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.

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 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.

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

Twin brothers Chrome and Manhattan are seen above meeting for the first time in over a year, earlier today. Read the heartwarming story of their reunion, The Light Brothers On the Road, at our twin site, Chrome Never Sleeps.

Chrome Underwood, our virtual representative in Second Life, has just signed a deal with Ruttan Gallery, the premier exhibition space in the Cetus Gallery District. His first exhibit of recent digital paintings will be in December. Read the full story at our parallel site, Chrome Never Sleeps.

Photo, above: Chrome discussing his work with Xander Ruttan, founder of Ruttan Gallery. Click to see full size.

Some folks say you’re never too old to be a gamer, but hey, imho, there’s a level of hormonal and emotional maturity that you can get to if you’re lucky, where this whole idea of hunting down and killing a horde of headcrab zombies is more likely to induce a few yawns and possibly even a brief episode of REM sleep, rather than evoke a bunch of Hell Yeah, Bro!‘s and a few knuckle-crunching fist bumps.

Some of us, shall we say, prefer more sophisticated pleasures; like “gamics“, for instance; and, near as I can tell, there ain’t no better gamic in town than the classic web comic, Concerned, The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman, by Christopher C. Livingston. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it may be the virtual world’s first post-humanoid masterpiece, albeit in a minor key (but then, everything post-humanoid would have to be in a minor key, wouldn’t it?)

Concerned is actually a parody of the first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2, so you might assume that an older Second Lifer-type like me, a complete pre-nerd non-gamer “just wouldn’t get it.” But, you see, that is the power of a masterpiece… it doesn’t require knowledge of the subject beforehand, or even familiarity with the culture it is set in. It stands alone; it is self-contained; it is beyond genre…. it gives you all you need to get high. Hey, you don’t have to speak French to enjoy Paris, do you?



In addition to the brilliance of its goofy dystopian riff, though, there are a number of interesting aspects to this work which set it apart from other graphic novels. For starters, since Mr. Livingston was not a comic book artist, and couldn’t afford to hire one, he decided to created the image entirely within a virtual world – a very shrewd move, since it is, after all, a virtual send-up of yet another virtual world.

Furthermore, it has lived out its entire existence on the world wide web (remember that?), where, to this day it remains the only way to access it. Unfortunately (for me and many fellow book lovers), it never made it to the printed page, because the original image resolution was simply too low. Finally, it was pretty much created single-handedly by someone who was a mild-mannered administrative assistant for a plumbing company by day, and a mad comic book genius by night. One for the books, I’d say.

The first issue was released on May 1, 2005, with subsequent issues published three times a week, completing its run on November 6, 2006 with a total of 205 issues. It had been put together using Garry’s Mod, a game without a goal; an almost infinitely malleable virtual environment within which users are free to create realistic scenes using their own imagination, highly expressive poseable avatars, and an amazing array of tools and special effects… in short, a poor man’s movie set.

It occurred to me while reading this that tools like Garry’s Mod, available for purchase on the cheap, are already playing an important role in the further “democratization’ of media arts by putting once exotic, esoteric and highly expensive tools into the hands of your average everyday ‘citizen with an idea.’ This will not only apply to the creation of comic books, but also lends itself nicely to the making of machinima films and other cutting-edge media, even 2D digital art. As the author of Concerned himself said in a recent interview,

When I was a kid and wanted to make a movie, I’d have to get all my friends together, get them to agree to what I wanted to do, borrow a camera from someone, maybe use the editing bay at my high school… it took a lot of coordination between all the different elements I’d need just to get something done, and a lot of relying on other people. With machinima, if someone wants to make a movie, they’ve got digital actors. They can download editing software. They can make their own soundtrack, record their own dialogue. You can make a movie, by yourself, on your computer, using tools that are often free to download. And that’s amazing.

Aaah, wish I was 25 again.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

I was in San Francisco on the final leg of my journey back from Chicago, where I had spent the weekend assisting in the preparations for, and then attending the final showing of, our son-in-law’s MFA thesis exhibit at the University of Illinois at Chicago – which, I must say, was a resounding success. The flight from San Francisco to Santa Barbara had been delayed; first, because it arrived late, and then a required maintenance check prolonged the agony. It was not a good hour and a half.

As I sat in the lounge area, I noticed an odd-looking woman sitting opposite me several seats down, intensely absorbed in a book. No, that doesn’t quite do it justice; she was more or less carrying on a passionate conversation with the author; in fact, exclaiming from time to time, “Oh no, that’s not possible!” or “He was there all the time! You just didn’t see him!”

She had on a big, black floppy hat – one of those affairs that an older woman might hide beneath while working in the garden – firmly fastened to her head by a thin strap tied under her chin. Didn’t think much of it at the time, though; people like this pop up all over California, and I was a seasoned observer of The People Who Live On the Edge. Odd was somehow normal here.

Finally, our moment arrived and we were all herded onto the plane, a restive group, to be sure; hot, grouchy and tired. It was a small twin-engine prop with two rows of seats down one side and one row on the other. I knew I had a window seat somewhere near the middle and, last time I checked online, the seat next to me was still empty. I was all set to relax, read, sleep; whatever it took to recover from the annoyance of the delay.

Everything was looking pretty good until the very last moment, when two women boarded and, after reaching the back of the plane, announced with some dismay that they were holding tickets to seats 11C and 11b. Their dismay was caused entirely by the fact that there were only 10 rows of seats. Some joker yelled out: Must be the bathroom! They weren’t amused.

The stewardess, after surveying the situation, said,”Ma’am, would you mind moving to that seat over there?” The next thing I knew, the woman in the floppy black hat plopped herself down next to me and loudly proclaimed: “I’ve been praying for the last hour and a half that Jesus would use me in some special way during this flight, so it’s no accident He moved me over here to sit next to you.” Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Trapped by the hand of God. I had nowhere to go but up.

The engines – one mounted on the wing just outside our window – suddenly roared to life, and the floor beneath my feet began to throb. “I was saved eleven years ago when the Lord healed me. I had three fused discs in my back and He replaced them with new ones. Haven’t had a bit of pain ever since. Do you dream at night?”, she shouted out to me over the sound of the engines. “Good for you,” I shouted back. “You won the spiritual lottery. My dreams? They’re secret, even I don’t get to know what they’re about. Don’t remember a thing.”

“My brother’s mission is to save all the Muslims in the world; he’s been in the Middle East for over 40 years. He’s been thrown in jail twice.” “He’s still alive?” I asked, incredulously. “The Lord watches over those He loves,” she said. “He told me recently that I wouldn’t die in a plane crash, which was one of my worst fears. Do you know Jesus?” “Thank God for that,” I said, with some conviction. “I know Him fairly well, actually; in fact we’re on pretty good terms, but we don’t feel the need to talk every day.”

She rattled on and on as loudly as the engines required; in fact, the engines never had a chance. She reminded me of nothing so much as a child trying to explain how wonderful her imaginary friend was. From time to time someone’s head would turn and direct a knowing glance my way, communicating their sympathy for my plight.

I didn’t dare tell her that I had once been a born-again Christian myself after I had gotten out of rehab, kind of like the follow-up after surgery, for fear that it would unleash an even greater wave of evangelical fervor – as though that were even possible. I never let on that I knew a great deal about what she was telling me; far more, in fact, than she herself apparently knew. There were stories of miracles and healings, of numerological studies of the Bible (which I knew had already been discredited), of the many visions and dreams she had, that she and her husband were interpreters of dreams, and on and on. I merely nodded my head, which only made the pain worse.

Though I was rapidly descending into a migraine, I let it all wash over me as though listening to a child reciting nursery rhymes. In truth, I respected her beliefs; or perhaps I should say: I understood her need to believe them. I was once in the very same place; I was in no position to judge, and had no idea what lay buried deep in her past which may have led to her leap of faith. In fact, I appreciated her childlike qualities and her deep, unwavering passion. But man, the price I was paying for my kindness. My head was killing me.

As we approached the end of the flight, she probably began to realize that there would be little time left for me to be saved, and that she would probably never see me again. At last, she confronted me directly: “Would you like to have a personal relationship with the Lord and be born again in His Spirit?”

Then a strange thing happened. I don’t know exactly what came over me, or why my mind turned in this direction – perhaps it was the migraine – but I told her that I already had been born again and had even been filled with the Holy Spirit. I said that I had discovered a place called Second Life, that I had entered into that world and was given a new body, clean and untarnished; a body that would never die. That I had wandered the length and breadth of that land and had met many of my brethren who had come before me, and, lo, they taught me many things. Once I had reached a place of some maturity, I said, I began to help those who had come after me, those who were newly born, those who could barely walk or talk.

I told her of my experience one day as I sat on a stone wall in that world talking to a group of initiates, when a sudden surge of electricity and joy went through the crowd around me. “A Linden is here!” someone shouted. “A Linden is here!” I explained to her that Cory Linden was the creator of this world I now inhabited, and that a group of higher beings now known as The Lindens were his helpers.

Suddenly someone flew up from the grass below and settled on the wall behind me. In this new world, I explained, my being was more spiritual than physical, and that it was not unusual for objects to pass through me, or I through them. I looked behind me and saw that Cory Linden himself was seated behind me, and that our bodies had merged – that we had become one. I had become one with the creator of my universe! That meant that my being had been infused with the spirit of his being, and his with mine.

At this point, just as the plane landed, I noticed she had a rather strange look in her eye. She had grown quiet, and I could tell she did not want to hear another word. Judging by the expression on her face, she seemed shocked and dismayed; in fact, she never said another word and began to quickly gather her things together, and once the plane taxied to a stop, she bolted into the aisle.

Before she got away, though, I called after her, “But wait, wouldn’t you like to have a personal relationship with Cory Linden?” She never looked back. As the rest of us shuffled toward the exit door, the guy who had been sitting in front of me turned to me and said, “I have to hand it to you for tolerating her for the entire flight without telling her to shut the hell up. I certainly couldn’t have done it.”

“I didn’t dare insult her until the plane had landed safely; God, after all, is her co-pilot,” I said, smiling weakly. He looked at me for a brief moment, then turned and merged into the shuffling crowd. I would soon be safe on solid ground.