New World Notes

Lyric's Desire: Erotic SL Machinima From Lyric Lundquist

There are many Second Life machinimas that aim to titillate with sexual imagery, but for my mojo, at least, few are actually sexy. Then there's "Sideways Time", the latest from Lyric Lundquist, whose expressionist machinima I've celebrated before, a geometric burst of sensual imagery. Possibly unsafe for work viewing, but more evocative, than explicit:

"Although there are sensual undertones in a lot of my machinima," Lyric tells me, "I really wanted to take it to another level with this video." She was inspired by the discovery of Igor Ballyhoo's latest creation [SLurl teleport link here]. "I was floored with how sensual and powerful it was. I was also hanging out a lot at Selavy Oh's installation while obsessively listening to the 'The White Flash' by Modeselektor." Both builds are featured in "Sideways Times", Ms. Lundquist's attempt "to create something that would evoke the viewer to feel the emotions that both installations made me feel."

Fun With Sim-Wide Havok 4 Physics in Second Life

This is one of the lovelier demonstrations of Second Life Havok 4 physics at its most, well, physical:

This mayhem is brought you to by a metaverse developer called Bytegang, helmed by the aptly named Loki Dancer. "We did the video just by the way, when cleaning up a simulator after a finished project," Loki tells me. The 'prim explosions' we caused by the physics engine of Second Life. I selected the whole sections of the build, unlinked them and set all the primitives to be physical. The results were rather amusing."

I'd love to see more full-fledged machinima using this effect -- imagine what you could do merging the footage to some well-placed sound effects and visual flourishes in post-production. Bonus: Shoot the physics footage in KirstenLee's dynamic shadow-enabled viewer.

Weekend Machinima: Torley Explores the Cyberpunk Wonderland of Sick

Here's what Second Life looks like with a high-end graphics card and all the viewer features turned up to full: Presented by Torley, a rollicking, single take trip through Sick, one of Second Life's best cyberpunk city islands, creation of a Japanese Resident named MK Curtiz. I interviewed him last year, who told me, amazingly enough, he built Sick as "a hobby". [SLurl teleport link to Sick here] Mr. Curtiz is also a superb machinima maker himself: After the break, have a look at the subtitled version of an anime-inspired short he made back in 2007:

Second Life Machinima Shot With an iPhone

Want an economical way to shoot Second Life machinima? There's an app for that. As demonstrated by Botgirl Questi, who captures SL video with her iPhone:

I actually like how the iPhone gives the footage a glassy, abstracted appearance. (This is roughly the way Douglas Gayeton shot his Molotov Alva SL documentary, with a high definition camera pointed directly at his monitor.) Botgirl also edited this video with an iPhone app called ReelDirector, so it's entirely an iPhone package.

Weekend Machinima: "Impressions" of Second Life, the Video to Show Gamer Friends Who've Dismissed SL

I love this Second Life machinima directed by Willow Caldera (Sarah Burnside IRL), who recently became this blog's live music reviewer. Behold:

It's a travelogue-style montage through several Second Life locations, a popular SL machinima sub-genre, distinguished by two elements most other videos leave out:

• Recurring characters featured within most shots, an excellent way to anchor the images with an implicit storyline, and also add a social context to the locations. (Way too many montages are empty of avatars.)
• Shots of the dynamic content creation process in action, strongly suggesting everything else was also created by other other users. (Which is, after all, Second Life's core market distinguisher.)

A third optional element might be: Flying chick with Icarus wings armed with twin Uzis. That's the one which makes me think this is an ideal video to send your gamer friends who've dismissed SL after a sub-par first time experience, or seeing sub-quality screenshots and machinima from the pre-WindLight years. Not only do you want to show them the world's current 3D visual quality, you also want to show them gameplay they can't easily get from standard MMOs. (And so far, MMOs are severely lacking in the cyberpunk/flying chicks with Uzis metric.)

Anyway, here's direct SLurl teleport links to some of the locations in Willow's video:

• The retro cafe is in Artilleri (SLurl teleport link)
• The destroyed city is Abyss (SLurl teleport link)
• The cyberpunk metropolis is Insilico (SLurl teleport link)
• The autumnal forest glade is Tempura (SLurl teleport link)
• The submerged island with grand piano is Chouchou (SLurl teleport link)

Machinima Glimpses of Burning Life 2009

Thanks to Chantal Harvey, here's a lucid dream montage of Burning Life 2009, which is still unfolding. I love especially the giant, mechanized robots and the stilt-walking fire juggler. Interesting choice of discordant soundtrack music, which brings a weird foreboding to a happening that's usually a chaotic jubilee.

Second Life Machinima Integrated Into Multimedia Theatrical Production Co-Created By UK Director Peter Greenaway

While interviewing Italian artist Luca Lisci about his latest SL machinima, he casually mentioned an earlier project he worked on last year: creating machinima for The Blue Planet, a live stage multimedia show co-directed by Peter Greenaway. (Trailer above.) Film buffs will immediately recognize that name: the UK artist and director is renowned for a number of award-winning films he's created over the years, intellectually ambitious and visually arresting, often working with imagery that's extremely sexual or violent or sometimes both. (He's probably most famous for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover starring Helen Mirren and her edible boyfriend, and The Pillow Book, starring an oft-nude Ewan McGregor and, well, his Scottish banger.)

Second Life machinima was incorporated into The Blue Planet (a re-telling of the Noah's Ark story) at the behest of Greenaway's collaborator (and spouse), Saskia Boddeke, who's active in SL.

"We make art which is crossing and combining the different medias and SL is an important tool for us," Boddeke tells me by email. The team commissioned Luca Lisci (known as Vive Voom in SL) to capture footage of an SL ark and animals, created by Timmi Allen. "[Greenaway] liked the 'synthetic' mood of machinima and asked me to push forward expression as much as I can, but without losing that 'videogame' appeal," says Lisci. Here's some of the footage he made for the production:

Mixed Reality Portrait: Rik Riel

Here's the exceptionally flexible Rik Riel breakdancing in both realities -- his material self in Brooklyn, his avatar in Justice Commons. Rik blogs about both identities on his own blog, Rikomatic, and keeps track of non-profit activity in virtual worlds at Betterverse.org. (RSS both soon, son.) Unsurprisingly, you can often find Rik at non-profit/social good events in Second Life. Somewhat more surprisingly, you can sometimes find Rik in New York's Central Park, getting funky center stage for the female James Brown.

See the whole Mixed Reality Portrait series here. Want to send me your own Mixed Reality Portrait? Here's submission guidelines and suggestions.

Beautiful Machinima On the Dreams Second Life Inspires

In this supremely gorgeous if somewhat opaque machinima by a French artist known in SL as Tutsy Navarathna, a man and woman meet and love in Second Life, both united and divided by their individual visions of the virtual. Now living in India, Tutsy tells me the ancient country helped inspire the visuals. While narrative, the ambiguity of the imagery leaves things up to various interpretations.

"So the man wants a second life on the beach while the woman wants to be in a fantastic world?" I ask Tutsy. Who only giggles and says, "Why not?" In any case, much thanks to ColeMarie Soleil (who is no machinima slouch herself) for the pointer.

Bill Gates Embraces Second Life (Kinda Sorta)

In this seriously cute machinima from Draxtor Despres, Bill Gates crashes a Mac store, griefs an SL sandbox, and tries to convince Apple lovers that they should switch to Vista. (The parody is actually a promotional for a metaverse development company.) Incorporates clever use of a real world celebrity's audio clips, a comedic standby I'd love to see used in more SL machinima. (As we saw with last month's "I'm Too Busy To Date Your Avatar" hit send-up of Felicia Day's "Do You Want to Date My Avatar", parodies based on recognizable personalities have a much better chance of going viral.) Gates' avatar is scarily accurate from some angles, though the bad lip sync jars at times. Thanks to SLurl Twitter master Ozzy for the tip; read more about the machinima here.