BURNING LIFE, BURNING EMBERS (PART II)

One of three final glimpses from the last Burning Life, featuring some of the most ambitious projects of the event, redolent with artistic and technical brilliance.

"TAMED FRUSTRATION", an environmental sculpture piece by Lash Xevious.

"It was inspired by a dream I had not too long ago," Ms. Xevious explains. "In the dream I am in different roles. One roles was the girl looking into the box, while other times I was inside the box... And there was an instance where I was just this bodiless entity, observing the whole scene.

"The dream only inspired my build visually. What I wanted to express was the feeling I had from that dream and my surroundings. So mostly it was based on feelings of sadness and fear.

"This feeling that I wanted things out of my reach.

"I think it's my nature in wanting to have the ever vague Ideal. No matter how hard I strive for it, I may never be satisfied. And there's always that rude awakening... you get what you want, and it turns out not so great. I was also listening to my sentimental playlist [when I built it.] I tend to get nostalgic. And sappy. Bleh."

"[The texture for the sculpture was created] from pictures... [but the originals] don't look like [the finished work]. I go into Phtoshop and make the colours richer or add some lighting effects. I like to mess around with the texture filters and see what I come up with. The textures overall have a violet-ish tint to it; that's my colour of choice, I guess. They all have that tone."

Next: ringing in the new Burning Life...

Tiger Crossing's "MUSIC, BOXED", the sound-enabled interplay of falling metal spheres and resonant cylinders, which chime as they're struck. (And hurt you, if you happen to be in their way on the way down.)

"It's just a larger, grander offshoot of the Marimball instrument I made for last year's Burning Life," says Crossing, referring to a site still on display in Celadon. His abbrievated explanation for the building process:

"Create one 3x10x10 cylinder and script it to randomly rotate and position itself in a given 3D volume [in this case, the cage.] Shift-drag lots of copies. Move the few that intersect by hand.

"Create a temporary-on-rez physical sphere that fades into view on rez, and fades out when it drops below a certain altitude. Make a script to rez copies anywhere on a given plain (the top of the box). Ta-da...

"Only took a day or two to put together. Making the spheres damaging if they hit you was the final touch I liked... wild notes caged for your entertainment. Watch your fingers."