Art

I recently received a short missive from my errant brother, Cardinal, which I shall reproduce in its entirety here.

To tell the truth, I was too busy opening champagne to actually write anything myself.

(His last stanza, of course, is quite accurate; this is no panacea and doubtless there will be new methods of extortion and harassment arising, as well as issues as to the enforcement of this one, simply due to sheer volume. But please do allow me at least a short period of satisfaction.)

As mentioned in the Comments upon my previous entry regarding the excellent Slouching Towards Bedlam, paintings were composed to illustrate it by Sandara - two of which may be seen here, reproduced with kind permission:

(please click to see the full-sized versions)

Further works by the same artist may be found at sandara.net.

The rotating tin cylinder within the phonograph vibrates slightly as a brass needle scrapes against it. The sound of a throat being cleared emerges from the machine’s hornshell speaker, followed by a thin, haunting voice.

This has very little to do with the Grid and Scripting and So On, but I have recently been spending idle moments in a work of Interactive Fiction (some may know such things as “text adventures”) entitled Slouching Towards Bedlam, which, stylistically I believe, may be of interest to Regular Readers - or those of you who are decidedly Irregular.

The rubber piping connected to the back of the machine convulses for a moment, a wisp of steam escaping from it. From within, comes a low whirring which slowly increases in pitch and volume. From out of the magnetophone’s horn comes a soft echo of static…

Bedlam certainly describes itself as “steampunk”, which is frequently in my experience a Bad Sign particularly where Literature is concerned - it is a crude and anachronistic word - but, with a sigh, I must admit that it is useful shorthand at times. (I can hardly disavow it when I am a High Officer of the group “The Steampunks” and use it frequently in my Commercial Announcements, simply so that those who are interested may find me. I would much rather use a more elegant term, “Counter-Historical Scientific Romantic” or similar, but hey ho, that takes up an awfully large number of precious Letters.) Certainly, by any reasonable standards, this piece would qualify, set in a London of 1885 with steam-powered hangmen, a full-size Panopticon and mechanist shops on Fleet Street owned by, erm, red-headed female technologists. The tone is dark and intense, almost Lovecraftian, the writing concise yet expressive. I have not yet finished it, but will be sad when I do - happily, I hear the promise that there are many alternative endings.

Bedlam was published in a format known as “Z-Code”, to be run on a “Z-Machine”. The history of this is too lengthy to go into here (if you are interested, dear reader, perhaps peruse the appropriate Wikipedia article) but suffice to say that it was originally developed by the masters of the art of Interactive Fiction, Infocom, in order that they might produce their products easily for all manner of different Engines, and is now available for general use via the reverse-engineered compiler known as Inform. For the Player or Creator this has two main results:

1. One can run a Z-Code piece on practically any Engine, as there are interpreters now for almost anything imaginable - a list of them may be found here. I have even done so on my Portable Magnetophone, though it is not what one would call a comfortable experience. Conversely, the author must only provide one file for general use, rather than be forced to exclude certain folk.
2. One can also write one’s own Z-Code pieces with ease. The latest version of the Inform compiler is an absolutely astounding effort; fellow Scripters and Engine Instructors will be astounded to hear that it is a “natural language” language that actually works, as opposed to, say, the abomination known as Applescript. If you have the slightest interest in creating these things I would advise you to visit the Home of Inform and obtain their free software forthwith.

It will doubtless not come as a particular surprise to hear that I personally have spent some time attempting to write pieces in Inform, but whilst I find myself perfectly technically capable, I also find that I have no skill with either Plot or Puzzle. I dislike Puzzles in general unless they add to the overall experience of the Piece - Bedlam so far works well in this regard, with such “puzzles” as there are being related to the plot rather than being there to slow one down - but the main issue is that I simply do not think in terms of Narrative.

Within Second Life, narrative is something that other people provide for themselves, simultaneously a collective and an individual effort with everyone’s experience being different, which is perhaps why I remain there; I can provide components, collaborate with other people’s existences, and construct my own, but when it comes to creating an overall “plot” I am completely adrift. My efforts with Inform are (if I may say so) detailed and diverting vignettes, but they have no point to them. My efforts with more traditional prose are similar, for that matter.

Still, enough introspection: I would hope that some readers might be curious enough to obtain the appropriate code for Slouching Towards Bedlam, then one of the interpreters, and enjoy the experience. Perhaps some may even wish to delve further into Interactive Fiction; I would suggest Baf’s Guide as a starting point for obtaining further pieces. A search for those given a Five Star Rating will provide many excellent examples.

As a very tardy note of something that I should have mentioned earlier: the Second Life premiere of the exhibition of 77 Million Paintings by Mr Brian Eno is occurring this weekend, and will not be reoccurring as far as I am aware after the end of today.

Locations and links may be found at the special page on blueair.tv. I have been visiting the installations myself and would say that they are certainly worth visiting, if you see this in time. (I have been taking some photographs, which I shall be making public in the near future for anyone who misses this, but really, photographs will not do it justice, as part of the point is that it changes constantly.)

I’m sorry to anyone who is getting bored of my cinematography, but I have such fun making these things, even if they are rubbish. The latest efforts are views of two things from Burning Life. Ms Rebekka Ruff told me about the Steam Powered Gumball Factory and clearly I had to visit that - but on the way I also noticed Jillian Callahan’s telescope, and felt that that deserved a piece as well.

Burning Life - Telescope on Vimeo

Burning Life - Gumballs on Vimeo

Unfortunately I am producing these little clips at a rate that seems to be exhausting my uploading allowance on Vimeo. I do like Vimeo very much, it is far nicer, prettier and easier to use than Google Video, and I’m afraid we do not use the Y*uT*be word around here. However, it restricts one to a mere Thirty Megabytes of Information per Week, which sounds like an awful lot but in actual fact isn’t. Particularly as one’s allowance begins anew on a Sunday, and I tend to engage in such projects on Sundays rather than Saturdays. Because of this I have been forced to produce things in piddly little 320×240 format.

I suppose that I should examine the Burning Life areas a little more thoroughly before they vanish.

If you have not already done so, I Highly Recommend that you read Hamlet Au’s piece on Seifert Surface’s “crooked house”. This very much falls into the category of “I wish I’d thought of that” - Mr Surface has created an experiential model of a four-dimensional cube (a tesseract) in the three dimensions of Second Life, by means of some trickery. One can walk through a building in a straight line and return to one’s starting point.

Watch the video first and see if you can work out how that could be done. The answer seems very obvious after you have seen it from the outside, but that is always the case with the best of such things.

For some reason this has impressed me far more than pretty much anything I have seen in Second Life so far, and stands up as a reason why, no matter what the social situation becomes with ban lines and changes and so on, SL will continue to remain something wonderful. Where else, pray tell, could one construct a hypercubic building to walk through?

I have mathematical and experimental and political and sociological interests, and whilst all of them are important to me, none entirely wins over the others. Perhaps it is my background that leads me to treat them all as intrinsically connected, thus I cannot help considering the political aspects of a technological development (and vice versa), but at times my sheer admiration for an achievement overwhelms other considerations. It may be a weakness but a dictator could gain my support by promising easy access to multidimensional housing.

One thing that always amazes me that anyone has ever heard of me in Second Life at all. I fear that I shall never get over the idea that anyone might remember my name or, for that matter, know it without me having met them or annoyed them in some way. I am most gratified whenever anyone does, believe me, but each time I am quite astounded by it.

The above came to mind when I was asked by the very talented Tateru Nino to pose for the illustration on the Tower on a Tarot deck. Of course, I was immensely flattered to be asked, and I think that it ended up rather well - you can see the full set on Dwell On It. I think it’s a fascinating thing to interpret the Tarot in the medium of Second Life avatars; an activity that I am proud to be connected to. Torley as the Fool is particularly good.

I am not an expert in the Tarot and certainly not in the meaning of the Tower card, but I see from Wikipedia that:

> * To some, It symbolises failure, ruin and catastrophe.

> * To others, the Tower represents the Paradigms constructed by the Ego, the sum total of all Schema which the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lighting when Reality does not conform to expectation.

> * Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and Kundalini experiences may result.

Hm. Well. This is not intended to be a conventional interpretation and thus I will not take the “ruin” elements to heart. My Lighthouse has yet to be struck by lightning, though Reality has commonly failed to conform to expectations, mostly on the matter of physics and sim boundaries.

~ * ~

Recently I have been doing many things, as always, but today I decided to take a break from speculative technology and concentrate on something that I find strangely relaxing - the replication of antiquities in Second Life.

It is a good test of one’s skills to attempt to create a functional duplicate of an object that exists in the “Real World”, and it is ideal for those moments when one is not feeling desperately inspired and full of ideas for novelties, as all of the details are already there. In fact, quite often during the process one comes up with an idea for something entirely different. Just as the way around Writer’s Block is to write, so the way around Creator’s Block is to create.

This Sunday I decided to build a replica of Dr Watson’s service revolver, something which would be of interest to a few people, I judged. There are different opinions as to precisely which model this would have been, but I settled on the .455 Webley as my choice. In actual fact I based my model around the Mark 6 version, which was only created in 1915, but don’t tell anyone that. They all look rather similar in any case.

Being myself I couldn’t help but add a series of features once the basic design and texturing were complete, so the revolver, apart from firing bullets as one would expect a revolver to, now

* has a selection of various sampled sounds attached to it;
* has custom animations for holding and firing the weapon, as I can’t stand the default ones;
* has muzzle smoke;
* breaks open when one has fired all six rounds, ejects the empty cartridges (which fall to the floor) and animates one’s avatar to engage in reloading.

You know, if one is going to spend hours scouring the Inter Net for textures and images, one should at least also spend some time scripting suitable behaviour for the device.

A couple of antiquarian friends of mine with a particular interest in antique firearms have indicated their approval of the final product, and thus I think I shall put it out for sale forthwith. To return to my original theme, that is the other thing that continually surprises me about Second Life, the idea that people will actually pay good Lindens for things that I create. I should hope that they would as I have already spent several hundred on textures, animations and sounds for this one item. It is not just a question of one payment for each component, either - it is impossible to tell whether an animation appears just right, or whether a sound seems quite appropriate, before one has uploaded it and paid to do so.

~ * ~

Now, if you will excuse me, I must return, as I wish to speak to Mr Shang on the subject of a noticeboard for residents.

Incidentally, I am selling my land in Theretra. If anyone wishes to buy a continuous plot of land there with amenable neighbours, please do contact me.