Elements of Azure

 In virtual worlds, the weather tends always to be nice. Bright sun, azure sky, or something dramatic to create the setting for a particular build. But sometimes it's good just to stop and think about the weather itself. What is it, how does it affect our moods, our sense of self and our interactions with others? A change in windlight can dramatically alter the context of an art build, ask any artist who has seen their installation wrongly lit, they generally get pretty steamed up about it. Weather is mood, and mood is fundamental to any creative endeavor.

Forest Azure at her build on the Opensim World's Fair

At the Opensim World's Fair build, on Wolf Territories Grid, (exact Hop at the end of the post) Forest Azure explores the theme of 'The Elements' as experiences inworld. She has evoked a potent portrait of the emotions that the weather can fill us with - mysterious, passionate, pensive, and more. 

It's a series of beautiful black and white photos, beautifully presented in a structure by Rez Rezzal that embraces and proposes the images without encroaching on their atmosphere. Forest is a fan of his style, and with good reason!

Forest Azure: he is all about the feel of something, an the story.

'Winter Wreath' is a glimpse into the liminal world of windows... what side are we on?

A lot of work goes into creating these scenes and tableaux, since, of course, Opensim has no natural weather of its own! So to get the right balance and vibe is down to the artist herself. The delicate brutalist walls of this build perfectly set off the monochrome images, topped off with a thundercloud in miniature, hanging above it at just the right height. 

Forest Azure's The Elements is one of the many art gems on display at the World's Fair, be sure to check it out, in this final week of the show. You won't regret it!.

HG Address/hop

hop://grid.wolfterritories.org:8002/OpenSim%20Worlds%20Fair/1168/1215/22

How Not to be Lonely in Opensim

Ever heard someone say 'there's no-one in Opensim'? Or maybe that was you, talking to yourself - hey nothing wrong with that!

Opensim can often feel like a wide open, empty place. Quite intimidating after, say, the bustling sims of SL. That's not surprising when you compare its size to that of Second Life. 

SL in 2024 by primerib1 aka Claire Morgenthau

SL is not small. This picture shows the main continents at the center of a galaxy of private regions, but if you think that's huge, Opensim is waaaay bigger - if fact, if you're wondering why there's no map of opensim here, that's because it's impossible to say how big the connected hypergrid universe is. 

A few people try to give statistics about it, but they do not, and indeed cannot, know the full extent of opensim, since it is a completely decentralized and unregulated meta-place where anyone at any time and for any duration can have a grid without reporting to any higher authority. 

That means there's no central control, nobody keeping complete records of all the comings and goings of our hyperverse - it just can't be done in a meaningful way.