During the project Sheherazade I am looking for your stories about your virtual life, told through words or/and photos, fictions and facts. If you have a story about how you found your way to virtual life, how you chose your name, your first love or wig, please share it. If you have a story about lag, ruth or ”being stuck in animation”, tell it. Let other know that a virtual life is also a life.

You can either give your story in a notecard Inworld here or send it to heidi@dahlsveen.no
The stories will be published here: http://sheherazadevirtualstories.tumblr.com/

I think my first line to Capcat was something like: OMG we have the same name and same WIG. My avatar was called Frigg Ragu and hers Capcat Ragu. This was March 2009 and we did not meet through SL, but flickr. Back then we cared for wigs and skins and sunbathing on beaches with fake waves going in the wrong direction. Eyelashes was misplaced and life was not yet a mesh. Now 4 years later she is still ”my little sister”, we have spoken on skype and written papers together. And hopefully we will soon meet in RL too. Together with Meilo Minotaur, Capcat has created some of the most striking art pieces and concepts in SL, and crossed the border between virtual and real world.

They writes about themselves:
Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu are two portuguese artists that devoted their artistic activity to the Metaverse, working individually and collaboratively in the Second Life virtual environment where they held several exhibitions and collaborated with artists from different fields and nationalities. They build the Second Life Sim Delicatessen, that held projects like “de Maria, de Mariana, de Madalena”, “Petrified” and “Meta_Body”.

In this project they also have brought the sound artist Takio Ra:
Originally from Portugal, Takio Ra first joined the Metaverse in 2006 and has shared a peaceful coexistence from there on with various activities in meatspace, including politics, design, illustration, visual coding, VJ’ing, teaching, sound works and parenting. META_BODY II, a project by Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu, includes Takio’s collaborative contribution in soundscaping.

See more of their projects here.

This is the second time I row Cherry Manga creates installations based on one of my wild ideas. So, as you probably understand I am fond of her ability to create frozen moments of a narrative.

You might have, like me, wandered through the surreale world in ”Mysterious Wave” where you encountered moments of fables that are on their way somewhere. Small stories are here and there frozen in a movement so you can have time to look at it from several angles. Or maybe you, like me, experienced “Dance Macabre / Chess – Cherry” and you remembered Edith Piaf. When I asked her to be a part of the last project based on Little Red Riding Hood, she entered the protagonists hidden dreams and spoke them out.

Cherry Manga who was born in SL 2007 is a self-taught multi-media artist and a silent enigma. She allows her art to tell their own stories. When I’ve seen her in action, she works quiet, precise and intense. In this project, she has portrayed moments and turned them into epic adventures. The scenes she has created turns you into voyeur, you peek into a secret world. At the same time it feels like you are in the eye of a hurricane. You have something to look forward to.
Read more about Cherry here.