For this weeks blog I was asked to go out in second life and make contact with two diffferent people in an area of interest to me. I decided that this area would be the arts. I searched the second life home page to find out what sort of events, meeting places and destinations were available to best meet people as I was sick of going to places in second life and there being no one there. On the homepage I first found the alemzi gallery, this was on the top of the list of places under the heading of art so it was the newest, I was disapointed by this location, not because the art was poor, alot of it I was impressed by aswell as the overall design of the gallery but there was absoloutley no one there. I returned to the homepage and search for somewhere with a bit more promise.
This is when I came across the Zinn centre, the Zinn centre was a lot more impressive looking than the alemzi and at first there was no one around or so it seemed. I decided to take a chance and mail one of the creators of one of the "builds" as they are called in SL. Trill Zapatero, Trill replied to me almost insatntly when I told her I was an art student and I wanted to learn more about the Zinn centre. She told me she could meet me at the Zinn in 45 minutes so I decided to kill the time by looking around the Zinn. This is when I took advanttage the people tab and looked for nearby people. there seemed to be a pocket of people gathered at the southern part of the island that the Zinn was on so I teleported myself there. This was a part of the centre called " the speakeasy" a poetry and music club for avatars. There was a stage where you could go up and recite poetry and litrature. after waiting around here I seen that Trill had arrived.
I have to take this oppurtunity to thank Trill for her paietence with me and my unrelaible internet connection, my browser logged me out of second life twice but she still stuck around until I got it together. I started of by asking Trill about the Zinn centre in general. The zinn centre is a part of the four bridges project, the four bridges project was set up by Millay Freschi with Trill Zapatero, both are graduates of the university of Maine. With Trill studying print and painting. The other important person involved with the project is David Wiley who is the online co-ordinator for the organisation Veterans for peace. Activism and art are the outlets of expression for the Zinn. Anyone can join the four bridges project, which i was told was becoming an issue regarding people make exceptionally large "builds" in the centre which causes lagging which could be stopped if there were better criteria for membership but this would sacrifice the four bridges project's free and open medium ( and free and open nature) so its a catch 22.
so it was after some discussion that Trill took me out to see some art seeing as that was more of my interest more so than activism. First Trill brought me to the online gallery of the unviersity of Arizona,which had an amazing anuimation of a painting that opens up and turns into a gateway into the rest of the exhibit. Next Trill brought me to a very impressive build that was her own work called the grail quest. The grail quest is a quite a large build that the viewer must journey through and interact with in order to experience the piece. The grail quest starts out in a cave where there is a mirror and when you touch it your avatar can look at itself, next you journey to a large grail shaped pillar that supports the rest of the parts of the peice.
Zapatero comobines a number of very interesting influences that combine together suprisingly well such as street art, medival art and tarot card art. The search for grail is not literal and this piece is not based on any kind of roleplaying fantasy game, the piece is about the pursuit of false grails such as money, and the hazards of such pursuits such as war and greed. each part of the piece has a floating tarot card to signify what part of the quest the viewer is travelling through. There are numerous interactive builds that are a part of the piece such as a " game of the wealthy" and objects that when touched say quotes from people such as Willam Shakespehere. The quest also brings the viewer through different stages such as death and judgement. Once one travels through death and judgement they reach the centre of the pillar which contains the garden. The garden is full of books that have animations of words and numbers flying out of them this represents knowlege being the only true path to the grail. In the garden there is a well, when the viewer steps into the well they fall down into a path made of stepping stones in the vast surroundings of the universe, its a very impressive part of the piece, at the end of the path there is a door that leads into a room that is completely white with a grail in the centre of the floor when your avatar touches the grail it reveals that the grail is filled with water which shows your avatars reflection so the piece comes full circle from the beginning. The message being that the only true grail is the search with for inner hapiness through knowlege of the world and oneself. Interestingly my avatar was missing it's head at the time so mabye i got a mixed message when looking at my reflection in the grail, which was mixed up even more seeing as Zapatero was standing behind me at such an angle that her head appeared to be on my body whcih raises alot more interesting questions :) .
Trill was a joy to work with and had amazing paietence for me getting myself stuck in bushes and "spazing out" she also offered to show me alot more art on second life and to help me to get in touch with more artists on SL i would consider her to be a very valuable connection on SL due to her willingness to teach those of us who are new to the experience.
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