"lingua abstractica" art exhibition

{This exhibition is now over, thanks for taking an interest}

Welcome to another art exhibition of mine I've been lucky enough to be offered an opportunity to display at the Sisi Biedermann Gallery & Gardens in Second life. 

Through this collection I'm attempting to extract the fundamentals from what is often overlooked in an increasingly distracted and distracting world, to rediscover the tangible through simply being in a space without being bombarded by all the peripheral noise. 

I hope this collection of my paintings can make you think or maybe even take you away for a short time from the craziness of the world and of overthinking and help find a still place inside yourself. Through these images I'm offering one way in which to navigate the madness of pandemics, lockdowns and divisiveness.

 

 

 

‘broken songs’ art exhibition

{This exhibition is now over, thanks for taking an interest}

 
Good news!
I have a new collection of artwork on show at Yr Helyg gallery in Second Life (SL).

I’ve always drawn and sketched and doodled, and a few years ago I took up being a life model for local art classes and recently with lockdown and all I decided to brush up on my own canvas skills, so, with the help of an online art course as the pandemic restrictions at the time made it impossible for face-to-face classes to even run it became one of my personal lockdown challenges, to get some formal training in it.

I’ve been doing more abstract art for years and photography, for which I’ve also had some SL exhibitions, and some design work inside and outside of SL but now I thought there was time to get some more proper training in actual painting and this collections is some of the results. They are watercolour on canvas and I’ve entitled the collection “broken songs”, a theme loosely-influenced by how music evokes memories and transports us back to important or special places and times in your lives.

I hope you might find time to visit the gallery and enjoy your time there. You can visit them at the slurl, http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vinefields%20Paradise/92/96/22
where you’ll also find artwork from other artists in this brand new creatives gallery.

Anan~x

pixel pixies

 

Yet another of my favourite shops in SL has closed, land abandoned, sims dissolved. It follows the fate of so many I’ve been fond of over the way too many years I’ve been here, all consigned to the primyards to be disassembled, composted, and one hopes at least eventually to be repurposed as something else and not just rotting away in some sl’andfill.

Then there’s my friends list, my avatar’s and my Bloodlines online profile. All those I’d bitten and all those who’d bitten me, all those still in my clan’s bloodline, of a sorts, where are they now?

As with these, alongside my list of friends, so few are even here anymore, more gone than not, less are active than not, some most likely not logged on for years even if they could remember their passwords, or their names. Their avatars exist now only as ghosts: there and not there, so transparent they can’t be seen at all and yet there they are still lounging in my lists.

That’s life, even Second Life, time and people move on, change, die, my friends list reading more like a memorial to lives past than present, rows upon rows of gravestones overgrown with lichen and ivy, missing presumed. Occasionally one will suddenly appear after years, an IM (instant message), usually sent when I’m offline to be found like a message in a bottle washed up on my shore to be uncorked and read, quite often beginning, “I don’t know if you remember me, but,….”, or a more succinct “I’m back!”, sometimes leaving me scraping my brain as to who they are. I usually remember though, weirdly I’ve always remembered more detail than I would’ve thought, on how we first met, or something particularly notable we did, even if it was only the once. So strange how all we pixel pixies leave an echo however brief the acquaintance may have been, a different kind of byte caught in these memory banks.

I sometimes look through my list and think, I should purge this a bit, tidy up, as I do every now and then with my bulging inventory, which by the way keeps bulging no matter how often I sieve it. It’s actually a shame more of this stuff we accumulate isn’t set as ‘trans’, as in with transfer permissions, because it would be brilliant to be able to do the preloved thing and instead of throwing things away, pass them on. As for my friends list, I’m reluctant delete those names long gone or forgotten or those I haven’t heard from in years, they are people after all. At the end of the day they aren’t just pixel pixies but real people beyond their screens even if they aren’t inworld, so to speak, anymore. 

In a way I’m a carrier of part of their story, even if it’s a part they’ve long left behind.

© Anan Eebus

 

to name but a few

 

   When I joined SL way back in 2008, five years after it started in 2003, choosing a name was different from what it is now. Your first name could be whatever you wanted it to be, you choose it, make it up, whatever, a normal regular name, one with random letters or numbers, or a combination of both, a made up word, you could even name yourself after an object, wherever your imagination took you at the time of signing up, but once you’d done it that was it, your name, no changing unless you got a new account.

Your last name was chosen from a select list provided by SL at the time of signing up. Some of the names would have been familiar like real-world ones, while others completely made-up. This list every now and then be changed, some surnames would drop off it and new ones added. Whatever you chose that would be your inworld name, as in my name, ‘Anan Eebus’. The surname ‘Eebus’ wasn’t around very long I’d discovered and was lucky to choose it from the list at the time as now when I search there aren’t many with it. These names are now sometimes referred to as ‘legacy names’, so not only have I got a legacy name still, it’s an unusual one in that not many people ever chose it.

After a few years of being on SL, they changed the naming process to you only choosing one name, your first name essentially, which could be a single name or a compound of say what you might want your first and last name to be. Additionally they took away the last names lists completely making all new accounts be whatever you chose as your first followed by ‘resident’. For example, my name would have looked like this: “Ananeebus resident”. As it is I think I was lucky to get in before they made that change. I thought this was a bit silly, and I think it was at a time they were trying to take more control or something. I actually have no clear idea why they did it.

Moving on yet another couple of years and they have since abandoned the ‘resident’ surname in favour of you just choosing one name, whatever you want but it can only be a single word with no spacing, hence, if I were to join now it would be ‘Ananeebus’, and nothing else, or of course I could just have gone with ‘Anan’ as long as there wasn’t another already inworld with that name. That’s always been a rule, no two avatars with the same account name.

Just prior to dropping the 'resident' in favour of what we have now for new accounts they introduced an additional naming option, that is an ‘alias’. This is a name you can unofficially change you name too in your account so your avi, or avatar, will show up as that name inworld even though officially you’re still the name you originally signed up with. This means you can one more have two names, or more, and even symbols in your name, you can in fact if you know how get quite wacky and inventive with it or choose one which fits you character better for inworld roleplay.

I’m still pleased I have an original name, or what they call now a legacy name, and I’ve never used the alias option as yet, I’ve felt no need. Some people change theirs as often as every week, just for fun or for whatever, perhaps just being bored or a bad case of nominative attention deficit disorder. Those who do can make it tricky when looking for them in your friends list to IM or something as when they use an alias it shows up first and can take an age to work out who is who.

So that’s two things I’ve never changed since I joined, my name and the colour of my hair, it’s always been blue, since my second week here I may choose different styles on and off but the colour remains an obvious shade of particular blue.

~Anan Eebus

the explorer in me

 I’ve become an eternal explorer these days. It’s mostly what I do when online SL.

In the beginning when I first came into this world I did nothing but explore, and then shopping became another habit, then I got busy with other stuff over the years until now, I’ve rediscovered this art form. I do believe it is an art, from choosing to what I do when I go anywhere, and not to be put off by the fact that so many places, sims, are most of the time empty. I am not deterred, in fact I’m spurred on to make the most- after all, fewer people much less lag, especially these days as some people over-mesh themselves (although I can’t speak, I tend to carry probably more scripts than I should, usually in HUDs).

There are some amazing creations when you take the time to look, and for me the real art comes in choosing sort of randomly, sometimes I may go by a recommendation, but mostly I’m opening the world map, findings a square that looks interesting for whatever reason, and teleporting to take a peek. Sometimes it’s the name that intrigues me, or amuses me, making me think, that’s got to be worth a gander. Other times it’s the way it looks on the map, something catching the eye. Lastly I may just go somewhere cos it’s on the edge and way out in the virtual sea all on its lonesome.

I wish I could collect XPs or something useful for exploring across the entire SL but as far as I can find there isn’t anything like that really, not anything that covers its entirety.

The other day I landed in a sim, an island out on its own, explored, as I do, then found my next destination only to then receive a PM from the sim owner just asking if I knew if before she was the owner it was a club or something like, because of so many people just dropping in briefly. I said I didn’t know, and I didn’t, I had merely picked it randomly and never been there before in any of its previous incarnations.

It got me thinking, wouldn’t it be good it all sims, properties, plots, whatever, came with the equivalent of property deeds, like you get in RL, which contain some history about the property, boundaries, any major changes, when it first came into being, previous occupants sometimes, previous uses, just for historical interest. I think this because the history of life in SL is mostly overlooked and because of that a missed opportunity, to not archive the history of how people use space, interact with it, including I some cases their lives. All we have are blogs like mine and there aren’t many, most are ad hoc and they don’t relate to one another really.

I think land deeds in some form with such details about previous use, etc, and passed from owner to owner or renter to renter would be a fascinating resource and all find its way into a larger archive. Of course I’m not sure how it could be done, I just think of these things, and if they did exist then that sim-owner who PM’d me would have the very information, history she was searching for.

I’ve kept loads of files and stuff on my activity here and only recently realised what a valuable anthropologically-rich database it could be seen to be. Ok, maybe I’m overstating it, but I am fascinated by people’s pasts as much as their present. Well, anyway, there I go thinking again, letting my ideas run amok.

~~Anan Eebus

minding the gap

     It’s 2021, as if you didn’t know, and what a journey 2020 has been to get here. The time’s been both contracted and protracted, now we’re suddenly four months into this year and I’ve just realised how much has already gone.

     I felt it was time to catch up on my blogging here, and you, lovely readers, that’s if you’re still out there. So much has happened and is still happening to everyone it’s been too easy to get lost or mislaid in the noise of it all. RL (real life) time seems to have collided with SL (Second Life) time.

      For me, SL has always seemed to exist within its own clock, its own chronology, with usually more time passing there than actually had in the real world. Like dog years, a year in SL can feel like seven. Perhaps not as much as that but maybe you get the idea, that sense that you can live that many years in a mere actual 12 months- not only virtual characters and lives but virtual time.

      Second Life is a bubble into which whenever we log in we penetrate like tiny needles each time, not enough to pop it though. Or maybe it’s more like a virus, being absorbed while its integrity remains intact and like a virus we have an impact on events and actions which might result in changes or ripples for good or for bad. Oddly enough we never leave actual footprints for virtual archaeologists to find in the future.

      Well, I’m feeling very philosophical today, but in truth I’ve always been like this, thinking too much, a pocket philosopher (after all, I’m not very tall, in RL or SL). In SL we’re immortal, or think we are. I’ve known inworlders (SL players) who have vanished without a trace and live on only in my memory, not anymore even a profile. As we in RL return to dust, in SL we revert to pixels, maybe to be recycled, reused, becoming ‘preloved’, or even discarded into those vast oceans that exist between sims into which we aren’t allowed access, through which we have to ‘hop’, or teleport. They are the forbidden lands, lands of water, we’re tantalizingly teased but aren’t given the keys to unlock, or touch it, feel it, interact with it in any way.

      It is the nowhere, a final frontier. I think they should open them up, find a way, find the key. The future of SL I believe is there, joining the dots, so to speak. Then we could walk or swim or fly, take a train, drive a car, ride a bike between Sims, perhaps in glass bridges, causeways, following buoys or wandering stars, feel a freedom we’ve not yet been given inworld. I don’t think they’re reading this, those Linden gods, but if they were, that would be my suggestion.

 © Anan Eebus