Exploring 6 Exhibits from the UWA Design Challenge (by guest blogger Victoria Lenoirre)

Walking around the challenge sim, there is lots to see and touch. Like always, I feel like a small child gazing up in wonder at all the builds and colors. The feeling never goes away and so I thought I'd write about 6 exhibits that caught my eye. All the builds are most excellent and my thanks and respect to all the artists who spent hours creating inworld and offworld. You rock! So, here goes my brief glances at the 6.

I first stumbled upon The Monade by Kicca Igaly.

The Monade

It's certainly a vision in purple. I saw at least 3 contrasting shades of purple. It looks like a snow globe, except that are stars inside it. There is even a place to sit. Just left click on the outside of the globe and you can meditate. The backside is shrouded by mists while the front side is mostly clear. Monade comes from the Greek word monos, which means "unique." According to the philosophy of Leibniz, the monad is the smallest unit and indivisible of spiritual substance of which all things are composed. Enter this little universe enclosed in the sphere, concentrate and listen to the little red heart, your heart..." To see more of her work visit her Flickr page.

Infernal Machine by Lollito Larkham

Infernal Machine

It is made up of 2 conveyor belts with 2 disembodied arms that pick up canisters from the belts and dump them into a deep bin. The animation of the arms looks quite efficient and fluid. Lollito uses blender. He made the avatar animations and loop sound. The mechanical arm was rigged and posed in Blender. You can see a blender screenshot and more of his work at his flickr page. He wanted to build something funny and interactive. Lollito gave me one word of warning, "Be careful, machines can have unexpected behavior..." Will you come play with his machine and see what happens?

Requiem for Mother Earth by Silene Christen

Requiem for Mother Earth

At first glance you see a golden orange altar with pink lotuses strewn on the top. Behind the altar stand about 12 monks humbly offering a lotus plant that they hold in both of their hands. These are their small offerings to give to Mother Earth. The fact that they are all faceless demonstrates their humbleness...their separation from their ego. The altar is under one black arch and the supllicants are under another arch. Some supplicants are even standing above the arch like they are alighting from the sky to make an offering and honor Mother Earth.

Inspiration for Requiem came from a documentary about Sydney [sic] starring Cate Blanchett "where she struck up a dialogue with a biologist about nature that is still preserved and of its representation of the past. They also spoke of the importance of any element in the equation of nature, even a tiny field mouse who is in danger of extinction. This documentary, the passion with which they spoke, I[t] came [from] deep inside. A procession of beings on a permanent pilgrimage to the last remains of life on a planet in decline: humidity, cave, underground, and human beings among inorganic, tenderness, love .... Everything moved like a blender in me and [I] saw the image of what I have shown in this work."

Follow this link and this link to see more pictures.

Frankx Lefavre - Golgotha

Golgotha

It's a dark night scene with plenty of lightning bolts in the backdrop, which is made up of 3 panels. In the center is erected a sort of lopsided cross with an anguished-looking skeleton nailed onto it by his hands and feet, a man being crucified. Golgotha is the place where Jesus was crucified, according to the Bible. There are skulls and bones lying on the dark ground Death is the white horseman in the back panel texture. there is also a second cross. i clicked it and found my avatar bolted down to it, my head bent low over my chest, like i was very ashamed of myself. Frankx told me that the exhibit is about "the basic futility in believe there's a God to save humankind from its own self destructive instincts. Jesus did not return for a 'second coming', "so all that's left is a Post-Apocalyptic Golgotha." The empty cross that I found myself on, that is where you "are crucified to await your own God. The idea behind this exhibit is that there really is no God and people die in vain, waiting for Him to arrive. Frankx says, "They've crucified another son of God yet again and the world's ended anyway...They're waiting for something that is never going to come."

Sarah's Soul by Soda Lemondrop

Sarah's Soul

It's a dreary-looking scene in a rich, wooden frame. You can see a girl sitting on some concrete steps at a train or bus station, bent over her knees, with both hands over face like she is crying. There are pigeons behind her that look as if they're watching her in her distress. The viewer of the picture is the observer as are the pigeons.

Soda says about this piece:
     
           I searched through my collection of photos and felt drawn to use this one. It’s a picture taken of   a  stranger, a student probably since she is wearing a backpack and there are colleges nearby, and her pose made me think of her having an inner moment. She seems withdrawn from the world around her and the small dog nearby seems to be her only companion. To further add to the theme of inwardness, the edges of the photo were blurred giving it a feel of an inner concentration and focus where peripheral details are lost and ignored by ones mind which is traveling inward.  I isolated the figure of the girl in a second photo and added a red tint then layered this image over the first one in the work of art I created. I then placed the images in a box which to me added to the feel of containment. Ones soul is housed and contained, confined to the body during a lifetime, and I used the box to convey this feeling of the walls within which we feel ourselves. Walls of personality, opinion, and belief.


Petite etude sur Olivier messiaen by Aristide Despres

Petite Etude Sur Olivier Messiaen

It means "Small Study on Olivier Messiaen."
My first thought was that it looks like an abacus with balls and cyclinders going up and down, around and around. Some background info: "Olivier Messiaen [1908..1992] may be considered as the master of modern classical music. He was also interested in ornithology and studied the bird songs which he used in his music.

Aristide says, "I wanted to create a piece that would tell about the complexity of such a person as Messiaen, without being illustrative."

The technical side of this exhibit is that the SL wind is causing the balls and cylinders to go crazy. During the displacement, you can hear them making a sound like birds. You just click on one cylinder to reset it back to its original position.

I hope you all vote for your favorite masterpiece! One of the ones I've mentioned OR one of the ones I haven't depicted here. Voting ends by September 3rd! Well done to all the artists who have submitted to the UWA 3d Challenge this month!