Second Life Sketches: Happy Talk
There’s the flat crack of cannon fire, and the whump of sails being suddenly filled as creaking timbers turn into the wind. Below me, two small galleons twist around each other, angling for the best shot.
Second Life Sketches: A Day On The Grid
Thirty-five thousand people wearing their psyches on the outside and all the attendant unfettered freakishness that brings.
Second Life Sketches: A Virtual Miscellany
Kazuhiro Aridian is a customiser of Second Life bodies. I saw her limbs unfold, deploy and spread like some kind of skeletal mechanical bat, her pale face floating in its metal cradle like the Bjork-robots in the Chris Cunningham “All Is Full Of Love” video.
Second Life Sketches: Let’s Put The Future Behind Us
Twenty-five years ago, William Gibson quietly left a Canadian cinema fifteen minutes into a screening of Blade Runner.
Second Life Sketches: Please stop doing that to the cat
It’s not often you come home to find people having sex in your house.
Second Life Sketches: News From Nowhere
I really wanted to get all screwed up on drugs in Second Life this week, but ran out of time.
Second Life Sketches: Worlds Within Worlds
Second Life is a natural and ideal setting for role playing games, especially for those who remain just a little too self-conscious for live-action role-play. Throwing ping pong balls at a bloke in a monster mask while yelling “Magic missile! Magic missile!” isn’t for everybody.
Second Life Sketches: The Art Of War
Weaponry is a booming business in Second Life. Anything with the term “push” in its arsenal will shoot an unlucky avatar a lateral twenty thousand meters or more. And there’s one company selling nerve gas.
Second Life Sketches: A Night On The Grid
A friend joins Second Life, but a day or two on her own has her wondering why she bothered. I take her to Transylvania.
Second Life Sketches: Penthouse to Pavement
Some people reject the notion that Second Life is an art space to be explored. Their intent is purely to replicate what they believe to be a rich person’s living experience. It’s a little like watching the MTV show “Cribs.”
Second Life Sketches: Digital Shorelines
I had a history teacher whose favourite saying was that land is expensive because they don’t make it any more. In Second Life, land is expensive because they make it very slowly.
Second Life Sketches: Two Worlds - Fame and Infamy
It’s the biggest digital art installation in the world, the size of eight Manhattan Islands, but there are never more than 20,000 people there at the same time.
