Preface

September 2013 I discovered SecondLife having finally gotten my hands on a mac capable of running it. My training as a fine artist, graphics industry and music tech makes this tool a fundamental core of my lifestyle as a multimedia creative designer. SL is at the same time pure escapism and also evolution. It is the internet proper, the dream of ShadowRunners for decades, it is the aspiration of my generation. A 3D virtual space where creative designers from all over the world can network and create for free, or for a price if you get that into it; it is a trading hub because human nature is to trade and share. 

By September of 2014 I had opened my own store on SecondLife Marketplace selling affordable sci-fi props and with aspirations to gothic clothes design (most of the software for SL is for PC so I have to wade through a lot of learning curve to build a workflow pipeline from Mac). 

Admittedly my colleague from a company who this computer technically belongs to, Ordo Octopia Ltd; a street smart by name of Raychel "Dolphindark" Rees aka Razel Bree, borrowed the new computer for the first six months of it being plugged into SL so she could run a character in there, name of Velcro. She finally got off my couch and went traveling with her boyfriend for a few months so I could learn the basics of Mesh and Scripting. I am so lucky to have fallen under the tuition of a mentor and friend, Jedda Zenovka whose unique bio-organic work is all across the grid.

This is the software I currently use for 3D design: 

2D Textures: Pixelmator

3D Mesh: Cheetah 3D, BalancerLite

3D Engines: SecondLife, Unity3D

In SecondLife I have been building virtual environments. Half of the purpose of this is to create the finished environments. Half of the purpose of this is to get better at doing it. These environments are developmental stages toward what I intend, eventually, to be doing; which is creating fully immersive and interactive universes based on the books I was writing during my 20s. Although they are stories, they lend themselves perfectly to rpg settings for multiplayer. I barely have the funds to get a grip into SecondLife let alone pay others to develop my worlds into videogames, so; I am learning how to do everything myself, a process which is attracting attention of others who share the same vision and have similar and useful necessary skills sets. The ball is rolling, we surf an avalanche.

 SAT-land history:

1. Bunker
    Mayan temple inspired concrete ground-base and mutant tree.  

    Exhibition of extracts from "Jungle Journey" art series. 

    Learning to upload mesh & texture prim with thanks to Jedda Zenovka.

2. Jungle Art
    Exhibition of extracts from "Jungle Journey" art series,
    in an atmospheric, exotic pot-plant and vine filled house-boat gallery on a lake.

3. Sidhe Street

    Ambitious project to create a gothic backstreet rpg environment, featuring 

                                                                                shops, nightclub, apartments, etc. 

    Learning Prim Generator software for SL. 

    Learning basic Scripting. 

4. Gallery

    Hosted at Space4Art by Asmita Duranjaya 

    Exhibition of selected 2D paintings uploaded into SL,
    mostly from recent "Ishtar Is Itza" series.

5. NeoCyberCity

    Invited by Asmita Duranjaya to a joint-build & exhibition
    based on the theme of "oriental urban" 

    The opening night features a discussion panel on the theme of "cyber art".

6. SAT Gallery  (work in progress)

    Exhibition of my work, both irl paintings and cyber-design, from past until present.

    

There is a lot more going on that I have not listed here; multiple projects. I am a polymath and I multi-task. The opening of innovation and development of ideas in one field emerges by exploring in a different field: it is the sound that opens the visions and the visions which are oblique strategies for creating soundscapes. Writing about it all is its own pleasure and an immediate way to translate instinct into imagery for sharing, yet it is also a means to an end; notes for the interactive paintings.

SecondLife is a brilliant introduction into use of 3D environment and a way to meet like-minded cyber-literate creatives with similar interests and focus. It is global and bypasses most of the hang-ups and prejudices we encounter in our daily so-called 1st-Lives. The Internet Nation is the first world; reality is somewhere we go to sustain our bodies and to raise the next generation to be less selfish than the past generation. 

On which note we enter the topic of what Ordo Octopia Ltd games are all about; not primarily combat and fighting but on problem solving, social counseling, education, way-finding, indeed most of these topics were once upon a primal time under the jurisdiction of 'shamanism'. In todays (post-industrial / post-post-industrial era aka post-post-post-modern era) world, this concept of shamanism is associated with spirit plant ethnogens and contact with other dimensional entities, the domain of naked tribes living in rainforests hand in hand with nature.

In the west we do not have the luxury of being indigenous humans. We are technologically augmented and socially disenfranchised. We dwell in designer luxury caves, not in the open skies and beneath the lush forest canopy. When we need space, it is digital space we depend on. When we need connection, communication; it is digital dimensions we rely on. When we need to swim in the open sea, we have the digital ocean. Our world is made of light and of imagination.

Dreamers. Some of the most talented people alive are working in SecondLife, making it what it is. It is an honor and a pleasure to be rubbing shoulders with them.