Goatmoose

The year was 2006.  We were “born” into a virtual world, rezzing for the first time, Ruthed-out and confused, blissfully unaware of what we were getting ourselves into.  Fast forward to 2007.  Money was coming in.  Creativity was booming.  People were happy, a community was established, and everything was blossoming.  We were in Second Life, and things were going well.

A number of Second Life businesses were the closest things I had to a full-time job in 2007.  The money made from owning 6 sims and renting the land paid some bills, the camaraderie of dozens of avatar friends filled my needs for friendship and collaboration, and we all worked as a team to create worlds unlike any other.  We had landscaping stores, built waterfalls, had undersea adventures, operated a modern art gallery, played tunes at our drum & bass club, designed clothing, made art and built homes.  We created furniture, utilized all the tools of the environment, dabbled with flexis and sculpties and became players in a global commonwealth of business and culture.

Then, for whatever reason, it stopped.  Maybe we all ran out of money.  Maybe we ran out of will.  Or creativity.  Regardless, dozens of people known for logging 40-100 hours per week over several years’ time just stopped logging in.  The world became trite, and we all walked away.

And now it’s almost 2011.  I have made a habit of logging in at least once every two weeks, just to see what’s up.  My friends list is almost always entirely devoid of anyone currently logged in, despite once being a list of people you could rely on being there at any hour of the day.  The worlds seem empty – junky sim after junky sim, covered with crap builds, advertisements and garbage prims.  I visit the sims I used to own – the ones that still retain their original names, that is – only to find my once-beautiful, tailored landscapes covered with the enormous, badly-built Best Buys of Second Life selling crap and looking downright terrible.

It’s depressing.  The photographs in my inventory of days gone by hold millions of memories of friends, creativity, and the beauty we once brought to the world.

To be blunt, there has been no redeeming reason to enter SL for at least a solid year.  Until last night.

During my bi-weekly login last evening, I stumbled into the Caerleon Museum of Identity on Caerleon Isle.  It is a sim-wide art installation crafted by the Virtual Art Initiative.  This group of artists are some of the best in existence, and are making themselves known by creating these installations to exhibit founder Georg Janick’s six Theses on the Art of Virtual Worlds as their framework.  Each installation is a collaboration of interpretations by a number of stellar members of the Initiative.

From the official press release about the sim:

In addition to major builds on each of the six theses, there have been numerous theme collaborations on various topics, including consumerism, imprisonment, surrealism, and masks, as well as limited resource challenges like the one-prim and limited texture shows.

The Caerleon Museum of Identity is an interpretation by the collaborative team of Georg’s fourth thesis: the Ambiguity of Identity. It states in part, “…digital bodies, and the names that uniquely identify them, can be altered, multiplied, discarded, or exchanged at the will of the user. Since bodily presence is open to such radical discontinuity, the identity of the virtual person is protean and ambiguous, including indicators of age, gender, race, and even biological species.”

Everyone who’s spent any amount of time in Second Life can appreciate the concept of the avatar as a representation of the human self.  There is a lot to analyze about the relationship between the actual self and the digital version, and each artist involved with this project brings their own interpretation to the point, and raises their own questions through their work.  It’s impossible to wander through the sim and not begin to analyze yourself and your own identities, nor to go without thinking about angles and elements you’ve never thought of before.  It does exactly what art should do – provide creative, innovative material that focuses on discovery and the possibility of new ideas.

And what’s best – it does so through the use of Second Life as a medium.  This allows the artists to create materials that are not only unique in subject matter to digital worlds, but unique in assembly using the only platform that would permit such installations to exist.  Ambiguity of identity couldn’t be more perfectly represented than by a medium that is inherently ambiguous in itself.  Second Life’s tools allow artists to create things unrestrained by reality, and the artists do a brilliant job of conveying their messages.

Plus the place plays some damn chill music.

But enough about what I think.

The point is, this place has given me a reason to exist in Second Life again.  It has re-energized my belief in the creativity offered by the world, and reminded me why I’ve dedicated such huge portions of my life over the past four years to the world.  Though everyone I once knew has disappeared, that doesn’t mean I have to, and that doesn’t mean my creations have to cease.  I’ve always believed in the power of Second Life to educate, cultivate and inspire.  There’s always a community to share with and collaborate with.

So thank you, Georg, Botgirl, FreeWee and everyone else I’ve spent my day researching as a result of coming to this sim.

The Museum of Identity is not technically open yet, with its official launch on October 2nd.  I hope to be able to make it, and think you should too.

EVENTS:
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/219/128/40
OPENING: Saturday 2 October 2010, 12:00-2:00PM, and continuing through October.
DJ Mommaluv Skytower for opening party.
MEDIA PREVIEW: Tuesday 28 September, 1:00-4:00PM SLT
VB15 – GRACIE / KRIS in an encore performance, Saturday October 9 – Noon-1pm SLT. Gracie Kendal presents her theatre piece with 16 live avatar models from Vaneeesa Blaylock/Company. performance artists.

P.S. – We’ve already covered how I don’t have any SL friends left.  If you want to hang out, shoot me an IM.  The name is Gore Nesterov.