HG Addresses for this week's three destinations at the end of the post, should you wish to visit them yourself. You put the address in your Viewer's Map, hit Search, and then teleport. It's a simple low tech way of discovering opensim for yourself.

Building competition entry by XsiberiaX Ilfreddopurifica

         Craft Grid turns 7 on Friday, and there will be a big party from around 1pm Pacific time, which is ten o'clock in the evening in Europe. They will be awarding the prizes for the annual Build