Cub Run Over ( Sigh) June 6, 2008

Well, the Cub based beehive didn’t work out… went back to the sim and the build was deleted and my primitives autoreturned to my inventory. Hucka D. cried when he found out, and I so hated to see the little guy unhappy that I allowed him to build a new beehive in the sky above our property. It’s mostly based on the design of the former beehive. And what a little builder he’s turning out to bee! (sorry) Check this out: only 16 prims used in the construction of this 3.6 meters wide, 20 meters long, and *50* meter tall structure. It’s a little complicated. Let’s start at the top.

Here you see Hucka D. at the top. Usually he sits in the white chair to position himself on this top while flying above, and then stands and walks over to the holes that lead inside. If you look closely here you’ll notice the two distinct “holes.” One is created by hollowing out the 10 x 10 x 3.5m prim (the whole structure is a 5×2 stack of these prims hollowed or cut in various ways) to create a circular hole. Then the prim is additionally spliced off from the corner in such a way that another hole that Hucka D. can fit through is formed. Then, in addition, Hucka D. can just squeeze inbetween the two holes, a crucial linking aspect to access all parts of the building.

This is what happens when Hucka D. drops into the circular hole, which is mulithued internally (Linden tie dye texture). He enters the first of two main galleries of 20m long by 10m high by 3.5m wide, with one long side made entirely up of windows. You can see through these windows on the inside, but outside they don’t show up. All you see on the outside, in front, is a rusty door texture chosen from Atoll textures option given to us all by the Lindens when we were birthed in their metaverse.

Notice there’s also a giant eucalyptus tree in the gallery, and I stuck this in the two cut holes of each of the two galleries. Which moves us to…

… the intermediary rooms, which make up floors 1, 3 and 5 in Hucka’s naming scheme. The main galleries I’ve already mentioned would be floors 2 and 4, with floor 0 being the same as the top of the structure. All of these intermediary galleries (floors 1, 3, 5) are reached only through the *cut* holes in the prims above. These intermediary galleries are actually 1/2 galleries, but with a little additional solid floor just below the cut hole to allow Hucka D. to land in the gallery in the first place. All of these have window that run across the bottom of the floor, and all except the bottom have parts of one of the 2 eucalyptus trees poking into them, a nice visual. So below we have a view within the 3rd and last (lowest) of these 1/2 galleries, with Hucka D. observing through the window in the floor our skybox and land property immediately below.

One of the neat things about the beehive is that you get views in all four directions, since the window of the main galleries (floors 2 and 4) face in opposite directions — north and south — and the top and bottom of the 3 1/2 galleries have open sides facing west, while the middle of the 1/2 galleries has its open side facing east.

Here’s the whole structure with a happy, smiling Hucka D. posing in front of it.

So to review briefly: using the hollow cuts, you can access only the 2 main galleries (floors 2 and 4). With the corner cuts you can access all the intermediary or 1/2 galleries (floors 1, 3, 5). Confused? It’s just something you have to really visit and get inside to understand. Niether Baker Blinker nor Baker Bloch have been inside, but they could probably fit into the holes as well. I think.

Since the cuts are so small the easiest way to get back to the top is simply fly out of one of the open sides. If you choose to move through the entirety of the structure, top to bottom, you can then just fly out the bottom hole on the end and go back to the top, or other destinations.

JCMEB? Not Dead! (Just Beehive Now) June 5, 2008

Baker Blinker pulling out. “It’s all yours Hucka Doobie!”

“10th!” April 17, 2008

WORK IN PROGRESS

“Holly Blue Holly Blue Holly Blue…” April 10, 2008

“Heater Presents:” April 9, 2008

“Labyrinth Squared” April 7, 2008

Thought I’d go ahead and insert the rough draft of the 7th collage in the Hidalgo series [4/7/08 note: collage now completed], which keeps moving along. To me, this adds a little sinister twist to the maze/labyrinth thread being developed here, and perhaps also relates more to the very 1st collage of the series in that again we have an artificial and very square and regular waterfall, as opposed to the more natural one in the 5th collage before this, which is actually the top of [delete name] waterfall on Hilo Peak Mtn. I have a feeling Blochs will be standing on top of the newest waterfall, once again, very soon [4/7/08 note: he ended up in the hedge maze; is he asleep or still just looking at his (wet) feet?].

The sinister figure in the maze (note that this is not a labyrinth but a (hedge) maze, since it has dead ends), is a combo of images from two “Labyrinth” movies. Again, also, we have the eye in the hand motif from one of these movies, mirroring the Second Life logo itself. In the background we have a motel specifically chosen for its location and former tenant.

I could give considerably more detail on an interpretation for this one, actually, but I need to relate the latest installment of my Blinkerton tales, and I’ll add attached snapshots to a post above this one. Chuck sent me an email Sunday afternoon (about 10 hrs. ago), which I’ve been thinking about rather heavily in the meantime, and certainly spurred on the collage draft seen above.

The maze in the collage represents, I believe, the Second Life grid itself, but more specifically the underwater “maze” trodden by the Ancient Ones mentioned in these blogs posts, and trekked again, at least in part, by Baker Bloch just recently, especially before his ascent on high to Hilo Peak and Lemon World on top of that peak. I believe now that the walls of this maze represent the land “separating” the water, and that the water maze is represented by the paths between the walls. Pretty sure about this.

In his email to me, Chuck tells of a similar kind of hedge maze which he intended to be used as an art gallery of sorts for what he calls his Star Series, made up of either 25 or 26 reputed paintings of a particular 5-point star in the Lordsburg area. There is a very interesting story behind this but I’m not sure I have time to get into it tonight. I will say that on behalf of Chucky I revisited, using the Bloch avatar, The Man statue and also the proximate Delerium Castle on the high island next to it, and in the very nw corner of the Natoma sim. I thought I may have missed something on my first visit, but it turns out I didn’t find anything new with my second study of the area.

I was looking for a particular thing for Chuck: a boxed hedge maze, and the very same one that I found advertised in the Lemon sim. I was also looking for a potential “portal”. More soon as I digest all this and also work on the collage.

baker b.

“/ Before” April 2, 2008

“After/” April 1, 2008

“Day of Destruction” March 31, 2008

“A Passing Double Diamond In The Night” March 24, 2008

Draft for new collage created tonight [finished product above now, 3/28/08]. This would be 3rd in Hidalgo series, then. For now. Want to move ahead with an interpretation since I have more time to write tonight and the next several days. At that point my art and photos/snapshots may start to outpace the text in these posts again, as it was before.

So here it is. We obviously have the 2 bushes again in some guise. In the sky above them is a collage of images from Lordsburg, New Mexico. Have I talked about Lordsburg in this blog? Can’t recall, exactly. I don’t think I have.

No, in searching the blog see that I haven’t mentioned Lordsburg until now. Well, Lordsburg is the name of the county seat of Hidalgo County, New Mexico, a quite large and quite scenic county but with only a total population of 5,932 per the 2000 census, down from 6,049 in 1990. Over half of the county’s population lives in Lordsburg.

Have I mentioned Hidalgo County, even, in this blog? Let me check again…

Again, no, I haven’t brought this up, although I’ve mentioned Hidalgo a number of times, first connecting it to the small island in the ne corner of the Rodeo sim of Second Life, one I’ve been calling in places here “Isle of Baker – Not”. (footnote here to SL forum and SJ post).

Tentative title for collage is “A Passing Double Diamond in the Night”. The sculpture of the man and woman, man with square head and woman with triangle head, was found through continued search for images using keyword Tamayo, as in Rufino Tamayo. This is a sculpture found at the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City. It can be related, then, to the Long Hope Indians of the collage in the Hidalgo series prior to this (see two posts below), since Tamayo was a Mexican of Native American descent (Zapotec pre-Columbian civilization of the Valley of Oaxaca in present day southern Mexico). The sculpture also brings up the relationship of square and triangle already covered in previous posts of this blog: here the complementary nature is embodied as opposite sexes. Unification comes in the double diamond also mentioned before, which we see here represented by what’s called a double diamond hexahedron situated directly in front of the sculpture couple, and uniting their figures as one.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillipwest/101059497/

The sculpture couple is also walking or passing between the two bushes, which upon closer inspection turn out to be one and the same bush, reversed in respect to each other and also illuminated in two different ways. A double diamond star in the sky reinforces the shape in the collage’s title. Beside it is situated a water tank with a word that trails into darkness reading from left to right. I can tell you, however, that this is the Lordsburg water tower, and the double diamond star is a real illuminated star installed right next to it. The word on the water tower is thus “Lordsburg”, but we can really only make out the L and O of the word. This is an interesting edit, because LO is the second part of Hilo, as in Hilo Peak. The city lights in the background of the collage are also those of Lordsburg.

So what is Baker Bloch trying to relate to me through this new collage? Are the two pairs of aliens he’s mentioned, 1 pair consonant with the square shape and the other pair the triangle, represented here by the two figures in the sculpture? It seems so on one level at least. The double diamond uniting these figures may then stand for Lemon World itself, which they are one with in this collage and also in reality(?).

They are passing throught the two differentiated bushes, which probably represent the high and low bushes (elsewhere: “pointy bush, high” and “pointy bush, low”) of the true Hilo Peak itself.

And in again checking, realized I haven’t brought up the fact that one of the only two Hilo Peaks found in the United States is in this Hidalgo County. The other one, which has a similar elevation, is found in Idaho. Here is some basic information concerning these peaks:

http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/detail.asp?fid=5345856

http://www.bivouac.com/MtnPg.asp?MtnId=9999

And, yeah, notice in that second link the mention that the Idaho version of Hilo Peak is really 5761 feet high, and that this is also 1756 meters high, using the same four numbers. Strange thing is, I could have swore that at least one source I originally checked when finding out about this quirk of numbers also mentioned Hilo Peak, New Mexico as having this same height. But in checking again tonight can’t find mention of what appeared to be a mistake at the time, a mixup of the two Hilo Peaks. Did I dream it? Was it a mistake at all? Perhaps yes and no together on both counts.