UPDATED
Contact: Ina Centaur
July 4 2008

RFL Grand Finale Vendor Fair & 4-Sim Fashion Show

Skin City, Second Life: The “RFL Grand Finale Vendor Fair” opening on July 1st, and running until the end of Relay of Life on July 19th, features some of RFL 2008’s best fashions. An invitational “RFL Grand Finale Fashion Show” showcasing these RFL fashions live on the runway will occur on the Sky Globe 4-sim stage on 7/6 @ 1 PM and 7/7 @ 7PM SL Time (GMT-7). All proceeds of the event will benefit the American Cancer Society through the Relay for Life venture on Second Life. But, most interestingly, every single component of each outfit — from skin, to hair, to shoes, to eyes, to clothing, of course — is an RFL item.

The following fashion brands will have their RFL fashions shown live on the Sky Globe 4-sim runway:

Alienbear Designs
_AR Another Realism
Bailers
Bewitched
Enchant 3D
Eros by Keth
~flirt~
french Kisses
Haute Style & Co
House of Heart
IC-Skins
Magika
Mirada
Nicky Ree
Nova
Opium
PrimPlay
Sam’s Secret
Shiny Things
Tesla
Topaz Square

All fashions can be purchased directly in the Vendor Fair adjacent to the fashion show venue at the Sky Globe, Skin City.

ABOUT THE SKY GLOBE:
550 meters above the SL Globe Theatre, the Sky Globe is a postmodern architectural building spanning the intersection of 4 island simulators, with the stage on its own sim adjacent to three audience seating venues in neighboring island simulators:
http://Slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20City/245/33/632
http://Slurl.com/secondlife/sLiterary/31/24/632
http://Slurl.com/secondlife/Shakespeare/232/231/632

ABOUT SKIN CITY
Since August 2007, Skin City has been the one-stop place to see a wide selection of skins, shapes, eyes, and other avatar accessories on SL. The build is grayscale based on Frank Miller’s Sin City (theatrical version), and only the various shops give it color. Visitors are told: Turn the right corner in Skin City, and you can find anything. Merchants are told: We are noir until you!

Vendor Fair @ http://Slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20City/220/85/555

trackback

On behalf of RFL and fashion in Second Life, Skin City invites all
designers who have created items for RFL to participate in the RFL
Grand Finale 4-sim Fashion Show and Vendor Fair at Skin City and
vicinity.

The RFL Vendor Fair is open to the public from 7/1 to 7/14; designers
may start setting up in the metro region starting on 6/25. The RFL
Grand Finale Fashion Shows are on Sunday 7/6 @ 1 PM SL Time and Monday
7/7 @ 7 PM SL Time. Both events will have search parcels designated
shortly before they open. All designers are welcome to participate in
either or both events. Details below.

RFL Vendor Fair: The RFL Vendor Fair is meant to be a final display of
your RFL designs, and also as a small showcase of the non-RFL designs
you feel represent you the most. To participate in the vendor fair,
you must RSVP by 6/26 11:59 PM SL Time to Ina Minotaur by dropping off
a notecard named “RFL Vendor Fair: (Your Store / Name)” with ad photos
of all of your RFL items, and a rough minimum and maximum prim count
for your proposed store space. Space for the duration of the Fair is
donated by Skin City, and available on a first-come-first-serve-basis.

RFL Fashion Show on 4-Sims: This fashion show will be accessible to
the maximal amount of local audience members, and will be one last
chance for people to hype and rave about these RFL fashions live on
the runway. The only requirement is that each outfit must feature an
item on sale in an RFL vendor. To participate, please drop off a
notecard named “RFL Fashion Show: (Your Store / Name)” to Ina Minotaur
by 6/27 11:59 PM with:

1)       a specific outline of the exact outfit combination(s) you would
want the model(s) to wear—be sure to indicate which outfit item is an
RFL item, and also, if you don’t have preferences for non-RFL outfit
components, please state so. Do NOT drop outfit inventories on Ina
Minotaur.  You will be given more information after processing. You
must show a different RFL item on each model, but there is no explicit
limit on how many models you can clog up
2)      a brief biography about you/your store. LM’s, blog links, and other
information also welcome. Optionally, you may also include exact item
descriptions for the MC to announce.
3)      specify whether you would want to be included in the fashion show
machinima to be distributed for free inworld, and also on youtube,
blip.tv, google videos, and similar media.

The show is pro bono for RFL.

Here is a LM that gets you close to the event location. An exact parcel
will be segmented out when the fair and show open:
http://Slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20City/225/16/563 

trackback

I’m thinking of the RFL prom - the immersive virtual prom event on Second Life created by the passion of numerous designers, to benefit ACS through Relay for Life. I’m also thinking of data loss, oil paintings, and quantum mechanics… the ephemeralness of everything coherent.  

A younger me used to find it apalling and infuriating that great canvases of oil paintings would burn in a building fire. And be lost forever. I used to regard cases like that with the naive innocence of someone with too much pride in her own era’s distinction. I’d scoff and think — had they done that digitally, it would exist forever. And yet…

The great works of art from the ancient past will outlive the great works of this era. Modern art is relative, and in the eye of the beholder. Digital data is ephemeral. Hard drives fail, CD’s fail, DVD’s fail, flash drives get lost. Simulators on Second life get wiped because their maintenance fees are far too great.

It’s amazing the amount of passion and love people put into Second Life - and the beauty of some of the work is just wow… The insane amount of time and tendency to details the creator puts in… just defies good reason… especiallly when the details won’t survive after its creation - the creator, galvanized by more things to create would never look at it again… the detail, being to subtle and fine, would get overlooked by others, especially when there are a thousand others. (”The greater you are, the less of each of your works.”) And yet, I guess the only thing that really matters is the experience. There’s no gaurantee that the end product will survive or what sorts of freak accidents would prevent it from successfully reaching its destination. It is as Eshi says. It is all about the process of creating it. It is not about the end product, and yet the process of creating it is often unbearable in the horrible way - and while creating it you’re thinking about the end product. But, in the end, it is only about you. There’s a high chance no one will see it beyond you. And a high chance you’d never look at it after you’re done with it. It’s the process, and yet…

I guess that’s why in the middle of my personal life experiment in Second Life I start pursuing live theatre. I’d always strayed away from it after I “developed” my philosophy of life. Really, I studied physics thinking that knowing physics I would be able to understand everything else, and that really wasn’t it. Philosophy was more rhetoric and tenure politics than truth. And bioengineering was just unrigorous physics and luckiness. I used to pity people who spent their time doing art and that sort of stuff, since I thought they were so deep into their own niche they were “shallow” — savants, in a way… and yet, what I wanted to be was a savant too, actually a savant polymath, if that makes sense… Anyway though, live theatre is often not recorded not because of technical reasons but because of politics - recording rights and all. In Second Life, live theatre can’t always be recorded “live” because of lag and “ruthing” and gray-unrezzed-textures - they often render the view not as optimal, and a substantial amount of postwork becomes necessary. Thus, in Second Life, you’re lucky if you see things “in the eye of the creator,” textures rezzed and sculpties rezzed and everything as beautiful as intended.

The other element of a live event involving multiple people is that it isn’t always easy to get all of them together simultaneously. Some things only happen once in a lifetime - once in all of creation and existence. The extreme amount of anti-entropy required and butterfly effect and the mess that might precipitate an event. It’s a miracle it happened. And even if the medium has limited reach due to technological lackings… I guess I was lucky to have taken a part in it.

And then back to data. The loss of it. The capital necessary to maintain it. And even then there’s the possibility of these digital bytes succumbing to its own butterfly effect as random cables suffer random effects to sudden blow up a huge data center. I’m thinking about the no-cloning theorem in quantum computing. And I’m thinking of paintings, the massive oil canvases. They can’t really be cloned either - taking a photo just isn’t the same, and even so-called restorations where a lesser paints over the work of the master…

But I’m thinking about simulators on Second Life again, and the beautiful things created on them… and then destroyed on them because of the cost to maintain these simulators. It’s just such a pity when copying data is so easy in other digital mediums, and yet so hard in the infrastructure of Second Life. Why isn’t there an archive.org for Second Life?

I dunno, I guess I have a super-weak weak spot for beauty. If told that the only way I can immortalize beauty if only for the span of another’s lifetime were to lose my own, yet pass on what transpires of it, I would… You live and then you die.

trackback

Everyone has a crush on me!

In other news:

trackback