It's been so long...

avaria sims 271108_001, originally uploaded by Myf Mcmahon.

Three months since my last entry, told you updates would likely be spotty.

Avaria consists of four sims spread beneath Grendel's Children, purveyors of some of Second Life's most amazing avatars. The sims themselves portray a fantasy landscape that owes more to Howard than Tolkien. Here is a marginal landscape of rocky plains and canyons. Civilization is limited to a shamanistic tribe of Kobolds, high in the cliffs and the remains of a long forgotten culture, their temples drowned beneath a calm and shallow oasis.

And now we have a Flickr stream..

gardens 230808_008, originally uploaded by Myf Mcmahon.

To celebrate our newly added Flickr, we have some photos taken in Straylight, the one accompanying this post being, if not my favourite from the set, easily the most dramatic. There's been minimum post processing work done on these pictures, one or two have had no more done to them than a change in size. Most of the variations in lighting and appearance are down to the effects of Windlight. It's really quite incredible how a change to the atmospheric settings can change the whole tone of a build.

Tableaux - A Dream of New Orleans

I've never been to New Orleans. All I know of the city and it's environs come from movies, books and the tragic reports that followed in Katrina's wake. I'm fairly certain the city, as portrayed in film and the writings of Poppy Z Brite, doesn't really exist. It's a dream of a city and Tableaux is a dream of that dream. . .

Nudes 1 - Portage Bridge

They're a bit too dark sadly.

All roads lead to. . .

Getting about in SL has changed. I don't know exactly when, the change occurred before my time. I suspect it wasn't long before I joined, the signs of the switch were still dotted around more liberally than today. Then again, I could be completely and utterly wrong about this. It wouldn't be the first time, it won't be the last.

So what was the change and what got me thinking about it? Second part first. I was doing something you rarely see anyone in SL do these days, I was taking a walk. I plopped down in a mainland sim and I started walking the Linden road. This is not something that folks do anymore and the reason they don't is directly related to the change I mentioned. Once upon a time, you couldn't teleport to anywhere on the grid you felt like. There used to be teleport hubs, central locations dotted about the grid. You'd teleport to between the hubs, from there making the last stage of your journey by car, by bike, flying, walking, pogostick, whatever. Consequently, there was a time when the roads were important.

Roads are and were clearways. Threads of land unobstructed by the nearly unzoned building practices of SL residents, assured paths crossing the sims. People followed roads, used them. Consequently land along the roadsides became expensive, precious. If you ran a business then a roadside plot was coveted. People saw you as they walked by, you got the benefit of passing traffic, impulse drop ins. Rare custom outside the malls these days.

You see the grid differently when you follow the roads. You see places you'd otherwise never find. On my last walk I passed through a number of Japanese dominated sims, looked inside some shops I'd be unlikely to find otherwise. Checked out a castle of impressive dimensions, it was one part Cinderella's castle in Disneyland, one part spun sugar. There was an art gallery, presumptuously named The Second Louvre. Prim sculptures of Burns and Smithers were approaching it's fromnt door, I'm sure there was commentary involved there. Finally, I found myself passing through the very sim in which I first rented in SL and for the sake of nostalgia I left the road and had a look. Surprisingly, the place was still there, despite having changed owners at least once since I left...

And that's it. Much like my walks, this blog entry was leading nowhere in particular and instead just kind of trails away...

Nothing to see here...

Nothing at all.

This should probably stand as a warning, oh audience who may, but probably don't, exist. It's unlikely this blog will see regular, steady posting. It'll be scattershot, random, long silences will be common. This is a kind of testing the waters, feeling a way forwards.

My secondary lifing has been more or less routine of late. Hanging out with friends, earning Linden pesos, promptly handing said pesos over to other folks. Just another cog in the great capitalist machine.

Floating Philosophers

Sanctuary was down last night so I decided to engage in a practice I learnt from Warren Ellis. Simply zoom the map to a distance where you can still read the region names, then look around for a name you find interesting. One of last night's stops was in Odyssey.

Far from being packed with Homeric warriors, Odyssey turned out to be an art space. A series of galleries, exhibits and installations dotted across a island sim. While wandering about I came across an amusing, possibly auspicious work that I just had to share. =)

The portly gentleman in these photos, chained down to prevent flights of postmodernist whimsy I presume, is the philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard was one of the leading thinkers in the field of semiotics and had much to say on hyperreality and it's role in the modern world.

Significant that I should find this within hours of starting my blog, no?

The name of this Blog...

The name of this blog, Travels in Hyperreality is borrowed from a collection of essays by Umberto Eco. I thought it an apt description of my feeling about the grid. Hyperreality is not to be confused with virtual reality. Virtual reality is all about recreation, mimicry and improvement, Second Life does all of this and it goes further. SL blurrs the boundaries, it actively encourages you to treat it as being as real as the real world, maybe even better than the real world, it is here it becomes hyperreality.

Hyperreality is the blurring of the real and the fake, which is which becomes impossible to ascertain. At this point I'm going to hand over to wikipedia, the relevant article there is a decent starting point. [Have a Link]

Phirst Post Passed

Weee!

I've been thinking about a Second Life blog for some time now, though my tendency towards procrastination has been getting in the way and seeding doubts. I'm a lazy one, there's no doubt. Thirty six years as a slacker with no spouse, house, kids or car. Thirty six years and essentially none of the trappings of a proper adult life, has more proven me a layabout of the most slothful stripe. You see this kind of Olympian level indolence tends to seep through you eventually. It begins to poison you. You start not doing things, not because you can't be bothered, but because you might not be bothered later. The only thing worse than a blog that no one reads would be be a blog that no one writes.

Some time ago I decided to Witness to some unbelievers. It was a message board I frequent, one dedicated to gaming. There is a lot of misunderstanding of Second Life amongst the forum's population. Despite being gamers; roleplayers, tabletoppers, video gamers, most of them held the same prejudices you see amongst any other random group...

"Second Life? It's all griefer and furry bondage sex innit?"

So in a rare fit of activity, I decided to do something. I started a photo journal, showcasing some of the sites across the grid. Interesting builds to stir the imaginations and maybe, just maybe, get some folks thinking differently. The journal lasted three posts, though the idea of it has hung around longer...

And so I've decided to try again, well kind of. This time I'm not trying to sell anything, this time it's about what I think and how I feel, about Second Life and about the wider internet. That's why if I'm talking to anyone but myself, I'm talking to other Second Lifers.