A spoon swirling through honey

I went to visit the gigantic ‘Burning Life’ art exhibition in Second Life on a Saturday evening (madness). Many, many people were visiting the displays or celebrating the event at temporary music stages amongst the exhibits. Live music was being streamed in from the physical world to the synthetic world to entertain dancing avatars. The ‘in-world’ map showed wobbly towers of green dots at all the happy hot spots. Now, when you see those teeter-tottering avatar pile-ups you know the lag of Second Life will be bad, add in the intricately detailed builds of the exhibits, and you know you are in serious time warp territory. Nevertheless, I teleported into the slow motion zone and began to explore, spurred on by the knowledge that all this incredible work can only be seen for a week!

Avatar (wearing duck helmet) on Narita Rayna's Ferris Wheel. In the background you can see the blue 'Pleasure Drome' tower built by Lana Tomba.

I began by walking really, really slowly and then I would suddenly start spinning my avatar legs and arms but not move at all. Music would veer in and out of ear shot as I moved from one ‘Burning Life’ parcel of land to the next. I sat on Narita Rayna’s Ferris Wheel and experienced what it must be like to be a spoon swirling through honey. (New experiences are guaranteed in Second Life!)

Flamingo Island by Lana Tomba on floor 3 of her Pleasure Drome

The lag was so bad I could not use the teleport on the Pleasure Drome so I used my camera to view the different floors and I am glad I did as I managed to see the haunting Flamingo Island room.

vroum Short's beautiful flowers

Perhaps the most beautiful creation I saw was vroum Short’s gorgeous flowers set against the night sky. Finally, exhausted by the stodgy lag my avatar took a nap on a log under a cardboard box… built by Ledoof Constantineau.

Avatar overwhelmed by lag snoozes in what looks like a trap...

Burning Life Locations mentioned above:

Narita Ryan’s Ferris Wheel
Lana Tomba’s Pleasure Drome
vroum Short’s Flowers
Ledoof Constantineau’s Box Shelter

(Update: The Burning Life Exhibition in Second Life™ has now ended. Next exhibition in 2009.)

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The Internet: Is it raw power?

Eye of the hurricane on the NOAA island

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.” – John Schaar, futurist.

Sitting in a hurricane simulator (with music too) on NOAA

I was toying with Schaar’s quote, exchanging the word future with ‘Internet’ (I include the World Wide Web under the Internet heading here.) It is intriguing to play with the idea that the Internet is the future. The quote exposes a dilemma of labeling, i.e. naming and defining something that is in a state of constant evolution and change.

Watching the Tsunami

If you consider the Internet in the context of this quote you can see a creation that keeps mushrooming in size, growing at an exponential rate. As it grows it evolves and changes. As we draw close to pinning summaries and definitions to it, it alters yet again. Now perhaps, we can claim the Internet (and its web) have become like the world’s oceans? Maybe, we can even go so far as to say the Internet has become a force of nature in and of itself? It appears to have grown so colossal that it has leapt beyond our ability to micromanage its mass. Just as the future is beyond our control so is today’s Internet.

Tsunami simulation and avatar doing the snake dance

What is the Internet beyond the machines and programs with their archives of information and endless chat? What has it become as it transcends the boundaries of clever software and smart devices? Every time we comprehend what the internet has turned into it poses new questions. Is it a place? A tool? An idea? A community? It is all these things and more, a giant protean shape-shifter born out of its own questions and answers. It has become a location for perpetual invention, a future that each of us can touch and mold. It is a great Tsunami wave of information. Does that make it an intelligence? A shared mind? Raw power?

Tornado on Tornado Island

Links to these locations in Second Life:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA)

Tornado Island

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Avatar Through the Snow Globe

Pillflower World by Nar Duell

Above you can see Nar Duell’s Pillflower World, a beautiful snow globe with large colorful flowers. When you take a closer look you see the flowers are made out of pills! Peer closer still and you can see lying inside a strangely wonderful landscape of snowy mountains, Pillflowers and abandoned bath tubs.

The little ant like dots are avatars who ventured into Nar's snow globe.

A platform floats high above the globe affording space shuttle type views of the gorgeously colored Pillflower World below. A red sled is parked on this platform waiting to carry adventurous avatars deep into the globe.

Pillflower World Trip

Avatar Through the Snow Globe

I popped a motion sickness pill, climbed aboard my sled and took off into cyberspace and Nar’s tumbling snowflakes. Once I landed inside the globe, I walked slowly around the snowy garden. I saw giant flowers swaying around me like carnivorous sea plants, turning their Siren heads towards me, enticing me into their petaled arms with the words ‘Touch me’. I realized then that I had taken the wrong career path long ago and could have become a pill designer. Someone somewhere designs these pretty pills, they don’t just happen after all. Imagine heading into a meeting to decide what color exlax should be?

Aleve and ExLax flowers

There should be a gallery for the unsung creators of the ignored details of our lives. I once photographed the designers of Chrysler car interiors and had the rare honor of meeting the simulated-leather- car-seat -covering designer! I had not realized that someone went to work to create patterns for vinyl car seat covers until that fateful day. Our gallery of obscure designers would feature my seat cover designer alongside the drug company pill sculptors and colorers, and they could be joined by the unknown designers of shoe treads, coupon organizers and cough sweets.

Pillflower World is not Alice Through the Looking Glass but Avatar Through the Snow Globe. I found myself repeatedly thinking about Shakespeare on this visit. (Egads!) The term ‘globe’ triggers this thought, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater was a place where Elizabethans side stepped reality and entered into the ’synthetic’ worlds of Shakespeare’s imagination. Nar Duell has in turn created a theater where we can ponder the tragi-comedy of pharmaceuticals. As I wandered around the cold, snow covered landscape I was IM’d by a Second Life friend and learned that her father had died very recently. I stood in Pillflower World with giant snowflakes spinning round my head contemplating the inevitable shuffle that no pill can prevent!

Green Pill Flower

You can learn more about Pillflower World and Nar Duell at It’s a Pillflower World, afterall by Douglas Story (posted on Bettina Tizzy’s Not Possible IRL blog). I came away from Pillflower World feeling very well after seeing all those Pillflowers. (But then I am very suggestible, simply reading the instructions on pill packets makes me feel better.) Nar Duell reminds us with her Pillflower World that drugs are the magic spells of the modern world, full of promises and lurking side effects, just like a Grimms Brother’s fairy tale with a morality message.

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Nar Duell is the Toronto based artist Lynne Heller.

Thanks to Bettina Tizzy’s ‘The Impossible IRL Group’ for the heads up on Pillflower World’s existence.

Walking the dragons

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Thunder-breathing dragon on Templum ex Obscurum

I have a number of dragons residing in my inventory that need to be exercised fairly frequently or else they vandalize my landmarks and clothing. I decided to take these dragon avatars for a flight, and a walk, around Templum ex Obscurum… a tricky enterprise! I accidentally burnt down a tree or two, and the grass was singed in a couple of places.

Here are some ‘happy snaps’ from this recent dragon trip (more pictures can be seen on flickr.)

Lurking dragon

Dragon bathing in rainbow light

Hunter with his armored riding drake

Hunter and drake plus sunset over Templum ex Obscurum

Location for dragon photographs Templum ex Obscurum in Second Life™.
Dragon avatars created by Flea Bussy of Grendel’s Children.
For more images of Templum ex Obscurum visit flickr. This site is displaying a fabulous range of images all taken at this one location in Second Life.
Please read Not Possible In Real Life for more information about this photographic project to record Baron Grayson’s Templum ex Obscurum .