Five in "the Wastelands"

This sim “The Wastelands“ (actually two sims) is one of the “musts” of Second Life. A lot has been written about it. What is striking is the coherence of sims. The brilliance of textures and details is staggering and there is a lot of humour invested too, for instance the living underground. Once I discovered somebody had made a beautiful bed in a deserted metro tube under the surface.
(As written before Five likes “the hidden things” very much, this “not showing everything immediately” is rather lacking in Second Life. Just what is contrary to the aspect of selling as much and as fast as you can.)


But also remarkable are the differences between the buildings, their individuality within the theme. This means a lot of individual people are working together within a common idea: the most difficult thing there is, staying yourself, in coherence with a group.




For me, “The wasteland”, is T.S Elliot’s poem.

This is a superb link for the poem (http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/)


The poem starts with:

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

…..



But the poem has nothing to do with the wastelands sim. Although the description fits, the poem dates from before the notion of total destruction. We, living now, are aware and very conscious of the fact that some people have the power to destroy everything there is. (Quite a miracle it didn’t already happen!) But the fear of annihilation has entered our mind, because endless books are written and movies are made about this final disaster.


So this sim is the landscape, which might still exist, after the bomb. The scenery is based on the comic of Antony Johnston, the videogame Fallout, or the movie Bladerunner.


Recommended for this sim is simply wondering around, and looking for clues, where to enter. There are lots of clues lying around! Just search out where people live, what they have found out to live in.....sometimes even guarded by an giant shrimp, be careful!


Interesting for sim builders is the edge. Five was wondering how the people of the sim could “dig” so deep in the surface. Have they made holes? Can a surface of a sim be broken? At the edge one can see how it is done. The total surface is raised high above see level. Then locally the surface folded sharply, and deep abysses are made. In these deep spaces, the underground constructions are made, and the surface is covered up with prims having textures like the soil. So for the eye on the surface the deep ravine is invisible. Really ingenious application of the restricted possibilities of Second Life. All this can be seen at the edge of the sim. Don’t go there if you prefer to stay in the fantasy of the sim! (Don’t look at the last pictures then!)



As I see it, the sim is also a protest against the childish behaviour, seen mostly in Second Life. The phenomenon that almost everyone is going to copy his real existence, the trying to sell (but failing), the building of a home, the disorder of individual enterprises, which in their individuality are sort of all the same. Maybe “The Wastelands” is not even a protest, better still; it is an example of what is possible, when working together is a joy and stimulates fantasy.





Ok to finish the picture of under the sim....don't look at it!

Chaotic and organized Land

When Five bought a plot of land, the region was still only sparsely populated. The land was “no convenant” and not a quiet area. On this continent everyone can buy and do what he wants. After a few months every bit of land was sold. Everyone started building something. Most of the time the people built was a house. Some enterprises were showing their real life products. But on the whole it was unorganized, like a chaos. In fact it still is. No one is really interested in what their neighbor is doing. Basically we are all trying to shut of the other from our land, trying not to see the other, imagining that the other doesn’t exist. At the same time the selling people are hoping everyone is coming around to see what they sell! Walking around is impossible. Only flying between the plots gives you a possibility to see what is down there. No roads are separating the buildings. It is a bit like a soukh.

There are no streets or highway ordering (or cutting up) the space, because traffic is not a problem. But roads are not only for traffic, they also divide the buildings, providing space around them. This interesting side effect of roads is only discovered in the game of Second Life!
No roads means that everyone, only minding their own business, is actually building a wall between each other. Small walls of Berlin everywhere! Some are trying to escape in the direction of the air above us, and as a result even in this vast space buildings are appearing.
Older sims are sometimes organized in a theme. For instance Five likes to visit the sim with the Wastelands theme, or the elven theme sim. People are working together within the framework of an idea. This gives a coherent space, where things are presented in more variety and depth. You are more induced to explore and look around.
But then something happened. Probably connecting, relating is also a basic feature of the human, and so showing itself in Second Life.

In the neighborhood of Five’s land some people are starting to work together to get a more connected space. I discovered a place which was like an idyllic garden. It is called Pearls Gate. It consists of several plots of land, of a different character, with nice entrances between each other. The garden is connected through a blue archway with a dance floor, and on the other side there are some buildings which serve as art gallery. So you can walk around on circular stone forms and have time to discover, for instance, some pavilions and waterworks. The only way to visit the chaotic individual buildings is flying. Only when several plots of land are connected you come down from the air and start exploring on foot. Sometimes you discover a few lovers, oh jee? Am I disturbing a starting romance? They seem to be very well together. But wait: the girl is rather frightening me! She is wearing a pair of shooters on her legs. I ask myself if she is going to shoot him afterwards. Although he seems to be strong with his tattoos, I pity him very much. He will be like the male of that big spider that eats him after having made love to him. How sad life is!

Building drive in Second Life.

Coming in the world of Second Life we see we weren’t the first. This makes life easy. Others have tested, scouted, invented before us. We can say others, but maybe the others were like our selves. So if we see that there is a lot of building, we could say “we” like to build. There is a lot of sex (well a sort of sex) so we have an urge for sex. Who will deny these facts?

But looking closer, you can discover where things fail to be appropriate. For instance we can build a lot, but what do we do with the buildings? What are buildings for? Protecting against the wind, the rain, stocking. Homes are for living, making us comfortable, protecting us when sleeping.

Ok we quickly discover that in Second Life there is no rain. There is wind, but it serves to move floating objects and trees. The wind never becomes a storm. Also your belongings are yours for ever. Theft is unknown. All objects you make are signed absolutely with your name, even if sold. So seeing all those nice homes, I asked myself, why are all these people constructing homes? (I did it myself, found a nice Japanese house. But later I removed it.)

To have a place for their own, of their own? To have a personal mark set in this space? This here, is not “a” home, this is my place. But wait a minute! This is asking a big question! When is something personal? Is the putting together of anonymous objects, virtual things, made mostly by others (homes, chairs, tables, beds), is this making something personal?

Another aspect of this unstoppable building:it is simply too much! You discover in Second Life all kinds of buildings, being …empty, empty, so empty, and then to be rented.

See this picture of my the place of my neighbor. So people are building without knowing what to do with it. Putting a rental sign on the building they are hoping that others have an idea. This system of putting for rent and renting, when it is in equilibrium is well and doesn’t really surprise us. Also in real life there are buildings to be rent and people with ideas what to do with it, who rent these places. But in Second Life you see that the building urge is bigger then the ideas what to do with the buildings. So the buildings are mainly empty. Terrible places to float around. Holes in space painfully showing the lack of imagination of the people who ought to rent these places.

This is not to criticize. It is just very funny to realize that this building urge which is present in Second Life, reflects the building instinct in Real Life. Apparently we build to the limits of the possibilities. Always expanding. Always more and bigger.

In Second Life we can build rather easily. This could result in a building disaster! Filling up all space. So there is a limit of building blocks for a certain piece of land. Each morsel of land of 512 square meter having 117 prims available. Prims are building blocks to be used building walls, roofs, but also combining to make chairs, tables, and all that a human being can design. Well practically all. This limit is necessary because without it this world would be absolutely overgrown with buildings. It would be impossible to move around. This limit is enough for a small house with some things in it. If you want more, well buy more land. So the relation space – building blocks stays intact. Lots of people buy a lot more, building like “human beings” and then discovering the big question: what do I do with al this?

So Second Life and the things we see happening in it change our view on the real world. Now I see very clearly the ever expanding building drive in the human being. Our deep urge to construct. The difficulty and probably impossibility to keep some space in the real world “empty”. Empty could be called unspoiled, natural, but maybe that is already impossible. We can see the future of the earth: layers upon layers of buildings. Only where the climate is too rough, ok here we let nature in peace…

There is a place in Second Life where this is already visible. Nexus Prime for instance. Layers and layers of buildings. One of the oldest sims around. We can see our future in this aspect.
Well, I can give you my observations and opinions and leave you to it. But no, I also show you how I myself try to build. The trying is not about the building. The trying is to fill in the hole, the emptiness of what to do with it. For me this building is a sort of exhibition space and laboratory, where I want to find out what I could do in Second Life in the domain of art. Art for me being exploring reality. So I am filling this space with things I made in the past. And I am trying to transform the art works to become more fitted to the world of Second Life. My goal is not to sell, my goal is to find out what might be interesting in Second Life. The side aspect is discovering aspects of real life, as this blogg shows.

But more about my space later!

You can find my place where I experiment with building, scripting and "thinking" at Contrechoc.

You can find the place of my neighbor, still having shops to rent at Alles Beta!.