Astounding
Here it is, 7:00 SLT on a Thursday night. In addition to the hundreds of other events, there are 20-some-odd live musicians performing on the grid as I type this. That's really quite amazing.

That's all. I'm going to pick one at random, kick back in the back row, and have a listen.

Addendum:
Ended up seeing Andreus Gustafson at the Sunset Jazz Club. He sings a mix of original and classic rock/alternative covers, does his own keyboards, and plays a mean guitar, to boot. The man puts on a great show... And he's the first and only person to have ever pronounced my name correctly on the first try! Go see him now. SO SAYETH MORI.


Posted by Moriash Moreau at 7:56 PM - 0 comments links to this post

 
Keeping Busy
Haven't done much that is terribly blog-worthy lately, but I thought I'd take a moment to mention a few projects that have been keeping me busy lately. In my ongoing quest to fight off boredom whilst simultaneously paying my tier costs (been more successful with the former than the latter, to be sure), I've been dusting off a few shelved projects and getting them ready for sale.


Here's a video of the Kaleidoscope Carpet in action. The Carpet, which is a greatly improved version of a not-terribly-popular product from 2006, takes any image and turns it into a kaleidoscopic whirl. I was encouraged to come up with the upgraded version when I was contacted by Evaluna Sperber, Italian Second Life performance artist. Evaluna takes avatar animations, particle effects, prim sculpture, video streams, original music, and poetry readings and combines them into one harmonious whole. Several videos of her work can be found here. The videos don't do them justice, however. I was privileged to experience a private showing of a couple of her pieces, and they must be seen in person to get the full impact. Simply amazing.

In any case, Evaluna had purchased one of the original Kaleidoscopes (a simple, wall-hung affair with touch controls), and asked if I could make her one sufficiently large to appear in her performance. Or, rather, after a half hour or so of back-and-forth via Google Language Tools, we managed to sort that out! The above is the result. As usual, I went far overboard and overly complicated, and ended up having to scale it back and simplifying it. The end result turned out to be kind of nifty, if I do say so myself, with HUD controls, programmable speeds, and so on. I'm sure this kind of thing can be found on dance club floors and so on all over the grid, but to my knowledge this is the first one that allows the user to supply his own photos. Kind of a nice feature, anyway. We'll see if the market agrees. In the meantime, if all goes well, one (or more) of these will appear as one of the backdrops for her upcoming shows.


And, lest you think I've become too cultured, this is the other big addition to Mo-Tech Industries' catalog: X-Ray Specs. Not a lot to say about them, really. They have hypnotic "X-ray vision" animated lens effects, just because I could. The picture above is the promo sign used in the various SL storefront and online locations. Never underestimate the value of sexual harassment as a marketing tool!

In case you're wondering, yes that is me in the picture, sans beard. The slider-enhanced leer was distorting the facial hair, so I swapped in the clean-cut version of the skin. Probably for the best, all things considered. I have to say, though, SL-me's chin is huge.

Finally, the Audience Reaction Chair project I mentioned back in July is finally live! This was a joint project between MenuBar Memorial and myself, and I think it's turned out pretty well. Menu did the particle artwork and sound design, and I did the scripting work. This is the first of what I hope will be many joint projects to come. As I understand it, the mechanics for the Chairs now built into the for the latest season of LaurenLive, soon to appear on Treet.TV. So a bit of indirect fame there, I suppose.

Eh, keep the fame. I'll settle for loads of L-bucks. Take a look at the Audience Reaction Chair and its spinoff product, the Audience Reaction HUD, on XStreet.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 4:01 PM - 0 comments links to this post

 
Garden of Mo Twitter Feed
I can't imagine why anyone but me would be interested in this, but the Garden of Mo is now on Twitter. Over the past couple of evenings, I've started wiring the various events and objects in my neck of the woods to send discreet little status message back to a centralized notifications server. The server then relays these exciting updates to the GardenOfMo Twitter feed via Twittermail for the world to see.

I don't know what, if anything, I'll do with this information. Probably nothing, aside from feeding my own curiosity about what goes on in Mo-Tech Tower when I'm not around. Better than hiding in the bushes with a pair of binoculars and a notebook, anyway.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 12:17 PM - 0 comments links to this post

 
Two Shows
While working the kinks out of my Fraps installation, I took a short video of the new dusk-til-dawn fireworks show at the Mo-Tech Tower SkyLounge (SLURL link). Definitely not a cinematic masterpiece, but it shows off the particle effects quite nicely. Music is courtesy of SomaFM's Space Station Soma stream.



On a completely unrelated note, I went to my first live SL comedy show last Tuesday (July 21). Mariner Trilling was on the stage, delivering his comic monologue, "Mariner Trilling, Below the Waist," based on his hilarious and insightful articles on romance, sex, and dating in the virtual world. I didn't really know what to expect when I arrived, but the performance was low key, and quite funny. Mariner simply took the stage, kicked on the SL Voice, rezzed a couple of slideshow prims (which were unfortunately plagued by technical difficulties), and went to work. In spite of the usual headaches caused by lag in a crowded sim, Mariner managed to pull off a warm, natural, engaging show. That, in and of itself, is quite an achievement when filtered through the innate woodenness and awkwardness of the medium. After the show, Mariner informed us that he would likely only do one more show, in a few weeks, before retiring this monologue. (I have hopes that he'll come back again, with new stories to tell, but he was noncommittal on that point.) Date and time are unknown, but it would be well worth keeping an eye on your events calendar to catch him. I know I'll be back again.

My initial excuse for attending, aside from prodding by Taralyn Gravois and Menubar Memorial, was to observe and provide emergency tech support for the first use of the prototype Audience Response Chairs. This joint project with Menubar allows audience members an easy way to give feedback to performers, by showing floating particle comic balloons ("Ha Ha Ha!" "Bravo!" "Yay!" and so on), playing sound clips, and running animations. It's very much in the early beta stages now, and has a fair bit to go (mostly in terms of making it less disruptive), but it could turn into something of a small revolution in SL performances. The jury is still out on whether this is an improvement over audience-member-provided gestures and text comments, but the response was tentatively positive. Mariner seemed to like them, anyway, or so I hear.

We'll see if it goes anywhere. For now, the project has at least gotten me out from my script windows in Louise, and exposed me to a new aspect of SL. Well worth the time, even if the project itself ends up dead in the water. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this later.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 10:53 AM - 0 comments links to this post

 
Friends
Y'know, I really have a pretty impressive Friends list, filled with dozens of the old-school movers and shakers that helped make SL what it is today.

It's kind of a shame I never actually see or speak to any of them.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 2:39 PM - 0 comments links to this post