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.

Love & Peace on ArtDestiny

 Coming soon - get out your diary - a musical treat where you can show your true spirit as a lover of peace. 

Saturday, July 27 from 10am to 7pm Pacific time 

at artdestiny.de:8002:Lothlorian

When you arrive on the sim you'll find this convenient teleport board tht will take you to the concert venue in the sky.
These days, it's all too easy to get sucked into the latest round of name-calling and outrage, which doesn't help anyone. As a global community, let's stand side by side with our fellow residents of all nations, in a spirit of tolerance and love. 

Four Bits By Bink

Anyone who is well familiar with the Safari is familiar with the name Bink Draconia. I think the first time we had a proper group visit with her was back in 2016 on her grid Kroatan. 

That's a classy name for a grid, Kroatan. Grid names should be catchy, short, and imaginative, don't you think? 

In fact, that name was our first clue to the level of talent we were going to come into contact with, on her Halloween build, made in collaboration with the wonderful Kiki Bailey and with a storyline by Malon Wyngard - you can read about it here. 

Flash forward eight years, and Bink continues to deliver fabulous builds, now on Marlon Wayne's Pangea grid. 

You may remember seeing in 2023 Bink's The Good Place build, which is not just a triumph of landscaping, but a full-on game that shadows the plot of the television series. It's a brilliant synthesis of the story, with a decor so close to the real thing at times that you feel like you're inside your TV. 

But Bink has other fab regions on Pangea to visit, and this post highlights four of them, conveniently set close together in the Great Pangea Ocean. The region names are: Eternal Ice, North Pole, Koburk, and Needful Things. The addresses are, of course, at the end of the post - but what can you expect to see if you go there?

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. 

Creanovale: Tout Doux

 If you're in need of some R&R, far away from the draining drama of world events, and the vociferous, but luckily not too many, angst-mongers inworld, why not take a little time to enjoy the season on Creanovale.

This grid is built by Dabici Straulino and Kelso Uxlay. They live in the French-speaking area of Canada, and their grid is based on the beautiful countryside, traditions, products and history of their part of the world.

Each year, they modify their VAR region to reflect the passing seasons, so you can experience everything from surfing to skating here, depending on when you come to visit. The sim is a resort, a wilderness and a fine collection of perfectly assembled tableaux, complete with appropriate sounds that bring the sights to life, and here and there animesh...

In the Mix

You won't find Abyssinia on a modern map, unless it's a map of Zetaworlds of course! After some time on the Science Circle Grid, Skip Dahlgren , known as Aba Brukh inworld, has moved his build to a new grid, and a new start. 

'Abyssinia' as a geographical place is more or less the current land territory of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

A term used in the West from around the 1600's, in the 1970s Haile Selassie nixed the name 'Abyssinia' because it has unflattering roots in an arabic word meaning mixture. 

Politics and deliberate slurs aside, this rich tapestry of an area, sometimes called the Horn of Africa, was undoubtedly enriched by the miscellaneous trade in goods, cultures, religious and philosophical influences, and DNA from three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, all passing through the area of the Red Sea. Not to mention a very mixed fortune over the centuries as powerful people came and went, leaving their mark on the landscape.

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.

Summer-palooza on AMV

 A long weekend of summer fun on AMV and it all begins on Thursday 11 July! 

Alternate Metaverse Grid is famous for its many festivals and special events, and this happening is bound to be a great one, with five VAR regions dedicated to getting your summer started with a swing. If the great outdoors has been nothing but heatwaves and downpours, why not stay inworld, where the best weather is always guaranteed?

HG Addresses, as usual, at the end of this post, and of course if you look here you'll find the calendar of events on the grid's website

Cat on The Arts

Cataplexia Numbers: OpenSim and its community are blessed with so much art and creativity! This is our way on Alternate Metaverse to celebrate that, and encourage more arts in every genre! We open our festival to all who wish to be a part of it! Join us on July 11th through July 14th - Help us celebrate and enjoy the arts!

Community Art exhibition

You've probably visited this festival in previous years, and will remember the names of the sims - The Arts, In Tribute, OpenMic Arts, AMV Special Events, and Festival of Arts. Having 5 regions allows for plenty of space for exhibits, fancy stages and unique venues for all the performers and presentations.

What kind of summer fun? It's fair to say there's something for everyone, from burlesque to community art exhibits you can tour by boat. 

Happy 17th Birthday OSGrid

 Yes, it's that time of the year again, as OSgrid is celebrating its 17th anniversary from July 22 to 28.   As always, there are a whole lot of parties planned, and as well as the usual dancing, there's a special emphasis on music, because the theme of the Birthday Expo builds this year is exactly that. 

As always the builders of OSGrid have come through with some special builds celebrating the field. There are four regions, and it's recommended to use region environment settings in order to see the installations at their best. Wow are we all getting old or what? The first time I covered this event was a ten years ago... These were the exhibits, on that occasion.

Victoria Logan's delicious little dancing park has a very apt message board 'Music connects generations, crossing barriers of time and space" and this installation is just on of the gems on show this year. Here's a few hints - you should definitely go yourself to see these builds properly when everything's in place and up and running.

Genesis Evolving

 New from Genesis Roleplay grid, getting bigger, better, and every more HG  friendly!

Grid co-owners Lavia Lavine and Tango have increased the overall square mileage of the sim by a significant number, adding 6 new 4x4 regions and 8  8x8 regions. 

All but one of these is set to private, but if you're the exploring kind, you will be interested to know that the RP sim The Crucible has now been set so that anyone can visit.  Be ready for a challenging maze when you arrive! Your reward will be some information about the roleplay activity on the grid.

Another new feature of the grid will be the "Showcase Plateau". 

Snack-fari?

The HG Safari clubhouse on OSGrid is closing down, because now the travel group's main HQ is on a dedicated grid, hopefully you already know that if your planning on joining us in the next season of trips. 

The HG Address of the new sim is at the end of  the post, where it belongs.

New HG Safari sim

So - exciting times, but it is a bit of a sad goodbye to the sim that Ange Menges gifted in the fall of 2021 when it became very clear that our old home on FrancoGrid wasn't going to be viable any more as our main base for the revamped HG Safari group.

The FrancoGrid clubhouse, 2015-2022

Over past months, regular visitors to the HG Safari sim on OSGrid may have noticed gentle reminders that it's closing, as the land got smaller and features like the Archive House, the Self Guided Tours, the Marketplace, the dancing places, and the mesh clothing store, Meshanthropy, all gradually disappeared.

 Leaving just the mountain in the osgrid ocean. 

Cool Poule

 Over the past weeks,  the group Les Theatreux has been working hard on a play called 'Et l'oeuf engendre la poule' which is a reference to the old expression 'which came first, the chicken or the egg', and Thursday night was the final performance. The whole thing took place in the purpose-built theater on sim EventSpace, on Minord Loup's grid, SV3D. The full HG Address is at the end of the post, of course.

Using as the soundtrack a radio broadcast of the  play from a few years back, the team took the story and interpreted it into 3D sets with appropriate lighting, poses, props, scenery and so on - all the bells and whistles of a theatrical representation. Kudos to the man behind the control panel, Tristan Dehaie. 

Tristan Dehaie, the man at the controls.

 It's a play by Jean Vilain - no, not the guy from the Expendables! - here's a potted autobiography by the author who has clearly had a long and entertaining career in theater in France. 

Rural Retreat

In a corner of the gloriously rural Ruritania region on Littlefield Grid, is a beautiful old barn, converted by sim owner  Xi Shi into an airy art gallery,

It's a perfect little jewel set in a many faceted 4x4 VAR build that celebrates so many aspects of England that is will take you hours visiting and contemplating in order to take in all the delightful details, as it draws you back to another time, not just in the style of the vehicles and the road signs, which belong to the era of Dr Who's TARDIS, but also in the allusions and references to UK film and television, gently reminding you of classics like Brief Encounter, and the Two Ronnies discussing fork handles - or should that be four candles - to mention only two of the dozens of 3D throwbacks... make sure you have your wits about you, or you'll miss a lot of the fun. The HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

Vicky Does It Again

 Victoria Logan is a delight, and she's pulled off another successful art collaborative on her OSGrid Var region 'Arts-&-Friends'.

Victoria Logan at Arts-&-Friends in 2024.
The region features a mall showcasing some of Victoria's fractal art

 Last year, the connecting thread between builds was the subject of Women, with celebrations of everything from Disney's princesses, to Amy Earhart. 

It's all about OSGrid this time!

Victoria's installation sets the theme

Victoria Logan is a familiar figure on the virtual art scene.  The Argentinian artist has been a resident on OSGrid since 2012 and has been building ever since.  You may remember her build dedicated to her home country, on sim Vicky's Dreams, back in 2015. She invited the Safari over for a visit on Christmas Eve, and our experience was further enriched with a concert by Joaquin Gustav. 

Atlas Fashion coming soon!

Another exciting event produced by the team on  Atlas grid, Harthelie, Chip and Jeff, is being planned - a fashion show!

Chip Atlas, Harthelie Atlas, and Jeff Kelly

If you attended the previous edition of their Fashion Show, you'll remember the spectacular evening in 2023 which drew a huge audience - a challenge in itself for any sim, but one that they rose to magnificently. This is the second parade in its initial form, with a similar (set but new outfits, obviously, hey, fashion is always changing!)  The Atlas friends are already planning ahead, and say that the 2025 extravaganza will take place in an entirely new setting.

So, what inspired the group to do an event like this?

Finale on Atraxia

Our final destination for this season was a chill trip to the trippiest, most unusual VAR regions in opensim, owned by 3D artist, photographer, and curator Nyx Breen, whose talent is well known but never everyday.  Nyx Breen was on Inworld Review  a few weeks ago, check out the interview in which he discusses both immersive digital art, and a bit about his rl work. and the HG  Address for this enormous build is at the end of the post, as tradition demands. 

Nyx Breen

Nyx's work with EEPs (the Environmental Enhancement Project) has become something of a legend, he has hacked the usual expectations of sea and sky by adding all kinds of unusual and striking images, thus exploding the concept into a full blown art show that occupies all your senses rather than being a passive if pretty background. Every now and again, he changes the settings, creating yet another mood on the region.

Dorothea Lundquist: Hi Nyx :-)

Nyx Breen: hi there, everybody welcome

Forest Azure: heya nyx

Petlove Petshop: Thank you !! oh wow !

Safari's Wild Season

Little bit of pre-nostalgia on Safari yesterday, as we had our final meetup on the OSGrid region HG Safari. The sim was gifted by Ange Menges back in late 2021 to give the Safari a regular base (our sim on Francogrid was still in existence at that time, but the grid was in deep decline) and since then, it has been our life-off point for 160 trips around the hyperverse. The closure here marks the start of another adventure on the new HG Safari Grid, which will be our main base starting in the Fall. More about that in future posts.

Final meetup on HG Safari sim, OSGrid

Today's first destination was on Neverworld, another large and detailed build, with extra features! The full HG Address of Wild Kingdom is of course at the end of the post. 

lifted pixel: hello hello! sorry distracted how are all you lovely avatars today?

Taarna Welles: Hello sweet people.  :)

Star Ravenhurst: I am sad this is the last Safari for awhile

Thirza Ember: well there is so much happening in opensim, plenty to do always

Forest Azure: /me smiles... last one?

Thirza Ember: until September 4 when it all begins again... I hope you guys are ready to be eaten by dinosaurs today

lifted pixel: oh hell yeah

Tosha Tyran: if later he spits me out again - why not?

Thirza Ember: make sure you are wearing stain-resistant clothes

lifted pixel: i'll be sure to scotchguard my rings before we go

James atLLOUD: Hello - I just got home from work!  Barely made it.

lifted pixel: yay welcome james :D

Dangers await at the Wild Kingdom !

We jumped over to Neverworld Welcome, in a bid to make our arrival a bit easier on the servers. As time has gone by, avies have become more complex, so we take longer to load. But not that much longer...

Remembering Torben

 This week, on June 28, there will be a special event on Pangea grid.

It was in the early Fall of 2022 when we got the news that Torben Asp had passed away after a long illness. 

Born in Denmark, and later resident in Ohio, Torben was known for his gentle demeanor, his electronic music and his otherworldly particles. He started in Second Life in January 2007 and was a sought-after performer there for many years, and later also in Opensim, where many grids can claim the fame of having him celebrate various anniversaries and milestones with them. He was there for the Safari whenever we asked him, and many other grids and individuals will tell you the same.

That's why Pangea grid has decided to offer each one of us a chance to celebrate his life and talent with this event. If you have pictures of Torben, you will be able to share them on the specially dedicated region, and so we can all remember the very good times he brought to us in our virtual homes, and into our lives in general.

The event will be at 11am SLT on Friday, June 28
 and the location is pangeagrid.de:8002:Torben Asp Memorial