New World Notes

This Flickr Artist is Creating a Series of Stunning Second Life Images Inspired by Books

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

SL On Camera is working on a project that has me completely intrigued. It’s all in her photo album “Life Is Like a Book.” This picture is #28, or more officially, “Life Is Like a Book (28).” It’s a lovely example of the Rule of Thirds, the tower of books bisected by an imaginary line one-third of the way from the left side of the picture. I don’t know why this is #28 because there are eleven pictures in the album, but that just makes it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice said in Wonderland

Speaking of Alice, check out this next pic, click here:

This Artist Blends Gen AI Imagery With Second Life Screenshots to Powerful Effect -- Here's a Glimpse at Duraya's Process

See original image here

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Duraya creates such intriguing pictures, I had to ask her how she does it. It’s clear she combines Second Life screenshots with her own sketches, but I was curious if she also used AI and other methods. She was kind enough to pick three of her pictures that illustrate her three main approaches to creating an image. 

“I joined SL out of curiosity and for socializing and stayed mainly for the wide field of creativity it offers,” Duraya tells me.  She started making screenshots in 2021 and over time, learned how to use all of SL’s tools. “So from playing with WindLights and shadows I gradually added various ways of post processing until finally taking up using AI too.”

Her first approach is pure Second Life with minor post-processing touch ups. 

She starts by “taking pictures in SL and using WindLights that help me approach my idea of the result I seek, refining with different graphic programs – I usually use more than one. Either it stops here or I add some small gif, like a few strands of moving grass or a bird blinking its eyes and so on. It enlivens the image and as this is a virtual world we are less limited here in the way we express ourselves. I simply loved the forest and the dark and mysterious mood the WindLight added to it.”

For two more Duraya images and methods, click here:

ℕadej Dae Turns Second Life Screenshots into Breathtaking Landscape Art

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

ℕadej Dae creates extraordinary images focusing on landscapes and avatar portraits. Her landscapes are close and intimate, a single tree, a few flowers or grasses, often in silhouette or in striking colors. “Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year” is a striking picture and perfectly captures the quote with all the leaves on one side turned to their autumn colors and then the bare branches of winter. The leaves are blowing all about swirling in the wind and fog. 

For more of her extraordinary landscapes, click here:

Today's Second Life Flickr Pick: The Intriguing & Beautiful Conceptual Images of Celestial Demon

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

My first glance at Celestial Demon’s untitled picture of a man laying on the ground, I thought he was a boulder. But of course, a closer, slower look revealed a far more interesting picture. I love how he uses the body as landscape. It is his lighting that makes the body look so much more a part of the landscape, making the body more abstract. It’s reminiscent of Carl Warner’s Bodyscapes, an amazing exploration of the geography of the human body and Celestial Demon’s is as well. 

For more of Celestial Demon’s conceptual art, click here.

This Artist Heavily Post-Processes Second Life Screenshots to Look Like Striking Pop Art. Her Name is Flo.

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Flo’s “catch up” is a good exemplar of her work - modern, minimalist, and oh-so-graphic. She creates half-tones that seem fresh off the printing press, negative images, duotones, and so much more. With layers and filters, she takes a screenshot and turns it into neo-pop art. 

For more great art, click here:

Metaverse Memory: My Story of a Man Who Built a Virtual World Museum to Hold His Dying Father's Art

From "Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father A Second Life" (2011):

As death approached, the artist’s son did an extraordinary thing: He began to build a place that would live on after his father, made with particles of light. That is to say, Sander Vos logged into Second Life, and made a gallery of his father’s work in digital 3D.  

“I started building a 3D version of one of his drawings, ‘Villa Insight’ in Second Life, while he was ill, because building makes me calm in a way,” Sander tells me. “I had to think practical all the time, like: How on earth am I going to make this little ink bottle with prims? And I was busy with him at the same time, ‘cause it was all about him of course."

Read the rest here.

These Utterly Stunning Images Look Like Wyeth & Hopper Paintings. They're Actually Screenshots from Second Life.

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Claire Vuissent’s depiction of Wuthering Heights character Catherine Linton is so magnificent, I didn’t have to glance at the title to know she was running “out on the wily, windy moors.” (Yes, I know this is the original but I prefer the cover.) Claire embodies the spirit of Cathy searching on the moors for Heathcliff. To be honest, I love the song, admired the book, but have always disliked Cathy and Heathcliff. They are not good people. 

For more fantastic images from Claire Vuissent, click here:

This Artist Uses Layered Second Life Images & Wireframe Screenshots to Create Breathtaking Works of Abstract Expressionism

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Thus Yootz’ “Exodus to Air” is exquisite. There are multiple shots that have been layered to produce this otherworldly scene. It’s a distortion of reality that expresses emotion which suggests abstract expressionism. After all, it’s just some trees with clouds scudding in the distance. Add some screened flowers and some text in a different alphabet and all sorts of context becomes possible. 

Is it a parallel multiverse or a dystopian future here with black chlorophyll and a red, red sun, or is it a mood? She chose “The Ballad of John Henry” by Joe Bonamassa to accompany the picture, a connection I don’t see, but I enjoy Bonamassa any day of the week. Unlike an ordinary landscape, this picture is not just beautiful, but also confounding. What does it mean? 

The original screenshot was taken at The White Armory and Sylvan Moon Designs.

For more Second Life screenshots as abstract expressionist art, click here:

Incredible Second Life Screenshot Photos Inspired by Emily Dickinson & Other Poets

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

Emily Dickinson

Becca Ordinary’s image “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” is anything but ordinary. I love how she captures the idea of the poem in a way that takes note of the birds, but goes in another direction. It’s imaginative and truly captures the spirit of the Dickinson poem. And poetry is what inspires Becca’s work. 

For more poetical pictures, click here:

 

Metaverse Artist AM Radio on Second Life as the First "Giga-Artwork"

Image via AM Radio's Flickr

Jeff "AM Radio" Berg was watching my recent interview with Philip Rosedale, and AM Radio being AM Radio, sent me this pretty profound thought:

I wonder if what he created, when considered as a whole, is the first giga-artwork. An artwork so large it has an economy. An artwork as a grand experiment on the nature of our existence, as evolving typologies of identity and taxonomies of spaces, and communication. As if it was an innate instinct in each of us to reject randomness, a clamoring for order when we recognize something like Second Life as a well structured lattice designed to catch up with the unfolding entropy of the universe, find new ways of being, classify each discovery, expand our perceptions, and add it to our phylum of ways of being alive.

He's saying "giga-artwork" as a play on "Gigafactory", a facility which manufactures electric engines. (Or more broadly, a factory which makes other factories.) Adding:

Why couldn’t a whole meta world be a unique artwork, the artist as world builder. Maybe there is a specific set of qualifiers to define something as a giga-artwork? But qualifiers might get lost in semantics. So maybe a giga-artwork needs just one, and Second Life is the first one I’ve seen capable of it. Think of it as a sort of analog to Turing completeness, call it meta-complete, when a world is capable of spawning child worlds capable of emulating other worlds.

Here's what he means, in terms of Second Life's architecture: