VB Previz #35 – Taaratantaarinen

Previz: VB20 – Taaratantaarinen

Long time VB/CO supporter Lothar Leborski is opening a new art and performance venue “Blucat” and ours in the inaugural performance!

To christen the space we’re calling on “something old and something new.” The “old” is another longtime VB/CO supporter, designer Kai Heideman at Powers of Creation. The “new” is Kai’s new “tattoo layer” latex skin.

While the UI of SLViewer2 may or may not be your cup of tea, the code base has introduced some exciting new developments, like Alpha Masks and the Tattoo layer. You can use these for lots of things, like alpha to make a really nice, tight corset, or tattoo to put a nice tat on your butt! 🙂

But two of the things that really excite me are alpha for shoes – OMG! How many times have you seen hideous clipping in giant swaths around heels and boots – uggh! – Now gone! Not all shoe peeps have adopted alpha masks yet, but a number have.

While the tat layer gives you an extra layer on your butt, chest, etc, where it really changes the world is the place where you sort of didn’t have any layers before: that minor area known as your head!

In the past your upper body had 3 clothing layers plus gloves, lower body had 2 plus socks, and your head had… Nuttin! The only way to get something on your head was by making it your skin, or by making it a prim attachment. So, if you wanted to wear a latex catsuit with a hood, the only way to get a hood was for the designer to “burn” the hood onto some base skin. So, the price of a hood was giving up your own skin and wearing whatever base the designer was offering. Here’s Kai’s Gen-1 hooded catsuit. It looks great, it just doesn’t happen to be me.

And now… drum roll please… here’s Kai’s Gen-2 “Tattoo Layer” hooded catsuit over my “real” skin! It’s so great to be “real!!” No more fake for this girl! 🙂

(psst: the tat-layer also means you can finally have one skin and use it to put different makeup on top! 🙂

But wait, you say that Alpha Mask Shoes and Tattoo Layer Catsuits are cool… but your parents made you promise you wouldn’t use Viewer2 till you were married?

No Worries!

You can have the same great functionality with the UI you know and love in the fantastic Emerald Beta Viewer!

Of course you know where to get V2 or V2.1, it’s right here:
http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

For Emerald the current beta, “1.4.0.2270” is here:
http://blog.modularsystems.sl/2010/06/25/emerald-2270-beta-release/

For VB20 the VB/CO Cast will need to run either V2 or Emerald Beta. However, the wearing or “baking” of your avatar happens on your machine… so… the Audience for VB20 can run any viewer they like and still see us in our sparkling catsuits and real skin.

As for what our shimmering spectral latex clad cast will be doing in VB20… well… here’s a hint…

The architect of the 20th Century: Eero Saarinen
A work by sculptor of the 21st century Anish Kapoor: Taratantara

Yes, our demented, unstable, artistic director has created an almost unspellable amalgam from two of the great artists of our time.

Hmm… it must be story time… so let’s talk about the Sydney Opera House.

Danish architect Jorn Utzon’s (1918 – 2008) Sydney Opera House is the icon of a city… perhaps it is the icon of a continent. How did this extraordinary work come to be?

Step 1. Conductor / composer Eugene Goosens (1893 – 1962) lobbied the New South Wales government to build a new performance venue and defied the NSW premier, insisting that it be built at Bennelong Point overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Step 2. In 1956 Utzon, and 229 other architects submitted designs.

Step 3. Four architects were asked to jury the entries and select a winner to be built. The jury consisted of two Australians, a British architect, and the American Saarinen (1910 – 1961)

Saarinen arrived late and his colleagues had already done some preliminary judging. He looked thru the designs still under consideration, then turned to the pile of rejects and… as legend has it… Saarinen pulled Utzon’s design from the rejected pile and declared “this is the winner.” To which his colleagues replied that it couldn’t be the winner because it couldn’t be built. To which Saarinen riposted, I don’t care if it can be built, it must be built.

Saarinen worked on Terminal 5 at Idlewild Airport, better known as the TWA terminal at JFK in New York, from 1956 to his death in 1961. It was completed a year later in 1962.

In his Architecture 407, beginning 3D Studio Max class, Jeremy Wang built a model of T5: (the beginning’s a nice view of the terminal, and then he has a lot of “video game fun,” and finally re-transforms to T5 at the end)

Anish Kapoor has had a long and celebrated career, but he’s almost certainly best known ATM as the designer of “The Orbit” for London 2012

Apparently not everyone’s gaga about this sculpture:
http://designkultur.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/architecture-london-2012-anish-kapoors-olympic-tower-a-grand-design-or-garbage/

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/35487/anish-kapoors-olympic-tower-teeters-under-scrutiny/

but we’ll see how that goes.

It’s pretty crazy that this colossal structure comes from a sculptor whose early works feature small geometric forms dusted with pigment.

From the floor of an art gallery to a pulsing rival to the Eiffel Tower, from a competition winner to a maker of winners, from Sydney to New York to London, we take our inspiration for VB20 most especially from two Saarinen works and two Kapoor works:

Saarinen’s airport terminals at JFK and Dulles, and Kapoor’s massive PVC sculptures Taratantara and Marsyas. The sense of space, of form, of biomorphic vibrance, of trajectory, of ascent in these works invites us to consider the possibilities of avatars caught somewhere between monumental architecture and grounding, pastoral land, of avatars caught somewhere between heaven and earth.

If you would like to perform in VB20 please speak to Friday or macar00n or Forceme:
VB/CO Managing Director: Friday Blaisdale
VB/CO Casting Director: macar00n Earst
VB/CO Stage Manager: Forceme Silverspar

VB20 – Taaratantaarinen

Saturday 28 August 2010
Noon – 2pm SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/CSULB/241/188/23

For Tat-Layer catsuits you can visit Powers of Creation at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eliza/95/31/24