Recently, a friend invited me to see a well-done particle show. It was done by a Tyrehl Byk At Event Horizon in the Disturbed Fear sim. In his profile, he called it the “Particle Phantasmagoria.” By either that name or the Event Horizon Particle Show, it’’s worth a look.
After teleporting over, I found myself on a small platform about 4000 in the air. It was night, and the platform was a circle of chairs around what looked like a large bonsai tree. A computerized voice would occasionally speak up, asking the audience for patience until Tyrehl showed up, the seats slowly filling. Panning around, I didn’t see anything else but stars, and one small green dot some distance away below the platform. Of the audience, some of the people were well-known in SL media such as Cypress Rosewood and Delinda Dyrssen. Having seen more, they might be a little harder to impress.
Finally, Tyrehl arrived. The computerized voice then apologized to the audience for his tardiness, and began to insult him. After some moments of this, there was a “click” noise followed by a shotgun blast. “Enough of that,” Tyrehl remarked. He then explained that during the course of the show, he would temporarily be taking control of the residents’ view, recommending we go into mouselook before he did. He then told us we should soon see a green light. And it soon appeared in front of us in the middle of the platform. Then our viewpoint’s changed to empty dark sky. But not for long.
It began with a couple blue dots floating into the screen. Then came silver flares and fiery orange-red explosions of color, “Ooooh!” “Pretty!” “Awesome music!” “Beautiful!” A multitude of colored lights appeared, filling the sky. They were soon followed by colorful swirls. Then came a number of smiley faces, soon followed by some agressive-looking ones, the screen suddenly full of spinning pictures of disasters and troubled images, the music blaring, “It’s the end of the world, as we know it.”
The show continued on, with more special effects, such as the rumbling clouds that looked like a heard was trampling our way, “Stampede.” The audience continued to cheer, and express their approval. Finally, the show ended. Tyrehl thanked everyone for coming.
Tyrehl and I shared a few words after the event. “This is kind of new to me,” he told me, “I only started this performance last week. It's taking on a life of its own. ... Last Friday was the first time I posted a schedule and started inviting people to come.” Crowds came in “slowly at first. I had a lot of empty shows during the first week. Last night things really started to happen. It's difficult to really get a handle on SL promotion, what works and what doesn't.”
Of setting up the show, “The big challenge is creating the effects and coordinating them with music. I had to mix the sound track and then create effects to interpret the music. That took well over a month. There are over 80 different particle effects that had to be designed and tweaked.”
Of how he got the idea for the show, “I've always been a very visual person and when I saw my first particle effects in Second Life, it was love at first sight. I've also been very passionate about music, and combining them seemed like something that would be fun to try. As with so many things in my art, I don't always know where something is headed, but I usually know when it has arrived!”
Tyrehl has also worked on a place called “Not-A-Knot,” which he explained took eight months to build, “It would be interesting to see more people have the opportunity to view ~(Not-A-Knot) it is not very well known and it can be a source of very interesting dialog.”
Of future plans, “At the moment, my sights are set on further development of the particle shows. I've only really scratched the surface of what is possible, and it really seems to bring a lot of people joy.”
So for a great particle show, head to Tyrehl Byk’s after checking his schedule.
Bixyl Shuftan
Delinda Dyressen, whom is among the staff at The Pocket, promises it will be “the biggest ever mass particle jump in Second Life history!”
