Art of the Artists: Slartist@UWA Machinima Challenge (L$430,000 Prize Pool)

Art of the Artists: Slartist@UWA Machinima Challenge - L$430,000 Prize Pool
Sponsored by Slartist & The Writers Centre, Singapore

PREAMBLE: We are absolutely thrilled to be able to run a machinima event again, thanks to the generosity of LaPiscean Liberty & Slartist as well as Singh Albatros and The Writers Centre, Singapore. This is not a continuation of the MachinimUWA series, which ended in Dec 2015, with MachinimUWA VIII: Pursue Impossible, rather this is 'A New Hope,' if you will, that has a life primarily thanks to LaPiscean Liberty, who wants to nourish the dynamic partnership between artists and filmmakers. EDIT: Plus 2 new wonderful sponsors, Virtlantis and PookyMedia!


DATES:   Submissions open through 31st December 2017

Entries will be displayed on the University of Western Australia (UWA) Second Life blog and the Slartist website.

THEME: Create a film with a work of art!

SUBJECT MATTER: Any artworks that sit on the UWA Sims in Second Life, and these include artworks created when the sims themselves were created in 2009 can be selected to feature in your machinima. You may choose individual artworks OR a collection of artworks around which to weave a story. The artwork(s) need to be a relatively significant part of the story, and not merely something glimpsed in passing.

An additional award is being sponsored by The Writers Centre, Singapore for any machinima that includes 'The Merlion' sculpture.

LOCATION OF SUBJECT MATTER
(YOU CAN HOWEVER SELECT ANYTHING ANYWHERE ON THE SIMS):

UWA MAIN GALLERY - This is where our main current art exhibitions are. Our most recent show, "Transformations," is expected to remain up at least through the end of this year.

THE MERLION - This is a special installation that replicates a large iconic sculpture in Singapore. There is a small copy on UWA's sims that gives information  and a landmark to the full size installation on the Monash University sims. There is information there about the Merlion Portal Project concerning cultural, literary and artistic significance of the Merlion.


UWA Archive Gallery (Upper Level) - Selections from the past 8 years of UWA art shows.

UWA Archive Gallery (Lower Level)
UWA Archive Gallery (Annex) - A few special installations

UWA MAIN SIM - Home of the iconic Winthrop Hall clock tower, Somerville outdoor cinema, the Moreton Bay Figs, and Sunken Garden. Some art works from the closing sims will be moving to platforms above.

 NOTE: The artwork may be filmed in its current location, but it is not a must to film it there, so long at the focus of the machinima is centered around the artworks. You may communicate with the artists to film their works in other locations, and work with them on the film. Please contact FreeWee Ling or Jayjay Zifanwe if you need to be able to rez blue screen, etc., as part of your filming process.

*As of today 4 sims form the UWA cluster, namely UWA, University of WA, UWA Winthrop & WASP Land. Only the first 2 sims have a guaranteed lifespan for the next 2 years, the other two could disappear anytime as there is only funding to support 2 of the sims. Filming artwork on the sims that may disappear would be a great service to the art!

THE CHALLENGE
Create a machinima that features some (or one) of the artworks sitting on the UWA Sims in SL. You can choose to film as many (or as few) as you like, and you may submit any number of entries. The absolute maximum time limit is 8 minutes (longer films will be accepted but will not be considered for the challenge).

Method of Entry & Other Info:

• Load the Machinima anywhere, preferably YouTube or Vimeo, and provide the link to Jayjay Zifanwe & LaPiscean Liberty.
• This will appear on the  Slartist@UWA channel and RSS on Slartist that will appear on the front page as well as on Roku TV
• Please acknowledge the artworks you feature, the lands that you film in & please acknowledge and get authorisation for any music you use.
• You own all rights to the films you create, but by entering the challenge you agree to provide UWA, Slartis & AviewTV non-exclusive, unrestricted, use in perpetuity in the known universe for educational and promotional purposes.
• All work must be free of copyright issues. If requested, you must provide detailed information regarding the source, creator and background information of your work. If you utilize any 3rd party materials, such as music, textures, or prefabricated parts, you must have obtained permission from the creator(s).
• You may submit films previously made, so long as they feature an artwork currently sitting on UWA land in SL AND you have not previously submitted this film to the UWA MachinimUWA series of challenges
• Films will not be accepted if they include excessively abusive, violent, offensive, bullying, harmful, insulting or inappropriate material, or excessively foul language, in particular where religious references are used. Depictions of gratuitous nudity or sexual activity may not be appropriate and may be rejected
• If you need to rez (blue screen etc), contact Jayjay Zifanwe or FreeWee Ling
• If you have questions, want to discuss anything, or add to the prize pool,  please contact Jayjay Zifanwe

Current Prize Pool
1st Prize - L$75K,
2nd Prize - L$50K
3rd Prize - L$40K
4th Prize - L$30K,
5th Prize - L$20K
6th - 10th Prizes - L$7K
'The Merlion' Special Prize - L$50K
UWA Special Prize - L$50K

(Above numbers will adjust upwards as the prize pool has increased by L$80,000)

* MANY THANKS TO ELIZA WIERWIGHT FOR HER WONDERFUL POSTER FOR THIS CHALLENGE

JUDGING PANEL 
Chantal Harvey - Judging Panel Chair
Harnake Hunspal - Freelance Producer and Producer / Director
Tess Baxter (SL: tizzy canucci)
Craig Harbison - https://www.facebook.com/Harb40

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You have by now heard that the UWA sims in Second Life have given a reprieve yet again. In short, we have gotten an extension for another two years for two of our remaining four sims. There are great blog posts about the recent developments by:

• Inara Pey
• Alison James

Our Programs:

The large 3D Art & Machinima Challenges are basically over. We may have occasional changing exhibits in the UWA gallery, but the current show ("Transformations") will probably stay up for the rest of this year at least. This is in part because we have been offered funding from an outside source for a machinima challenge that will focus on the art on the UWA sims.

Our Sims: What's Staying

The "main" sim (called "University of WA") contains the iconic campus builds including Winthrop Hall with the clock tower, the Somerville outdoor cinema, the Moreton Bay fig trees, and the Sunken Gardens. It will be one of the sims to remain.

Also staying is the adjacent "UWA" sim that includes our art gallery in the sky (home of the changing exhibitions for the last 8 years), and several ground level installations, including the large Anatomy, Physiology, and Human Anatomy building that is used for teaching by Prof. Stuart Bunt.

Because of the recent increases in sim capacity to 20K prims and some judicious editing of certain objects, we are actually in pretty good shape to move a good number of our archival "permanent" collection of art from the Winthrop sim to UWA sim. Some items cannot be moved due to ownership constraints or other practical reasons, but most of the better known pieces should be preserved (at least for the next 2 years).  JayJay and I will be working to move what we can this month.

What's Going Away:

A lot of the familiar installations on the Winthrop and WASP sims are going to disappear.

Winthrop sim has a number of things that will likely be lost. Notably the large forest of trees and figures by soror Nishi (we will be saving a couple of smaller pieces soror submitted to our art challenges),

as well and a bunch of Glyph Graves's organic plants and creatures and his huge sky installation called "Strangers Also Dance." (You really owe it to yourself to see this. There is a rather dramatic transporter in the form of an amorphous shape over the water at ground level.)

And the modern gallery building by Patch Thibaud that houses a lot of the smaller pieces.

And, speaking of Patch, the amazing BOSL Amphitheatre in the sky will necessarily be going away because it sits over the intersection of all four sims. This has been the beloved location of most of our major art/machinima challenge award ceremonies.

WASP sim is also going away. This sim was originally intended for use by the advance visualization collaboration at UWA.  (WASP stands for Western Australian Supercomputer Program.) Most of their activity happened the first year of UWA in SL (2009), but included the creation of many of the major campus buildings that were created in the old Google Sketchup 3D modeling program and then imported to SL using a custom conversion tool to recreate them in prims. In addition to Winthrop Hall, they recreated the School of Physics, Art Department, and a few other buildings that will survive the coming changes. The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery building on WASP (currently housing an old exhibit of doodle drawings by former Linden Lab CEO M Linden) will be going away.

An Aside:

Alexander Graham Bell, best known for the invention of the telephone, was also interested in aerodynamics and created a number kites using various geometrical principles. Among them was this design that is a set of equilateral triangles within triangles in a pyramidal form called a Sierpinski tetrahedron, which would later be recognized as a fractal set in chaos theory.

Among the items in Second Life on the UWA WASP sim is a Sierpinski tetrahedron as part of an exhibit of numerous fractal objects made by Trianguloid Trefoil.

Interestingly, there is also an art object on UWA Winthrop sim created by the brilliant scripter Takni Miklos that generates a Sierpinski tetrahedron on collision (i.e., just walk into the orange ring).

WASP and Winthrop sims are expected to close the end of July. The objects on WASP (including the remarkable 1032 prim model of St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow) are expected to disappear permanently.

You are strongly encouraged to come see these sims while you can!