ArtWorld visits the amazing world of
Sabine Stonebender
[June, 2007]

In July, 2008 Sabine's Zero Point was obliterated in a glitch.
These are some of the few pictures of it.

Is it an amusement park, an art gallery, a studio, or a home? Many SL artists have been influenced by her work, done in SL over the last two years. Read on to see our visit, or  Visit her Zero Point environment now to see how the rebuilding has progressed.

I was in a sandbox to look at the work of a new SL artist, Juria Yoshikawa. In Second Life you can arrive, own nothing, and learn to use the native tools to make art in a public space. Thanks to Nebulosus Severine's Art & Artists Network group, Juria was able to send an invitation to 1,000 people instantly, so the work could be seen before the automatic return of the sandbox made it disappear. Aurel Miles was already there when I arrived, interviewing Juria, so I looked at the art, and the other avatars who had come for this instant show. 

Quite a crowd formed, mostly artists and art gallery owners.  Several artists were rezzing their work in the sandbox, and I was attracted to a furry who was part feline with a unicorn horn. We talked for a while about the evolution of art in SL, and then she took me home. It was no ordinary house. I had met the legendary Sabine Stonebender 

Above: Sabine at home in her Throne Room                                        Below: Sabine when I met her in the sandbox      

If you have not visited her Zero Point development, you are missing one of the wonders of Second Life. Imagine Nicola Tesla as a sci-fantasy psychedelic Op artist making an installation sculpture that ended up as an amusement park—complete with a roller coaster! 

I switched from the male avatar I was wearing to the female ArtWorld. Here is some of the conversation that followed::

Sabine: ah yes gotta love the sl instant new you;)
Sabine: the avatar itself is a great canvas
AM: That's what first attracted me to you
Sabine: *blushies*
Sabine: i find i cant gripe about my av if its my own doing;)
AM: what I find so interesting is how I identify with her. If I'm out and see a clothing store, I instinctively look for clothes the gender of the av I'm wearing then
Sabine: yah its funny how immersive our chosen av's are
AM: Now I'm learning Poser, so soon I expect to be doing more with avs
Sabine: eeerg poser is such a pita-- i came here because of poser
AM: How so?
Sabine: i was a poser user looking for more uses for it and stumbled on sl from its connection to poser
AM: No wonder your av is so refined!
Sabine: now i've been an sl junkie for over 2 years giggles
Sabine: yah i made my face on my 3rd day here-- i already knew uv mapping 
Sabine: but i don't like skins--very fussy stuff
AM: This is all new to me--I'm a very old fashioned sort of artist
Sabine: me too insofar as i had to unlearn my traditional approaches
AM: I'm adapting them when I can, which is not often
Sabine: nothing to grab or carve directly.  i find that airbrush painting techniques carry over well, and now that they have kinda fixed alpha sorting some optics work here now.  the prim onions i had out earlier would have failed utterly a few months ago--only the outer layers would have been stable. now sl is letting you look as deep as needed--no more flickering texture. even these works we are standing in have benefited from that bug fix
[Sabine is looking at the ArtWorld Artist Avatars feature]
Sabine: oh cool you've met dancoyote
AM: DC's a friend here
Sabine: we have worked together in the past.  i did the original attachments for the first season of his skydancing--
was kinda exciting to dress folks up like that-- and something new

 
This covered pathway at Zero Point feels like being inside a blood vessel

This hall is like being inside the computer

 Enter here for the elevator, a psychedelic vortex

Above: You can walk into Sabine's scalar art, which looks like a kaleidoscope that goes on forever

Below: In the sculpture park, Sabine's Orbital Trip