SL -- Astronomy2009 and Spindrift

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We unplug the computers when it thunders. I left SL abruptly on Friday as it began to thunder. I went back, on the weekend.

Admiring someone's lovely build. So many comfy and relaxing places to hang out!





See this, on the mantel above? It's not easy to build a horse.......





Yet another pleasant place to sit.

I know almost nothing about building, but am clear that there are at least two ways to go about doing things. One is to build a model, like the horse above, from geometric shapes. The other is to essentially draw things, and put that drawn surface on a much simpler shape. That, I believe, is the way these ducks were made. The male just stood there, and the female went in circles on the surface of the water.





Another exhibit on Astronomy2009. This one is artists' renderings from their imaginations, rather than astonishing captures of work by Mama Nature.



Gotta love a painting of Dune, and I like the Europan Night, too. You can just see Europan Night at the left in the above.

I was glad to see that one artist was working at least partly in fiber -- see Bettina Forget's work on this page.



After enjoying the work in the IAAA gallery, I walked across a bridge to Spindrift.



There is a ton of stuff on Spindrift. Unfortunately I was unable to figure out how to make a lot of it *do* anything. A museum for electronic music, which I could not induce to make noise. An elaborate (enormous) music-box sort of instrument, likewise.

Sigh.



Hey. Look at this. Let's go aboard.



I don't see any designation from the outside, but descriptive signs inside indicated this is the Mayflower. I don't know if it is to scale for an SL person, but whoa.

It is frighteningly small. Surely fewer cubic feet than our house. For all those people. To travel all that time. (I just looked it up on Wikipedia -- 102 passengers plus crew, for 66 days. Yowza. And you know they didn't have any space almost hardly for the stuff they would need to live. Axes. Shovels. Seed. I can't imagine going off like that..................... Those people either had way more fortitude than I, or no imagination at all............)



Ok.

Back from the 17th century.

This may be my favorite SL art piece yet.

There are several thin identical shapes here, moving in synchrony. The viewer picks the surface those shapes would have. I liked the choices which had black places, as the black bits were transparent on the sculpture.

If I remember correctly, this choice is directly below the orange/yellow one in the upper right corner of the choice board. As the pieces of the sculpture rotate, you can see through the shapes to the other shapes, and watch the overlapping lines move.....

Really cool.





Yet another interesting place to sit. Don't you love the bench?





I also spent a bunch of time practicing building stuff.

And I made myself a new shirt, with a Chandra telescope image. They are giving away small copies of images from Hubble and Chandra on Astronomy2009, for personal and non-commercial use.



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