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.

Hey, got a new sidekick… the luscious, and purely organic, Vanilla Titanium. She joined our creative team recently and has already made her debut over at mojozone. She is highly cultured – a former intellectual, in fact, and like many before her she cut her teeth on Kafka, Sartre, Camus and the like, but now prefers to read comic books. She’s a master of traditional woodblock printing, drives a beat up old pickup truck with a big box of Japanese woodcutting tools in the back, and she can rock and mock at the same time, so watch out, boys…

Regarding her striking hairdo, someone asked her today if she could get the Discovery Channel with it. Her response was, well, no, actually, none of the channels she received were terrestrial. hmmm…. that last name, Titanium; she may very well be from another world. Who knows?

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…

Reached another milestone today, and it’s a biggie. Of course, it goes without saying that if it’s a milestone it automatically qualifies as a biggie, but I”ll say it anyway. Said biggie is the launch of my first print from a limited edition of digital paintings – or more accurately, digital collages -at Nash Editions in Los Angeles (that’s in the real world, by the way). The first one to roll off the press will be a copy of Bang (yep, that’s it up there), an ab-ex work from my pre-sl days (2006) and will soon be hanging in the home of a prominent architect in San Francisco, who also happens to be a well-known builder and entrepreneur in Second Life.

Nash editions, founded in the 90s by Graham Nash of Crosby Stills and an occasional Young, is one of the most respected digital giclee houses in the country. I once spent some time babbling away with him about digital imaging at a conference in New York when he was just getting into the business. He’s had a long and serious relationship with photography himself, and was one of the first to catch the vision of the future of digital photography. Suffice it to say that I’m pretty damn excited that they’ll be producing my work in the real world and, hey, this is only the beginning.

I’ve long wanted to launch this series, but have been noodling away at a million other things, like building my web gallery, making art – stuff like that….. and now my good friend Patch has given me a timely nudge. Thanks, man; I needed that.

Jumped into machinima big time yesterday, not only overcoming my fear of working in three dimensions, but throwing time, space and sound into the mix. Since we’ve been recording our first original tune in real life this week, Botgirl and I have also begun discussing the music video we’ll be using to introduce it to the world. Since  my digital paintings were to be incorporated in some way, I finally realized I’d have to go in there myself and experiment with the medium hands on, in order to get the full sense of how it should look and feel.

I decided, at least for the sake of experimentation, that I’d put together one of my art cubes using my most recent paintings, and set up a brief shoot with Camille on guitar and myself on drums. Then I downloaded several machinima (screen capture) software programs and began to try them out, one by one. The programs were Camtasia, fraps, and jing… in each case, the free – and, I should also add, limited – versions.

Though I wasn’t able to do some of the more important things, like pan, zoom, select and frame – nor did I get around to editing; this is raw footage – I concentrated mainly on the look and feel of the scene, using lighting and atmosphere, much as I would in my paintings; then I shot the film in HD. I also had to settle for streaming audio on my sim since my software skills are limited in this medium, and I didn’t have any editing software (I’m sure you veteran machinamators out there are chuckling at this). One of the clips, if you care to check it out, can be seen on vimeo. Fyi, this particular clip was shot in fraps.

“Most of the guitars on the market in the late 1950s had their share of feminine curves, but the Strat was the wood and metal equivalent of a pin-up model.” -from Wired Online

A mighty big birthday high-five is winging its way to the man who invented one of the most important musical instruments of the 20th century: the Fender electric guitar. As you may have noticed, many of the greatest rock guitarists in the world have built their sound, career and image around the sleek, sexy and fluid Fender Stratocaster, making it the central force in rock culture in the ’50s and ’60s, a period which continues to dominate almost every genre of popular music to this day.

The late Clarence “Leo” Fender was born 100 years ago on August 10, 1909. Thanks for the many soul-searing moments, Leo.

Looking back on things, I now see that since that day two years ago when I first began to stumble around in here as a brand-spankin’newbie, much of my internal and external landscape has shifted a bit. As a longtime digital artist in rl, I knew I had fallen upon something unusual; but it would take a few years to grasp just how extraordinary it really was.

It was a wonderland for those who had eyes to see it, one with few apparent limitations – an intoxicating brew for an artist. But it would take time and experimentation to gain any real sense of what it would be like to actually push the envelope of creativity, spanning time and space (both virtual and real), leaping tall buildings in a single bound, as it were. The only kryptonite in my new virtual home, it seemed, was something natives referred to as ‘lag.’

Then, a few months ago, Botgirl Questi and I began to explore the idea of collaborating on a creative project of some sort in Second Life and/or Real Life. Initially we focused on creating a comic book or graphic novel together, but the more we talked, the more projects we bumped into, and before long one or two became three or four, and then suddenly we saw that something unique was beginning to emerge.

We found the one thing that would enable us to create a multi-dimensional, multi-personal, multimedia work: a grand piece of fiction we could tease to life and watch unfold through a whole mess a’media. We were going to be singers in a rock and roll band. The band, cherrybomb, was born.

As we see this thing, it will happen on several levels and stretch out over both worlds. The band has already begun rehearsing, as you can see in the photo above, and will record its first original song later this month in the ‘real world.’ There is a music video in the works, a comic book, and at some point perhaps, a live performance or two. You will be able to follow their adventures here on a regular basis, and on Botgirl Lives, where, coincidentally, the new video is waiting.

Like the man said, this place is only limited by your imagination. Let’s see just how far that is.

Photo, above: cherrybomb at their first rehearsal in Second Life; from left to right, Botgirl Questi, bass; Fourworlds Ra, rhythm guitar; Camille Topaz, lead guitar; Chrome Underwood, drums.

Author’s Note: Cherrybomb’s new video is now showing on the Second Best music video channel on vimeo. Check it out.

Thought it might be time to focus once again on Juliette, the lovely and loyal subject of much of my attention in Second Life. She is the face and figure of all of my digital artwork, the focal point of my search for the human heart and mind within the avatar. Fortunately for me, though, she is kind, generous, and very, very patient. She has to deal with an obsessive perfectionist, after all, and pulls it off with grace and poise. Can’t figure out how she does it, actually.
Suddenly, however, a new side of her personality has begun to emerge. To give her a break from the lights and cameras I began a series of photo shoots using myself as a blissed-out rock star for the subject of my next painting, and Juliette took one look at those shots and decided she was not gonna be left out of this party. She has long wanted to be on stage, she claimed, and not just as a pretty face. She wants to be a rock star herself, dammit, and then went on to inform me of her considerable musical talent and experience. I was floored. We then, of course, had to go shopping. Women.
The photo above was taken at Bowling Green State University, where she began to unpack and test her new guitar – a classic Stratocaster from KLP Productions, one of the best musical equipment builders in SL. She has been rocking the house ever since; the studio will never be the same. We also picked up a gorgeous set of drums, btw, since she is multi-talented, and, well, drumming runs deep in this family. We’ll talk more about that later, though; looks like this story line has just begun.