DJ Violet Scrivener announced a late-night set, which she doesn't usually do, spinning for a new photographer's gallery. So off I went to check it out. Turns out it's another Morningstar on the grid--this one named Lizbeth.



She does run into the same problem we're all used to--I'm usually the only model around when I have a picture idea, so I end up in a lot of my pictures. It's less ego than accessibility.



It's a decent space for dancing, walking around--two-story building, so lots of room for her to expand, too.



This is "Wake". She definitely has an eye--most of her pieces feel very ethereal, somewhat vintage, but she definitely has a good eye for photography.



Some good messages are found here and there, too.



There's at least one RL photograph here, too.



Even the build is pretty, but there is something I apparently missed:

[21:36] Lizbeth Morningstar: Dear All my honorable guests, Please use "shared environment" to have a better lighting here. Here are 3 floors displaying my photos and dance balls next to the DJ booth. You may dance and chill after seeing the photos. ^^
[21:36] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): Three floors? I missed the third floor!

Oops. Well, you'll have to check it out when you're here, then.

You can find the gallery in Peeley. If you see this before, say, eleven pm SLT tonight, you might be able to stop by and dance with us.

So, I've developed something of a thing for artificial intelligence machine learning. There's a lot of different ways to do it, and I've read articles on all of them, it feels like. But one that's growing in popularity is image generation. I started playing on Deep Dream, then, a few years later, moved to DALL-E (which is now https://www.craiyon.com/), then to NightCafe Studio, and finally I was accepted to the Midjourney open beta (that last link will open a Discord prompt to join their Discord server, which is how they enable the image generation system through a bot function).

Let's take an example I found through Midjourney. The search prompt was "beautiful woman modeling a stunning silk floral kimono outfit, in the style of Alexis Franklin and Tom Bagshaw, no blur". So this is what that turned up for Midjourney:



Great detail, wonderful differentiation, little fuzzy on the hat, and in the fourth image, the hand looks somewhat detached, but otherwise, this could be four different portraits hanging in a gallery somewhere.

Meanwhile, the same search term through NightCafe brings us, well...this:



Great pattern, style very similar to a kimono, black sticks for arms, headless, but decent.

And that brings us to Craiyon, where I ran the same prompt. Midjourney nets the user four to six detailed images, depending on detail of prompt, which the requestor can then reiterate, or evolve. NightCafe nets the user only one image, but generally extremely detailed, which can then be evolved. Craiyon does nine quick "sketches", and it's abysmal with facial recognition. These were the six that made the most visual sense:



Definite kimono, it's the right cut, the pattern's good, the pose is good. And at least with a side profile, it doesn't look so completely like the face is distorted.

And for all of these, I didn't chop off the heads, they came that way.



Remember what I said about their AI engine not quite..."getting"..faces? This is an excellent example. You can tell that it IS "face", but...not much beyond that.



The third only works, I think, because the head is cut off...



The fourth is not a kimono, but it's a great pattern, and it's a pretty perfect attempt at a sari. Face is still very odd.



This one's not as bad at some of the others, but it's still not the best face.



And this one could have walked straight out of a J-horror film.

There are some ethical concerns with the technology, to be fair--this article lays them out fairly well for Google's Imagen generator--but it's one step further for machine iteration in the goal for independent consciousness. And that is still fairly exciting to me.

Ultimately, we'll just have to realize we're moving into the era of post-reality, and adjust as we can.

So, I've yet again failed to cover everything during Hair Fair, and we're quickly approaching the last few days, so this will be the last one, I guess!

First up: KMH.



This is 'F199', with the hair in size M straight out of the box, and the bangs shown in shade 36 from the Natural color HUD.



And this is 'F200', shown in shade 36 from the Colorful color HUD, and resizing didn't exactly work.

You can find KMH on the Blonde sim at Hair Fair.

Next up, LaGyo, with two accessories. I'm showing them with Olive's Tabatha hair.



This is 'Dee', a veil with attached butterflies. I'm quite fond of this.



And this is 'Zoa', a VERY large hat.

You can find LaGyo on the Redhead sim at Hair Fair.



Next up is Equal with more hats. This is the 'Cameron' Patrol cap, shown in size 2, which still shows my hair clipping through it. But again, even as a unisex style, I think it's meant to be worn with close-cropped hair.



And this is the 'Sunny' bucket hat, for which I just took off the previous hair due to clipping, and did my best adjusting pr!tty's Brittany bangs into a sort-of hairstyle-underneath-hat look. I tinted the hat to shade 3 on the included HUD.

You can find Equal on...damn, I forget the sim, and I want to get this out, so--look up where Equal is at the Hair Fair site!

That's all for this year!

Have we not...already covered Exile? I'm confused. But...okay, we're up to Exile!



This is 'Inessa' in size B, straight out of the demo box. I liked the variant shading.



This is 'Inessa 2' in size B, in shade 83 from the color HUD. I'm...not seeing the difference between the first and the second version?



This is 'Marlana' in size B, in shade 90 from the color HUD.



This is 'Sarah', version 1, straight out of the box.



And this is 'Sarah', version 2, in shade 58 from the color HUD, and again, I'm...not seeing the difference between the two versions?

You can find Exile on the Foils sim.

More soon!

We're starting with TWIG$!



I can't decide if I want this one or not. This is 'Anita', and it's hard to tell if the included hairbase works or not, because I think the demo tinting is along the roots? Also, because of how this is made, it clips through everything. But...it's also got really natural movement, and it's so lush. I'm genuinely torn.



'Cloud' does the same thing--gorgeous movement, clips right through my bust. Argh.



And for 'Yve' it clips through my entire body.

You can find TWIG$ on the Blonde sim at Hair Fair.



Next up, ONE Creations, with their 'LongLocks v1' (female variant, natch), in shade 6 from the color HUD, using the BOM Red_2 hairbase included.



Same style from the back, because...there's one single strand that seems to kick up oddly in certain poses? It's probably not a deal-breaker, but it is obvious.



'LongLocks v2' is a shorter style, which I'm showing in (Breast L) and in shade 1 from the color HUD, with the accompanying BOM hairbase in Blonde_1.

You can find ONE Creations on the Blonde sim at Hair Fair.

More to come!

We've reached Curious Kitties. And wau, do they look dated now.



This is "Aylea v3 [Type B]", and since the only two tinting HUDs incldued was "White Gold" and "Old Fashion Brown", I'm just showing each one straight out of the box.



This is "Buajori v3 [Type B]". I do like the hairpin streamers.



This is "Detoi v3 [Type B]".



This is "Meadowlynn v3 [Type B]", which almost works with the additional floral detail. (But then fails to work with my bust. It's always something.)



This is "Technov v3 [Type B]", which is an utter mess.



And this is "Zabob v3 [Type B]", which again, with the highly stylized hair sheafs, and the lack of movement, is the one of these that could actually work really well on a head.

You can find Curious Kitties on the Foils sim at Hair Fair.

More to come soon!

Hoo, boy. Template crash and burn on the blog, and I lost a folder of files, so things are definitely back to being 'in process' for a bit. Damn it.

We're starting off with Grasshopper Street:



(Because these are accessories, I'm wearing Ayashi's "Masumi" braids with them.)

This is the "Bergere" hat, a lovely 17th-century summer straw hat. Perfect for hair piled high on top and powdered.



This is their "Panama" hat, and it's adjusted sort of oddly on me--it's designed to be unisex, but I think it will work better with hairstyles that don't have as much upper 'floof'.



And this is the "Primrose" hair comb, another designed for more vintage, piled-high-hair styles.



And now, the one I was dreading....so....This one is actually Grasshopper Street's gift for the Hair Fair. Let me make sure I get the name right: it's the "Grasshopper St Lakota Feather Headdress". Let that sink in.



And this is the back.

I have questions. Namely, what makes this Lakota, specifically? Second, a fairly in-depth Google search didn't turn up anything specifically for this six-feather style (and I blame my search parameters, I'm sure there's something more similar that exists). But did turn up a few links for a Nez Perce war headdress (which actually makes it worse), a three-feather Zuni dance headdress, and a shot of an Aztec dancer in traditional outfit and headdress/back piece (see here for more shots of the same event; the single image is listed as 'Native American' but the larger collection says Aztec dancers at the Evergreen State Fair).

So why is this a deal? Because, unless we're Lakota (or another tribe in question that wears similar feather headdresses), and we're the proper performer/gender to wear them, we should not wear them, end of.

Perceive. Black people will have straightened hair. Fine. White people will wear dreads. Great. Whether it looks 'good' on them or not is up to the individual, ultimately--it's just hair. (For that matter, dreads are actually more universal, seen on cultures from the Cree to people in Egypt.)

But cultural appropriation is a thing, and we need to be aware of it.

Let's take a more modern example. Let's say I want my hair styled in a faux 'hawk. (Several, several years ago, there was a year I actually did this, so.) I can go out and go wild and no one's going to bat an eye (beyond the folks that think Mohawks are 'unfeminine').

But if I wanted to go out and get a specifically Lenape-tribe Mohawk, complete with porcupine roach headdress? Then I'm stepping into shoes that aren't mine, to walk a path that I don't have.

Ultimately, clothing is clothing. Wearing kimono doesn't mean I'm trying to be Japanese. Wearing double braids doesn't mean I'm trying to be Native American. But specific styles can be seen as base cluelessness, at best, and racism at worst, and I'd rather not be involved in either, thanks.

I'm going to throw this away now. More coming soon. You can find Grasshopper Street on the Redhead sim at Hair Fair.

We're starting with FUNKYSTENCH, which...I can only assume is some reference to pot? (I apologize if that sounds weird. I don't partake, being allergic, so a lot of that entire scene is lost on me.)



This is 'KOFFEE', and no color HUD was given.



This is 'PINKI' (demo 1 variant).



This is 'RIVAL'.



This is 'SPIKE' (again, demo 1 variant).


This is 'STARR'--I had to move the camera angle to the side, because the red flash on the demo hair and the red ribbon in the photobox blended together too well.



This is 'SUKI' (shown in demo variant 2).



SUKI has the weirdest flex, though, with the thousand-dollar bills wrapped around the rollers. Why. Just why.



And this is 'TRIP', looking for all the world like a patch of coral that managed to sprout on my skull.

You can find FUNKYSTENCH on the Brunette sim at Hair Fair.

Next up, part seven!