Temple of TILE reinstated… May 8, 2010

… on Pudding Hill properties. Nothing really in it yet. Big E (stripped of all b_hivia supporting elements in this incarnation) is just to south. Some skyscaping below, including a waterfall.

Ground shots now. Really nice view from Fleep’s cottage down into the heart of Big Sink. Will be hard to give this up (once more). Sunklands Central Victorian house in the southwest corner of Pudding Hill can be seen to the right, occupying the last of the four 1024 parcels I rent in this sim.

My little Pudding Hill forest. I’ve also reinstated the modified Econo apts. May actually put pics in it this time… we’ll see.

*Up*dates: Galleries, Etc. January 26, 2010

Think I’ve basically finished the Sunklands Central project I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around. Here’s the deal: essentially I’ve re-created the Victorian house setting on Big Island in the Comet Archipelago, starting with the portrait hangings of both Lord Chancellor Chesaw (in the most prominent place in the house) and his ne’er-do-well twin brother Chancellor Lord Saw-che (in the least prominent place), the two rivals in the ultra-important, second game of Trivia Ratsuit ever played — and last to date as well — that supposedly jump started the creation of virtual reality in our time.

But let’s start outside with a sign marking the historic site within Sunklands.

This is the new twist: the Victorian house was actually *flown* to this new location from Big Island, perhaps via a massive amount of balloons but perhaps not. But the parallel with the inspirational movie Up is implicit still, if reversed. I’ll just copy the contents of the notecard that accompanies the Sunklands historic sign or marker:

The Disney-Pixar movie Up kind of had it backwards. The archetypal HOME was actually moved from what others might see as a paradisiacal setting to a empty plot surrounded on 3 sides by urban megaprims.

Sunklands Central is a relic from a past time paradise, planted in the heart of Big Sink as a seed. The past is tropical Big Island in Azure Islands’ Comet Archipelago. The present is largely barren but full-of-potential Big Sink in Sunklands on the Jeogeot continent. The future is…

Now I may tweak that notecard some more, but the core idea seems pretty solid. The Victorian house from Up pictured in the sign is in a rather remarkably similar setting just before its ascent into the sky through the aforementioned massive number of balloons (Karl, the surviving family member, use to sell balloons for a living… just go along with it). Like the similar sized Victorian house in Sunklands, it too is surrounded by urban “megaprims”, not even having trees on one side for relief. Here’s a relative, overhead shot of Sunklands Central.

I couldn’t find the exact scene from the Up movie that would best compare with the above shot, but viewers of the already famous 2009 movie probably know the one I’m talking about, and you still get the basic idea from the still I did find online.

Leaving that queer idea alone for a time, let’s move inside the house now. Chesaw’s directly front and center as we walk in the main door. That’s Max the cat-turtle to the right, and a table with one of Chesaw’s famous pies on it to the left, along with some maps of Big Island.

Upstairs are more detailed scenes from Big Island, including Baker Bloch sitting beside what I’m now calling the Pie Hole of Big Island, with a Tron video arcade positioned on top of the ancient passage as a sign of warning — so the story goes. Just for the record, Chancellor Lord Saw-che’s portrait is around the corner of the wall in front of the hobo bed, in a least prominent position in the house as I said, and hung askew as well.

Baker in his viewing chair atop the house. He most definitely feels centered here, perhaps more than ever before, anywhere, in Second Life. I can’t see giving up this particular parcel — certainly could be wrong, though.

Then moving to other updates, I think the “Down The Rabbit Hole” exhibit within the Edwardston Station Gallery cube might be essentially finished as well. Each picture now contains accompanying text that you can access by mousing over it. I now have some new ideas about the Rabbit Hole and Jeogeot-Maebaleia relationship concerning The Bill. I’ve also renamed Peter of Sunklands “Peter The Good” (not Great, just Good… just good enough).

And I believe the new, pared down Big E Gallery is sort of finished, or at least I’ve almost run out of prims to work with for now. Baker below sits in front of two of Edna’s photographs from her Ruins in the Woods exhibit, formerly housed in the Gallery at the Temple of TILE. There’s also her Ozland pictures from same inside the Big E Gallery now.

Lastly I opened a small gallery or shop in Pine Tree Village (originally called X-ville in this blog) called “Where Are We On That?” and offering the 4 collages featured in the archived exhibit from last year, along with several other related SL photographs and a link to the just completed web site.

Pudding Hill Gallery Complex: Some Prelim Pics… January 22, 2010

Newer, smaller version of the Big E Gallery (right) and the newly placed Edwardston Station Gallery (left) with added tubing. Both are situated on non-adjacent 1024 square meter parcels in the Pudding Hill sim.

Ground view directly underneath 30x30x30 Edwardston Station Gallery, with small cabin and pool and some trees. This is right next to another registered gallery called Tryad Mesmeriser’s Sculptures. More on that proximity soon.

Ground underneath Big E Gallery. Giant waterfall extends from the top of the gallery all the way down to the hillside, forming a small pool. No structure here; didn’t have enough prims left. 😦

3rd and lowest 1024 parcel I now rent in Pudding Hill, also owned by LaMa Estates like the one with the Edwardston Station Gallery. This same parcel is what Hucka D. has called Vortextra, perhaps the most important location of any in Sunklands as a whole, the center of it all. I’m calling the parcel “Sunklands Central”. Very excited to be renting there. 🙂

“Sunklands Central” with Edwardston Station Gallery floating in the sky behind it.

ESG and Big E Gallery again, looking down now.

“E” Exhibit, 03 July 6, 2009

Moving up to floor 3 of Big E, we now run into more pictures from the Korean Channel, like this nice dawn shot from the quite green, rolling hills of Xilted again.

And then of Karoz in Kenfield on floor 4, beside the keyhole shaped bay, its most prominent feature.

Then on the next floor up (5th, overall) Karoz curiously yields to Baker Bloch in further Jeogeot related pictures, which is explained in the titles/descriptions of the pictures themselves (once again, just move your mouse pointer over the pictures in the exhibit to see this text). Essentially, we’ve now moved beyond Karoz’s Pink Floyd album related “magic circle” defined by the yellow circles on the Jeogeot maps to the left of Baker Bloch here. One important switchover point can be identified with the Korean Channel: Karoz’s circular influence includes to the lower 1/2 of the protected land around this channel but not the upper 1/2.

Last current picture within Big E, a woodcut showing Little Robert Plant running with the “Zeppelin Tube” from Nowtown to Sternberg.

An additional feature of the big E are these phantom openings that allow visitors to walk onto the outer surfaces of this giant letter. One such opening allows Baker Bloch here to walk over the map of the Fernstar sim, and gaze up at part of the volcano centered island (Ichelus half) that also acts as a telehub for the region.

The other half of this volcanic island appears on the surface just around the corner from Baker Bloch.

Opposite direction.

And then Big E from the top, depicting another interesting island near the volcanic one that actually hasn’t been visited yet by Karoz, I don’t believe. I’ll have to remedy that soon.

“E” Exhibit, 02

Baker Bloch activates the teleporter and heads on up to Big E, 400 meters high.

Big E, as already described a bit from this early June post. As determined by Karoz at the time of the find in the Blue Feather Sea outlined in this post, all but 1 of the 30 sims of the Korean Channel are depicted on the 29 separate square surfaces of this E, with the completely water sim Ustermann being the lone omission.

Big E as seen from the north, with the sims from the lower part of the Korean Channel adorning the individual square surfaces on this side, 1 per square again. These would be the sims Karoz is most familiar with, starting with Xilted at the right hand bottom, closest to his Noru home. A broad strip of land extends from Xilted northward through Glasso, which Karoz has run a number of times now in its entirety.

On the south side of the Big E, then, are Channel sims from its upper part, which include another long strip of land but on the west side of the Channel this time, and considerably more narrow than the one on the lower, east side of the Channel from the snapshot above.

Looking up from the south side of the E again, starting with Xilted just in front of Baker Bloch here.

Then the same with the north side.

Baker spies some kind of face staring back at him from the doorway into the Big E. Ah yes, he remembers now. That’s one of the 2 Chilbolton crop circles from 2001, the ones his user baker b. think are intimately connected with Chilbo from the southern continent.

Baker Bloch moves inside the E, then. All of these pictures were originally found, for several weeks, in Noru’s House of Truth mini-gallery, but have since been deleted there to avoid duplication with the Chro gallery material. Again, I’ll let the descriptions of the pictures tell their tale in person to curious visitors.

2nd floor of E, again a 20 x 10 meter room as is the first.

Baker Bloch daydreams, once again, about the mysteries of Chilbo/Chilbol/Chilbolton while staring at one of its names on a map from this floor.

“E” Exhibit, 03

“E” Exhibit, 01

As of July 3rd, the new “E” exhibit has been opened in the “Something to Chro About” Gallery in Healy, in what’s called Yapland after founder (and my present landlord) Kelly Yap, a marvelously inventive person. Please come see her water exhibit which I view my “E” exhibit next door as a kind of side show for, if you wish to venture out of her gallery and down what’s called the Art Walk to visit the rental gallery spaces, which I recommend (and not just for the sake of my own gallery!). Sometime soon, I’ll attempt to review all the galleries on this walk, some of which have been there for a considerable chunk of time. I’ve been on the Walk since February, and although a number of new galleries have moved in not many have left in the meantime.

Below you have a look down the center aisle of the new exhibit on the main floor of the gallery, toward the giant Blue Feather Sea cube that I briefly mentioned in the post just below. The ceiling of the gallery above the cube seems to be open to the sky, but actually this is just another picture within the gallery. The reason for this illusion will become apparent in a moment.

Let’s first glance over at Kelly’s fabulous water themed exhibit, yet another incarnation of the multifacted Kelly Yap Gallery which reinvents itself every couple of months or so. I’ll have to encourage Kelly to get a web site about her gallery; at least she doesn’t have one listed in the Art Gallery Owner’s group database. Btw, there’s an amazing SL map you can pull up on this site that shows the location of all 600+ galleries in this database on the overall grid.

Moving inside the gallery, we can now clearly see the “E” in the “sky”, which, again, is just a picture. A person entering the gallery may not get this at first, and that’s the idea, for there really *is* a giant “E” in the sky, just not low enough to open the ceiling up and take a look at it. Instead, the 50 meter “E”, which we’ll visit in coming posts in this series, is situated at 400 meters elevation, or, putting it another way, about 300 meters above the level of this main gallery floor. Much too far for the average avatar draw distance to take in, then (which is usually set between 96-128 meters; I actually have to often set mine at the minimum 64 meters to successfully navigate urban areas sometimes).

The teleporter that takes one up to this “E” in the sky is positioned at the end of a large, yellow-black two-dimensional “I” letter in the center of the floor here. On this “I”, in turn, are etched the lower case letters a,b,c, and d, in the order that they appear from the door. As the teleporter is situated just beyond teh “d” in this row, it is implied that it stands for “e”, I hope. And the description of the teleporter gives just that: simply “e.”

On either side of the I with these small letters and teleporter are positioned 6 pictures, 3 to each side. These show scenes directly or indirectly related to the Blue Feather Sea pictured on the cube between and in back of them. To learn more about each picture, and this applies to all pictures within the gallery and also the giant “E” in the sky, you simply move your mouse over top of them to manifest text within the title/description of each. The notecard available at the entrance to this level also provides the url for this blog, with the prompt to search on related keywords and categories within to learn more of what I speak about here.

A view from the back of the gallery. I like the way the new blue color of the gallery (thanks again for the refurbishing Kelly!) nicely frames the giant Blue Feather Sea cube in this manner.

Interesting juxtaposition of “E” representations, one on the Blue Feather Sea cube (marking the position where Karoz found the “E” last month in this sea) and then the one on the false sky opening. Worth a snapshot I felt, anyway.

Kelly also has graciously linked the individual levels, through this see-through 17 prim blueish staircase in the snapshot below, of what were former two different gallery rental spaces, one on top of the other. I now only pay half the rent I did before, although I also only have half the amount of prims to play around with (100 instead of 200). When I present the whole tour, it should be easy to see that I did run over a bit, which I told Kelly in advance to expect, and that I’d pay extra for the additional prims beyond my new, lower limit. Which I did.

Opening to the old, lower gallery space, now populated with a number of 09 collages from the 10×10. That is, the 9th collages of each tier. Pictured here to the left are, then, Wheeler 09 (9th collage of the Wheeler series, 9th overall tier of the 10 tier 10×10), and then Jasper 09 (9th collage of the 10th tier) next to the opening itself. Not seen here is Newton 09, which is on the narrower wall facing the door, snugly fit between two columns there.

Another 09 collage was hung underneath the new stairs and accompanying rock border, this time from the Yale series. There are 10 total “09” collages in the 10×10, one for each of the 10 tiers. We have four on this level of the new exhibit, and the remaining 6 are found in the giant “E” in the sky. To those who care, find these remaining 6 and you can copy them for free! (just as a reward for poking around a bit here)

View of the remaining pictures on this lower level of the Chro gallery. Again I’ll let the descriptions tell the story. Moving on now to the sky!

“E” Exhibit, 02