All it takes is a catalyst. For the past 48 hours, this empty parcel came to life with a group of designers, architects and artists from around the world, who imprinted this build with their creativity – riffing and building on what others had created, and adding their own voice. It really was a site to behold, and is a great example of so many things that are still great about Second Life. It’s not just the final build, but the fact that it brought people together. It’s the community, the conversation, the collaboration, with contributors from so many different parts of the world, all coming together on a moment’s notice to build something. Simply amazing.
We set out to build around the theme ‘amalgamate’ – which, I’ll admit was cheating a little… whenever you bring so many people together to build without any formal rules or structure, you’re bound to build an amalgamation. Yet, there’s something powerful about this kind of open, free-for-all, collaborative process. It becomes a kind of organic, evolving pentimento that’s ‘alive’ in a certain sense, and the final product is only half of the story – the process is the goal, in much the same way a jazz performance is about the conversation between musicians. It’s a fleeting moment that lasts only as long as the musicians are performing.
Similarly, this build has since been deleted – preserved only in screenshots and machinima.
Participants included: Annabelle Fanshaw, Archie Stonesheild, arklo Galicia, Camby, Chrome Underwood, DiJodi Dubratt, Keystone Bouchard, Laurel Leavitt, Maya Paris, Theory Shaw, Tiger Duesenburg, Werner Kurosawa.
