Concept Car

Far-back the virtual reality is integral part of automobile prototype’s development:in view of the fact that the majority part of defects noticed on new car’s models of Formula 1 are singled out during 3d race’s simulations. SL is not certainly the adapter virtual platform to this kind of development, but it’s a community brich in creatives and designers, so we’re not surprised if, in a very close future, the development of some concept cars really started from Secon Life’s metamondo. The term “concept car” means a new prototype of motor vehicle, realized on the base of a specific theme, destined to define a new concept of use or a limit accessible only from technique in the period this is built, often without consider the productive standard’s bonds. Normally the concepts by which the concept car are developed are functional as safety, consuption, ergonomics, aerodynamics or the kind of use; and they are realized for foreshadowing new models or for showing design solutions or advanced technologies that will be adopted in the manufacturer’s future production. So we have visited Motorshow in Bologna for evaluating the new trends and compare them with ideas coming from SL metamondo.

BeefCake Wrigglesworth – Contest winner

2nd: How long have you attended sl?

BW: I have been here for almost 11 months now.

2nd: How much time do you daily spend in sl?

BW: As i have a couple of shops here i spend about a couple of hours on line each day, give or take a few.

2nd: What do you like more about sl?and what do you dislike?

BW: For me i like to build and as there are few limits to what you can create here it leaves it wide open to the imagination as to what you can create.  other than the random person that seems to find me in the sandbox and tries to cage me or use some pushing device on me there is not much i dislike maybe lag sometimes on busy areas.

2nd: What is the most beautiful place that you’ve seen in sl? and the most disappointing?

BW: My shops of course are the most beautiful places here in sl (sorry could not resist), well there are some really cool asian theemed places here that are interesting and also the nice beach areas around.  as fo rthe disappointing places i would have to say the ones that are full of avs but ther eis not a word that is spoken, i refer to these as zombie zones.  i would say places that are full of bots are teh most dissappointing.

2nd: Do you work in sl?

BW: Well i have some jewelry shops here in sl, but i would not call it work, i do it mostly to relax.  it is enough to pay the rent of the land i have so as long as i make my sl rent i am happy and even if i don’t make the rent i guess i am still happy maybe less happy.  also i am working in sl on a ski contest project “sxt – ski  x-treme” that will be a game for all the people here in sl to try out skiing, it should be done just in time for christmas. they are pasted below:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/redshift/227/88/80

http://slurl.com/secondlife/redshift/231/48/77

http://slurl.com/secondlife/gye ran/57/89/115

2nd: Would you have a favourite profession?

BW: Well i enjoy my rl work, but would have to say it is not what would be my favorite profession.  umm is winning the lottory and moving to a big house on the beach a profession?  but if it came down to it i guess working with audio design for music halls and theaters would be cool.

2nd: Your work in rl is similar to what you do in sl or it’s completely different?

BW: I would say it is completely differnt, in rl work i dont get to use any creative or artistic side of me but here in sl that is about all i do.

2nd: What are you often looking for in sl? events, shops, discos?

BW: I guess to take a break from building stuff here i go around and check out the shops and some of the clubs,  or just meet up with friends and hang out.

2nd: What your secret dream?

BW: Well i would have to go with my hopes of one day getting into the lottery winning profession.

2nd: A greeting for our readers.

BW: Hello from beefcake wrigglesworth, say that 10 times fast.

GIOVANNI FRENDA – Racconti del cuore

We’re honoured and pleased to have, in this issue, Giovanni Freda, author of “Racconti di cuore”, novel that has a lot excited us. Giovanni Freda was born in 1965 in Bologna, where he still lives in a cottage with his fianceè, his dog and his two small parrots. He had scientific studies and a degree in Economics and Commerce, and, at the same time, he is a judo instructor and he studied oriental religions’ philosophy that he had taught for many years. He worked in different division of commercial cicles, especially in advertising. Today he works in tourist trade and he likes travelling both his body and his imagination. In writing his tales, he draws inspiration from his trips, he likes running off, quite in hypnotic state, leaving that words flow themselves, creating works always full of emotions. Bizarre and histrionic, he also worked in private radios, as entertainment organiser and he often presents village festival and performances. With his readings and trips he’s always looking for a new world, closer to his life’s vision, a positive world build on people and not on things, which is sensitive to each one dreams’ realization. In his stories, he paints everybody’s emotions by using warm and strong colors, clean lines and soft nuances, exploring dreams, sadness, worries and his joie de vivre. In 2006 the book titled “Racconti del cuore” comes out, edited by Sovera multimediale: it’s a little volume of tales, a collection of sharp paintings in which the reality mixs up with dreams, fantasy grows up through words coming out from heart, that talk about emotions, love, passion, friendship and feelings which are integral part of our life. A little magic that spring by force the story through the author’s pen who originally describes dreams, disillusions and tenderness in one go, without filters, touching reader’s heart.

2ndDesign: Good morning Giovanni, first of all thank you for having accepted our invitation. The first question I’d like to ask you is: How was born the idea to write this tales?

GF: I’ve started writing tales before trying out myself with novels. These tales aren’t the result of an idea, they take form on their own. I like to think about words that, as if they were animated by a spell, personify and neatly arrange themselves in order to create tales and novels. The words themselves are alive, I’ve just acted as an intermediary. I often read stories which I appreciate a lot..and asking me who’s the writer, discover it was me! Perhaps our readers don’t understand and consider me mad, but it’s so.. An artist has to be a little crazy in order to break rules and generate something different. Usually I start from a term that has stunned me, often it’s s a word of a song that I like to listen while I’m writing, and so I begin to create. I compose without following the rules that I learnt at school, in this way the novel slowly takes form. It’s wonderful to see an item apparently senseless connects itself and gains meaning throughout the pages. I always say that it’s a sort of spell, a boon. Slowly I’ve started gathering tales.. I had really written a lot of them.. According to my publishing I’ve chosen some of them and this is the way the book was born. I named it “Racconti del cuore”, firstly it was “Racconti del mio cuore” because these tales really come from my heart; I’ve tried to express with my words what people feel inside. One day, a young girl explained me her sensations reading the book, unbelievably… they were the same that I’d like to spread to my readers.

2ndDesign: Why have you decided to talk about such important theme as love?

GF: In point of fact I’ve not chosen to talk about love.. It’s love that have chosen me for being told. Perhaps because it’s the most important thing in our life; in my book I talk about love intended in ample sense, between men and women, parents, friends, brothers, animals… People don’t admit it, but the most deep pains that have permitted our grown, come from love, deprivation and forsake. Surely getting the ax could be harsh and painful, but it’s worse have to be throw over by our girlfriend; the same applies to thee beginning of a new work: great sensation.. but nothing as compared with falling in love, or with the first time you date with a girl or make love with her.. In my opinion nowadays we need a lot of love, maybe for the fact that we are becoming more and more selfish living with the certainty that love is obtainable only with money, in a world where nobody is able to sacrifice himself for love. So, in the light of this, what’s better than talking about love..heart..

2ndDesign: Dreaming is a recurrent topic in your book, but in your opinion, what is dream?

GF: I like very much dreaming: both during night and day –I’m a really day dreamer!-; I firmly belive that dreams are integral part of our ordinary. It’s important to dream and it’s important fight for strictly defending them. For those who love dreaming, life is more beautiful: one can images it as we would prefer.. and imaging a different life is just a very good step near the concrete change. Afterall, most of the time, it’s the dream itself that give us more satisfaction: for example, when we buy a new car, we begin to imagine how it will be drive it, or our friend’s admiration.. And then we realize that often we’ve taken delight in imaging then in driving it everyday. The same applies to love, to life, to work.. It’s beautiful to be successful in the realization of our dream, but maybe what more delight us is what there’s before its realization. The most important think is does not permit to anyone to steal our wishes. There’re a lot of people like stealing others’ dreams, probably because they’re not able to do this.. Let’s not permit it happens and do not permit to anyone to say that we are not able to realize them. Go on dreaming. This is one of my dream: to be here with you.. A lot of people said me that I was not able to write a book, that nobody would had published it, that nobody will not buy special guest it.. and so on..

2ndDesign: Your particular way of writing, so simple and immediate, recalls childhood: ingenuousness and freshness of children and, at the same time, the depth of thinking and a wisdom’s touch typical of who has lived. Pratically a child inside an adult. How much is important in our life to be mentally child?

GF: I like very much this question because it’s seems to express my way of thinking at best: we do not forget that, during our childhood, we were able to play and dream in life and with life, as children can do very well. We always keep in mind it, but maybe the only moment in which we can relive these sensations is when we mess with a child: try to watch children playing in a recreation ground, as I did some days ago: they immediately begin to play all together, and, even if they have never seen themselves, they behave as they know each other all along, and they laugh, they run and are full ofe positive energy. Then I think that it’s very curious (and sad..) that, in a party with adult people, this never happens. It would be pleasing begin to chatter and to joke.. When a child loves, he makes it without any kind of interests; when he begins a new adventure, he makes it throwing himself without fear, laughting for any failures, and try and try again.. I don’t understand wherefore we change in our life’s course.. Try to live with the typical childeren’s lightheartedness as well, without always taking us too seriously, both in victories and defeats, without losing hearth, smiling to world and people around us, with eyes full of wonder.. Maybe this is the well-living recipe.

2nd Design: Your tales are full of love: stolen love, legal love, departed love, rejected love, unaware love, love and sex. Nowadays, in your opinion, is there more love or sex?

GF: It’s difficult to answer.. I like thinking that there’s much love..Maybe often love is painted with heart’s sex.In searching love, we believe to be satisfied with sex; we’re always seeking of love, emotion, feelings, cares, sharings.. In order toh ave them, we take sex as replacement everything else. Unlike a child, who loves without fear, we are afraid of love, so we refuse it, because love is risk. It’s like poker: you can watch other players and never win, or bet low sum of money risking a little, or bet more with a very high risk.. This, in our life, means: sex with feet on the round. But think about fallino in love, nights spent embraced, when time loses importance, and dilating itself, a minute becomes an hour or an hour becomes a minute..

2nd design: You’ve told: “Often I feel like a painter, because I love paint an exact moment o my life, block a feeling, an emotion, using all my colors” What are your colors?

GF: I like thinking that, for expressing an emotion at best, one can block it inside the heart, as a picture. Some years ago, I learnt an exercise that we can try to do again all together: if you want to feel a particular emotion, call to mind the moment in your life in which you’ve felt it; then take a picture of this moment, including also sun’s warmth, flowers’ scent if you’re in a lawn, or those of person that was with you.. then put this picture in little box insieme your heart. When I have to tell an emotion, I look for the corresponding image and I begin to describe it. I could also paint it, because I clearly see its colors.. but I’m not able to paint so I use words as colors and try to describe through my sensations.

2nd Design: What are your writer’s future projects?

GF: A short time ago, I finished a novel which now I’m correcting. It’s a very romantic love story, complex and moving, but I don’t want to tell anymore. I’ve read it many and many times, and everytime I feel deep emotions, the same as I hope feel others people who will read it.

2nd Design: Well, at the end of these pleasant interview I would like to thank you again for having been our guest.. but before concluding, I would like you make me a promise: it would be a great pleasure for usi f, at your second’s book issue, you’ll come here again in order to present your new work to Second Life’s virtual world, giving a preview some novel’s passages to our readers, maybe inserting a bit on our website.

GF: Oh yes! I will be happy about it! See you!

SLCamp2008

We can’t lose this occasion! On october 25, in Florence, there was the great SL Camp 2008 into Festival della Creatività. A double occasion, in reality, given that there was also the exhibition “De Avatar Dignitate” in the Florence’s anthropology museum. Sincerely, we remained very disappointed: the exhibition De Avatar Dignitate, organized by Mario Gerosa (friendly suggestion!), seemed superficial both in the organization then in the realization. Also the stand placed inside the Festival wasn’t great, but at least it presented some connections with Second Life. The SLCamp, organized by Fabrizio Pivari and talking about the Second Life’s death, was very interested under various aspects. It gave the opportunity of showing some projects that underlines the launch pad’s function of Second Life , and of how it could be a testing platform for many artists, above all on visual and digital arts, but also è stato mostrato come, the virtual reality could be a great opportunity to anyone wanting express their own art, without the untenable costs of real life. Therefore, Second Life as starting point for emerging also in real life, for ex pressing something or spreading a message. And the communication through Second Life has probably been the most important aim of the day. The promotional campaign leaded by Alice Mastroianni and her team for CBM ITALIA ONLUS on Second Life is an example of how virtual media could be used in reaching thousands of users in a serious, organized and efficient way. Of course, this meeting has been also useful for comparing ideas, considerations and projects of some protagonists of italian Second Life ‘s panorama, ..that has given life to a debate on how this virtual platformis used, lived and seen from the external. Surely we had preferred more crowd, both for considering others ideas and proposals, and for affirming, without any doubts, that Second Life is alive, active and rich in surprises. Waiting after giving sure answers to these Hamplet’s indecisions, we want underline what this SLCAmp2008 has given us: the meeting with many new friends, special people loaded in enthusiasm, as Dap Ho, from daPRaf Creations, Alice Mastroianni of Wonderful Dream Team, Micalita Writer, Mila Tatham, Rodroguez Imako, Gigi Roffo, and everybody with who we had spent a wonderful weekend, that we hope to repeat as soon as possible, maybe the next summer for a SLCamp2009 beach!

BASQUIAT – and the ghost to fight-off

In Rome it starts in these days the retrospective that pays tribute, with works and inedited photos, to this famous american artist.

Jean-Michel had a lot of ghosts to fight against. The title of the exhibition set up in Palazzo Ruspoli (Rome) retrieving that of one Basquiat pictures’series, immediately frames this character, that has been man nothing much but who will remain artist forever.

He grew up in NYC, he dead at 27 years old for heroin’s overdose; at the age of 7 he was invested by a car and, in the corse of convalescente he became excited by the most popular anatomy manual in the world, Gray’s Anatomy.

Fondazione Memmo presents more than 50 works (also some inedited), centred on Basquiat’s fragmented vision of human body and the complexity of the man himself. This perspective involves many basic themes widely revealing about the artist’s soul, as for example, the urban space so intensely experienced, his modus operandi, the graffiti art, his afro-caribbean origins, his fears and insecurities olf young musicien and painter. There is not any ties in his obsessive object’s repetition: skeletons, limbs’ fragments, cars, skyscrapers, toys, black heroes, writings, a crown, a clear self-assertion symbol. We can read a worls shattered by his own draw, incoherent but, at the same time, evident proofs of a lost innocente, a primitive and ritual representation of his world, made of delirium and marginalization.

Michael Halsband, the author of the 5 unpublished photos exhibited and Basquiat’s trusted friend, maintains that drug and alchool have been palliative for the frustration of “a black in this world”, using Basquiat’s words. Therefore, also his art appears as a sort of catharsis, for fightin off ghosts of a life lived between drugs and racism.

MARYMOON – Portraits of innocents

Before internet communication, the music that we all listened was selected and imposed on marketplace by so-called “major”, the big record labels. The arrival of net services as myspace or other similar social networks has eased not only the possibility for an artist to obtain wide consents but, above all, has given us, simply users and fond of beautiful music, the opportunity to discover, follow and support them in their ladder to success. Second Life, in its capacity as musical bin, has certainly extended the possibilities, for many artists and musicians, to reach a raise number of users, giving them, with very low expenses, the chance of an unrecordered performance. Thanks to virtual reality infact, also the users can value the musician’s real artistic abilities. For exemple, in Second Life we have had the pleasure to listen (and appreciate!) the Marymoon, a group on which our magazine bets for the future. An advice: while you read the interview, created in exclusive for 2nd Design Magazine, connected with their website www.myspace.com/marymoonband, and keep as background music, the fantastic pieces in playlist: they will excite you!

Therefore welcome to Stefano De Maria e Federico Dagoli, the two band’s guitarists.

2nd: Who are Marymoon and how have they begun playing together?

MM: Marymoon formed back themselves in 2004 in Fabriano (AN), Italy, when five local musicians, coming from different band experiences, gathered on a saturday evening around a fireplace. Without making any plans, just to play some music, they wrote their first album “ “Portraits of Innocents”.

2nd: What are your main influences?

MM: Every member of the band listens to the music he likes, so he has his own influences. Therefore, some of them are common, like Radiohead, U2, Coldplay, the Seattle sound of 90’s.

2nd: How does a composition come to life?

MM: First to come is music, sometimes the idea of a single member, others of the whole band. Almost at the same time melody, often Vittorio’s work. Lyrics at the end. Firstly it cames the music, sometimes by single member’ thoughts, at others by the whole band’s ideas; almost at the same time one’s creates the melody (for the most part of times, it’s the result of the singer’s inspiration, Vittorio; then there’s the texts’ composition.

2nd: Tell us about your albums.

MM: Our debut album, Portraits of Innocents (© 2008 Pressplay Records – http://www.press-play.it/) with 11 songs (from “Taxi Driver” to “So Much Love”, from “All Over Again” to “Last Departure” etc.), has a romantic and melodic rock taste, with textes full of melancholy and hope. You can buy it on line with paypal or credit card in: http://cdbaby.com/cd/marymoon (only 5 $) or directly in Second Life (2.000L$) in the Adrenaline Live Music Second Life site: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Itland Entertainment/198/223/25

2nd: What do you think about your experience in Second Life?

MM: We’re surprised! And thankfull… It’s beautiful and at the same time strange watching your concert from home, vent without doing the sound-check! And it is wonderful to think that virtually worldwide people can listen to our music, enjoy it, talk about it, maybe make it a small part of their lives.

2nd: What are Marymoon plans in Second Life and real life?

MM: We are really interested in “live” concerts in Second Life, that means to play live in our recording studio being broadcast on Internet in real time. It really looks like a radio live broadcast, where you can even interact with the audience, that are people coming from all over the world. Real life plans? We’ll think about it if and when it will be necessary.

2nd: Which are your contacts and references? 

MM: In internet you can find us on: http://www.marymoon.it and http://www.myspace.com/marymoonband (this is better, with videos, photos and SecondLife events). In Second Life virtual world you can follow us in our tour joining our group “Adrenaline Live Music” (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Itland Entertainment/198/223/25) or contact directly CarloDM Demme or Sdav007 Noel to book our concert in your land.

Bye bye!!

INFART – Say yes to infart

A very interesting event for art and avant-gard creativity’s took place at the beginning of september, in Bassano del Grappa. Infart (that’s the name of artists’ collective who organize it) is fast and explosive: it happens in 48 hours. 48 hours during which the artists invited meet each others and, living together, axchange ideas and opinions in a continuous interaction with guests in urban filled and transformed. Everybody is completely plugged in an higly informal community’s atmosphere: there’re no curatore, there’s no an out-and-out exhibition, but there’s a party, there’s a knowledge’s network that takes place and leaves a mark, where the pick of national and international artistic avant-garde can freely express itself inside especially dedicated spaces.. 80 famous artists realized a colorful painting of styles and languages, interacting and influencing each other, for offering to public an absolutely strong vision. At the same time, the city gave ospitalità to an “all night long party” for celebratine Innovation Valley’s birth, with the biggest concentration of italian creatives during one sinle night. Innovation Valley, conceived by Fuoribiennale, is an important project created in order to arouse great interest to the big creative north eastern Italy’s area of eastern Italy. It was an unforgettable night, fulled by excellences and new talents, with the partecipation of the most important creatives and cultural realities of north eastern Italy.

 

Contact: www.infartcollective.com/blog