The Artfish : Not Everything Is Plain Black & White

The White Room : At the start and end of the art space.

'Not Everything Is Plain Black & White' 
by Fuschia Nightfire Exhibition 
runs from 20th January until 20th February 2012 
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MetaLES/56/62/30

What has always been the most attractive quality about art in second life is the creation of immersive, interactive environments to examine an art idea.
In Fuschia Nightfire's 'Not Everything Is Plain Black & White' - this quality is very much explored through a series of virtual spaces within the art environment.

The exhibit starts you off in what resembles a ready room. The space is almost blindingly white. Behind you is a small stall offering vendors for free skins, clothes and tattoo layers in black, white and shades of grey to entice you into becoming one with the art.
Thusly inspired, D decided to  go exploring as a mythical winged zebranoid.

(Hair by KMADD, Wings by Black Lace, Boots by Boudoir, Claws by Dita's Diabolique)

Into the Void 

You wander along a path through several key stages in the exhibit. Clever use of textures and animations make the environment uneasy, disorientating and jarring in some places.  Straying from the path leads you to some other more static exhibits that are equally curious and thought provoking.

Zebra meets zebra crossing

It very much employs the engagement of wonderment in an alice down the rabbit hole sort of way. 

Fall through the void and into an ocean of stars….

Dance through the stars to a planet that condenses into a city which wobbles like jelly…

Amongst the herd

Travel through a surreal mirror lake with its own box gallery that shimmers like a mirage in a greyed out savannah…

The Big Bissous

The above are just a few choice points along the path. More pictures can be seen in Ourfish's Art Aquarium

Additional Information :

Videos of this installation:

by Spiral Silverstar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u__XaAPelXw

by Fuschia Nightfire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8HO9ZzGSKQ

by Praxisfield Resident http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDmcwFhvSw

Blogs about this installation:

http://caitlintobias.com/2012/01/26/not-everything-is-plain-bw/

http://lnlsquare.blogspot.com

http://eddihaskell.blogspot.com/2012/01/second-life-art-installation-not.html

http://honourmcmillan.wordpress.com/

http://quanlavender.blogspot.com/2012/01/sneak-preview-things-are-more-shades-of.html

http://metalesperformance.blogspot.com/

The Discoveryfish : Pile Ups

Ourfish is new to the world of flickr, and D came across this fascinating thing to do on it. Called a pile-up, (not a pile-on as F so kindly points out)

Cue music :

It's like a round-robin of image-connivance where an original author puts up a work to start. Someone-else adds or subtracts things from that image and the idea is that this continues ad infinitum... And the original pic

By Kota Buck

Which struck D as being almost as elfin like as the Icelandic pop princess.
Thus resulting in this pile-up and image-agitation.

"Seed"

Which came first? The video or the imagery? Actually,after playing around a bit with the original image D found herself seizing on the seed like danglys of the model's earrings - and the idea (pun intended) just grew from there. The video though similar, was added only as an afterthought.

The Artfish : Swan Lake

The nice thing about Second Life is that it is an instantly accessible medium for creating visual imagery. Today, D decided to interpret Swan Lake. Swan Lake as we know it, has its origins as a Russian composition (1875 - 1876 according to Wiki) by Pyotr Tchaicovsky for the Bolshoi Ballet.

It is a tragedy that centres around two women whose features are so alike, they are mistaken for the other. Princess Odette is enchanted by the evil Sorcerer,Von Rothbart - and cursed to live out her days as a swan. She inhabits a lake that was magically formed by the tears of her grief struck mother.
Together with her companions, who are also cursed alongside her, Odette is only able to regain her human form at night. The enchantment can only end with the power of a vow of true love; however if such a vow were alas to be broken, then Odette would be twice cursed to remain forever a swan.

Odile, the black swan, is the rival of Odette

One day, a young Prince Siegfried happens to venture deep within the forrest, coming across a beautiful swan that he first intends to shoot at with his new cross bow - when low and behold the swan transforms into the peerless Princess Odette. So moved by her beauty and story is he that he offers to take her for his queen - inviting her to the castle ball so that they may marry. They dance the night away together falling deeper in love till the dawn breaks and Odette is once more forced to resume her swan form.

The next night at the ball, Prince Siegfried anxiously awaits the arrival of Odette whom he tragically mistakes for Odile - the daughter of Von Rothbart who is herself enchanted by her father as a trick. The sorcerer's plan is to make the Prince break his vow so that Odette would be in his power forever. It is a plan that  succeeds as the Prince recants his love for Odette and declares himself in love with Odile. He fails to tell the difference between the two women. Nor does he notice the appearance of Odette at the castle window trying to warn him to be faithful to her. 

Odette was forced to live by a lake formed magically from her mother's tears

The only way left for the curse to be broken is with the death of Odette who has no desire to live without Siegfried. As dawn breaks, she throws herself into the lake - and Siegfried who now realises that he has been tricked, follows his true love. With their sacrifice, Odette's companions are freed and the magic broken as Odette and Siegfried rise up to the heavens together in spirit for all eternity.

Related Links : Yinka Shonibare MBE

Fashion Direction :
Body Suit and Feather Collar from " Behind the Mask" by Bare Rose
Tutu by Canimal
Hoodie by La Rosa (Midnight Angel)
Nails by Mandala
Necklace by Miamai
Lace Jumpsuit by Boudoir
Makeup by Niju

The Artfish : Depth of field

"Cry Baby"

D of Ourfish reckons that her graphics card is too retro to do the amazing captures some people appear to be doing with that new option in their SL3 browsers - So any blog picture you see with depth of field is done with a little fairy magick - The photoshop CS4 fairy that is.

What is depth of field?

(Quotes from Wiki)
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.

Depth of field from an SL manipulation point of view actually makes a capture from inworld more " realistic". Ordinarily, as all objects within a scene are virtual they are also rendered on the same specified plane (i.e your draw distance). It is your 'cinematic' eye, or camera view which then 're-renders' the scene with additional calculations for presenting this perspective of nearness and distance.

Although depth of field is now an option in SL 3 viewers, this 'Original' capture lacks it.

D thinks everyone who uses photoshop probably has their own little methods and ways on how to do things. It is quite possible that the program itself has some sort of smart filter in it that will likely outdate this tutorial. Nonetheless , the following is how " Cry Baby" was put together.

In this screen capture, we see the original  (bottom most layer) and the eventual layers to be added which will go towards creating the final image ie. 1) Depth of field layer 2) Shadow Layer.
The Black and White Layer depicted in the layers tab is the transitional  from the original , illustrating desaturation to create the monotone 'depth of field' 

Create a copy of the original layer and turn this into black and white using any number of methods (ie, apply black and white filter, or use desaturation )
Then take the now monotone layer and apply the filter 'Gaussian Blur' set at Radius 2.0 pixels.
Here we illustrated the process in a cutaway from original so you can see the difference after applying the two processes.

Use your eraser tool set to a wide brush and a small opacity (Here it's 100 pixels and 19% opacity)
We erase the parts of the layer that we want to see crisp and sharp;
Thus leaving the parts that we want to look distant - blurred.
The art idea here is  for focus to be in colour and for what is not focussed, to be black and white.

In this capture you can see that shadow is added  to pick up the idea of a depth of field
as well as to illustrate a light source. As this is the final frame of the process,
you can see that  the smudge tool was selected. D calls it 'sculpting the shadows' by smudging over a layer of drawn black lines.
This is a somewhat quick and easy way to create shadows in three simple steps. 

Step 1) Create a new blank layer and draw some thick black lines over your image
roughly where you might likely capture shadows
Step 2) Use the 'Gausian Blur' filter to soften this line and change the opacity
and pixel density of your  drawn  'shadow'
Step 3) Select smudge tool and 'nudge' your shadows so they follow the contours of your central focus 

End Credits: The final  assembled image  is now an application of  three layers to the original; ie.
Depth of field
Shadows
and lastly a Vignette frame
 which was simply a drawn black border set to blur.

Thus concludes our little workshop. Have yourself a creative and fun SL!

The Artfish : Hogmany

Hogmany!

It's nigh impossible for D of Ourfish to resist an opportunity to pun.

Today's Artfish project is inspired by this gem. Would you believe we have the same dress ! *fashion faux pas still happen virtually*


We put this one together real quick and is just posted raw with details and more photoshoppiness to come...

The Discoveryfish : A strange new world of online photo contests

Of late, and on account of A. - ourfish has put a couple of photos up in contests. They mostly occur in flickr; but have been oddly quite satisfying to participate in. Here are the latest.

For Gabriel Photo Contest

Title : " Road Warrior"

For Gabriel Photo Contest

Title : " Gabriel - Fashion for Urban Angels"

For Fashion Teller :  Murder My Sweet Contest

Title : " The Killer Critique"