Second Life Sketches: Brief Lines

By Warren Ellis

The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.

I’ve done my usual seasonal move. I’m now located on the Fort Stygian sim, part of the Wastelands chain. The Stygian Pirate Nest is a sort of hideous tin blood-bucket bar on legs, just west of the Fort Stygian landing point.

There’s an answering machine mounted on one wall where you can leave me messages — I’m always grateful for leads on new places to write about — and plenty of seating, as I tend to get visitors. Everyone is, of course, welcome. I find there’s usually people around, especially in the evenings (UK time), usually talking about Second Life Sketches, frightening places they’ve found, and current system failures…

There must have been six or seven of us in there one night last week, just talking. Including a young woman whose boyfriend evidently made the mistake of visiting the island of Matriarch after I wrote about it. It appears that my slight paranoia about the place was justified: upon his entry to the island, he was set about and caged by the crazed valkyries who inhabit the place, and apparently he still cannot talk about the appalling depredations visited upon his poor twisted avatar without crying. Serves him right, I say. I warned you. I warned you all.

(I note with just a little male fear that Matriarch appears to have recently spawned a sister island called Matron.)

If you haven’t seen Fort Stygian yet, do take the time to explore the builds. The place is young, and in a state of flux since the owners of seven parcels on the east suddenly gave up their lots earlier in the week (sadly, taking a very promising and exotic-looking build with them).

There was a weird replicating-object attack in Lemon on Wednesday evening. Always hard to tell if it’s just random griefing or a blanket strike on someone in the general region (it looked to have covered at least three sims). Lemon is one of the more robust mainland sims, and so I knew I had a couple of minutes before sim degradation would prevent me teleporting out. So I walked to the coast and watched huge spinning boxes fill the water with their mad jostling. It’s always worth taking a moment for these odd sights that are so unique to the virtual world. A minute of science fiction in motion.

New places: the botanical gardens at Straylight are beautiful. Some groundbreaking things are being done there with lighting effects and the new “sculptie” 3-D objects. They’ve achieved some fascinating stuff with water prims, which, as most users find very quickly, are not particularly successful in comparison to “real” Linden water. Applying the new 3-D method to water objects may prove the salvation of the concept. The early attempts, while still being far from perfect, are nevertheless quite beautiful. And, as I say, the gardens themselves are lovely constructions, complete with Constable-like shafts of golden light falling through the branches.

Dead City is a themed mainland area, an urban sim. It seems to be fairly new, but I’m seeing a lot of visitors and a lot of stores opening. The attention to detail is quite excellent, and worth a walk just to admire the little touches that always indicate the attention of a real artist.

ANWR has, I believe, been around for a while, but it’s a wonderful thing, in its way: an oil rig in the middle of a four-sim connective channel between the original north and sound islands of the mainland. The area now seems to be set up for boat races, but don’t try sitting on the little tender vessel that automatically visits the rig — it’s non-physical.

Finally, I have to recommend the current exhibition at East of Odyssey, which I can only effectively describe by quoting from the excellent notecard monograph:

“Nash has installed seventeen sculptures - Unsung Songs - in the Odyssey Island landscape, inviting avatars to be collaborators and explorers of the virtual unknown… Each Unsung Song is like the product of an ethereal instrument, fresh from another planet where synaesthesia is the dominant mode. Each is an experiment in visual and sonic polyphony where the avatar is both audience and co-creator of the unearthly forms and music that float in the domain.”

It’s a fascinating attempt to produce the “perfect” Second Life art, one that is multimedia, reactive and interactive.