Lil Bit More JOG

 Just as I publish a post about JOG, yet another cultural event happens there that's worth recording.

The summer festival called Obon, sometimes just called  Bon, is a joyful celebration of the dearly departed, and a moment of reflection about all the positive ways in which our ancestors near or far  have affected our lives, a sort of spiritual giving of thanks.

Looking down from the castle at the party venue

Mint B's region is a classic, with Cuteulala's castle as the backdrop to the main dancing area. There's a cool romantic midsummer moonlight feel to the sim, perfectly contrasted by the red and white colors of the festival - those are lucky colors!

I really love the little ghosties that dance around the central tower or yagura.  

The Jogged Heart

井の中の蛙 大海を知らず

A frog in a well knows nothing of the great sea

Doguu by Daiki Aabye 

On a hot day, there's a cool grid to wander through half a world away from Europe and on a very different planet, culturally. It's the Japan Open Grid, called JOG for short.

The main part of JOG is the great square continent, with the region Jog Central at its heart and all kinds of builds surrounding it, those closest to the middle have a permanent feel, like the 5 year anniversary Grand Staircase, the shopping regions and JOG Meet...

...and of course Dejima, 'Exit Island', as it was called, the one point at which, during the Edo period,  the West could interact with the Japanese culture and economy. We are talking the long period from the mid 1600's to the 1800's. 'Exit through the gift shop' comes to mind.

This, of course, was a period when Japan was trying to have as little as possible to do with outside cultures, in a bid to preserve their own culture and to repel the less attractive effects of western culture.  It meant, however, that the traditions and philosophy of the country were protected while a bit-o-bartering could go on undisturbed.   

Torch For a Nation

Marcel Mosswood lives and works in Indonesia... and Opensim. She started in Second Life (SL) around the year 2010. Six years later, she discovered the flexibility of Opensim, particularly for its potential in terms of creating education-friendly environments. A lot of hard work, learning, building, organizing and networking, and today she has her own school grid, called, Suluh Bangsa.

Marcel Mosswood: it means 'torch for a nation'.

Arrival sim, Suluh Bangsa

This sim she put together in just five days... she is a quick worker, and the design is very bright, modern and airy. You'll see some familiar, elegant and modern architecture. There's a lot of energy on the sim, which is surrounded by a tramway, and the central torch has delightful images projected on the marble.

Lessons are taught inworld using Discord, because the quality is way better than Vivox, and Marcel has a group of teachers, as it would be impossible to do everything on her own. She learned building in SL and has also been studying Blender, plus so the look of the grid is unique to her vision of a place for learning. 

Since this is a school grid, set up to educate students aged from 7 to 17, it's not open to the public - Marcel kindly let me in with my own student avie - check out the shades!

Thirza Guest

Will You Participate in 3px ?

DeReOs grid is approaching its 10th Anniversary very soon, and you're invited to participate! 

DeReOs grid

DeReOs is a beautiful grid of about a hundred regions. It is home to one of the oldest dance clubs in opensim, the Blue Wave, as well as lots of art. And pretty soon, there will be even more hypergrid art on show...

Akita Sonoda: We're looking for your wildest, most beautiful, and innovative artworks for an exhibition called "3px" (pronounced: Three Pix), which we'll be opening on our Grid birthday.

Tony, Jerry, & Little Willow Bay

Here is a heads-up ... or should that be deadheads-up? ... hmmm ... good question. 

What isn't in question is the following news - tomorrow,  August 1st, at 5pm - 8 pm SLT, there will be a concert by Tony Saunders to mark what would have been Jerry Garcia's 82nd birthday, held on the sim Little Willow Bay, on Neverworld, with some very special architecture put together by some of  NWG's best known builders.

Govega Sachertorte: Mr. smokes and Nexus Storm built the sim and I added the art and art info. The pieces are a gift grant to the SCA who is collaborating with the foundation on this. They will be livestreaming the event, and so will we. 

Little Willow Bay region on Neverworld is a virtual take on RL Sausalito

The full address is at the end of the post, as always! 

Wait a minute, why is this event on this sim, you ask, and not the Jerry Garcia Tribute sim that we visited back in 2023? 

Close Encounters

Encounters - of any kind - it's not a word we always associate with Opensim. It's a whole lotta space! 

If you think that opensim's kind of empty today, then you should have seen it ten, fifteen years ago. The small population of pioneers was pretty sparse, and you'd be forgiven for describing it as a place of rare encounters, maybe even zero! 

Close Encounters - the space ship

Yet, for seven years from 2008, there was one fixed appointment on OSGrid where you'd find a regular band of happy dancers, some good tunes, the latest gossip - of a friendly kind, nothing hostile - and the chance to finally see someone after a week of building and experimenting in this brave new world.

The place was Close Encounters, a spaceship dance club on a region that was home to Dorothea Lundquist and Jay Maze. 

Twirling time!

Revisiting Susa

My name is Susa. We come in pairs.

'Susa Bubble', by Saskia Boddeke, text by Peter Greenaway

Confusion, conflict, and consequences;  love, life, and loss. That's the story of Susa Bubble, who went to bed single and woke up double. It's a very long story, stretching back to the golden age of art in Second Life. It is the brain child of Saskia Boddeke, in virtual worlds Rose Borchovski. From 2008, about a year after Saskia joined SL, she has been sharing chapters in this tale, via a symphony of multimedia -sights and sounds, video and music, images and objects, wonderfully woven together into unsettling and detailed Big Art.

And it is a family affair, with contributions by Saskia's husband the well-known filmmaker Peter Greenaway, (read more about their CVs here) and their daughter Pip.  The story of Susa stretches out over well over a decade, and well into the real world. Check out the pictures of  'Why Is It So Hard To Love?'   the 2020 installment of the Susa Bubble story, at the  MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. 

But real world galleries can't keep installations up forever. In virtual worlds, SLEA land grants expire, and Second Life sims are notoriously expensive. You won't be surprised to hear that Two Fish, Rose's region there, is no longer online. That makes sense, as Saskia is very busy in RL with film projects and installations all over the place, from Lithuania to Lucca.