Alizarin Goldflake

Now, as we know, some art has pretensions of superiority and the collusion of gallery owner and art critic, called The Art World, often justifies the Marxist theory that “the professions are a conspiracy against the people”.

In SL there is a tendency for the distinction between art and craft to break down. Artist, craftsman, and builder have to merge really in order to make a great piece of art.
Alizarin Goldflake falls into this category and her work shows her intelligence and craftsmanship to such a degree that it is ‘available’ to all. Now, that does not mean that there is a ‘dumbing down’, that it is so simple any fool will enjoy it, it actually comes from a great skill, namely the ability to combine the complex and the simple in an unselfconscious way.






Aliz is holding an open studio and her latest piece Acquarella is the centrepiece of her gallery...here... go, it’s a must see.
If you have a mermaid av....

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Mark Linden and I

Well, nobody said when I started this job that I couldn't use cheap journalistic tricks to catch your eye, dear reader. So... about Mark and me...well...we both think that the University of Western Australia is one of the most interesting things happening on the art scene today. Mark popped over last week, some think after having read my Koinup post on UWA, and Twittered (or Twitted, possibly Twat?) his visit. Now, there's no way to know if this is true or not, but flimsy speculation, rumour and gossip are good enough for me.

So, if Mark reads Koinup, does that make me like "By Royal Appointment" like the tea bags the Queen uses? (Such esoteric ponderings, no wonder it's becoming the best blog around.)




...and...more..... stuff on UWA...on your intrepid reporter drowning in radioactive waste (see chilling photo above) at Deshima, and who is Marko Seurat?

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Meet Fellow Musician and Metaplace Founder Raph Koster

If you are a musician looking for your first virtual world experience, think about starting in Metaplace. Metaplace is the brain child of Raph Koster - a blend of passionate visionary, thoughtful scholar, pragmatic developer and best of all, a soulful artist, writer and musician.

UPDATE: Raph is playing a special Metaplace concert tomorrow, Friday Nov 29th 2PM PST.


I met Raph in person in 2007 to talk about Metaplace (then Areae). It was an informal business discussion and I watched over his shoulder as he flew through the basic tenants of Metaplace, talking at speeds normally reserved for livestock auctions. We talked more over lunch (slower this time, there was chewing involved) about the future of virtual worlds, the collision of the social web and gaming, music, guitars and poetry. I won't bore you with our excursions of thought and speculation, but if I boiled down the conversation one thing predominated - the power of virtual worlds is unlocked when people can create, connect, and have fun pervasively.

Imagine what that means for a musician.

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Photo challenges for virtual worlds members

The autumn is getting "very hot" on Koinup. Members have the chance to enjoy a series of lovely initiatives that challenge their skills. These initiatives are open to all the virtual worlds members, they have only to register on Koinup.

If you're not yet signed on Koinup, you can join by creating your account or login using your pre-exhisting social media accounts. The first reason, because you may want to register on Koinup is to join the 1st 3D Fantasy Art Contest. The contest is about creating fantasy-like themes and submit as pictures to Koinup. Read more »

Winter Wonder

Winter is coming upon us. We are on the verge of the holiday season where we dream of twinkling lights reflected in a glittering snow, a warm bright room with a cozy fire in the fireplace.

I put together two looks from two different worlds to get a feel for the holiday season.

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Stories From The Machine Presents: The Princess And The Pea

A great many have no idea how difficult it is to make machinima. While my personal taste strongly favors original, coherent stories rather than the artsy type films, never let it be said that any machinima is "simple." Even more difficult is the adaptation of material and the translation of it to a new medium. Koinup member Toxic Menges tackled this with her rendition of the classic children's fairtytale "The Princess and the Pea."
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Changes in the Koinup "coolest" algorithm

The "coolest" algorithm is the "Koinup item algorithm" that assigns to any images and videos posted on Koinup a specific weight. Its has been built with the purpose of ranking contents and displaying some of them with more frequency in the front-pages of the website. The "coolest" algorithm is the reason because some works are more frequently seen and displayed than others on the website. The algorithm was based on democratic criteria such as the number of favs and comments.

If you login today, probably you may notice that the list of Koinup coolest works in the various pages dramatically changed. This happened because we upgraded the algorithm in order to include new criteria and elements in the measurement of the specific weight of the contents. Read more »

3D Fantasy Art Competition!

According to Wikipedia: Fantasy Art is a genre of art that depicts magical or other supernatural themes, ideas, creatures or settings. The 3D Fantasy Art Contest is about depicting, by using images and sceneries derived from virtual worlds, games and 3D tools, magical and supernatural themes and avatars: as fairies, wizards, dragons, etcetc... Read all the rules and guidelines in the discussion board.

Read all the rules & guidelines and join the competition! Express the magic in you!


The winning works will be picked by the jury made up by the italian journalist Mario Gerosa (curator of the Virtual Renassaince Exhibition in Florence) and Simon Newstead, founder and CEO of Frenzoo


JOIN THE CONTEST NOW!

Grace's Liner Notes

photo credit: Paddy Wright

Do you have any idea how hard it is to write your own introduction? Seriously, this is entirely too difficult and even a bit unsettling. I guess we should just start with the basics and keep it short.

I'm Grace McDunnough and I am pleased and honored to have joined the Koinup team.

That's me there performing live at my cafe on Nevi in Second Life. You might call me a wandering minstrel; I'm a live musician in Second Life and a member of the ground-breaking virtual world live music tour called "Rocking the Metaverse" presented by Koinup.

Here I'm unofficially in charge of sass, and officially charged with writing stories about the magic of music in virtual worlds, affectionately labeled Grace's Liner Notes.

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Koinup for Arts News and Views.

Welcome to the new style KoinUp blog, kinda smooth-looking I think. In these Virtual Arts posts I hope to be able to bring you some of the more interesting things on offer in Virtual worlds.

In this post.....
Breaking News for AM Radio Fans
University of Western Australia
Brooklyn is Watching
Lindens Support the Arts????


There’s nothing more frustrating than going to see a show, waiting ten minutes for the thing to rezz and then finding out there’s loads of dodgy photos of roses or cats which would be more at home in Google Images than wasting both prims and my valuable time in some poorly designed virtual gallery. So....I hope to be able to point you, whether you are a noob or veteran in the direction of some tasty bits and pieces.

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Harper Beresford's guide: "Style Across the Worlds"

Dear readers, we're pleased to announce the launch of a new column on the Koinup Blog. It will be called: Style Across the Worlds
and it will guide you through the most fashionist people, style, trends that are spreading out (NOW) from the Metaverse. The column will be held by Harper Beresford.

Second Life bon vivant, business woman, and builder, Harper Beresford is the Duchess of RFyre (CMO and Business Manager) and blogger for House of RFyre. A Second Life Mentor, owner of two sims–Avant Garde and Vanguard, photographer, art collector, and jewerly-maker, Harper has made her mark on the virtual fashion scene with her SL fashion blog, A Passion for Virtual Fashion (http://slfashionpassion.wordpress.com).
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Style Across the Worlds

Hiya. I’m Harper Beresford. Welcome to my world—the world of avatars and avatar apparel and enhancement. It’s called “fashion” in common parlance, but it’s more than what an avatar wears. It’s about how a person represents herself in these worlds and the artists who make those enhancements.

In this case, the person is me, so you are subject to my whims and tastes. However, my choices range across a broad swath. I like anything imaginative, artistic, elegant, fun, well-crafted, and/or evocative.

I will be exploring the worlds of Second Life, Frenzoo and IMVU. You will probably see more of Second Life here as I am an established resident there, and frankly, the tools for wearing, exploring, capturing images of, and making fashion seem a lot easier. That doesn’t mean IMVU and Frenzoo don’t have a lot going on and coming up. IMVU has a very lively avatar enhancement scene. Frenzoo puts a big focus on fashion. Let’s see what they have!

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Koinup's Cream of the Crop - True Friendship

The best thing in Secondlife for me has always been the friendships I've made. On a tough RL day, I know my bestests are waiting for me inside to go shake it off by being silly or to listen to me piss and moan. Virtual worlds have made the oceans seem far less vast and forged together unbelievable connections around the world. Koinup's Cream of the Crop today celebrates True Friendship. "Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends."- Jacques Delille

I cannot tell you what a delight it is perusing the 532 works inside this group made of 191 members. The pics all make me grin from ear to ear and remember all the fun snaps I have taken. I made a slide show in game of all of mine and continually add to them. I'll have to upload them to this group to share with everyone as well. :-)

Photo by: Brunaozao

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Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona) Selected Second Life Works 2007-2009

Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona) just opened his first "solo retrospective" collection of selected Second Life Works dated 2007-2009. It’s a varied and random set of installations scattered high up on a flat suspended platform; his works comprising primarily of 2 main competent s, one being sound and the other movement – you see solid walls out colour, some more transparent, some moving, some not. These simple shapes hold an audio/ visual experience which draws you into a state of contemplation – I felt many times as if I was trying to unlock a puzzle of sorts. Adam’s work is engaging on a deep level, and its best experienced in person. Each installation has its own ‘personality’ if you will –and I found it to be truly captivating, and indeed before I had noticed, an hour or so had passed me by– I felt as if each individual experience pained a story in my mind and took me on a journey. As with all such moments in time, each of us with see it and feel it in our own way; and its meaning will of course vary to each of us – what is important here is that it evokes a response. Few Artists transcend, Adam is one of those, and he takes this creative platform of Second Life beyond the screen in front of you. Please go and see Adam’s work for yourself via this direct link and be sure to pick up the additional information made available about the background on both Adam and his work. Adam's "solo retrospective" was curated by the experienced White Lebed and hosted on sim generously donated by Kolor Fall.
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Koinup Blog Expansion

Since the call for new guest authors, Koinup Blog has been headed to expand the area of interests. Thanks to the active support of Poid Mahovlich, we're actively building a staff of bloggers that under the label of the "Koinup Blog" will cover fashion, art, machinima, education and all the creative things happening in virtual worlds.

Basically there are two big changes. First of all Koinup Blog is headed at cover news not directly related to Koinup.com portal. Then, the Koinup blog will be a genuine voice and tool to discover interesting things that are taking place in all the metaverse.

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OMNIBUS M is for me, me, me...

I was bought up to be modest and that is a bit of a handicap when it comes to self-promotion. So, since I started my Second life I decided not to be backward in coming forward.

As you have, dear reader, enjoyed my musings here on Koinup, I thought I would share some more detailed information with you about myself.

Interviewers aren’t forming an orderly queue at the door, so, like a lot of things in life I will have to do it myself.





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Stories From the Machine Presents: The Little Wooden Boy and The Jewish Genie

Oftentimes it's difficult to get the word out about great Machinima, thus there are hundreds of little gems hiding throughout our global community, tucked away on personal websites or on some YouTube account buried beneath the videos of 14 year old boys lighting their farts on fire. It is always a true joy when I run across a film that, to me, exemplifies a strong use of virtual tools to tell a coherent story.

Codewarrior Carling's short film entitled "The Little Wooden Boy and The Jewish Genie" genuinely made me smile. In fact, I laughed out loud. It's a true challenge for any filmmaker to invoke emotion using animation because they can appear unwittingly stiff or altogether static, but the performances in Carling's film are nothing short of stellar and they bring the characters a vibrant life that makes them leap from the screen.
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Rocking the Metaverse at Club Cooee

Rocking the Metaverse is back. The stars of the most hot crossworld live music tour will perform on tomorrow, 6th of november (friday), starting at 12pm SLT(pacific time) in Club Cooee, the new-innovative 3d Chat World.

The show will take place in the International Club of Club Cooee, a cool dj lounge room where you can sit and enjoy music, and hangout with friends

If you're wondering, what's the hell is Rocking the Metaverse? Rocking the Metaverse is a crossworld live music project, aimed at bringing live music in all the virtual worlds. The musicians of the Rocking the Metaverse (Doubledown Tandino, Slim Warrior, Grace Mcdunnough) already performed in Second Life, Reaction Grid, Twinity, Metaplace, Active Worlds and now they are headed at Club Cooee


Back to the upcoming show. Bookmark the news, and stay in loop. On the next hours, we will post all details. This is the direct link to the Club Coeee music venue of the show http://www.clubcooee.com/scenes/view/11

Meet Me in the Metaverse - Verdigris

This week on Meet Me in the Metaverse I'm taking you to the sim of Verdigris. This is a unique sim in both design and shopping. It's got a bit of duality to it with the east side having a bit of an old west feeling and the west side being a old time vintage village. A deep gorge with a beautiful river divides these two halves and giant walking bridge connects them.

The landing point brings you to the east side where you can find a handful of really neat shops, and some great tables and chairs to just sit, think, and enjoy the view. Climb down the many many stairs and under the big bridge there is a really fabulous grungy old dock where you can fish with 7Seas system, take a row boat out for a spin, or just relax in the chairs provided. Cross over the the west side of the sim to find things like an open air ampitheater and then fly up to the shops area that really catches the eye of most the shutterbugs...the vintage village on a train bridge to nowhere. Fabulously exectuted and wildly photogenic!

Photo by: bark

Bark did a fantastic job of capturing this sim. What a jaw dropper! If this doesn't make you want to visit I don't know what will.

Photo by: fiona_haworth

I took this photo to show off the really fabulous build on the east side of the sim. It is the main shop for Dirty Rat and also a few smaller satellite shops. I really enjoyed just hanging out up top and enjoying the fab vistas.

Photo by: Shoji

Shoji's fantastic shot here shows you what a picturesque place the fishing area really is. I really love how Shoji captured the sunlight on the water as well as the all the reflections. Nice job Shoji!

I really want to credit n0th1ng Ackland and Oriolus Oliva for making a wonderful sim to both shop and enjoy as well as a great landscape for taking some fab photos!

Fiona Haworth
Guest Author - Koinup.com
Staff Blogger - Phantom’s Republic
Co-Owner - Prim Pads
Twitter - Fiona_Haworth