Saturday at HIE 2023: Italian session

 The second session of Saturday's Hypergrid International Expo, 2023 was dedicated to Italian speakers Lorenza Colicigno and Gianni Spada,  plus one long-term resident of Craft Grid and so an 'honorary Italian', CapCat Ragu, really from Portugal, who performed the art section of the session. We hope in future editions of HIE that we can have a full session in Portuguese, or in Dutch or other languages.

Perhaps you know someone who would be a perfect candidate to give a talk at the next event. If so, get in touch on Craft grid! Use the Mail Box on HIE Welcome to leave your details. 

The session was moderated by Snowbody Cortes. To make life a little easier for our presenters, Snowbody developed a handy tool for people with rigged mesh heads - it allows you to speak in various ways, with different 'mouth styles' possible, as well as the option of pulling faces. You can either press to talk or just turn your mouth on and leave it... for those long conversations.

A burst of one or 3 seconds is also possible. Made specifically for our HIE presenters, the tabs along the bottom allow you to change the language of the HUD's buttons. click the green bar at the top, and the HUD is minimized. Pretty neat trick. You can find a free and full perms copy of this toy on HIE Welcome region on Craft.
Our first speaker was Lorenza Colicigno with a really fascinating talk about her project "City of Women" - it's a whole sim called NoiLab on Craft, built in collaboration with Tonino Lane, that explores the lives and fortunes of women writers through history. One of the most complete and erudite regions in opensim, it's worth multiple visits just to take it all in.

Lorenza's stunning presentation

After Lorenza, we moved into the artistic performance portion of the session with CapCat Ragu, whoese region on Craft IPVerso is a laboratory of creativity for CapCat's real world students at the Instituto Politecnico de Viseu in Portugal. 

IPVerso by CapCat Ragu  filled the auditorium with movement and color

The auditorium was flooded for this presentation, that included pictures of some of the classes, and focused also on what the students have achieved artistically, in their virtual classroom.

Our final speaker also has a build that is as informative as it is beautiful on Craft Grid, a sim called Artemaestra. Gianni Spada, who like CapCat and Lorenza is an educator in RL, presented his talk "The Possiblities of the Metaverse" Ideas, Proposals, and Developments" and he explained how he is working to re-create inworl many monuments and ancient structures of his native Apulia, in Southern Italy, so that people can discover these treasure and visit them virtually, since in many cases they are inaccessible in RL. Another region to put on your 'to visit' list, if you have not yet seen it.

And here is a photo of backstage at HIE. While waiting to go on stage, the presenters can wait here, check the time on our 5 time zone clocks, grab a virtual beer or bagel, and review the instructions about how to use Discord, or check the schedule. A place for nerves, laughs, and the occasional dance.

Sky Haze by Cherry Manga

The evening ended with a spectacular art performance on HIE Welcome by Cherry Manga, called Sky Haze. We were all absolutely blown away by her performance which she has been working on since May. Cherry is rightly considered a phenomenon and Opensim's most precious possession. Long may she continue to delight and wow us all.