Quadrapossibility: On almost recognizing stuff but not quite

Some things not possible in Real Space:

1. Planes visible from one aspect and not visible from another
2. Planes semi-transparent from one aspect and opaque from another
3. Aphysical cameras independent of skulls and mechanical housings, however miniaturized - spaceless eyes
4. Light projection from invisible objects

As always the summer-fall LEA competition attracted a pleasing variety of projects. Many objects look possible if unlikely - a light bulb over a bearded head, creamy elemental dunes, a rainstorm confined to a booth. 

I took great pleasure in exploring the eclectic exhibit - as should you, in the unlikely event that you also visit SL events at the last possible minute!

The theme, “Pursue Impossible,” strikes me as properly collegiate. Before they abandon their half-formed fantasies of self-realization and take up productive careers in mineral rights litigation, water district field supervision and actuarial science, college students Pursue Their Dreams. 

Dreams which, unless they involve underpaid massage therapy, often prove unattainable, partly because they are vague and partly because other people only need so many performance artists, vaguely international relationists, graphic designers etc. 

As such, dreams of this kind, like World Peace, are not impossible - just daunting and unlikely.

A truly impossible dream: an eye which flies from itself. 

“Last night I dreamed I could see everything in a great city without moving my body.”

Many SL-goers have probably encountered the plentiful and various work of quadrapop Lane/Tree.

For Pursue Impossible at UWA, quadrapop built a stack of irresistibly maddening volumes, mostly cubic.

Oh I know what THAT is

Ages ago Saturday Night Live ran a repeating skit in which actors studied something off camera and said “wut the hell IS zat?” Playing as vaguely Appalachian dumbbells (yes, it IS insulting), they would tilt their heads, shrug, storm away in exasperation and return.

Finally someone would say “oh, I know what that is, that’s . . . [more head-tilting] . . . that’s a . . .” [goofy music]

“What da HELL IS zat thing?” [laughter, which diminished with each repetition of the premise]

When you ALMOST know what the hell it is, you look. If I think: “I know what that is” - and I really do - I might like it but I can move on.

Cubes, planes, hemi-cylinders, spheres and holes are non-virtual familiars. 

Interiors made of vanishing designs, anti-sensible edges and unilateral transparencies are not familiar. They are "not of this world" - but of a world nevertheless.

I can imagine purplish lacquered surfaces filling a sizable corner at an arts-district gallery in RL. 

The stippled, bumpy surfaces might gleam mysteriously were the projectors cleverly placed - but with effort and criminal transgression you could find them, bolted to plywood, perhaps, emanating incandescent heat as they glared through a slit.

In SL quadropop can vanish weightless projectors and float them wherever. One must cheat (ctrl-alt-T) to discover them. I did cheat but only out of childish curiosity, not because it helped me engage.

So. I find myself camming around and through quadrapop’s cubicularities for 45 minutes.

Am I in Pursuit of Impossible? Well yes. 

My eyeless eye pursues its limitations. 

My eye seeks its way back to my head. 

My eye craves real planes with two visible faces, real cubes that can’t vanish, real suns and light bulbs, so it can recover its mortal pulpy skull-mounted eye-ness. 

Discomfiting, this dream in which I have lost my body.