My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I love the details Kira Malien takes care of in her picture for “Lonely Night,” a recent post featuring leather, city lights, and melancholy. I love that she made the effort to 'shop in her reflection into the picture. The lighting is sumptuous.
Her most recent post is after this click.
Whiskey Monday is an acclaimed SL artist; follow her on Twitter @Whiskey_Day
Dear Makers of Amazing Things in Second Life,
Let me start by saying: I LOVE YOU. I would not be in Second Life without you. I could not do what I do without your inventive, beautiful, well-crafted creations. Thank you for all that you do. I enjoy shopping for and collecting the imaginative items you sell. I want to support your work!
When I can find you. And when I finally find your store, if I can find the item I’m searching for, even better. Because it’s not that simple, is it? Many of you make it tough to shop in your store.
Please, please, please – I’m begging you – make it easier to give you my money.
I keep a notebook of cool things I see, and who created them. If I’m wandering a sim and see a nice plant, I don’t want to leave right that moment to go buy it. So, I inspect it, note the creator (for our purposes here, let’s call the item maker SuperStore69), and then carry on exploring.
Later, after I’ve been abused over the phone by yet another client who thinks the universe revolves around them (off you fuck, Chad), I want some retail therapy. I flip open my SL notebook and see my note about that plant at SuperStore69 and that’s just the ticket! What could make me feel better? Gimme plant.
Second Life Search is shitty, but it’s still where we start. I open Search in my viewer and look up SuperStore69. Nothing. Nada. Zip. But I want the plant. So I open SL Marketplace in my browser, and I type in SuperStore69. In this case, YAY, there they are! But no plant.
So I click the link for the in-world Store…
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I love abstract art. Most of the art in my home is abstract or extraordinary examples of the graphic display of quantitative data. (By the way, the best work-related course I ever attended.) But yes, it is abstract art that really grabs my eye. As much as I love story-telling pictures, these explorations of shape and color always excite me the most. Suzanne Graves is not just the artist taking these pictures, she is the person who created these exciting shapes. “2017-04-14 LEA5” reminds me of those molecular model kits. I swear the one in Ninth Grade used these same colors.
For more recent abstractions, click here:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“The Ship” is inspired by a Pablo Neruda poem. Well, that made me like it all on its own. My high school Spanish teacher was a Neruda lover and she passed on the fandom. But look at that picture. Her use of bright light and high contrast to blow out all but the essentials, the sea grasses and boat are nearly the only visible elements. It is a bold, confident picture by someone who knows what she wants to express.
If you think we all need more cats, click here:
Anytime I watch clips from FOX's The Masked Singer, my first thought is, "Why are all these celebrities costumed up to look like furries from Second Life and VRChat?" So I was utterly unsurprised to read about Alter Ego, an upcoming reality competition show from the same TV network:
ALTER EGO is an all-new original singing competition where lost dreams and second chances are reignited when singers from all walks of life become the stars they’ve always wanted to be. However, these contestants won’t perform as themselves. Rather, they’ll be given the chance to show how they’ve always wanted to be seen, creating their dream avatar ALTER EGO to reinvent themselves and perform like never before.
So yes, pretty much Masked Singer meets singing avatars. The producers are directly reaching out to U.S.-based performers who sing in Second Life, and I imagine singers from other platforms are also welcome.
Go here to apply, and send to performers you know who should. To judge by the kind of questions the application asks — "What personal struggles have you had to overcome?", "Has music/singing helped you overcome a challenge?" — the producers are just as interested in the real life story of each applicant, as their actual voice.
Next question is, which great singers who perform in a virtual world should apply to be on this show?
Click here to teleport to what seems like a six floor apartment complex, but actually houses a pretty ambitious group art project called Ed. Colonia:
The idea behind Ed. Colonia was exploring further the format of group exhibitions, preserving each artist’s individuality as we occupy a common space. No theme has been suggested, since the limitations of the apartments were restraining enough. Each floor, inhabited by a different artist, is an exhibition on its own. The lack of front doors encourages the visitors to walk inside and explore.
It's the latest project of GBTH Project, a Second Life-based arts space, and speaking of ambition, the group's official site is so well-made, I honestly assumed it was a real life gallery's homepage. The installations in Ed. Colonia are impressively varied in their theme and their success as installations, but setting it all in a six floor apartment is a smart touch, something you only occasionally see IRL.
Hat tip: Artist Huckleberry Hax, who has an extended write-up here. Marina Munte, the founder of GBTH (i.e. "Grab By The Horns"), by the way, was recently featured in a Strawberry Linden interview:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“The Art of Dance” is a dramatic photo of that most dramatic of dances, the tango. It made me smile that the man has the flower in his teeth rather than the far more stereotypical woman. They are caught in the spotlight, forming the beautiful lines that would make dance judges reach for the 10 cards. It is just one of many widely varied photos from Maria Rodriguez’ photostream.
What’s an SL photostream without a bit of cheesecake? Click here:
"She kissed the Captain" by Cadwyn Daffyd
Important update: We've extended the deadline to our #Virtualpride Challenge to June 9th! Here's the details:
Questions for Cajsa? Post here or on her Flickr page.
