Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Lludmila Makes an Exhibition of Herself

 Exhibition Poster based on old crash photo

Apparently, posting thousands of screenshots on Flickr are not enough, but I had to create a small exhibit of some of my favorite pix of the past, ohhh, two to three years in SL.  The idea originated when I was using an older pc with an inadequate graphics driver that crashed continually.  I thought the resulting images were interesting and friends suggested putting together an exhibit.  I tinkered with the idea for quite a while, but in the end decided that the crash pix weren't that interesting even to me (except for the one above that was Photoshopped to make it more interesting) and not worth the 10L each it would cost (that at the time I didn't have, being a poor and homeless waif in the virtual world) to upload them.

The idea was always in the back of my mind and I talked about it with friends recently and, looking at my stash of Linden cash (now that I am both employed and have a space of my own), decided I could fritter it on uploading about 25 pictures (there goes my weekly salary and then some) that I really liked and putting them in one of the many freebie skyboxes I had acquired.  This meant rezzing the skyboxes, of course, to see if they were suitable.  They were not so suitable as skyboxes for Lludmila to live in, or change in, or whatever she planned to do in them, but I was reluctant to delete them (which explains the struggle I'm in to keep my inventory below 38,000 items).  I chose the large and airy skybox pictured below and began to upload photos.

Photos were not exactly chosen for their artiness, but for my own personal reasons - such as: I thought they were funny, they said something about virtual life, or they were just ... colorful.  They show how much personality you can read in some pixels as well as the beauty produced by some of the content creators.

 Exhibit Opening Gala

It didn't seem like enough just to put something up, so I figured I'd attempt to have a party.  This would require a dance ball and dances.  I'd acquired those for my ill-starred rez-day party and reassembled something that worked.  That still wasn't enough.  I thought it would be fun to have places for people to pose and take pictures of themselves, so I set about poseball tinkering and set them out.  The poses are the best I could do from the freebies I had in order to make the Birth of Venus, Zeus, and a cheeky Psyche at Nature's Mirror.  I had some other freebies where you can pose in a frame.  I topped it all off with a Very Valuable Egyptian Vase from Carla's Workshop.  All I had to do after that was turn something prettier than a headstone into a tip jar (because tip jars are all about extorting Lindens from your friends), set out some champagne, and put up some signage and a teleport.

It sounds easy, but it was pretty fiddly.  I wrestled with Photoshop for a couple of days, swore at the poseballs that weren't working, and left pieces of skybox all over the Awen airspace as I tried to adjust, readjust, and tuck things back in the inventory for the night.

The Book of the Exhibit with photo of the First Visitor

All I ask is that people come by and have a little fun.  Take some photos of your own av and either post them online where I can see them (which requires telling me where they are) or drop them on me in-world, if you can afford the upload charges.  If you do, I'll visit them in the former case and put them in The Book of the Exhibit in the latter.  

Yes, a couple of the photos are for sale.  I figured folks weren't that interested in photos of Lludmila and her other inpixelations, but they might like a landscape.  If you're in a photo, you get it free, of course - just let me know.

I forgot to add a slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aw
en/102/85/23�http://slurl.com/secondlife/Awen/102/85/23

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