Vulcan’s Secret: Connected Artists. A monthslong mystery in Craft beginning with SL’s Ivory Tower of Primitives creator
Vulcan Project – Connected Artists
In the Craft grid [see below for a reference] GeR Orsini invented and is currently curating an interesting Artistical project, under the umbrella of IMAB [Intergrid Metaverse Art Biennal, see below] named Vulcan – Connected Artists.
A 3D volcano is meant as a creative cauldron where artists from different backgrounds and nationalities will meld or clash to create a shared creative thread as it is sometimes done with creative tales named “chain novels” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_novel) where a tale is built up from different people adding a chapter one after the other. Applying the Chain Novels mechanism to multimedial artistical building is quite interesting and is designed to happen following this schema:
In the island GeR sketched out an “initial canvas” (a huge volcano in the middle of the sea) where there is a landing place from where a winding and complex flight of wooden stairs leading to the volcano’s eye. Being there you can “plunge” and… each artist is being given exactly one month to stage an intermediate environment keeping on the work done before them, trying to understand and melt with it. There is no communication among various artists. They must be able to cooperate “blindly” or using a kind of empathycal “passing the baton” [The hollow cylinder that is carried by each member of a relay team in a running race and passed to the next team member] to next author who perceives what has been done and try to understand “aim” and “mood” and keep on it adding their own contribution.
Once or twice for each month (when changing artist), the island is made public so that everybody can perceive work in progress and grasp the creative bubbling entering in an pure immersive way directly in the hearth of the creation labor.
This idea is quite intriguing and will be unveiled in a couple of weeks starting from a historical SL artists: Lumiere Noir. He is quite famous to have built the original mytical Ivory Tower of Primitives in Natoma, one of the oldest and most representative buildings in SecondLife. Then other artists will come, like Tosha Tyran, Ruben Haan and Oberon Onmura.
Let’s talk about Craft:
Craft (http://www.craft-world.org/page/it/home.php?lang=IT) is an OpenSim grid created by Licu Rau and Tao Quan on January 27th 2010) and is often referred to as one of the most friendly OpenSim worlds even for Art. This Grid comes after the “closing” of previous Italian grid Cyberlandia, managed by Carlos Roundel (see http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/03/cyberlandia-switches-to-distributed-model/) where many ex-users did migrate and new International users did arrive. Craft is managed by Licu Rau and Tao Quan, with the cooperation of many volunteers such as GeR Orsini (coordinating a few events), Settima Sideshow (supporting people who need to install opensim on local computers) and others. Craft apparently is inspiring group teamwork and stimulate that kind of cooperation often lacking in SL.
From Craft website:
Welcome to Craft, a virtual 3D world, a metaverse where you can build things, make friends, create groups, organize events but also work on cultural, educational or entertainment projects.
A warm and friendly community will welcome you and will help you to discover Craft in a spirit of sharing things and knowledge, and you will be soon able to discover your own talents giving form to your dreams in your own region.
Craft is a virtual world based on OpenSim simulator, a world in many ways compatible with Second Life®, but different. From Craft your avatar can move to other OpenSim worlds that use the Hypergrid system, bringing with you your inventory and eventually taking things to bring to home.
Craft’s statistics, small but rich in quality
According to access statistics published by Hypergrid Business (even in latest report on November 2nd 2012 http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/11/third-annual-grid-survey/) Craft is in 6th/7th position in the list, associated with outstanding grids like OsGrid, InWorldz, Avination, Kitely, this is tantalizing it and making it desirable and friendly for occasional visitors. It seems so friendly that some International avatars like Lumiere Noir (creator of Ivory Tower of Primitives in SL) or the blogger VirtualChristine (see virtualchristine.com) elected it as their main home in the metaverse. Currently there are more than 2600 residents and can show off a monthly traffic of around 500 which is considered a very good rating for opensim grids (obviously we cannot compare this to SecondLife statistics which are many degrees higher)
We must remind you that Craft is also home of Roxelo Babenco’s “Museo Del Metaverso” http://museodelmetaverso.blogspot.it/ who achieved many important artistical projects in SL and now starting from 2010 moved to Craft (unluckily it appears inactive in these days).
The IMAB galaxy: Intergrid Metaverse Art Biennial (IMAB)
Craft is participating as a full actor in the artistical multiverse project IMAB http://intergrid-metaverse-art-2012.hypergrid.org/ currently organizing various events and happenings spanning from SecondLife, Craft, InWorlds, Metropolis, OsGrid, with a 6-month-long calendar.
Among various events organized in Craft we can find
- A photographic competition organised in collaboration with ParcDesArts Katia. It starts at the end of November and the prize will be a quarter sim for one year. The subject is three photos for each “equality”, “liberty”, and brotherhood for amateurs and professionals after that the best will be exhibited until the end of February
- Building competition with prizegiving for our birthday in January
- an exhbition from Lollito and from Pixel Reanimator
Events in Craft, and in other similar OpenSim grids happen regularly and many as we often noted are comparable to similar events happening in SL. To be sure, in OpenSim we don’t see crowds, it’s quite difficult to find 60 or more people crowded in the lag every day in the same island. The event offer and content are really there and sometimes you need to treasure hunt for them. If you want to participate as craftsmen, artists, amateurs or simply to be audience, doors are wide open. Probably it’s better to choose an adequate Virgil or Beatrix guide who can lead on the field to be sure to come in the right place at the right time…
Salahzar Stenvaag
Corso di Blender di base 101-102-103 / Basic Blender Class 101-102-103
Per coloro interessati all’uso di blender per fare mesh, ecco una sequenza di 3 video che culminano con un video che insegna a fare una spada importata in SL. I video sono titolati in inglese ed italiano. Per seguirli basta scaricarsi la versione di blender 2.59 dal sito http://www.blender.org lanciarla ed eseguire passo passo i vari pezzi. Se avete un laptop o un mac è conveniente impostare nelle preferenze http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Interface/Keyboard_and_Mouse come spiegato all’inizio del video 103.
For those interested in Blender usage to make mesh, here a sequence of 3 videos which terminates for now with a tutorial on how to build a Sword and import it in SL. Videso are titled in English and Italian. To follow them you just need to download blender 2.59 from http://www.blender.org run it and follow step by step various pieces. If you have a laptop or a mac it’s convenient to set up preferences as http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Interface/Keyboard_and_Mouse also explained at beginning of video 103.
Blender 101 le basi per muoversi:
Blender 102: le basi per editare i vertici:
Blender 103: costruiamo una spada con subsurf/crease e importiamo come mesh in SL:
Interview to Frolic Mills co/CEO of BOSL
Everybody know what is BOSL for Second Life residents. It’s the brand that mean a Magazine, a Radio, and a wonderful organization for important events, like Miss Virtual World, over all.
The soul of this organization, with his partner Giela Delpaso, is Frolic Mills. An avatar name as a symbol of BOSL success. Virtual Worlds Magazine asked to Frolic to answer to some questions for better understand the secrets of this succes.
[6:06] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: good evening Frolic, thank you for accepting this interview.
[6:06] Frolic Mills: hello, welcome to my home 🙂
[6:08] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: Frolic, our Magazine is interested in your activities in SL, to let italian readers to know better your initiatives.
[6:09] Frolic Mills: ok, I’m ready to answer.
[6:09] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: we all know you as the CEO of BOSL and the organizer of Miss VW, please may you explain us better all these initiatives, their objectives and scope?
[6:13] Frolic Mills: Ty Aquila for your question and interest in BOSL 🙂 The best of Second Life magazine started out as my personal diary of beautiful things that I saw around the grid. Back in 2007 there was little, if any, information regarding artists and all I could find were discoes and sex places, so I decided to make the beautiful arts known through my diary, which I named THE BEST OF SL. That was my goal back then and it still is now.
[6:14] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: a kind of diary of your life in SL
[6:15] Frolic Mills: everything else I do, like MISS VIRTUAL WORLD, the radio, my malls etc were a consequence of the Magazine 🙂
[6:16] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: so that mean your most important activity is the Magazine, and the other activities, like Miss VW, are secondary, is that right?
[6:17] Frolic Mills: not really, each acivity has its own importance but they were after the magazine started.
[6:17] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: to manage all these activities, I image you need a large team, don’t u?
[6:19] Frolic Mills: yes – BOSL has over 50 employees and over 300 contributors that make it what it is. I always say that I am just an orchestra director, but I happen to be conducting the BEST orchestra there is, so that makes my work very very easy!
[6:20] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: do you mean that BOSL is a company with 50 employees and all this is in SL?
[6:20] Frolic Mills: yes, it’s in Second Life.
[6:21] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: this is a very big team, for the SL standards, how did you create such a team? how much time it required?
[6:24] Frolic Mills: like any business, I would start an activity, then make sure I understood how it worked and what made it successful, then I would train someone to help me to run it. Then after that position was full and running smoothly, I would open a new activity and so on .. has been quite fun!
[6:24] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: How do you manage all these employees?
[6:27] Frolic Mills: we pay all of our employees – BOSL payroll is in lindens per month
[6:27] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: that means that you have an economic activity, customers, sponsors, and so on … a real business here.
[6:27] Frolic Mills: yes it is
[6:28] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: who are your customers? Is your business based on advertising in the magazine, or you have other kind of business?
[6:31] Frolic Mills: anyone who runs a business is a potential BOSL customer. My main business is marketing and advertising, but I am also a small landlord and we also represent many designers with boulevard agency.
[6:31] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: when did BOSL born, and how?
[6:32] Frolic Mills: Oct 2007, in a litlle land that I had of 2048 mts.
[6:32] Frolic Mills: the good old days.
[6:32] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: did u manage fashion activities?
[6:33] Frolic Mills: yes – I was a model back then and quickly fell in love with all aspects of fashion in second life.
[6:34] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: Fashion is the engine of Second Life, don’t you think so?
[6:34] Frolic Mills: yes I do – fashion and land are the biggest Second Life economies for sure.
[6:35] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: joined with sex, of course
[6:35] Frolic Mills: yes, but you only buy a penis once or twice – not more.
[6:35] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: I think you’re right Frolic. So, to understand your path: you started with fashion activities, next enlarged the business, create the Magazine with known customer.s, and finally, you arrived at today’s management of the brand. Is this frame work right?
[6:38] Frolic Mills: not really. When I started my magazine, I didin’t have any customer at all, and I didn’t care of that. This was just a project I wanted to do (with customers or not). It wasn’t always a business, nor did I open it to become one. It turned into a business, but that wasn´t my initial intention.
[6:39] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: so, at the beginning you started with a very little team, I image…
[6:39] Frolic Mills: me and my friend Giela Delpaso, that was it 😛
[6:40] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: it’s incredible, what you was able to do Frolic…
[6:40] Frolic Mills: Thank you Aquila, I believe that love for what you do, and with passion, anything is possible in Second Life.
[6:40] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: so, fashion is not the only activity of BOSL is it?
[6:42] Frolic Mills: no Aquila. My magazine and radio focuses on anything great happen in Second Life. Architecture, Scripting, Writing, Machinima, and many other types of arts.
[6:43] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: do you know the Italian residents? In the Fashion sector, for exemple, or in cultural activities. Do you have contacts with them?
[6:43] Frolic Mills: yes, of course!
[6:43] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: what do u think of Italy in SL?
[6:44] Frolic Mills: I know Mimmi Boa, my beautiful MISS VIRTUAL WORLD 2009! And I know Soraya Baher, Sissy Pessoa and many other designers.
[6:45] Frolic Mills: I think Italians have a very strong presence in Second Life and have brought many great contributions to Second Life.
[6:45] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: : I followed the last edition of Miss VW, and I remember that two italian girls arrived in the final phase.
[6:46] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: may I ask you a personal question Frolic? Where do you came from?
[6:46] Frolic Mills: I am from Venezuela.
[6:46] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: 🙂
[6:46] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: many Italians there.
[6:47] Frolic Mills: yes, they are 🙂
[6:47] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: do you have other RL Job or you work full time in SL?
[6:47] Frolic Mills: This is my main work.
[6:48] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: what message do you wish to send to our Italian readers? [6:49] Frolic Mills: I am happy the Italians are here and all the wonderful contributions they have made to improving the quality of our Second Lives. May they flourish and proper 🙂
[6:50] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: 🙂
[6:50] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: the last thing …
[6:51] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: if you don’t mind, may I ask you a suggestion fo my magazine?
[6:52] Frolic Mills: do it with love! If you do it because you love it and not so much because of money, you will always be fine!
[6:57] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: this is exactly what we do Frolic, no money nor sponsors. We all that work in the Magazine are volunteers.
[6:57] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: thanks for your time Frolic.
[6:57] Frolic Mills: multo grazzie 🙂
[6:57] AquilaDellaNotte Kondor: bye Frolic.
11:07AM: I start downloading opensim, 11:45AM: I have a working Multiuser Educational Virtual Space
Stellar Date 86415.25, “30 Minutes Virtual EDUKIT” 😉
Today I tried to delve into an issue I really wanted to share after having published around 1 month ago how to install Opensim in 2 minutes [https://virtualworldsmagazine.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/costruirsi-4-sim-opensim-in-due-minuti-sul-proprio-pc-gratis/]. The goal is to show that a simple person, even missing particular computer knowledge and without designing a Moon rocket, she can make up a Multiuser Cooperative Virtual Environment (or whatever you want to call it) using less time than she can ask information to official companies (like Linden Lab, IBM or others) and spending much less, i.e. ZERO $!!!!
When you are finished with these instructions you will find yourselves in a sim just ready to allow people in your school, classroom or office to register an avatar and to enter in a world where it is possible to organize virtual events. Due to the simplicity of this cheat-sheet there are some usage limitation it is worth to stress:
- The environment doesn’t allow for a huge concurrent logged in avatars, so you should think to use it with 10 and probably up to 20 users. It depends much on the actual memory available to your server, CPU speed and network performance. A similar experiment made two years ago in an Italian school with obsolete hardware couldn’t let in more than 3-4 users.
- Avatar appearance is that of female Ruth so people will need to work a bit to better their look (creating their shape, skin etc).
- Advanced functionalities such as Group Handling or Offline IM are not available. For those you must wait next post.
- Voice is not working (but yet the chat usage is much notable)
- It is still an “alpha” OpenSim, so please don’t expect it to be exactly the same as SL, be prepared to relaunch it from now and then 🙂
- It is not a full grid so don’t expect to build on it 40 connected sims. For that you need a real effective grid (see my further posts)
- Even if this installation is designed to connect with other grids and to use Hypergrid teleports, the related knowhow is not covered by this post and will need some further learning.
- What you are currently installing is a “standalone” sim not to be confused with other types of installations which are to be covered in future posts that can be connected to bigger grids like OsGrid or Craft.
This represents to me the finishing touch to a big dream I had some years ago: to provide a “(Knowledge) Kit” to teachers or anybody willing to build in their school, office, association, a 3D cooperative environment, without being dependent on an external service provider or “Computer Experts”. Another big advantage of such solution is that being built to work in a Local Network it is separated from internet and so usable in those contexts such as Educational K12 where minors are involved and where teachers have a specific juridical responsibilities. Keep in mind that these instructions work on a small LAN with Windows computers (XP SP3, Vista or Windows 7). You can do the same with Linux or Mac but you need to change something.
I’m calling this system Virtual “Edukit”: you just need to download TWO files from Internet (simOnAStick package and VCE oar) and with just a minimal simple manual modifications of a couple of files, you will be able to take off your SpaceShip !!!!!
Here is the log of my experience:
- 11:07AM I start downloading famous simonastick (135M)
You can download it from here: http://simonastick.com/download/simonastick_1sim.zip (It’s also possible to download the 4-sim version), - 11:10AM Unzip the file in a known folder mysim
- 11:13AM I test it. Firstly launch mysim\mowes.exe,
- Then from the subfolder mysim\diva-r13981\bin launch OpenSim.exe or OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe (windows 7 or 64 bit)
- At last launch from the subfolder mysim\Imprudence connecting to loginuri http://127.0.0.1:9000 with user usb me and password 123 (These operations have been already described in my first article). Now, I go to the console (that black one from the 2nd command) and write shutdown to close up the virtual world.
- 11:20AM To enable access from another machine I must modify following two files mysim\diva-r13981\bin\Regions\RegionConfig.ini
and mysim\diva-r13981\bin\config-include\MyWorld.ini - In both cases I need to find out using an editor the string 127.0.0.1 and replace it with the known IP of the machine where I’m installing (do not touch any other character!). To get the machine IP the simplest way is to use a DOS window and to write in it the ipconfig command. For instance in my local network in VMWARE the correct IP address would be 192.168.201.130
- 11:27AM. Relaunch OpenSim.exe. Now the sim should be accessible from the LAN where your PC is connected. (Note: it is possible that you need to configure firewall to let pass through packets on the port 9000 or alternatively switch off your firewall).
- 11:28AM. Now I go to another machine in the local network where a SecondlIfe client is installed (or you can use the same USB stick described before with the Imprudence folder) and can try to connect using the user usb me pwd 123 to the loginuri of original IP, i.e. http://192.168.201.130:9000. If everything goes well you should succeed 🙂 Otherwise you either have firewall problems, or the IP is wrong, or the configuration files had been wrongly edited in previous steps.
- 11:30AM. If now I launched the account manager on a browser http://192.168.201.130:9000/wifi I can configure additional accounts like “foo bar” (it should be quite intuitive) and can try to connect from a third machine.
- 11:36AM. Since this world is a bit boring I’m trying to liven it downloading a premade “oar” built for meetings and educators. I chose to download this freely available sim: http://openvce.net/resources/downloads/opensim-openvce.oar
I got this from a catalog of prebuilt sims you might find useful: http://opensimworlds.com/index.php?part=worlds just put the file in the initial server machine under the folder mysim/diva-r13981\bin and type from the console following command: load oar opensim-openvce.oar - Now you should have the full sim ready!!!!!!
- Other places where you can find prebuilt oars:
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/11/four-sources-for-pre-made-virtual-worlds/
http://myopensim.com/index.php?page=Assets&action=Category&categoryid=8&catname=OAR%20Files
http://www.rexxed.com/tag/oar/
http://opensimworlds.com/index.php?part=worlds
Disclaimer:
It can be possible that even following this guide you will not succeed in setting up a working OpenSim in a lan in exactly half an hour, maybe it can take you various hours, or some problems connected with your computer, graphic card, firewall might make it useless on your in your environment. Before committing yourself and promising success to others, it is advisable to scout the environment and to verify it can work (you just need a limited time insite). However to be optimistic, if you have modern computers, up-to-date graphic cards everything should work smoothly. Remember that even very “powerful” laptop are not really powerful when it comes to “server” tasks like OpenSim needs.
To know more you can contact me using the email salahzar [at] gmail [dot] com, or contact International opensim community like osgrid.org which should be very keen on helping educators and noprofit communities willing to use these tools.
Salahzar Stenvaag
Commenti recenti