Keep your hat on

John 'Pathfinder' Lester (né Linden) is much too famous to require introduction here: that hat, 'taken from a pirate' (draw your own conclusions, people) is the trademark of a VW guru whose resume includes Harvard, SL, and Reaction Grid, with Jibe Worlds thrown in.

For a more complete story, listen to the recent Metareality podcast where Gianna Borgnine interviewed him (brace yourself  for *sewper excited* voice).

He gets no puppy-dog adulation at the Hypergrid Adventurers' Club, which is the best club in the Metaverse. Here we are, outside the loos in osgrid (hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go) which are part of the Virtual Harlem/Africa build by SL legend and OSgrid goddess, Arcadia Asylum.
What 'is' the HGAC? It's a gentle forum for finding out what's going on in different parts of OpenSim.

In and out of the box

Going to another grid is hard work. No wonder people stay put! It's all sitting in front of the screen, but man, this is exhausting, I'm getting square eyes!  Reaction Grid Thirza  came into existence  in '10, back when Caerleon had some art here. She's languished somewhat since then. It's Jokaydia Thirza who goes Hypergridding, occasionally passing through RG on the way to more exciting places. Seems unfair - maybe there are exciting places in RG, right? 

Erm... RG Thirza had a default noob skin best described as 'Woman vs. Eyeshadow' and the usual Walmart combo of jeans and tee favoured by the makers of basic outfits, and some random black hair. For sanity's sake, basics are a must. Only as I brought them into RG did it occur to me how much work all this is! But the alternative is trawling through endless boxes of drek from the Freebie shop, which is an unsatisfying and long job. The following are essentials:

Shape. Got a shop-bought shape in SL? you're going to want to get a piece of paper and note down all the names and numbers on all the sliders. Then, in your inventory, go to 'Create' and make a new shape, painstakingly copying the numbers. It's a lot of work, but then the shape belongs to you and you can export it onto your computer and import it to any grid you want.  OK I've lost some of you already...

Skin and eyes. Eyes are not too hard, either draw or paint; otherwise, google 'eye iris' and see if you can find something you like, to put on a white background. For personal use only, obviously. Another source (and not just of eyes) is Opensim Creations. For the skin, that's a little harder - but much less than it was a year ago. Several people have made their skins available to download, share, and modify for free. Eloh Eliot's skins from 2007 are still the best place to start, even if you're not a photoshop wizard, but simply want to play about with lip color. Ina Centaur's skins are detail rich, but have two disadvantages, they're saved in a weird type of file (not simple non-paranoiac psd or png), and the women are all homely. Some manly men there, though, so give it a glance, if that's how you roll.

Hair. Thirza's took 15 versions and about 3 months of on-again off-again frustration. Simple sculpty shoes plus foot alphas are also frustrating - but nobody in opensim seems to mind seeing bare feet. Clothes are way easier, but still time-consuming. Craft Grid's elegant shop is full of Josina Burgess and Nicola Reinerman creations, while osgrid has the Fabulous Ada Wong. Most grids are pretty dire, though. Come prepared. Linda Kellie's enormous collection of free and modifiable clothes will give you a jump start at making your own fashion, with wrinkle layers, cuffs, lacy bits and clothing textures. It's impossible to overstate what a star Linda is, in making all her clothing available and modifiable this way. Use Robin Wood or Chip Midnight's clothing templates in Photoshop or Gimp and get creative! It's way more relaxing than trying to follow the plot of NCIS.

Frillies A loop rezzer lets you build prim skirts. To export them from the grid where you make them, you'll need to be the creator of all the prims.  Imprudence Viewer has Export in the pie menu: rezz your object, then click through till you see it. 
If Export isn't lit up, it means you don't own all the prims. Importing is done via File at the top of your screen-  if you created all the textures that were on the original object, they too will be saved with the prims in your computer. 
Here's me importing a skirt into Reaction Grid, together with hair and texture. Of course, all uploads are FREEE !!!
Whoa that feels better ! it's time to take a turn about Reaction Grid!  It's still home to the excellent World's Fair, featured in an earlier post. What else is here?

Some great RL paintings in the gallery on sim Arte, the Catholic University of Peru stronghold. 

 The Grid HQ is a fancy piece of modern architecture, too, and there's this Drive In, high in the sky.

It's early morning in the US, so it's no surprise that there are few people around. OK - make that nobody. For anyone used to SL on a weekly basis, all of opensim has that make-do-and-mend feel, but ReactionGrid feels more than most like a backwater where the shark has most definitely jumped. A cardboard world. These posters aren't helping...

At last I found some life. Six avatars hard at work on the Bedfordia sim. What I took to be a noob was getting to grips with a door script, hiding behind a hill. 

On the other side of the hills, the other five avatars beavered away at what seemed to be a Science Fair, but since none of them would give me the time of day, I can't be sure. No amount of standing around provoked them into comment.  

Torley's textures were all over the place like a rash. The workers walked, rather than working from cam, from one boxy build to the next. Be fair, it's a work in progress, but this is a long way from Second Life. Iron sharpens iron, and while it's true many parts of SL are prosaic and even badly built, the good bits, the innovative exuberance, the preconcept-defying adventurous bits, inspire creative flight. Which you need, if you're going to do science right, don't you agree?

The Bedfordia is a brave attempt at building by newcomers. But I hope these Bedfordians also take time to go and see what's out there. If they like straight lines and, lord know, i'm a fan, then they could start with Oberon Onmura's new build at the LEA, where 15,000 pointy prims are set on a month-long collision course.

He's definitely outside the box.

Push to go

Garry Beaumont has 'no imagination' - or so he says. But pay no attention to that, because this army type who 'likes to press all the buttons' has got some serious curiosity going on, not to mention an eye for detail and the patience to make some fantastic vehicles and gadgets.  In his testosterone-packed store in Wright Plaza, the much labelled motorcycle maniac explained his presence on osgrid.

Garry Beaumont:  I like osgrid, because you have to work at it if you are not techno, and I love the fact that it's all free. The only thing that's frustrating is the viewer; I liked hippo, but now am back using Imprudence - but osgrid will get that sorted soon, it's always changing and improving!  I dont think I've made anything to be proud of yet, I'm not that good! the submarine was the first thing i made on here, but when I look at it now, it looks poor.
Looks pretty good to me...

Garry Beaumont:  If I had to choose the piece I'm most fond of, it would probably be the tank I made with only one finger on my right hand. That is all i could move when I came here, so it was hard to do!  I type with one finger, like most people, but try building with only one! CTRL ALT DEL is a pain! I hit a truck on a motorcycle head on. I should not be here at all, really. I was sat for a long time looking at the computer, then I thought of the days when I was in SL, and started to look at what was out there. In Google, I read about this new grid that was doing things differently, and decided to try it.

Garry left SL, tired of the drama. Then, he had a big accident - truck vs motorcycle, head on. As a result, he could only move one finger. Interestingly, many of the good friends he had left behind in SL were wounded soldiers, whose courage in the face of terrible injuries and long, difficult recoveries gave him the strength to face his own journey back to mobility with a good attitude, and a sense of humour. Garry couldn't get over osgrid Thirza's sexeh a/o which had decided to keep me alternately  trotting on the spot, or gliding like a mummy. 
Garry Beaumont: I like your walk, it makes me laugh. Never seen a walk like it  you should box it up and sell it.
Maybe I should, it would be a good counterbalance to Garry's boy's toys. Is that a tank, or...?

During his years in SL, Garry never made anything - he remembers once putting together a simple Tp device, that's all. It's amusing to look back and think of the little noob house he had, just the right size to fit on a 512 region. Now he spreads himself out over one of Nebadon Izumi's megaregions, and wonders how he ever consented to be so cramped. His interest in art is always understated, always referential, often flavoured with a late-night effect, never more so than in this osgrid version of Hopper's Nighthawks, with good friends Avia Bonne and Richardus Raymaker.

Considering his interest in vehicles,  does opensim's notorious lack of physics, and scripting issues, hold him back?

Garry Beaumont: Not really, because I make my bikes and so on wearable.  Personally, I do not like to script, it is too much like work for me, and it makes my head hurt! But when I need it, there's plenty of help available. 

He produced a fine cine camera.
Garry Beaumont: This is available in my store on Wright. I set the buttons to run 4 films. Inworld video went a bit awry with Youtube a while back, so Neb made a new script that links to http://www.archive.org/internet archives. I got that from him. Nebadon Izumi is everyone's friend on here, from the noob to the old timer and the dim, like me! I try not to bug him if I get stuck I ask the helpers on the IRC chat channel.
We went inside the submarine and I listened for pings on the sonar. Next project for Garry will be making a new version of a friend's build, called Gone City. How does he see the future of the grid in general?

Garry Beaumont: Osgrid is getting better all the time, but you can never tell in this life where you will be tomorrow. It would be good to see more people - the the right people, yes. And when it comes to technology, give me it now, give me more! I press all the buttons!

A Mist Land

Going to CondensationLand is like visiting Tibet, like in Lost Horizons, maybe, but without the plane crash. Or wait, no, there is quite a bit of crashing; and a fair old bit of what feels like walking into the wind, in terms of lag. 

Condensation Land is a small grid consisting of just eleven islands, occasionally reachable from Osgrid, sometimes accessible directly via the grid manager, once you get permission to create an account from Zonya Capalini  who, along with Ludmilla Writer and Favio Piek, founded the Land long before the dawn of mesh. The weight of prims often prompts OutOfMemory errors, making the grid crash, and RL interests have drawn Zonya away from the project. But should you get a chance to sneak in here, you'll find it's like entering a secret garden, a special place of strange imagination and exuberant prims.

It is a girl's first job in any world to import hair, skin, shape, and at least one dress, and that takes about an hour when you're new at it, between the crashing and the importing objects. It feels good to do so, it feels like an investment in the place. OK no shoes. I can live without them. This is a place for flying and staring out over the battlements of improbable castles, or becoming one with the land's very own Klein Bottle.

The bottle turned out to be empty; in this antique world that came as no surprise. There is a strangely airlocked feel to Condensation Land. Knowing you are utterly alone on a grid is not a new experience to me.  In both Craft and my own minigrid, many's the evening I've spent without a soul around. But Condensation Land is like a Lost World, a place of silent awe, of certainty that any speck of pixeldust I might stir with my bare toes will stay moved for the longest time.

It is the evidence of activity, frenzied, purposeful, flamboyant building, that makes the sensation of stillness so poignant. Omurtag Milev's three sims Temple, Conceptior, and Angelico Miguelis burst with energy. Zonja's videos bring it to life.

  Walking quietly in this strange land, it rains down on the visitor just what it means to attempt escape velocity from the orbit of  Second Life. This place is a condensation of all the existential questions, a meditation on the missed opportunities, and the grasped possibilities, the virtues and the drawbacks that come with not being in the 'first world' of VR which we all either love or hate, or both.

Quiet loveliness is here. Like a mystical mosaic hidden in a misty mountaintop monastery, the art in Condensation Land has a special value, one that no Linden Endowment can touch... the effort required to see it. I wonder how many pushing, ambitious artists know what value that would add to their work - a little subtlety, a little more reserve.

To visit glorious, mysterious Condensation Land for yourself, contact Zonja Capalini via email for more information.

Rhomb here to Eternity

The sacred geometry of chance

The hidden law of a probable outcome

The numbers lead a dance

Sting, Shape of my heart

Wizard Gynoid is all about the Golden Rhombus these days, and it's led to an exciting new discovery about complex geometric shapes, which she describes on her blog. We have the opportunity to experience the quiet mystery of it, in InWorldz at Wizard/120/140/23 (when is IWz going to get functioning WZURLs? I ask nobody in particular.) Her creation looks a bit like a piece of brain, as it turns, orbiting rather than rotating, it calls to mind something Escher would make; the rhombuses or rhombi are all the same shape, size and colour, but don't seem so.

Wizard Gynoid: I like it 'cause it is deceptive. It looks like it's made of squares and cubes and boxes, but it's not. It's made from the Golden Rhombus.
We were quiet for a bit, just watching the oddity. The Golden Rhombus, I thought, would make a good name for a restaurant.
Wizard Gynoid: Or a liquor drink.
Thirza Ember: 'Ambassador, with this delicious Golden Rhombus, you're spoiling us.' or no - 'Hey, it's after 6, I'll have a Golden Rhombus on the rocks'.
Wizard Gynoid: 'I'll take a Golden Rhombus right between the eyes, thank you.'
One thing has led to another, with this rhombus story. She was inspired to build a crystal flower from the same root matter; it too is a zonohedra, and is squeezed in among the other Sacred Toys in the Temple.

Wizard Gynoid: The crystal flower is made of five petals, growing out from a center point, and has  icosahedral  symmetry. I'm into crystals at the moment, and over here are some real crystal structures I made for the Elf Clan Fantasy Art Festival, which is on right now. Soror Nishi, Ub Yifu, Scarp Godenot and a bunch of other peeps were involved also. As you probably know, the Elves recently escaped SL, and came to Inworldz. This thing glitters like it is crystalline; it's significant because this is the real atomic crystal structure that the world is based on, which is why I suggest it with the orbiting electrons.

Wizard Gynoid: InWorldz is great because it lets me make stuff big. and link them together. This object is almost a thousand prims. not possible in SL.
You need to tp to sim Wizard in InWorldz to truly get the effect. Don't forget to friend us when you get there.

Thirza Ember: It's always fascinating to me how, no matter what, we come back to nature. Inside our computers, it's a virtual world far from rain or mud or snow; it might be as alien to Earth as the Moon, or space itself - far from the natural substances of the world. But no. Whether it's traditional plants or the more surreal kind, like the ones soror makes, or this kind of meditation on form - it's still all nature.
Wizard Gynoid: I think duplicating nature in here is ok, but there is so much more potential to do things. To explore the inside of your mind. Which is nature, I guess, too...
Thirza Ember: I guess that's our axis, we can only spin on it.

Wizard Gynoid: The crystals of gold and silver and lead and copper look like this which is very alchemical -they are the classic metals. I found afterwards that they matched, so that was sorta synchronous.
Huh - so maybe she'll figure out finally how to make gold from baser metals?
Wizard Gynoid: I'm not out to make a fortune. I'm not materialistic. I just want to make beauty and help others to see it.

Rising Tide: Alizarin Goldflake

Digital artist Martha Jane Bradford thinks big. As Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life, she's collaborated with big noises like the Caerleon Art group, and big events like Burning Life. In the LL booth at the Shanghai World Expo last year, seventy squillion people from forty-two different planets got a chance to admire her work via the machinima Acquarella: the fable, by Chantal Harvey and friends.
Acquarella is an original story by Alizarin. Inspired by her love of all things aquatic, it's a tale of apocalyptic upheaval and change inspired by (among other things) the Fukushima disaster. Acquarella got its first outing in Second Life, which is still the default grid when it comes to virtual art meeting the virtual art-loving public. But, while Alizarin keeps a consitent foothold there, she's expanded the concept on Nexus Central, part of Jeri Rahja's  arty archipelago on the InWorldz grid.

Alizarin Goldflake: The sim tells a fable in 4 quadrants. All of it happened because White Lebed couldn't understand why

Linda Kellie's FreeLife

This is Linda Kellie, previously known as Ayla Holt in SL and Inworldz, where she spent over 5 years making stuff - clothes, furniture, skins, buildings, sculpties, and more. She's gradually putting all her goodies on her website, to be exported, modified, re-used any way you want, as she explains in her personal note. 
It's an extraordinary move, and so far there's over 250MB of material available, all set out in nicely categorized sections. 
Yes, that's right - FREE, FULL PERM/MOD/TRANS.
 On your computer. Good for any grid.
Linda Kellie: Not all of my stuff is on my webpage yet, a lot's here on OSGrid, and I am still adding to it, I haven't been here long! Making things has made virtual worlds more fun for me. I loved both SL and InWorldz, I just worked really hard in SL, and then played hard in IW. I quit for awhile, and decided I needed to do something with all my inventory, backed up on my hard drive. A friend told me about the OpenSimCreations.com site - it was amazing to me that someone would give away files for export to any grid. I didn't know I could even back up to xml. I think you just have to get to a point where you don't care about people stealing your ideas and stuff. I love having my stuff with no rules and giving people the freedom they need. I hope Vanish doesn't think I stole his idea. I kinda did, I guess! But it just made sense to put it on a website that I wasn't using anyway, and he has made a few positive comments.

What could be better? If you like to make stuff, but

Tech Savvy

Welcome to Biolandia, a scientific sim for schoolkids, where in a few days it's going to be Party Time! *digs out crazy co-ed costume* ...but more on that later.

Biolandia is on Craft Grid, and it was built by middle-school teacher, Michelle Tech, who uses her skills to inspire young students to learn the basics of science - chemistry, math, and biology. Michelle won a

Brave New Grid

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

The Tempest Shakespeare

If you're tired of SL prices and poseurs, and looking for somewhere new to hang your hat, here's a thought, what about New World Grid? Never heard of it?
Well, they are trying to put that right by having a fab  Open Day on Saturday 1 October.
Of course, the grid's already open, so be smart, go get an avie now, this is the URI: opensim://grid.newworldgrid.com:8002/   

Vadrouille Zepp

I gots my avie, and on rezzing at sim Welcome - look who was there already!  Vadrouille Zepp, famous creator of the multi-grid communicator, the Radionne. He has a new version, the 0.5.5.9G - upgrade, people!

But back to the point of this post. New World Grid, better known by the acronym NWG, is non profit and offers cheapish, reliable land, good services, lots of nice educational builds; plus it's on European time, all factors that appealed to Graham Mills, aka Peter Miller, a professor at the University of Liverpool.

Gianto office on NWG

 Graham and I were both there when the HGAC visited Aime Socrates' fun sim Physics one wet weekend, just as the Education discount in SL was coming to an end. The giant lab is a fun place to play, and makes you think about the Greenies, sigh, and all those other Rezzable goodies.

An Appearance of Vanish

Your five bars showing how much signal there is, they're called tacche in Italian and I don't got them, even now, when I have put the whole desk, not just the laptop, out on the balcony, much to the bemusement of the two men weeding the old lady's dahlia's next door. 
But just because I'm struggling on 3 bars, and can't be there, doesn't mean you shouldn't be in OpenSim today, at 3pm CET (that's 6am SLT) where Vanish Seriath will be gviving a RL presentation of Virtual Worlds to the AUGE - that's German for eye but also the Apple Users Group Europe.

Vanish will be talking about the uses of virtual worlds for business and pleasure, the virtues of open worlds in particular, and explaining a little about hypergridding too, so anyone who wants to pop in and say Hi (or Hy-per) will be welcome!
If presenting in Frankfurt at the Annual AUGE weren't enough excitement for this week, Vanish has created a new place to put your views and questions about OpenSim, it's called The Architects of Sleep. It shares passwords and usernames with his OpenSim Creations site (sign up today!!), where of course you can up- and download free items: clothes, houses, OARs, all sorts - for use on any grid you like.
Don't miss Vanish at 3pm CET this afternoon! Dang, those are big dahlias.

Jokay Unconferential

Yeah. It's a stretch. Today's HGAC meeting on Pathlandia was less about exploring and more about setting up for Jokaydia's Unconference, on from May 29 to June 26.

So what's this festival of unconferenciness all about?
Jokay Wollongong: The events can all be seen on our conference calendar.  We hope by letting the community generate the topics and activities, it will be more interesting than a scheduled conference, even if it makes for some chaos sometimes. It also always leads to interesting discussions. One of the challenges for this group is to get the different groups together a little more.We seem to have two almost separate communities sometimes; the daytime Aus people kinda miss you guys...

Pathfinder Lester: I love it when other folks put things on Google Calendars, because I can then easily add them to my own calendar. It makes it easy for me to figure out timezone stuff, since GCal just converts everything to my own local time zone.

Diversity in Craft today!

Today, at the Museo del Metaverso in Craft, you can see the very best of Virtual Diversity,  the recent photo competition at Koinup. Photos include images of Botgirl, soror and other famous SL names, but also some that may be new to you; beautiful images reflecting the vast variety of mood and makeup in virtual worlds. Luce Laval, Oberon Onmura and Nicola Reinerman have collaborated to create a lively, airy gallery in which to enjoy the photos. The pictures come in the main from Second Life, but other more exotic grids are also represented, including people and places in MMORPG, Frenzoo, and IMVU. Roxelo Babenco of the Museo del Metaverso was one of the judges in the competition. I asked her what the word 'diversity' means to her personally.
Roxelo Babenco:  Pierluigi Casolari of Koinup came up with the name. The competition has been about the diversity of avatars in different worlds, and the way different environments spawn diverse concepts of self. I know it's a charged word, particularly in the USA, but for me personally, diversity enriches us. Language, culture, background, the cross pollination all adds up to a richer experience. I've always loved to explore new things, even before I found Second Life and other virtual worlds, but here, I've discovered so much more.

Building an after Life

building is building, no matter the grid... talent is what show.

Hairy Thor

When bloggers are out of interesting topics, they give you the 'SL is Doomed!' routine. Supposing you're drinking that particular Cool-Aid, you may have wondered, what would happen if I went to build in other worlds? 

weirdness in veesome

On the downside, You're going to look like a noob for a while, and WEIRD STUFF WILL HAPPEN. If you go to a commercial world like InWorldz, and are prepared to pony up, you'll soon have good hair and skins. Otherwise, it's DIY or freebies. DIY can be an education, freebies are getting better all the time, but whichever way you go, be prepared to lose time reinventing yourself on your new grid. 

soror Nishi: I looked like a bagwoman for the first year, before we got shops in InWorldz!
   Personal appearance is only part of the learning curve. Don't be fooled by the laid back attitude outside SL - grid owners aren't lying down on the job, when it comes to protecting residents and their rights.

Elenia Llewellyn: My advice for builders leaving SL - not all licenses are the same! Keep your work legal!
Leannan Shi: Remember to check and make sure that everything in your SL builds is fullperm and YOURS before you bring it over. Sculpted parts do not export well.
Raphaella Nightfire: Scripting and animations require patience. And be prepared to be noob for a few hours.
Alizarin Goldflake: Builders need to be aware that not all SL scripts work here. Some have errors that can cause horrendous lag. And you can't edit linked parts.
Leannan Shi: Boobs don't jiggle in InWorldz. But next week though, right? LOL

Inside Story

Il rimpianto è il vano pascolo di uno spirito disoccupato. 

Bisogna soprattutto evitare il rimpianto 

occupando sempre lo spirito con 

nuove sensazioni e nuove immaginazioni. 

Gabriele d'Annunzio

A Roman Count in love with Art itself, a Sicilian family at odds with destiny, a smoker struggling wittily with his conscience, and a madman who returns to sanity, only to find himself trapped in an elaborate hoax. Four turn-of-the-20th century tales from Italian Literature with one thing in common - they have all been brought to life in Craft.
Marina Ninza teaches literature at the Ernesto Balducci Institute in Pontassieve, near Florence. In Italy, kids have options, when it comes to what kind of liceo or High School they attend; glamorous sounding options like classico, linguistico, artistico. The Ernesto Balducci is a liceo scientifico. Kids who choose this option are more into chemistry than classics, as you can imagine, so Marina's challenge is to find a way to get her students interested in texts that matter.
Marina Ninza:  We've used a lot of approaches to present the material, including ebooks and video games. I had the idea to recreate the settings in 3D. We're just getting started, it's a joint venture with the Computer department. This year, there were only a couple of computers and four avatars for the students to use in the classroom, so it's not as hand-on as we would like, and we live in the country, so a lot of the students don't have broadband at home.
The four builds are on sim Pindaro, donated by Craft owners Tao Quan and Licu Rau. Tao took charge of building  the house with the Nespolo tree, from verga's  I Malavoglia. The famous courtyard is full of charming little details, like the hen house, the bread oven, and round fishing nets.

Tao Quan: I'd never heard of the book before I started this build, but there is a lot of information on the internet and the teacher helped me too. The children aren't online very much, and are still learning cam skills, so if you look at the garden, you may see some of the vegetables floating above the ground! 

All's Fair

Seventy-two years ago last Saturday, the World’s Fair opened at New York, and we went to see it! No, not thanks to time travel, it was another gridhopping trip with the Hypergrid Adventurers Club. The Club meets on Sundays at Pathlandia on Jokaydia grid. Before you start saying shaking your head and saying you could never go to another grid, oh purleeeeze, it will take you all of 10 minutes to get a Jokaydia account, make an avatar, and kit it out at the freebie shop. Once you’re done, you’re golden for many fun trips around the metaverse.  And if you have a ReactionGrid avie, you can get to Jokyadia quite easily. Here’s more about how to do that.

 The real World’s Fair was spread out over more than a thousand acres of what had been an ash pile (yay coal fires!). Reaction Grid’s version is build over three sims and includes all the best-loved sights from the original fair including the Star Pylon, the New York building, and of course the Perisphere...

...which is where the HGAC regrouped once we’d al made the jump from Jokaydia. This is Democracity in the Perisphere. What fun to be able to fly down among the tiny buildings and do the 30-foot woman thing on Yesterday’s idea of the Future Today. It made Pathfinder go quite pale.

There’s a wonderful positive vibe in the images that is reflected in the mood of the Club; we reflected on the fact that all this was being imagined at a time when both economic depression and war were at the forefront of most people’s minds.

At the New York building, I took the weight off and struck up a conversation with Trivia Tiratzo. His dad visited the real thing back in 1939, and took over 200 wonderful photos of the buildings, the artwork and the exhibits. Back in 2008, Trivia was approached by ReactionGrid’s  Kyle Gomboy about doing some consulting for a World’s Fair project.

Trivia Tiratzo: I had no idea how to do anything in the virtual world, so it’s been a real learning experience before, I didn’t even know what a prim was but I gave it a shot. The more I build, the better I get (I think) … the hardest part is getting interior information for the pavilions, especially the murals.

The photos help so much in getting the details right, and Trivia has put on a big display of them so we can compare the builder’s work with the real thing.

Trivia has also published his father’s pictures in a book, ”1939 New York World’s Fair Photo Collection”   and has a blog that provides updates and insights into the project.

Ruud Lathrop, Joey Chernov, Amber Beaver  and other talented  builders have contributed models, exhibition rooms, and a Music Hall, to help us explore in 3D this wonderful retro-futuristic phenomenon. It’s a multi-faceted build, with vintage recordings, poses, notecards, and of course tons and tons of original pictures. To bring the whole thing even more to life, this past week, a range of events have marked the opening of the build, with talks on the construction and planning of the fairground, a piece about the Royal Visit, by RG’s official Fair Historian David Cope, and a fascinating insight into the Westinghouse Electric Company, by Shirley Manning. 

The World’s Fair build is slated to be a permanent exhibit in RG (as far as anything virtual can be permanent) so if you’ve not had a chance to go over there yet, there’s still lots of time. Trivia is optimistic about the build, and its potential.

Trivia Tiratzo: Between the web site and the grid, I have met some wonderful ppl from all over the world. Take David, our Fair historian, for example.  He does not come in-world but is a close friend of mine, even tho we have never met. I’d really like to have more people involved to make this a learning experience for everyone.