A Second Life. . . or why am I here?

You are asking yourself what is this woman talking about? A second life? It's true . . . but to really understand my second life, you need to experience Second Life.

I admit it, I am addicted. I'd like to blame Bobby and Amanda who first mentioned it. Or Rhiannon who got me to watch over her shoulder, but the truth is I am a sucker for a good storyline and the beauty of SL is that you can write your own story. It is role playing. It is the holodeck and the replicator (that's Trekker speak) all rolled into one. It is another reality and it is escapism.

So because it was almost summer and I had the time, I joined. Two years ago today. Next I needed money. Gotta buy clothes (don't want to look a total noob) and bling  from the designers and the scripters (because SL is also capitalism at its finest). The money here is called "Lindens," and one US real dollar is worth around 250L. So for about the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee I can have 1000 Lindens to play with in the Second Life world(s). Not bad. You don't have to really eat, or mow the grass, or do the dishes (unless you want to--just about anything can be put into gestures, a string of actions that your character or avatar can do). This includes virtual sex.  Best of all though is the dancing. Alone on a club floor, in the arms of a handsome avatar, even all by yourself in the moonlight. 

And then there is SL sex. Think about it.  No bugs to catch. You can say YES. Maybe get money for saying yes, maybe get presents, maybe just do it because you want to connect to a special someone. And you can say NO. And no one can force you. Don't like the guy who is coming on to you? Mute button. He follows you around? Delete him from of your friends list and he can't see you. Corners you? TP (teleport) out. Harrasses you? Report him to the PTB. All in all that adds up to the potential for a lot of fun, and no foul.

Beware, though, SL is addicting. Don't let SL occupy you so much that you forget that you have a Real Life (tm) too. And don't mix them or there is a big broken heart potential. Don't share RL info in SL with anyone you do not know VERY well. Don't be surprised when (if you share SL info with them) RL friends think you need therapy.

A good thing to keep in mind is that this is role playing. Your avatar (your SL body) is both you and not you. You can look anyway you want. In fact, most of the avatars look like gorgeous sexy 20 somethings. Never assume that how the avatar looks is the same as how the person looks in RL! Many of us do try to stick somewhat close to our ideal RL selves. I am, for instance, really an RL blonde, but in RL my eyes are more grey than green or blue. Some of us choose to be another gender, or another creature. I can be a smoke demon. Or a lust demon. In SL we can have any face and hair and body and clothes we want (or can afford). We can have wings, fur, feathers, elf ears, vampire teeth, horns, scales, or tails. I know of one fellow who lives most of his SL life as a Cheetah. I've met another who was a robot. And there is no way to tell what anyone's real age is. All of this is NP (no problem) if we don't lose control, if we don't forget which life is which.

Song du jour: "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan

A song for my Obsession....

Song for a Crazy Week: "With or Without You" by U2

...and I'm waiting for you....

Adam Ramona's Seventeen Unsung Songs

Second life is primarily a visual treat, and so art in SL tends toward the fantastic, the improbable and the impossible. On the island of East of Odyssey, however, Adam Ramona--known in real life as Adam Nash, a 3D artist, performer, composer and programmer who uses online space (and sound) as a realtime performance medium--has taken the visual and integrated it organically with the aural and even the emotional in a sim-wide installation he calls Seventeen Unsung Songs.

Nash's installations use a combination of color, prim transparency, and scripting to make interactive art such as this complex piece: " Unsung Song #4: Mitosis." The central piece is an plant with a central shaft that responds to touch. Touch it enough and it ejaculates pollen which, if it falls into the cupped petals below, may turn into red eggs. The eggs hatch pink larvae which turn into blue bugs. Touch a blue bug and it falls to the ground as a blue transparent prim which begins to grow into a music tree, each square blue branch sounding a different chime when touched.




Another of Nash's complex pieces is "Unsung Song #16: Blue Sound Ground" a roadway made up of transparent blue prims, each of which sounds a different note when walked on by an avatar.

The notes range from percussive sounds to voices to melodious chimes. Multiple avatars walking on this road thus literally make a unique song of surprisingly harmonious tones.


The most amazing and perhaps disturbing of Nash's pieces is "Unsong Song #7: The Moaning Columns of Longing." Dr. Lisa Dethridge (Lisa Dapto) says in her paper on Nash's work:

The artist leaves less room for us to negotiate space around his highly interactive work, the Moaning Columns of Longing. This is perhaps the most mysterious and emotive of the works. Here artist toys deliberately with the “hot buttons” of love and pain that drive us all, especially those enmeshed in virtual affairs . . . In response to an avatar’s touch, tall, white columns spawn instantly with a phallic upward thrust. These gently swaying prims define themselves as artificial life forms that exist only in relation to a single, specific Avatar. They are exclusive and faithful to a fault.
The columns sway and ooze particles for joy or shrink and pine desperately when rejected. They communicate directly, challenging each owner/lover/user to prove their love and loyalty. In this giggly theatre of cruelty, the Avatar may choose to support and “love”, to ignore or even to abuse the artificial life form that is now virtually “theirs.” Like real life lovers however, the Moaning Columns make heavy demands on the avatar, challenging us to differentiate between real love and merely dizzy infatuation. Thus we earn what Nash wryly calls “an endless amount of chances to practice emotional responsibility.”

I have to admit that after three days of my "Column" moaning at me I couldn't stand it anymore and I let it die--if nothing else, Nash has reminded me in a very concrete object lesson about the dangers of emotional entanglement in SL. A lesson many of us need to learn. The Unsung Songs of Adam Ramona/Adam Nash are not your typical artistic builds, they are a multimedia treat and a closer look at in our own mirrors, and at our own obsessions, all rolled into one. Go visit East of Odessey and see for yourself.

Sunday night's song: "I Can't Live" by Mariah Carey

I can't live without you . . . that says it all about the obsessions we develop in Second Life, doesn't it.