Travels with Cherry: Fest'Avi 2016

I wrote last year about Fest'Avi 2015, a grand festival in FrancoGrid, one of the many OpenSims in the larger virtual universe. (OpenSims are much like SL.) These festivals are led by Cherry Manga, who for many years was active in SL. Last year's Fest'Avi consisted of an artistically spectacular dance performance, easily worth joining FrancoGrid, but only staged on one date. When Cherry returned to SL recently to build an installation at Split Screen called The Path, she created a glimpse of the coming Fest'Avi ... as it turns out, a tiny glimpse. This year Fest'Avi consists of a complex installation covering a sim and rising over 3000m, and it will be available to visit indefinitely.

One might call the installation a "travel build": you explore it (at least initially) not by walking, flying, or camming, but traveling on a programmed tour which also controls your camera. "The Path," indeed. This approach has several advantages -- you become acquainted with the many different parts of the installation, you don't inadvertently miss any major parts, and the tour provides a sense of narrative or flow. In addition to its artistic value, when you consider how often visitors to installations pop up, look around for three minutes, and then teleport away, having a programmed tour is a sensible way to get people to experience the entire work. Having your camera controlled has its drawbacks, of course, but you can return to explore the installation without the ride (which I recommend, as I missed one or two things myself).

The installation has a huge variety of settings: abstract, geometrical, schematic, spiritual, underwater, planetary, biological, futuristic, architectural, and more. Elven, human, and other humanoid beings (some only partly humanoid) appear throughout the space. One location reminded me of neurons with their network of synaptic connections. There's even a sort of political demonstration in which Cherry recalls the hippie generation. At the end, there's a bonus: numerous boxes of free avatars, some of which appear in the installation. All told, it's quite a trip -- in perhaps the psychedelic sense as well as the typical meaning -- well worth venturing over to FrancoGrid (if you haven't before, see below).

Click to enlarge photos

Although Cherry was the primary person working on the Fest'Avi installation, she credits a large number of people for their contributions (music, animations, some of avatars and objects, etc).

Cherry's work seems to have taken a lighter tone compared to when she worked in SL. At that time she tended toward surrealism which ranged from slightly disturbing or ominous, to the outright desperation of her sim-wide build, Insanity. The work I've seen of hers in FrancoGrid has been sunnier.


How to Get to FrancoGrid and Fest'Avi

FrancoGrid is free, and easy to join. First, go to the FrancoGrid website and click on "Inscription" to sign up. Although the site is mainly in French, the basic sign-up form is in English (you can almost certainly use your SL name).

Next, choose your viewer. The Linden Lab viewer won't work, but you can use Firestorm and many other viewers. These viewers have grid managers so you can pick the grid you want.

• Some viewers -- Firestorm, Kokua and possibly others -- already have FrancoGrid (and other OpenSims) listed in the grid manager. If so, select it, log on, and you're off! (You'll need to switch back to Second Life again later.)
• In other viewers, like Alchemy and Singularity, you first set up the grid access information manually. That's pretty easy: basically the viewer just needs this URL: http://login.francogrid.org:80/. You may have to tell the viewer that the grid uses the OpenSim platform.

Finally, once you've logged onto FrancoGrid, teleport to the "FestAvi 2016" sim. (Note the absence of the apostrophe in the sim name.)

Follow the instructions for graphics and sound settings. Look for the arrow on the ground pointing the way to the green poseballs. Once you sit on one, you'll get a message asking permission to take camera controls, which you should accept. When you're ready, click the "Click" sign. You'll get a dialog asking which tour you want. Choose "Complet" (i.e., complete). The tour takes about a half hour.

Excellent review of Cherry Manga's "The Path"

Inara Pey has written an excellent review of Cherry Manga's The Path on her blog. It gives a rich interpretation which I hope visitors will find illuminating.  Thanks, Inara!

SLURL to The Path at Split Screen.

Machinima created at Cherry Manga's "The Path"

Isabelle Cheren created a machinima in The Path, which you can view on her blog or below.

Thanks Isabelle!

Cherry Manga returns to Split Screen with "The Path"

In November 2014, when the sim Mysterious Wave closed, Cherry Manga stopped building in Second Life and focused her energies on FrancoGrid, one of the many alternative virtual worlds based on OpenSim (where the sims are cheaper and the prims are more). Happily, she accepted my invitation to return in order to build at Split Screen (where she had created Danse Macabre in late 2012). The Path, her first installation in Second Life in 1½ years, is now open.

The Path's goal is to give a small foretaste of Cherry's contribution to Fest'Avi 2016, a multi-artist event covering nine sims in FrancoGrid, opening on 7 September. Cherry writes of The Path that "The idea is to show visitors the spirit of the concept developed in FrancoGrid, with this moving line, representing the path of life, the inner travel that we all go through during our life."

When you when you arrive at the landing point at Split Screen, pick up the free "Line of Light" avatar and the sculpture (also called "The Path"), and then take the teleport to the installation. Take a seat to be slowly guided around the build. Look closely as there is a bit more than might first meet the eye.

Cherry Manga's The Path (click to enlarge)

I encourage people to join FrancoGrid so you can see Fest'Avi this September. I saw it last year (and wrote about it here), and I'm sure this year's will be equally fantastic (in both senses!). I think a quotation from Albert Einstein that appears in The Path also captures the intention of Fest'Avi: "Creativity is contagious. Pass it on." If you don't speak French, the button you need to click to sign up is labeled "Inscription." You can use Firestorm to go to FrancoGrid, just select it from the list of grids.

The Path will show at Split Screen through the end of July.

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Promotional video for Fest'Avi 2016:

Fest'Avi in FrancoGrid: A Visit to an OpenSim

A friend invited me to go into FrancoGrid (an OpenSim grid) to see a performance called Fest'Avi, created largely by Cherry Manga, who is well known for her surrealistic and often dark installations in Second Life. (She built a piece at Split Screen, part of which is still there now.) Until then the only grid outside SL that I'd been to was InWorldz. OpenSims have technological differences from SL (a bit behind in some ways, ahead of it in others) but they have more flexibility due to their local control and open-source nature, and their cost is decidedly lower. On the other hand, they're also underpopulated. As a result, they're attractive for creating many types of art, but the works can seldom garner a significant audience (Fest'Avi did overcome that). In any case, given what's going on in SL, I went to the performance with somewhat low expectations.

It's a pity that Fest'Avi was a one-time-only event, for the production was extraordinary.

Fest'Avi was fundamentally a dance piece consisting of intense, driving music and rapidly changing scenery and avatars. The sweep of settings and avatars was fascinating, ranging from tiny fairies fluttering on flowers, to mechanical insects, to cyber figures, to demons in hell, to a rumpled elderly couple dancing around the world as tourists, and much more. Both the avatars and the sets were well-designed and executed. It was a particular pleasure to see some of Cherry's work become a stage. My photos scarcely do the performance justice, partly because it was constantly in motion, and so photographing on-the-fly sometimes obscures was happening and of course makes good positioning impossible; also I didn't start photographing until perhaps ten minutes into the show. I took nearly 80 photos, so I can give only a sampling here, but I've tried to indicate how some of the transitions looked. Click the photos to enlarge.

One interesting aspect technically is that other than (I think) Cherry, the performers were not live people, but rather NPCs (nonplayer characters). These are different from bots: the latter need to be run by somebody logged in with a viewer, who must sit the avatars on animating prims and coordinate the timing, whereas NPCs are programmable and operate through the sim without anyone logged in. This is one way in which OpenSims are actually preferable to Second Life. I'm sure Jo Ellsmere, who has to run over a dozen viewers in order to run her performance piece at "Obedience," would have appreciated that alternative (especially when the power went out at her house).

Fest'Avi makes it crystal clear that anyone interested in the arts should pay attention to what happens in the OpenSim grids. Given the cost of land and uploads into Second Life, many artists have moved to the OpenSims, and I think we can expect that to continue. I hope they'll publicize their work through the Second Life arts groups so that they get the audiences they deserve. In the meantime, there is a group called Hypergrid Safari, which people may be interested in joining or at least following. (Regrettably, their expeditions are usually at a time when I'm not free.)

Machinima by Hypatia Pickens set in Cherry Manga's "Danse Macabre" at Split Screen

Hypatia Pickens just released the machinima "Winning Touch," set in Cherry Manga's Danse Macabre, which Split Screen hosted in December 2012.  As part of it she reads one of her poems (she frequently incorporates her own writing into her machinima).  Hypatia is a superb machinimatographer who knows how to integrate other's art with her own.



Thanks, Hypatia!

Article and Interview with Cherry Manga by Quan Lavender

Quan Lavendar has an excellent article in Avenue incorporating parts of her interview with Cherry Manga about Danse Macabre. The article includes photos by Piedra Lubitsch. Definitely worth reading! See:

http://issuu.com/avenue/docs/avenue.december2012/318 (direct link -- you have to find page 318 if you use the embedded viewer below, which isn't hard since it's the last article)

Open publication - Free publishing - More arts

Another Machinima of Cherry Manga's "Danse Macabre"

Boa Tatuagem created this machinima on Danse Macabre:

Nicely done! I don't know who Boa Tatuagem is and the name doesn't seem to be listed in SL, but thanks anyway!

Update: The machinima is by Maxim Ouachita.  Thanks again!

Cherry Manga's "Danse Macabre" at Split Screen (and 2nd anniversary)

From now through the end of December, Split Screen presents Danse Macabre by Cherry Manga. Well known for her surrealistic imagery, such as women with bird heads, recently Cherry's imagery has had a more symbolic character. Danse Macabre is a further step in that direction. It has three parts or levels. The first is a revision of Chess-Cherry (now on view at the torno Kohime Foundation). As Ziki Questi hints in her blog, Chess-Cherry brings a startling and vulnerable eroticism to the chessboard, because on each of the chess pieces poses a nude woman. (I am reminded of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, in a young couple are revealed in the act of playing chess: the game becomes a metaphor for sexuality.) But death also lurks here, as the women's skeletons show on or through their skins. In Danse Macabre, Cherry alters the scene in several ways: the entire installation is now in the air, a grey sky surrounding it (the windlight Shadow1), the squares of the chessboard, which are textured with old newspaper classified advertisements, have the words Danse Macabre overlaid on them; a chessboard floating above like a roof is gone; and most prominently, the board is now dominated by a strange spider-woman, fly wings springing from her back, a cigarette dangling from her lips, and dressed like Pierrot. Notice when you walk on the board that the squares light up and issue a sound (also new to this version).


One reaches the smaller second level by walked up a ramp of bones (femurs, to be precise). Again we have a chessboard, but rather than chess pieces, it has floating spheres with skulls on them, while the words Danse Macabre swing about the space. The spheres contain poses -- dance-like, appropriately enough -- so be sure to sit on them. Music plays in the background.

Another bone ramp takes one up to the third level, where the actual danse macabre is located. A danse macabre is a medieval portrayal of the fact that all of us will ultimately die. In Cherry's Danse Macabre, first one sees a thicket of the words "Danse Macabre." Past that there is a ring of dancers, all hooded women, their skeletons on their skins, circling around a tower. The latter consists of a spiral staircase made first of legs with skeletons on them, and then more femurs. Posed women float on spheres. And all of it is placed on a dark hemisphere, above which another hemisphere has opened like a hatch, but also exploded out to the sky. Intense music plays ominously.

When you arrive, be sure to pick up the avatar skin and attachments in the spider woman!

Cherry made a machinima of Danse Macabre:

 
Danse Macabre is showing at Split Screen through 31 Dec. Misprint Thursday's terraform installation, which opened in October, continues at ground level.

SLURL to the Split Screen entrance: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Beleza/36/219/1501.

Also, this work marks two years of installations at Split Screen!