I jumped over to have a look at A L T I T U D E after catching it in Maddy Gynoid’s Echt Vituell. Sitting on and over a Homestead region, it is one of the most unusual and imaginative settings I’ve seen in Second Life for a while.
Designed by Dan the Hammie (DannChris), A L T I T U D E presents a place to “hang out, play and listen to indie music, alternative music, live performances and voice events.”
The music venue sits up in the air, “an abandoned hangar on a forgotten island”, held aloft by a combination of cement pillars rising some 60 metres above the water / ground by a mass of propeller engines slung beneath the baseplate on which it sits. Several more platforms float in the sky around it, some offering places to sit, others more functional in nature.
The hanger itself is little more than a rusting metal framework curving over the venue and facing a building that might, at one time, have been a small airport terminal or similar. Despite its industrial appearance, however, the club has a friendly, almost cosy look and feel to it. Events are regularly staged as per the schedule board over one of the stages.
Down below, apparently floating on the water, is a stunning garden spot sitting behind tall stone walls with a decidedly Tuscan look and feel; a reminder of Dann’s previous builds of Natural Falls (see Navigating Natural Falls in Second Life).
Watched over by leaf-laden trees, this is home to the most exotic of plants, a place where Nature’s chaos prevails in the most marvellous of ways, be it with the free form of plant growth, the broken, lopsided train of a of greenhouse, the slightly tumbledown suggestion of age and ruin, the delightful corner snug, or the myriad other attractions to be found here.
Such is the detail and design in the garden, it is easy to lose track of time camming around its enclosed space, seeking out all the little details, while several places to sit and relax offer further enticements to stay and enjoy the setting and watch the butterflies. Art is also to be found here, courtesy of Chirzaka Vlodovic and Mistero Hifeng, while opportunities for photography abound.
With great electrical pylons take a perpendicular march across the water in relation to the high music venue and the long gantry-like walkway that sits besides it, the entire regions sits beneath a forever twilight sky that frames both club and garden perfectly.
A sign close to the gantry landing point warns visitors that they are about to enter someone else’s dream. Given the overall design and layout of A L T I T U D E, it is a dream worth taking the time to visit and share in; beautifully conceived and presented.
It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.
Sunday, March 24th:
12:30 Around the World – A Seanchai Library Celebration
Seanchai Library celebrates its anniversary with an afternoon’s journey of imagination and adventure around the world, in partnership with Radio Riel.
Mixing stories and music and presented at Seanchai’s Story Glen, the event schedule comprises:
12:30 – Stories in Voice: taking place at the Seanchai Library Gle, featuring Seanchai Library Founder Derry McMahon with Bear Silvershade, and Shandon Loring.
13:00 – International Folk Tales with Radio Riel: broadcast on the Seanchai Library’s home stream and on Radio Riel, featuring Da5id Abbot, Faerie Maven-Pralou, and Caledonia Skytower.
14:00-17:00 – Around The World, a DJ Challenge: live from the Glen & Broadcast on Radio Riel, with:
14::00-15:30: Elrik Merlin.
15:00-16:00: Ktadhn Vesuvino.
16::00-17:00: Gabrielle Riel.
This is the third collaboration of this kind between Radio Riel and Seanchai Library. In March 2018, as part of Seanchai Library’s Volume Ten tenth anniversary celebration the two produced The Bagpipe Challenge – Beyond Loud. Then at the end of that year, Radio Riel joined Seanchai Library in marking the end of the 2018 Dickens Project with Reflections on a New Year in the same three-hour format.
Join Seanchai Library at the Story Glen as they celebrate their 11th anniversary in-world and with the support of Radio Riel
Have you heard? Willie Wonka is releasing five golden tickets in candy bars! Charlie Bucket may have a chance to find one as Caledonia Skytower continues Roald Dahl’s classic, live on stream!
Monday, March 25th 19:00: The World Of Ptavvs
Gyro Muggins returns to Larry Niven’s Known Universe to read the first novel Niven ever set within it – given it was actually he first full-length novel. Within it, he lays many of the seeds, human and alien that would come to define that universe, its characteristics, traits and races.
A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth’s oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Humanity’s experiments with time manipulation lead to the conclusion the “statue” is actually an alien caught within a “time slowing” field.
Larry Greenberg, a telepath with highly developed and honed abilities is asked to participate in an attempt to make contact with the alien. This involves Greenberg and the “statue” being places within a single time slowing field, the effect of which is to nullify the one shrouding the alien.
The the new field in operation, Greenberg finds himself in the company of Kzanol, a member of a race called the Thrint. Powerfully telepathic, the Thrint once rules the galaxy pure through their mental powers and the ability to bend the minds of others to their own will. However, in the time that Kzanol has been trapped the result of a malfunction aboard his ship which forced him to abandon it and fall to Earth protected by the stasis field of his space suit, the Thrint were facing a revolt by all the races they had enslaved.
As a result of this, the Thrint had determined to wipe out every race in the galaxy using a thought amplifier. Now, his own mind mixed with that of Kzanol, Greenberg sets out with the alien with the aim of using the weapon to enslave every mind in the solar system…
Tuesday, March 26th 19:00: The Library is Dark
No stories this evening.
Wednesday, March 27th 19:00: My Word! Frank Muir and Dennis Norden Selected Writings
Frank Muir (l) and Dennis Norden (r) posing for a publicity photo. Credit: Getty Images
Frank Muir CBE (1920-1998) and Dennis Norden CBE (1922-2018) many not be familiar names to many, but they were one of the top comedy writing duos – and successful writers, authors, presenters and entertainers – in the UK working both on radio and television.
Muir was additionally a writer on the 1960s satire programmes That Was The Week That Was, which launched the television career of David Frost (perhaps most internationally recognised for his interview with President Nixon following the latter’s resignation from office), and The Frost Report., again featuring David Frost. Muir went on to become Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC in the 1960s, and was then London Weekend Television‘s founding Head of Entertainment. However, he is probably most fondly remembered in the UK as a team captain on the long-running BBC 2 witty comedy quiz series Call My Bluff, and as a voice-over artist in a number of famous UK television commercials.
Norden partnered in writing with Muir for more than 50 years, writing and producing radio and television shows for some of the top entertainers in the UK in those mediums during the 1960s. As a writer in his own right, Norden penned a number of Hollywood film scripts, including Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, and wrote, narrated and starred in A Child’s Guide To Blowing Up A Car – a behind-the-scenes featurette showing how a stunt used in the James Bond movie Thurderball was put together, and which now appears on the 2006 ‘Ultimate Edition’ Thunderball DVD. Norden is perhaps most famously known for It’ll be Alright on the Night, his show featuring out-takes and bloopers from film and television, which ran from 1977 through to 2006, much of the material from which was “borrowed” by NBC in the Unites States for Dick Clarke’s Bloopers.
Join with Corwyn Allen. as he celebrates these two great British writers.
Thursday, March 28th 19:00: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
With Shandon Loring. (Also in Kitely grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).
A L T I T U D E – click any image for full size
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 