BLOG | elifayiter

Search

2 min

Dress-up Games

I have been in SL more of late. Finally managed to make the transition to the mesh body and the mesh head for Alpha. Wasn’t easy to do, I still miss the scurrilous little face that the classic avi used to have and that, for the life of me, I cannot seem to achieve with the mesh head. Far too perfect. Far too smooth. So, the problem now is that Alpha doesn’t have any clothes to wear with the new mesh body. I have made quite a bit of new stuff for the store but for some reason

2 min

Bıdık the Crow

My housemate Hafize has been taking care of a young crow for the past few weeks. And the relationship is becoming so hilarious that I want to make a note of it. Bıdık, as the crow is named (means little one in Turkish), was found between two parked cars in the dead of night in a neighborhood called Çağlayan where Hafize had gone to visit her sister. Baby crows are actually quite big, you know they are babies from their wings which are still unformed and their beaks which are

2 min

My city is Istanbul

I may have found a way to put my street photos to some use. Not in terms of creativity, or design. I still have no ambitions or confidence in that regard. But there is something else that has been bugging me for ages, and there I may be able to do something with them. Which is trying (against all odds) to change the perception that people have of my city by starting a Facebook page (awful design, but nothing to be done about that, it is the thing that has the reach) where I s

1 min

Going out on the streets

After exhausting home and cat photo topics I have ventured outdoors with the phone and have started taking street photos. I still get nervous when I point the thing at people but I am also realizing that, unlike a real camera, the phone does not seem phase anyone. They probably think I am just texting someone when I hold it up like that. The results aren’t great or anything like that. No Cartier-Bresson in the making. But I do enjoy it. I am also finding (as I also did years

1 min

Starting to take photos

Never done it before. Never had the slightest interest, in fact. But now that I have the phone camera I have started to explore, starting with my own home and my cats. Which is probably how most people start with this. Their homes and their cats. And it is a lot of fun, I must say. A new toy, a new playground. Although it proclaims to have a high resolution (4000something pixels) it isn’t a very good camera, as I found out when I looked at the photos at 100%. But it is more

2 min

Intimate Spaces for Metaverse Avatars?

I am going to Porto in a few days to make a presentation at the Consciousness Reframed 2019 conference. It is a trip that I am looking forward to especially since I will also be getting together with CapCat Ragu (Catarina Carneiro de Sousa in RL – and we have met before). But this time I will also be meeting with her mother SL artist extraordinaire Meilo Minotaur (Sameiro Sousa in RL) – and that will be a first time encounter which I am anticipating with a lot of pleasure. I

3 min

Mesh Dramatics

One of my most cherished possessions in Second Life is a huge collection of dramatic poses created by Heidi Dahlseveen, which she very generously gave me many years ago. Heidi is a storyteller and her poses are unlike any other that I have ever seen in SL, in that they compress a huge amount expression into that one instance that the pose represents. And when one poses several avatars one ends up getting quite extraordinary mise-en-scenes. Which is something that I have done

1 min

Kokopelli

I love it when a software gives me ideas. And Sculptris does so. While I am playing around with the clay suddenly it looks like something and… So, here we have the trickster god Kokopelli, who had been on my mind before as a figure I might want to look into a bit more. But, I never knew exactly how. I even tried a few things in photoshop last year but they went nowhere. And I know why: I started out with that intention, and that never works for me. I need to go in round abou

3 min

Curly Things

Logotype for Mr. Tabby’s Spice Shop (“tekir” is “tabby” in Turkish) Handwritten fonts, script fonts, gothic letters, art deco, art nouveau, faux-oriental fonts, retro stuff, scrolls, ornaments, patterns – these are all challenging visual elements for graphic designers. Not only are they very tricky to get to work as part of a layout (alignment issues and so on), they also have to always be used within an appropriate context. In fact, they are so tricky that I advise my novice

2 min

Companion Species

The term “Companion Species” was coined by Donna Haraway who examined a very particular relationship between human beings and animals – specifically domesticated animals. A relationship, which according to Haraway, is built on a “significant otherness.” A similar relationship, says the author, also exists between the cyborg and the human, something she talked about in her renowned “Cyborg Manifesto,” which is a text that is much more widely known than her writings on the rel

1 min

So, as predicted…

I have had a whale of a time making things for the imaginary alpha.tribe RL store. No idea what this store is supposed to be all about at this at point – they seem to be selling everything. It is a bit like making things for a doll’s house, playing around with these mockups inside photoshop. And I am not even done yet – more stuff out there that I can slap my “identity” on to. Pathetic for a 65 year old woman, you would say? You may not be too far off, I am saying it quietly

2 min

Self Evaluation in SL

The new island is more or less done. It looks OK, but it is nothing like what I achieved with Fool’s Gold in 2015. The dark sky level is probably the best part visually speaking, and the ground level seems to work, if not entirely from a design point of view (lots of flaws that I see but can’t figure out how to fix), then in terms of being a weird little playground. However the thing that makes me write this is not really about my building skills. It is the way in which the

1 min

Arcadia’s avatars…

As I wrote before I have used Arcadia Asylum’s prims for many builds. Fool’s Gold, the best sim I think I ever built was made almost entirely out of them, and this new one has quite a few as well. I am a big believer in remediation, in reworking and modifying things to make my own stuff. Not to make everything from scratch but to build upon the foundations that others have set for me. Which is actually called Produsage, and I have even written academic papers on it. That sai

1 min

Midnight Wastes

I have gone back up to the towers that I had started to build a few weeks ago. But, like most of what I do, things did not go quite as planned and I ended up adding things that I had not thought of when I was first thinking about this level. There is a legendary builder in SL called Arcadia Asylum. She built many many different things, from avatars to whole cities. And she had this thing about giving it all away for free – to be used and redistributed as one saw fit. With on

1 min

The crazy cat lady parlor

A while ago Eupalinos Ugajin gave me the sofa as a gift. And I was so delighted that I immediately rushed out to get the matching arm chair and put together a special parlor for cat lovers on the island. And so, these were among the first things that I rezzed in this re-build. They are on a special platform that is actually above water. I did of course build a ramp to terra firma so that the cats can come down and wander around when no one is around. After all, everyone know

1 min

The Hextraordinary Cat

Naxos gave me a wonderful gift. Just look at this little guy! And when I walk he walks right along with me. When I stop he immediately plops himself down and sometimes he swishes his tail. Not the upcoming animesh, the creator made the animations by using instances and transparencies. He truly is the hextraordinary cat. And I don’t just mean his movements, that face! The grumpiness. What a cat! #Cats #Appearance #SecondLife #Play #Emotions

1 min

I have decided to build a playground

From the sky tower city, which I am leaving alone for now, I have moved to ground level to put together an amusement park of sorts. Ferris Wheel, carousel, bumper cars, some rides and a shooting gallery. Or rather a grab-a-duck gallery – no killing on my land – you just get to grab a duck and if you catch it the kiosk will give you a gift. So, I am back to “play” as a basal concept. We also have magic lantern show, a gym, and a Chemical lab. No gold – I am sticking to that.

6 min

Decapoda goes to the Forest

From the very first time that I heard it as a child I have had strong (almost gut) feelings concerning the tale of Little Red Riding Hood: I was horrified by the killing of the wolf. Inconsolable, in fact – to the point where my father had to invent a whole new ending to the story so that I would stop the tantrum that the actual tale had provoked. So, when storyteller Heidi Dahlsveen, with whom I have collaborated on wonderful projects before, asked me to work on “the other

1 min

Reasons for staying around

Animals are a good reason to stick around. And then I like walking in the streets and sitting in cafes, I guess. Watching the animal-loving population of my city, I really like to do that. Crossing the Bosporus is nice. Buying nice clothes is another good one. Making stuff, that’s probably one of the most important ones. And I guess, that’s it. Those are the reasons to still be sticking around, continuing to live. Other than that – forget it… I would bid my farewells tonight

6 min

The Tales of Ruysch

It would probably never have occurred to me to construct the nonsensical/non-linear web tale which I am cobbling together out of virtual imagery and Shakespeare’s quotes and sonnets, had it not been for the pose library which I was given by storyteller Frigg Ragu in Second Life. Initially I was using these to take photographs of the output of alpha.tribe for display purposes. Even on the very first occasion that I wandered back and forth between them I became aware to what an

ELIF AYITER