OK, this guy walks into an auto repair shop dressed as a woman to check on his twin sales guys who are standing behind the counter waiting to be tested for their rez speed. It just so happens that a friend is hanging around the shop and he asks sarcastically: hey, is your facelight bright enough? Not for me, (she) says; I can’t see a thing. Well, here, he says, I got a better one for you. So he gives (her) a new facelight, which looks like it may have been used to light up the Nurenberg rally for Leni Reifenstahl. Thanks, (she) says;  this oughta scare the papparazzi away. Yeah, they generally don’t do studio work, he says.

This is a (true) story. Bodies have been changed to protect the innocent.

“Go forth and multiply!”, she say. “Can I borrow your calculator?”, I say.

Just over a month ago I began the daunting task of creating a small tribe of avatars for an education project in Second Life. Having spent three years focusing on the subtleties of ‘synthetic individualism’ – tweaking shapes and skins and other things into distinct and credible virtual beings, I thought to myself – hell yeah, this can’t be that difficult, right? Well, I was cruising along at a pretty good clip until I hit the magic number ten and began to realize that creating fake people by the dozen was not for the faint of heart.

To make things more difficult, they all had to be ‘professionals’; that is, their appearance had to comply with the standards of the business world. Needless to say, having spent most of my real life (not to mention my virtual one) avoiding those standards by invoking my artistic license, I suddenly found myself staring into a yawning chasm, an occasional white shirt and tie drifting by. I not only had to quickly get a handle on an unfamiliar style of dress, but I had to find places to buy the damn stuff. I soon learned that there are a lot more mini skirts than pencil skirts in this little paradise of ours.

Now that it’s all over, though, I must admit it was satisfying in an odd sort of way. Not to sound megalomaniacal or anything, but it did make me feel a bit godlike, even though it was probably a bit more like being one of the elves in God’s workshop. But don’t tell that to the 21 new creatures who now believe in me. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

That little fox up there, btw, is Quin, my femme finale. She had just acquired that glorious crown of cascading locks and I had just enough strength left to snap a photo. A fitting image to end one of the bigger population explosions in the history of sl; 21 avatars birthed in 36 days. Would that qualify them as noobie boomers?

Anyway, I think I’ll  try to grab me a bit of sabbath. Procreating can be a lot of work, ya know.

Someone asked me recently what it was that I was after in my exploration of Second Life as an artistic medium, or, more accurately, as a base of operations and a springboard to first life for my creative activities. Interesting question, though, because it goes straight to the heart of the matter; no ifs, ands or buts. Simple and direct. My answer? “I’m looking for the legos behind it all.” Sounds flippant, I know, but it was a light-hearted way to express a serious endeavor.. to be able to delve into the deeper aspects of the virtual soul while playing like a child in my very own wonderland. Pixels, legos, atoms – they’re all children’s blocks in a big old cosmic game; God, man, avatar – the chain gets bigger, but the game remains the same.

That lego comment reminded of another serious artist who once took a detour off his career path to play with legos, also for a very serious reason. Norman Mailer, the great 20th century novelist, once built his utopian vision of “The City of the Future” in his living room, using thousands of legos to bring forth his dream. This fascinating story was recounted in Mary Dearborn’s Mailer: A Biography:

In many ways this was a typically Mailerian project. He announced it in advance in the pages of the New York Times Magazine and, to underline his seriousness, in Architectural Forum. The prose city he outlined would change the face not only of public architecture but of society itself. He had long blamed architecture for many of the woes of contemporary society, and now he applied himself to setting forth his plans in pronouncements and, beginning in the fall of 1965, the creation of an actual model city, immense in scale and meticulously planned.He decided to build a model of a city that could be populated by 4 million people, and to build it in his own living room. He conceived it as a monument to his sweeping utopian vision.

At the quotidian level, Norman acted as the brains behind the project, soon discovering that he didn’t like the sound of the plastic Lego pieces snapping together; it struck him as vaguely obscene. He delegated the task to [fourth wife] Beverly’s stepbrother, Charlie Brown, who worked as a kind of handyman for him, and to Eldred Mowery, a friend from Provincetown now in the city. The two men drove Norman’s 1961 blue convertible Falcon out to the Lego plant in New Jersey and returned with cases of the colored blocks. Then Norman directed them, instructing them to create hanging bridges, buildings with trapdoors, and four-foot-high towers, all constructed on an aluminum-covered piece of plywood on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood supported by five-foot legs.

Construction proceeded apace, and Norman never really did call a halt to it. But someone from the Museum of Modern Art came out to Brooklyn to take photographs of the model, hoping to display it at the museum. At that point, Mailer and his helpers found that the “city” could not be taken out of the apartment. though they consulted movers with cranes and took measurements of the glass in the front windows, they soon saw that it couldn’t be removed without being disassembled first. Here Norman drew the line. He told Mowery to build a fence around it and leave it where it was. There it still sits, occupying a third of the living room’s floor space. Beverly, who contributed a scale model of the United Nations to indicate the overall scale of the city, professes that she loved it, but concedes, ‘It was a bitch to dust.’

Though, like most utopian visions it never came to fruition, the image of one of the giants of American literature stretched out on the floor snapping legos together for hours and hours on end is one that stuck with me; and, in my own experience,  the best work I’ve done has always seemed to pour out of me like a kid with finger paints. So, I suppose a good definition of the word ‘master’ could well be: someone who makes extraordinary accomplishments look like child’s play.

Let the games begin.

Read the complete article at Greg.org.

It’s been nearly three years since I arrived at the immigration reception center in Second Life. By the time I took the shuttle over to Help Island wearing my new avatar getup I felt like I had discovered the New World, a virtual echo of my Irish forebears coming to America. At that moment I had no idea of the adventures awaiting me, and even now I’m amazed at how much of my soul has been poured into this place since then and, conversely, how much I’ve received in return.

Since that day I’ve devoted myself to probing the mysteries of the human/avatar interbeing through art, writing, and most importantly, through the creation of avatars (one of them seen above) – creatures who have evolved into fully-formed adults over time, much the way a child eventually does in First Life. Though I’ve approached this alternate reality from many angles and had innumerable discussions about the “identity issue”, it’s still the mystery of it all which I find most compelling. The virtual experience is tangible in many ways, and that’s enough to satisfy me. But, hey, I’m an artist, not a scientist.

One of the jokes that has been around from Linden Time immemorial is the notion that some day we’ll all be able to upload our brains to a database, link that data to our avatar and, voila! be rendered immortal. Though some may find that a horrifying prospect (Dr. Frankenstein comes to mind), I’ve always kind of liked the idea, perhaps because I’m so comfortable in my skin, even though it is store-bought. Now, it seems, attempts to bring that idea into reality have already begun in the physical world.

In the latest issue of New Scientist, Linda Geddes documents these wide-ranging efforts and brings to light a surprising amount of activity, some with mixed success and all in the most rudimentary stages. Though I’m sure there will be as many opinions of this quest as there are individual human databases, just speaking for myself and my avatar, I’m prepared to dump all my data into that dude even if he only becomes a reasonable facsimile of me; hell, it sure beats those old home movies. Then again, they might just stick me up in the attic as well.

Read Immortal Avatars: Back up your brain, never die, at New Scientist magazine

Above: Camille Topaz; photo by Chrome Underwood, a reasonable facsimile of Mick Brady

As I was saying, after a long period of creative activity I had crash landed in the burnout zone, and in an attempt to jumpstart my mind and leave the past behind I moved into a concrete bunker nestled high in the clouds, far above the studio. This was the place I would come to for solace, silence, inspiration. Since I had neither the energy nor the desire to decorate, I thought I’d bring in my virtual sidekicks, Vanilla and Camille, and give them the run of the place. It needed a woman’s touch. I called Camille first.

Rock star, tomboy and fiercely independent soul, Camille had certainly mellowed over the past few years. Once the band broke up she seemed to have lost her way, causing a lot of soul-searching. It would have been easy for her to slip back into her comfort zone of pink nihilism and rage against the unseen, but she danced away from all that and, before I knew it, became a woman.

“I’m spent,” I said; “worn out. These empty walls suit me fine, but this is your place too, so feel free to make it more like home. I’m just a recovering artist with a creative block, so pay me no mind.”

“Ya know, Chrome, I’ve been wanting to say something for a while, but you were like a man obsessed.. you lost track of the other world, the one we depend on for our very existence. Glad to hear you’re slowing down. Now we might live to see another day.”

“Guilty as charged,” I said, smiling weakly. She smiled back, then vanished; presumably off on a shopping spree.

An hour or so later she returned, and immediately began rezzing what she referred to as ‘creative blocks’: a giant set of colorful, highly-detailed wooden children’s blocks, exactly like the ones I had played with as a child. In fact, the blocks seemed almost the size of the originals, when I was no bigger than a tadpole. Rather than filling the place with things she wanted, she went looking for something to soothe my soul. Taking my own negative words, she transformed them into something positive, something playful, something to heal the wounded child within. She, of course, being me and me being Chrome made this an act of pure, selfless, self-love.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob

to be continued…

The old studio was empty. I had arrived at a dead end, creatively speaking, and it was time to move on.

I needed a new base, a new safe house, a new concrete bunker – high in the sky, far from the pain of rl and the frustrations of the virtual world below. After a brief but thorough search, I came upon a straightforward piece of postmodern architecture; dark on the inside, light on the outside, matching the current state of my soul. I rezzed a beat-up old leather couch, hunkered down and began staring at the concrete walls. It felt pretty good. I was safe. I was in a new place, with new possibilities. I soaked in the silence, the solitude, the emptiness. I was getting ready for the next stage of my journey.

I had filled the past few years with a frenzy of activity: creating a pretty decent body of digital paintings; joining forces with several virtual galleries and holding dozens of exhibits; collaborating with other artists on several projects, creating a virtual comic strip series, yada yada yada.. But the part that did me in was the building of a new website to gather all my creative activities under one big tent, including a gallery, the webcomic, this blog and several other sideshows. It felt good, but by the time I was finished, I was finished. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t create. I couldn’t even think. It was time to rest.

Once I was done savoring all those many layers of sweet silence, though, I began to wonder…. if I were to stay here for a while, would I bring anything in to make it feel more like home? An interesting question, since the emptiness seemed so comforting and, after all, what is home but a source of comfort? Since I couldn’t imagine where to begin or whether I even wanted to, I finally decided I would put the question before each of my avatars – my alts – and let them decide whether or what they wanted to hang on the walls or scatter around the floors. What happened next is a fascinating study of the fluidity of the human mind… what I call the liquid self.

to be continued…..

The year is 1998. Thom Yorke, lead singer for the rock band Radiohead, sits exhausted in the hallway of a Tokyo hotel. He’s nearing the end of a promotional tour for his new album, OK Computer, and director Grant Gee is recording his every move for the documentary film, Meeting People is Easy. In this scene he’s also being shot by a swarm of Japanese photographers, looking for all the world like a man standing in front of a firing squad. In a sense, he is.

Two of the photos taken at that instant become the basis of a magazine spread. Tracing it from the beginning, this is the journey those images have taken through the maze of media that make up our postmodern lives…

1. The Real Moment occurs.

2. Japanese photographers capture his image in that moment.

3. Grant Gee’s cameramen capture both Thom and the photographers.

4. In the interim, two of the photos become part of a magazine spread.

5. The film containing the magazine spread is shown on the Independent Film Channel.

6. I photograph the televised image of the magazine spread with my iPhone.

7. I upload the photo to my laptop.

8. I then upload the image to the virtual world of Second Life.

9. I place the image on a virtual canvas and hang it on the virtual wall of my virtual studio, then sit back in my virtual Eames chair and listen to OK Computer while reveling in the wonders of modern technology. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Great post by Hamlet Au on New World Notes about our good friend DB Bailey’s Cleopatra Water Courts project, in both Second Life and, you know… the other one. We’ve been following this for a while, and have even posted on it here at CNS. No doubt about it, DB is a pioneer in the use of virtual technology in the creation of real world architecture, and Hamlet’s post and additional links provide an impressive glimpse into the scope and potential impact of that work. Can’t wait to see the finished product nestled on the banks of the Nile.. the real one, that is. Congrats, DB! (sound of virtual champagne glasses clinking in the background)

Back to the magic of the metaverse…. is it possible that I could be standing alone at a jukebox in my studio in Second Life and suddenly be transported back in time to the childhood of my human self, staring, mesmerized, into this gleaming cathedral of sound and color, listening wide-eyed and reverent before the tabernacle as the spinning wafer teases out a piece of paradise itself? Yes, anything is possible in Second Life. In this world, in fact, you can still get to heaven on a buffalo nickle. I put a spell on you…

Finally found an art form that allows me to fuse the visual side of my brain with the verbal side: the good old, time-tested comic book. Words and thoughts had begun to appear together in my digital paintings lately, spurred on by the vague notion that I would actually attempt to create a graphic novel at some point in the future, but I hadn’t yet come to grips with the fact that I’d have to master an entirely new and different medium in order to do it… where to begin? Paintings, after all, are still paintings – that is, flat, static, single objects (albeit full of life, if they are good); but reading comics or graphic novels is like watching movies without a projector. You have to make that leap into the fourth dimension: Time.

Then I came upon a community of independent internet comic book artists online at a portal called The Webcomic List, where latest installments are updated daily, and where “internet geeks (can) keep up with their favorite webcomics quickly and easily, without having to check individual sites just to find updates..”, according to the site admin. Among the thousands of comics on display there I discovered some truly unique and creative voices; among them, the webcomic, Encore Seraphine…

While browsing through Seraphine’s archives, I began to realize that there was something different here, something that is very difficult to achieve in the two dimensional world that I work in…. communication on a truly human and personal level; channeled, layer by layer, through the thoughts, feelings and ideas of an avatar in Second Life. This is exactly what I had been attempting to do in my paintings, but here it was far more immediate and direct… and, within a few short hours, I was hooked.

So, last week I began to put together my own webcomic: mojozone, and have already completed two installments – in spite of the fact that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, or where this thing is headed. But since both my lives have been pretty much built on serendipity, and since that is also the way I paint, I figured I might as well play my strong suit. If it’s still round, it rolls (might even rock); no need to reinvent it. More fun that way anyway.

So, enjoy the new comic; and above all, don’t hesitate to jump in and make comments, suggestions, etc. That, after all, is one of the best things about this new technology; we get to hang out with our new digital friends and share all our crazy ideas. What, after all, could be more fun?

mojozone: reflections of chrome underwood

Photo, above: Camille vamping it up at a display of new comic book art in Second Life