New World Notes

SL Machinima Classics: Lainy Voom's "Stolen Child"

The Stolen Child - WB Yeats from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

Created in 2009, this is another rapturous masterpiece by Lainy Voom. Here's what I wrote about it at the time:

Thursday SL Machinima: Exploring the Cyberpunk City of Moon Shine

Is Moon Shine the new Insilico? (Or is new Insilico the old Moon Shine?) Either way, this is a pretty fantastic travelogue though a suspiciously empty cyberpunk city from Dooozy, who was nice enough to bring a friend. Click here to visit Moon Shine for yourself.

Meet SL's Many YouTubers in Mixed Reality Intro Videos

Strawberry Singh's SL vlogger challenge has already attracted dozens of entries worth a look -- YouTube videos of SLers introducing themselves to the world at large, featuring video capture of their avatars matched to their real life voices. (Just check out her Comment thread for all the video links.) Here's one of many good ones above, featuring Isabelle Cheren, who makes it clear that, contrary to the silly stereotype, she has quite an active and successful first life, and enjoys SL to relax. As Ms. Singh puts it:

Watch "The one that I want": Bryn Oh's Utterly Eerie Machinima Shot in Her Latest Metaverse Art Installation

If you've got chills, watch this and they'll be multiplying -- shot in dynamic shadow and swooping camerawork, it's a gorgeously creepy music video created by Canadian government-funded Second Life-based artist Bryn Oh, shot in her latest installation: "The Hand", which is "the story of Flutter, a girl who has something precious in a suitcase and lives in a world of Sleepers."

Click here for the official in-world listing, and read about it on Bryn Oh's blog. Second Life being Second Life, it's an enormous pain to enjoy the optimal experience as the artist intended:

SL Machinima Masterpieces: Lainy Voom's "Fall" (2009)

Fall from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

Still among the very most powerful machinima I've ever seen, Lainy Voom conveys deep emotion with perfectly composed shots and edits timed to a perfectly chosen soundtrack (by Claire Fitch), integrating clever use of WindLight (when it still very new to Second Life) and the scripting system for visual effects. As she told me back then:

Soda Gnome Explores Second Life as Only a Soda Gnome Can

Soda Gnome! How does he do it? Why does he do it? We don't yet know, but you should definitely see him in action, shooting random insane encounters in the virtual world. NSFW warning for above: Zombie sex, Darth Vader stripping, breasts as a weapon, other epic strangeness. A follow-up video plunges us into still more NSFW-ish (but good natured, goddammit) territory, featuring gratuitous nudity, woman-dancing-on-head, virtual showers, Star Trek and La La Land references:

This is Your Thursday Rocking Yosakoi Dance Interlude

I do not always blog SL dance videos, but when I do, they're seriously rocking takes on a traditional Yosakoi dance. My Japanese is a bit rusty but apparently this was shot (by Fair Saeed) in a themed sim called Yanfes with a Japanese language homepage here.

Anyone know the music source? Because I think it kicks koto-flavored ass.

"Library": Beautiful SL Machinima Tribute to Classic Literature

Pepa Cometa created this beautiful and achingly nostalgic Second Life machinima, one of the best I've seen in quite awhile. It's a tribute to great stories and characters that have endured the test of time, and the favorite books which loom large in our memory. (In other words, a paean to real books created in a virtual world.) Thanks to an installation by metaverse artist Cica Ghost, those books are literally large, towering all around Pepe's child-like avatar. Pepe also enlists a cast of SLers who've turned their avatars into classic characters who come alive around her: Don Quixote, d'Artagnan, the Little Prince, and Scheherazade.

Machinima Masterpieces: "Pipedream" Featuring SL's Petrovsky Flux

Shot in 2008 by Mescaline Tammas, a real life film editor, "Pipedream @ Hambone Flux" is a masterpiece for several reasons: Beautifully shot and cut, it was among the first to go viral outside the SL community, with Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow writing, "Man, this is the first SL machinima I've seen that crosses the line from 'extremely promising' to 'Holy crap!'" Just as key, it's a tribute to Second Life's self-assembling, self-destructing, steampunk city known as the Bogon Flux back then, a masterpiece in itself. And good news, it's still in Second Life: Now called the Petrovsky Flux, click here to visit.

A fourth reason? It was among the first SL machinimas to use a customized WindLight filter, an eerie, smokey, Max Max-y sort of atmosphere. (WindLight had only recently launched.) Created by Mescaline himself, it's called "London 2026" -- here's the code below:

Machinima Masterpieces: Molotov Alva & the Search for His Creator (2007)

Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator - Episode 1 from Submarine Channel on Vimeo.

Another SL machinima classic to watch this weekend from exactly 10 years ago: Part 1 of "Molotov Alva & the Search for His Creator", a feature documentary shot in Second Life by artist Douglas Gayeton, which was subsequently purchased by HBO and aired on its sister network Cinemax. Strange, beautiful, and moving, I can't find the full version streaming anywhere, but it is available for purchase as a DVD on Amazon.

Read about how it was made here. Capturing SL footage, for example, was done with a unique technique I'd love to see others replicate: