Second Life Landscape Initiative

Jul 28 2006

What is the Second Life Landscape Initiative?

SLLI is an attempt to understand landscape in the synthetic world of Second Life. We are presenting the different land masses in several forms:

1) The raw z data of the sim. These files are available for download at http://arsvirtua.com/slli/blender-data.html. You will need the blender application which is freely available for Mac, Windows, and Linux at http://blender.org.

2) The rendered version of that data. After rendering a snapshot is created and imported into SL, this is the silver, metallic form you see on the gallery walls.

3) The previously rendered version with the addition of texture information. Texture information is pulled from http://slurl.com/secondlife/ and applied to the form creating a 3d texture.

4) A short written work about the particular land-mass. These commissioned works are available by clicking on the peds in front of each group of images. They are part of the literature of the individual sim.

These different approaches are intended to give the viewer a greater sense of the land and to enable them to take part of this with them. In looking at this work we encourage people to imagine themselves in the landscape and then to take themselves there.

The final step is to visit the sim, as you read this you are standing in the Butler/Dowden sims. Look at the images upstairs, take Fiend Ludwig’s poem and walk. Walk to the river, walk through the trees, form your own impressions of the landscape and come back. Tell us what you have found, and tell us what meaning it has for you.

Featuring the work of Lucid Vindaloo, LestatDe Lioncourt, Fiend Ludwig, Zero Philo.

Ars Virtua architecture by Servo Quatro.