Safarezzing

Wizard.Gynoid: oic. this is like a pink floyd concert without the marijuana

The fifty-first Safari departed with everyone playing with an Englisch-German translator, so you kinda knew from the first that there was going to be trouble.

First stop, Metropolis grid, and this sims of Art Blue. It's a place where we feel at home, after many presentations and evenings spent in the zoo. Art's impressive collection is worth a visit any time, but this show is something a little special, don't miss the elevator, which is my favorite bit.
Addresses at the end of the post, as always.

A visit to Futurelab means you start out in the hand, which is fair enough.
          Art Blue: please activate voice if possible I will later speak in voice about the moon
Art Blue's Moonrezzer is a bewildering but ultimately thought-provoking show.  Or is it Soulrezzer? Or are there both here in this build? See how this is getting all confusing?
Art spans the virtual world barrier with this latest performance, which occupies a sim at the LEA in SL but is also in the process of being perfected for the OpenSim public on his Futurelab sim in Metropolis. That raises a few challenges as they mod scripts to work in the alternative environment. Cue the booze.

Moving on from the hand, we were invited up to Harry's Bar. Dancing, piano playing, a haze of smoke. Art was saying something about buying a Banksy. Or a house. Or maybe a wall, or a jukebox? That was where the mental confusion began, at least for me. Then off to a raft with a movie viewing area.
Identity, subjectivity and uniformity seem to be at the heart of this install, an interesting theme considering how much cloud computing in vws is on everyone's minds of late. We were invited to watch the video from the same point, to create a shared experience - tricky for some.
     Wizard.Gynoid: i don't hear voice
     Thirza Ember: I can't see it at all
     Isolde Caron: me either - need flash
     Thirza Ember: if you can't see the video at all, can you say Aye! pls?
     Sunbeam.Magic: Aye!
     Mal.Burns: aye
     Fuschia.Nightfire: aye

So this pic of the event is brought to you by the magic of photoshop.
(Only LaPiscean Liberty makes watching video in virtual worlds painless, no matter how uncooperative your viewer or computer or the grid may be. He is a god among video providers. Just saying.)
Art had a solution for the damnable Flash Player Message. He quickly gave us an outside link so we could follow along. (Want the link? You'll have to go and watch Moonrezzer inworld! Otherwise, it's cheating. But what the heck, here is a vid by Wizardoz Chrome that may help)

Art Blue, somewhat patchy.

Anyway, without giving away too much, Art's build is about how we all have a subjective view of the world, a view influenced yes, by our viewer, but also by our own unique makeup, which he demonstrates via a secret code and a tattoo.

And the Annoying Light.

There was also talk of walls, biodominant structures, old buffers, flamingoes, Jagermeister (mostly from Wizzy), and the unimpeachable talent of Deceptions Digital. More performances of Art's show are upcoming in Second Life, and an amplified OpenSim version of the same thing will be performed and visitable at Futurelab on Metropolis in a few weeks.

It was a two stop Safari.
Next up, was a return trip to Nara's Nook. Nara Malone organizes Hypergrid Nights trips at 9 pm Eastern, look for the notices in G+. Alongside Nara, Endora Twinklens was present to represent the Nookettes, as the timing of the Safari is incompatible with RL for the rest of the group. The focus was primarily on how this writer's group use 3D technology to help them tell their stories.

          Nara.Nook: I'm going to demonstrate a few features of old and new tools we have been implementing in our storytelling experiments. The two most useful to us are holodecks and NPCs. Here in Opensim, I can make an NPC with the click of a mouse.  And to show you how easy that is, Allure will do it for you. She has never made an NPC before. Allure hop on the stage here...

Allure hopped, clicked, and started dancing, to much applause.
        Nara.Nook: some items you don't have full perms for might not show on an NPC
       Jessica.Pixel: she doesn't have an attachments yet, but she can dance!
       Allure.Foresight: that's one big baby
       Nara.Nook: And that is how easy it is.  I know the NPC bug is supposed to be gone, but it's not, so make sure you wear no script, AO or HUD when you do this.

Next up a series of scenes out of rezboxes. Anybody used to Second Life is probably well familiar with these things which have been around forever - and forever have been cursed by gallery owners because the poorly set up ones cause epic lag. Ditto holodecks, especially on residential sims. 
They're a lot less common on OpenSim, probably because nobody worries too much about prim counts here. So it's more the use that they are put to on Nara's Nook that is interesting - they make story telling a more engaging experience by allowing the audience to stay still while the scenes come to them.
This is a cool alternative to the other two common strategies for performance pieces, either expecting the audience to travel through a build, or else using the whole heavy handed Permission_Control_Camera thing.
An interesting addition to the old formula is, again, the NPCs. A scene can instantly come to life, even gradually changing shape as part of the story - Nara demonstrated this, with an NPC selkie who came ashore and transformed from seal to man. The scene is part of one of her own stories, and is a powerful example of how 3D can enhance the narrative and the writing process. Another presentation about a wolves followed. Ate least one came to a sticky end, if this picture is anything to go by.

Holoscenes can be linked to make them flow between story 'chapters' and contain a lot of interactive elements; the timer is of course moddable, and everything is opensource, so you can play to your hearts content with the scripts, which come by and large from the inimitable Ferd Frederix.

We enjoyed the most part of the show from the comfort of the stalls, but we also got to get up and explore some of the builds in person - until they went poof and left us in the sea! This 'alien's cabin in the woods' for example had a nice interior to explore.

Then there was some Tai Chi with cows that got the feeling back into everybody's legs. Milk shake anyone? And the last presentation, a night club called The Asp, stayed around a little longer than the others, giving people a chance to enjoy Aine Caoimhe's NPC dance partners, fully modded to be appropriate to the venue.
        Nara.Nook: I know everyones brain is crammed full at this point, but there is one last scene that features Mark Ryan, a singer from SL. Shannan and Endora recorded him and stuffed his music in a player, and made his NPC because he couldn't be here.
        Nara.Nook: okay, music, booze and cute NPCs inside now we party until you want to go to bed
        Serene.Jewell: You know what this means. There is no reason to go on tours anymore. We can just sit in one place and have things rezzed up for us.
        Nara.Nook: right serene
        Mal.Burns: ha ha
        Endora.Twinklens: Very True
        PatriciaAnne.Daviau: ha! lazy man's tour

This week's URIs
Art Blue's Art in opensim               hypergrid.org:8002:futurelab
Nara's Nook, a place for writers     world.narasnook.com:8900