Vulcan Project – Connected Artists

In the Craft grid [see below for a reference] GeR Orsini invented and is currently curating an interesting Artistical project, under the umbrella of IMAB [Intergrid Metaverse Art Biennal, see below] named Vulcan – Connected Artists.

A 3D volcano  is meant as a creative cauldron where artists from different backgrounds and nationalities will meld or clash to create a shared creative thread as it is sometimes done with creative tales named “chain novels” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_novel) where a tale is built up from different people adding a chapter one after the other. Applying the Chain Novels mechanism to multimedial artistical building is quite interesting and is designed to happen following this schema:

In the island GeR sketched out an “initial canvas” (a huge volcano in the middle of the sea) where there is a landing place from where a winding and complex flight of wooden stairs leading to the volcano’s eye. Being there you can “plunge” and… each artist is being given exactly one month to stage an intermediate environment keeping on the work done before them, trying to understand and melt with it. There is no communication among various artists. They must be able to cooperate “blindly” or using a kind of empathycal “passing the baton” [The hollow cylinder that is carried by each member of a relay team in a running race and passed to the next team member] to next author who perceives what has been done and try to understand “aim” and “mood” and keep on it adding their own contribution.

Once or twice for each month (when changing artist), the island is made public so that everybody can perceive work in progress and grasp the creative bubbling entering in an pure immersive way directly in the hearth of the creation labor.

This idea is quite intriguing and will be unveiled in a couple of weeks starting from a historical SL artists: Lumiere Noir. He is quite famous to have built the original mytical Ivory Tower of Primitives in Natoma, one of the oldest and most representative buildings in SecondLife. Then other artists will come, like Tosha Tyran, Ruben Haan and Oberon Onmura.

Let’s talk about Craft:

Craft (http://www.craft-world.org/page/it/home.php?lang=IT) is an OpenSim grid created by Licu Rau and Tao Quan on January 27th 2010) and is often referred to as one of the most friendly OpenSim worlds even for Art. This Grid comes after the “closing” of previous Italian grid Cyberlandia, managed by Carlos Roundel (see http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/03/cyberlandia-switches-to-distributed-model/) where many ex-users did migrate and new International users did arrive. Craft is managed by Licu Rau and Tao Quan, with the cooperation of many volunteers such as GeR Orsini (coordinating a few events), Settima Sideshow (supporting people who need to install opensim on local computers) and others. Craft apparently is inspiring group teamwork and stimulate that kind of cooperation often lacking in SL.

From Craft website:

Welcome to Craft, a virtual 3D world, a metaverse where you can build things, make friends, create groups, organize events but also work on cultural, educational or entertainment projects.

A warm and friendly community will welcome you and will help you to discover Craft in a spirit of sharing things and knowledge, and you will be soon able to discover your own talents giving form to your dreams in your own region.

Craft is a virtual world based on OpenSim simulator, a world in many ways compatible with Second Life®, but different. From Craft your avatar can move to other OpenSim worlds that use the Hypergrid system, bringing with you your inventory and eventually taking things to bring to home.

Craft’s statistics, small but rich in quality

According to access statistics published by Hypergrid Business (even in latest report on November 2nd 2012  http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/11/third-annual-grid-survey/) Craft is in 6th/7th position in the list, associated with outstanding grids like  OsGrid, InWorldz, Avination, Kitely, this is tantalizing it and making it desirable and friendly for occasional visitors. It seems so friendly that some International avatars like  Lumiere Noir (creator of Ivory Tower of Primitives in SL) or the blogger VirtualChristine  (see virtualchristine.com) elected it as their main home in the metaverse. Currently there are more than 2600 residents and can show off a monthly traffic of around  500 which is considered a very good rating for opensim grids (obviously we cannot compare this to SecondLife statistics which are many degrees higher)

We must remind you that Craft is also home of Roxelo Babenco’s “Museo Del Metaverso” http://museodelmetaverso.blogspot.it/ who achieved many important artistical projects in SL and now starting from 2010 moved to Craft  (unluckily it appears inactive in these days).

The IMAB galaxy:  Intergrid Metaverse Art Biennial (IMAB)

Craft is participating as a full actor in the artistical multiverse project  IMAB  http://intergrid-metaverse-art-2012.hypergrid.org/ currently organizing various events and happenings spanning from  SecondLife, Craft, InWorlds, Metropolis, OsGrid, with a 6-month-long calendar.

Among various events organized in Craft we can find

• A photographic competition organised in collaboration with ParcDesArts Katia. It starts at the end of November and the prize will be a quarter sim for one year. The subject is three photos for each “equality”, “liberty”, and brotherhood for amateurs and professionals after that the best will be exhibited until the end of February
• Building competition with prizegiving for our birthday in January
• an exhbition from Lollito and from Pixel Reanimator

Events in Craft, and in other similar OpenSim grids happen regularly and many as we often noted are comparable to similar events happening in SL. To be sure, in OpenSim we don’t see crowds, it’s quite difficult to find 60 or more people crowded in the lag every day in the same island. The event offer and content are really there and sometimes you need to treasure hunt for them. If you want to participate as craftsmen, artists, amateurs or simply to be audience, doors are wide open. Probably it’s better to choose an adequate Virgil or Beatrix guide who can lead on the field to be sure to come in the right place at the right time…

Salahzar Stenvaag