What grew on this year's Burn2 Sculpture

Here is a guide to all the influences which sprouted forth from my campsite Stream of Consciousness currently on display at Burning Man in Second Life...

Style Branch

	Art Deco Inspired by the architects of Ancient Egypt. This angular and asymmetrical style was an attempt to lend a modern eye to elegance during the 20s.
	Googie and Atomic Age Following Art Deco came Streamline Moderne, which took the soul out of its line and often gave buildings a "submarine" look. After WWII signs and structures tried to define themselves for the future with geometric shapes and odd color schemes, mostly pastel and primary. Some say this post-deco look was inspired in part by Disneyland and the conceptual art of Mary Blair. Others by the proliferation of prefab diners. Applying this to homes, drive-ins, restaurants, hotels, etc. went on well into the 1960s, where it set the style for the New York World's Fair. My builds on Hydrangea reflect this style, as well as my fishing marina The Retro Metro in Nova Albion.
	Tiki USA's involvement in the Pacific also introduced a Polynesian influence. Mix that with Googie and you get a campy cult, which also manifested its own genre of musical styles.
	Framed Storybook Cottages Something I saw a lot of when visiting my mother's side in Alsace-Lorraine. Strasbourg and Obernai in particular. I'd never seen such detail, not even in Big Ben jigsaw puzzles.

Movie Branch

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans First soundtrack-on-film feature (versus playing a record in sync). Directed by Fritz "Nosferatu" Lang about true love reborn. You WILL weep I don't care who you are.
Back to the Future Trilogy After Buster Keaton's The Cameraman - a perfect comedy - comes the perfect epic adventure trilogy, in which everything happens for a reason and everything falls into place by the end.
Singin' in the Rain A perfect account of Hollywood at the dawn of the talkies. This has a little bit of everything in it, and beats American in Paris by a long mile.
A Matter of Life and Death Brilliant and clever tale of an RAF airman who survives his jump from a burning plane in a way no one would expect. It's refreshing to see foreigners depict American stereotypes.
Jean Cocteau He had a way of making Orpheus look like a waking dream and La Belle et La Bête like a walking Doré engraving. The moment the poet plunges into the mirror is nothing which has been replicated on film in that way before or since. Not even Eddy Grant...
Flesh and the Devil Two performers fall in love while shooting a movie about forbidden romance and scandal. You don't think that shows up on film? Hell yeah!
Random Harvest Okay so this nurse falls in love with an amnesic soldier at the end of WWI and they fall in love, start a life, live in one of those storybook cottages... until one day he remembers who he is and forgets his new life. ARRRGH!
The Forbidden Zone Danny Elfman's brother made this low budget softcore cult film with Hervé Villechaize, Susan Tyrrell, Oingo Boingo, The Kipper Kids, an obsession with Max Fleischer cartoons, old 78s, chickens, and hardly any budget, The result was a very bizarre but intriguing concoction with surprisingly successful special effects.
North by NortwestWhat do you mean you've never seen this?!

Music Branch

	The Beatles *watching Ed Sullivan* Mommy Mommy why are those girls screaming? They can't hear the music!" "Because they're crazy Dear." Even today there are very few music acts from any genre who were not even indirectly influenced by The Beatles. Which was your Beatle? Mine's always been Paul McCartney. I heard the Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey and thus started my listening the radio. He was big stuff at the time with his band Wings, and less interested in making social statements than putting out appealing pop tunes. On a trip to the UK in 1977 I acquired the single "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" which we'd never heard in the States.
	The Carpenters Sick at home and stir crazy I listened to a LOT of pop hits in the summer of 1971 when pursuing the radio, and it was a big year for The Carpenters and their multi-layered sound, which was great in headphones at my friend's house. My parents were pleased that I'd taken to someone they liked as well, and we included a concert as part of a road trip through Pennsylvania.
	Electric Light Orchestra Influences come and influences go, but I always come back to ELO. Still doing AM Radio in 1973 I caught the syndicated weekly AT40 where I got to hear Can't Get It Out of My Head once a week. By 1976 and having owned each single of theirs since AND listened to all their B-sides, I figured it was time to move on to albums. Simply this: Electric Light Orchestra picked up where The Beatles left off. And Jeff Lynne is God.
	DEVO i didn't think much of them until Oh No! It's DEVO! In 1982. That and a dream set a short distance from an atomic test site.
	Dave Edmunds High octane rockabilly strait ouda Cardiff.
	Paul Whiteman Orchestra You've got your kind of Jazz and I've got mine. It's just that most of mine are Foxtrot with Vocal Refrain

Art & Animation Branch

Looney Tunes Who doesn't love Looney Tunes? Funny imagery for kids and shrewd humor for adults.
Thomas Kinkade There are those framed cottages again, only mostly English. But still that cozy light inside. This man's work was always one step away from total kitsche, but he always maintained that distance.
Disney moment in Cinderella I knew I was going to be an artist, at least a cartoonist, but a moment of a scene from Cinderella in which the character ran into a darkened room so realistic had me hooked into majoring in animation while in High School. Yeah so what if the character was rotoscoped in the shot. This was my destiny and I had to follow.
Busby Berkley As you may suspect, Busby Berkley was in fact a drill sergeant at some point. Then coming back to the states after WWI he found work on Broadway choreographing reviews. It made sense to move on to movies, where his formations and patterns became legendary. Try the formulaic "Dames" for some of the best musical sequences.
Osamu Tezuka My earliest recollection of anime - at the time called Japanimation - was that of Astroboy aka Atom. From there was Kimba aka Leo the Lion. And Amazing Three, about aliens disguised as animals riding in a tire. Picking up my first manga in 1971 found me a host of new characters to follow, but opening a Yochiyen got me all my Tezuka favorites plus MamaChan, Magma, Black Jack, and more. He had the first anime studio and was a pioneer to Japan akin to Walt Disney.
Go Nagai Don't think I'd ever seen naked characters in a kids comic before then. He got parents in Japan furious in the 60s and 70s. But truly he did some amazing work. His original Devilman series was very sophisticated.
Ishinomori Shotaro For action, adventure, and again cyborgs and robots with hearts of gold. Much of my timing in comics came from him. At a time when I found American comics cluttered and messy, I found an appeal with simple character design yet perfect poses and amazing embellishments in manga (explosions, etc), mostly from this artist. Kamen Rider, Wild, Cyborg 009, Kikaida... these practically became a part of me.
Speed Racer Who would have thought? An animated series without talking animals or aliens etc? It was an animated version of an adventure spy thriller, and for the time it worked. When you grow up with Trans Lux' low budget dubbing you can't see it any other way and you wouldn't want to.
John Romita Sr A clean simple line, perfect poses... these are what I liked about Johnny Romita when he took over Daredevil. The only reason he left was to cover for Ditko on Spider-man. Thus a legend was born.
Gene Colan My key American inspiration stands right beside Go Nagai and Ishinomori Shotaro with yet another unique storytelling style. A man with a knack for realism straight from the hand with cinematic angles. He was like I am: see things in tones and very difficult to ink. I had resolved to pursue inking in mainstream comics as a result. We were eventually on a first-name basis but I never expressed to him my desire to ink is art and work on a project with him. I suppose somewhere up there he now knows.
Brian Bolland His inking style is unsurpassed. I wish I could do what he did, and he did it with a brush.
James Montgomery Flagg An amazing illustrator and cartoonist from early 20th century. What he could do with a few lines was just incredible. While he is known for his Uncle Sam Wants YOU poster it's the black & white cartoons and spot illustrations from an earlier time that I admire most.

Shordurpersavs
Shordurpersav is SubGenius for "Short Duration Personal Savior". It's those things which hit you hard with influence and advance you into a new phase of your life until the next one comes along.

	Tin Man Fascinating. An empty structure with a soul. I felt he had the most heart...
	Speed Racer I saw this during a visit in 1967 to NYC. I obsessed over it once back in Chicago and had to keep drawing it and singing the theme song so I wouldn't forget. Two years later we'd be moving to NYC and that's all I could think of.
	Dr Strange As long as one can go, there's always a path to redemption. I was impressed to learn that in the 60s there were college courses analyzing this Marvel comic series. I boast an impressive collection of original Dr Strange page art, and always wanted to do a piece for Marvel.
	Captain Hook There comes that moment reading the book that you realize that he wasn't the bad guy. In the original version he gets so sick of being tormented by Peter Pan that he climbs down from the ship to kneel in the water before the crocodile.
	Eddie Cantor The original King of All Media. Started impoverished in an immigrant family and became one of the greatest celebrities of his time and a great philanthropist. He also founded the Actors Guild.
	Buster Keaton Easily the best filmmaker. Director and producer AND screenplays. His Rube Goldberg engineering skills were also how he approached his plots.
	Danny Elfman Is he the devil? Is he a manic lead singer? Is he a soundtrack composer? I know him for more than Jack Skellington.
	Errol Flynn He might not have reached his full potential. Flynn was a dysfunctional genius with a great skill for the written word. He also had rage issues which turned him into a monster under the influence. Admitted that he wondered how his life would have been if he weren't so pretty and gotten away with so much. Looked 80 when he died at 50, but lived three times that. Was inspiration for the Tasmanian Devil. Many things written about him since his passing were not true.
	The EMH My adoptive persona since 2000 has been the Emergency Medical Hologram or Holographic Doctor. To interact realistically with people in a medical environment the EMH was configured with heuristic subroutines which resulted in a sentient lifeform. The story of the EMH is not just a study of an aware creature finding his place in society but ultimately the story of humanity's future and the question of whether we have truly evolved when mankind creates simulated scenarios for killing and war on the holodeck. People online don't always get that they are ALWAYS evaluated based on whether their values off the computer remain when they interact with strangers online.
	Doctor Who Damn I hated that show in the 70s. It was some crummy low-budget thing on before wrestling Saturday mornings (in NYC it wasn't on PBS). There's a different first impression between being a 3 yr old hiding behind the couch or being regarded by a film major (case in point Speed Racer, which appears on two branches of my sculpture). My first roomate made me watch it a decade later and it was painful. Something happened along the way, and now it's the best show on TV anywhere. I jumped on with series 5 in 2010, when most of that year's episodes could hold up in the movie theatre over anything out at the time.

Playing Artist

Productive weekend but only the backdrop of the main presentation of my piece is up.  Just need to launch the shordurpersavs and the influences are complete.  I have 2 deadbeats as well; watch where you step.

Animating textures is the big challenge for this.  The plasma carrying my subroutines from the memory storage unit will be routed through the build's foundation.  Right now the flow is restricted so as not to cause a distraction.

A Break Before Completion

I'm sitting beneath a painting by Van Gogh of an outdoor café bathed in yellow light. It's a comfort zone in eastern Jackson Heights.  It's been some time since I've made the time to have someone fix me a casual breakfast.

I had a scare this morning as my feet were swollen when I awoke.  Usually my ankles go down as I sleep and my feet are seldom edemic in the first place.  Things are getting worse as my lymphatic system starts a slow shutdown.  My grandmother and great-grandmother both died drowning in their own fluids, and I'm destined for the same fate.  Mom got lucky and inherited her father's metabolism and will outlive me if she doesn't meet with a serious injury at the nursing home.  She ensured my legacy of allergies intolerances and weak immune system by smoking during her pregnancy.

This place apparently became a Natives some months ago, a chain of Colombian restaurants; there's a larger one closer to where I live which serves as a dinner theatre.

Appropriately enough Nelly Furtado was on the radio when I came in.

With a heel which may either have tendonitis or a mild fracture, I was terrified into taking a walk out to the next community.  The round trip walk will rack me up 3 miles.  It won't do me much good if I don't do it again tomorrow.

I ordered a Colombian style breakfast, except it also will have a chorizo.  Aren't they Mexican?  Maybe not.  Anyway I'll be sparing with that or the additives will compensate for the walking and flare my entire body for 3 days.

They predict heavy rains today but there's no precipitation anywhere near the region on maps.

While most of the graphics are by me for Burn2,  there's an animation of an EMH's thought processes which I'm using from a graphics repository for RP and Trek fan sites.  You see Virginia, back in the days before social networking when everybody made websites, there were these people who offered superior graphical elements for non-commercial webpages in exchange for a link to them.  Linkware they were called.  The Brit LCARS site has linkware, fair use on the Playa with appropriate credit.  I'll have to use my profile and this blog to credit the creator.  I'd never take credit for something I didn't create.  Ever.

Breakfast is big.  Eating the carne asada and rice n beans mixed with egg; the arepa con queso and chorizo are coming home.

I'm back and my foot is now normal. I think after I finish the parcel I'll take another walk. Then work on my skin, then work on the freebie pack of skins, then work on the free Tee Shirts I'll offer on my parcel.

Yes I missed press day, won't be immortalized on a hand drawn map of the playa, or appear on Designing Worlds, but I believe you'll find my place worthwhile if you take the time to walk through it.

Burn2 Ends: Time to wander the dirt road.

So I hear the Lamplighters finally made it up to the temple during a USA night time - to dance on the its ashes on the final day.  I'm sure they're very proud of themselves for throwing away their duty to the community and keeping to themselves for most of Burn2.  It's not why I sought them out.  I really thought such an established group would have upheld its practices at least long enough for me to have been a part of it.

I think in the end though it turned out better.  People got together and just did it.  People got to appreciate the beauty of the temple. People got into the spirit of fire and bringing up the sun.

Having been unable to get close enough last year even to cam in,  it was great to observe The Man burn from just across a sim line.  When Bordello netsplit, I readied myself and crossed over the moment it returned, knowing people would have crashed or logged off in confusion. The Lampies as a group were nowhere in evidence for that 4am SLT burning.  A random number of us - only one other in Lamplighter robes - did the percussive honors with a scratch artist.  Interesting that there is a group of RL burners with shirts displaying photos of themselves at the actual Burning Man festival.  Two of them performed with us.

 

With Burn2 officially over, I'll have the liberty of lag-free exploration of whatever wasn't burned down.  I reckon there's quite a bit. 

How was this?  As I expected, Burn2 was much much better than Burning Man.  The spirit and feel of the RL one was there. The coziness and randomness of individual styles set one beside the other.  With the exception of #lampiefail and the lag/fill caused by the central tent, it really was perfect.  If only there were resources to create that buffer between the tent and everyone else.

With next year's theme announced as Rite of Passage, I have a head start in pondering a build.  Or two.  When Snurky won the lottery this year I couldn't imagine having her do my style of build.  I wonder if they'll take requests for placement?  This year was ideal with Marianne, Molly, me, and their friends all as neighbors and not sharing a region with the events tent.  Be nice to do it again - and STILL be in it.

I'll add Burn2 shots to this post this evening.  Other Burn2 pictures can be found on Flickr.

Now for the rest of 7seas' Fall Fishing Festival.  They party till LL pick up the regions, which means I've got some relaxing by the water ahead of me this week for both avatars.  We all want that galleon, don't we?

Now We're Cookin'!

Last night was a lot of fun.

I hadn't realized so many people felt the same way about the temple ceremony as I did.  Someone said: "Now it finally feels like Burn2," and that's what it's about!

No one can take the nontangible away, but to get enough random people together to save an event is hard to come by.  Enough of us wanted this.  Thanks to all who made it happen!  As long as the official Lamplighters remain sequestered in their bathhouse, we'll rule the night in the north.

We learned something though: need to remain on the Burning Man - Bordello side of the temple so that any non-lampies and non-campers can use the stuff.  Seems for some reason they've set Burning Man - Rabbit Hole to no scripts.  While campers and Lampies can play there, the sounds are not shared by the other region.

Got all sorts of things passed on to me since yesterday's post.  Among them were sets of robes from 2008 which are copy/trans, so anyone who wants just let me know.  Someone mentioned they had tiny robes as well to offer.  I'll try to grab more percussions as a few went out last night.  Wish I knew where I could get more cowbells?

When I get home this evening I'll prep some shots and upload to Flickr :)