ARTS 450 Class Filled With Art Visits

Today a lot of students in my ARTS 450 class took us on art tours across Second Life.  We started on Ollyawly's tour by taking us to a small recreation of the Sistine Chapel.  If you look into my posts of my Second Life blog, I have posted pictures of myself being in this exact recreation.  He must of found this place on google as a popular place to go to, just like the way I found it.  He then took us to The Museum of Amazing Illusions and Magic.  There was a lot of silly ideas like tables that would shatter on their own.  Professor Nan also laid on the top of an elephant.  I was playing around and I noticed that the walls were transparent.  Maybe it was part of the illusion.  I could walk in and out of the walls so it made navigation easy if I got lost.  The next visit was the Jonlin Estates: Lin's Art Gallery.  There was a lot of art for sale.  The lady who set this up apparently makes a living on Second Life just by selling work.  She has so much business that she has an assistant too.  This gallery had well over a hundred pieces of work that was displayed in a two story building.  She ended up even selling other people's work.  

Our classmate, Astrodino, took us on a tour to Second House of Sweden.  This place acts as an embassy of Sweden to reflect what Sweden is all about.  I didn't see it but apparently there is IKEA furniture in it.  The embassy building had a large, corporate feel.  It was a boring place in my opinion, just because the place seemed too realistic, something unimpressive that I can experience in real life.  The next place we went to was called "Folkvang Norse Home of The Viking Goddess Freja and her Valkyries"  Yes, that title was certainly a mouthful.  The island was filled with games such a jousting.  There was a nice map that would have teleport markers that made navigation easy.  There was a big gallery that offered a lot of Nordic clothing and buildings.  I teleported to a giant castle, with a bunch of pictures with women in Second Life.  The amount of detail on this castle was amazing, looking like it took forever to make.  Our next visit was to a place called, "Originalia-Adapt or Perrish-Cherry Magna."  This land was filled with enchanting scenes with the nice illuminate if northern lights.  This place looked like it would have a lot of fairy stuff since the trees were glittery.  It took forever for my viewer to res everything in this sim because everything was high detail.  I managed to come by a centaur couple.  You could even sit on them like a horse if your heart desired.    

Our next student, Collideshadows, took us to a place called "Eclipse Art Complex."  This gallery was giant and it featured a bunch of real life abstract paintings and sculpture.  There was also an underwater gallery that featured a bunch of water themed paintings and sculptures.  There was even functional elevators in certain parts of a museum located on the island.  Again, navigation is what made this place great.

The last tour that we were taken on today was by Kuya.  He took us to a place called "Wheatstone - Freedonia - Steampunk Goods for free!"  A bunch of the theme of this world is referred to as "Steam Punk."  I had no idea what that meant so I looked it up.  It basically is an idea of art work, cartoons, stories,  ideas, that are made up of futuristic machines that are made up gas pumping machines.  For example, There is a floating island in the sky that is being propelled in the air with exhaustion pipes.  After I looked up that concept, I could really appreciate the detail on this island.  There were castles and flying ships that were made up of this concept.  There was an underwater part of this place that reminded the class of a high profile video game named "Bio Shock."  Overall, a very spectacular place.  I know what Kuya likes in terms of his hobbies, so him showing us this place made perfect sense.

What a long day of tours!  What a lot to report!