BURN2 2016: a press day in Second Life

DV-posterBURN2 2016 will be opening its gates on Saturday, October 15th, and will run through until Sunday, October 23rd 2016, culminating in the burning of the Man the Temple on the closing weekend of the event.

The theme for this year is Da Vinci;’s Workshop, matching that of the official Burning Man event, and builders have been hard at work preparing camp sites across the four regions of this year’s event, and festivities will run right through the week, culminating in the burning of the Man on Saturday, October 22nd, and the Temple on Sunday, October 23rd.

Bloggers wishing to get early access to BURN2 are invited to complete the Press Sign-up form and join special previews of the regions on Friday, October 14th, at 12:00 noon through 14:00 and 19:00-22:00 SLT.

In addition, there are still slots available on the DJ and live performers schedules for the week-long festival. If you are interested in participating as a performer, contact one of the following individuals in-world:

  • Live performers: Cuga Rajal
  • DJs: Tracer Graves or Fifi Candyfloss (siouxsieincognita) or Leondra Larssen
BURN2 2015
BURN2 2015

About BURN2

BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups and the only regional event allowed to burn the man.

The BURN2 Team operates events year around, culminating in an annual major festival of community, art and fire in the fall – a virtual echo of Burning Man itself.

Related Links

Of hounds, spectres, madness and vampires!

It’s time to kick-off a week of story-telling in voice, brought to our virtual lives by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, October 2nd, 13:30: Tea Time at Baker Street

Tea-time at Baker Street returns for the summer, featuring a new location – 221B Baker Street at the University of Washington iSchool in Second Life. Caledonia Skytower, Corwyn Allen, John Morland and Kayden Oconnell invite you to join them as they return to what is quite possibly the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, and present their fourth reading from The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Baskervilles-1902The third full-length novel written about Sherlock Holmes, this is likely to be the one Holmesian story which – at least in outline – known to most, whether or not they have actually read any of Holmes’ adventures.

But how many of us know the story as it was originally written? Over the decades it has been adapted for film and television more than 20 times, starting as early as 1914/15 with the 4-part series, Der Hund von Baskerville, and continuing on through to Paul McGuigan’s The Hounds of Baskerville, featured in the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock series.

All of these adaptations have offered their own take on the tale. Some – such as McGuigan’s, have simply taken the title of the story and used it to weave a unique tale of their own; others have stayed true to the basics of the story whilst also adding their own twists and turns quite outside of Conan Doyle’s plot in order to keep their offering fresh and exciting to an audience.

So why not join Cale, John and Kayden as they read from the 1902 original, and discover just how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unfolded this apparently supernatural tale of giant hounds and murder, and the pivotal role played by John Watson himself?

Monday October 3rd, 19:00: A Spectre is Haunting Texas

spectreGyro Muggins reads Fritz Leiber’s 1969 novel telling of a world in which Texas had secretly run the United States from 1845 through until the Third World War, after which the former state conquered the entire North American continent.

Of it was never given out to the general public in the states, who never had no brains or guts nohow & flustered easy, that this assumption of leadership was annexation–but it was always known to the Speaker of the House & the senators who counted in Washington that secretest treaty Texas was boss…With the coming of the 3rd World War & the atomization of Washington, New York, San Francisco & so forth, secrecy became unnecessary.

Now, Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna & the Bubbles Congeries, has arrived in what he believes to be Canada. He’s come to reclaim family mining interests, but finds Canada is now N. Texas, ruled over by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual “good ol’ boys” convinced of their own moral superiority.

Tuesday October 4th, 19:00: Madness and Other Tales

With Trolley Trollop.

Wednesday October 5th, 19:00: In The Mist

Caledonia Skytower reads an updated version of her 2012 tale.

Thursday, October 6th,

19:00 Dracula!

With Shandon Loring in both Second Life and Kitely (check Seanchai Library’s Kitely event announcements for specific grid location details).

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Contemporary Sci-Fi with Finn Zeddmore.


Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.

The featured charity for September-October is Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a childhood cancer foundation dedicated to raising funds for research into new treatments and cures for all children battling cancer.

Additional Links

Rock Your Rack Charity Art Show in Second Life

Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction
Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction

The 2016 Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction in support of Rock Your Rack opened on Saturday, October 1st, 2016, and will run through until Saturday, October 15th, alongside the Rock Your Rack 2016 events.

Rock Your Rack is the annual fund-raiser started in October of 2012 by Jamee Sandalwood and the team at Models Giving Back for the National Breast Cancer Foundation ((NBCF). Founded in 1991, NBCF’s mission is to help women in the United States by providing help and inspiring hope to those affected by breast cancer through early detection, education and support services. NBCF is also joining hands with organisations around the globe to provide breast cancer education.

Curated and coordinated by Kultivate Magazine on behalf of Rock Your Rack, the art show features 23 2D and 3D artists, all of whom are offering one or more items in their art displays with 100% of proceeds going to Rock Your Rack.

Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction
Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction

The participating artists are: Adi4guam Resident, Aradia Aridian, Artemisgreece Resident, Brooklynleigh Resident, Bryn Oh, Byrnedarkly Cazalet, Calystiamoonshadow Resident, Cica Ghost, Eleseren Brianna, Erikoleo Resident, Glitterprincess Destiny, Inara Pey, Iquisitor Titanium, Iskye Silverweb, Johannes1977 Resident, Kodymeyers Resident, Leah Mccullough, Lucia Tophat, Retroye Resident, Tisephone Resident, Sandi Benelli, Sheba Blitz, and Slatan Dryke.

While the Art Show opened along with the rest of the Rock Your Rack events, there will be a formal Art Show opening on Monday, October 3rd from 16:00 SLT, with further events to mark the closing on the show on Saturday, October 15th. Two special raffles are also being held, featuring special bundles of work from Bryn Oh and Cica Ghost respectively. The main schedule of events comprises:

  • Saturday, October 1st: Rock Your Rack Art Show and Auction opens, and Bryn Oh & Cica Ghost 3D art bundle raffle tickets go on sale
  • Saturday, October 1st through  to Wednesday October 12th: Art Auction bids open
  • Monday, October 3rd: formal Art show Opening with live performer Talleysin
  • Thursday, October 13th: Art auction winners announced and Bryn Oh & Cica Ghost 3D art bundle raffle winners announced
  • Friday, October 14th: The Pink Art Ball featuring DJ John 16:00-17:00 SLT and live performer Sam Quenda 17:00-18:00
  • Saturday, October 15th: Rock Your Rack and the art show ends.

During the event, visitors can also tour the wider Rock Your Rack activities taking place in the region and support fun-raising.

SLurls and Links

VWBPE 2017: Call for Proposals

Image courtesy of VWBPE
Image courtesy of VWBPE

The 10th annual  Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference was recently announced, together with a call for proposals.

Scheduled to take place between Wednesday, March 29th and Saturday April 1st, 2017 inclusive, VWBPE is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments which attracts 2200-3500 educational professionals from around the world each year.

In the context of the conference, a “virtual world” is an on-line community through which users can interact with one another and use and create ideas irrespective of time and space. As such, typical examples include Second Life, OpenSimulator, Unity, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and so on, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or any virtual environments characterised by an open social presence and in which the direction of the platform’s evolution is manifest in the community.

2017 is a special year for VWBPE, marking its tenth anniversary. With this in mind, the overarching them for the four days is that of Legacy. A call for proposals has been issued to those wishing to participate in the event as speakers and presenters.  It invites educators and those involved in the education sector to reflect on work and their accomplishments within the context of the conference, and consider submitting a proposal and sharing their work with the wider education community.

Image courtesy of VWBPE
Image courtesy of VWBPE

As with 2016, the event is interested in papers carrying the ideal of Looking Forward and Looking Back:

  • Looking Forward – do you have a new project, research, service, or tool that you wish to share, something you have never before presented at VWBPE or elsewhere? Submit a proposal to start building the legacy for the future
  • Looking Back – do you wish to do a retrospective view of a past VWBPE session, where you share lessons, new research or updates, to your original presented work? Submit a retro proposal to help look back at the legacy you helped to create, and how it has impacted current practice.

Those wishing to submit a proposal should visit the VWBPE 2017 Call For Proposals page, read the guidelines and submit a proposal under the relevant category – Academic, Communities of Practice, Creative, Immersive Experiences. All proposals must be submitted by Sunday, November 27th, 2016.

Virtual Science Fair

via VWBPE
Image courtesy of VWBPE

VWBPE 2017 will include a new  event: the Virtual Science Fair which invites educators from all disciplines and levels are invited to participate in the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Science Fair. If you are interested in including an immersive project as part of your curriculum, consider showcasing it with VWBPE. You can find out more by visiting the Virtual Science Fair page at the VWBPE website.

Additional Links

Of times past, times future and hauntings at Seanchai Library

It’s time to kick-off a week of story-telling in voice, brought to our virtual lives by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, September 25th

13:30: Tea Time at Baker Street

Tea-time at Baker Street returns for the summer, featuring a new location – 221B Baker Street at the University of Washington iSchool in Second Life. Caledonia Skytower, John Morland and Kayden Oconnell invite you to join them as they return to what is quite possibly the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, and present their fourth reading from The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Baskervilles-1902The third full-length novel written about Sherlock Holmes, this is likely to be the one Holmesian story which – at least in outline – known to most, whether or not they have actually read any of Holmes’ adventures.

But how many of us know the story as it was originally written? Over the decades it has been adapted for film and television more than 20 times, starting as early as 1914/15 with the 4-part series, Der Hund von Baskerville, and continuing on through to Paul McGuigan’s The Hounds of Baskerville, featured in the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock series.

All of these adaptations have offered their own take on the tale. Some – such as McGuigan’s, have simply taken the title of the story and used it to weave a unique tale of their own; others have stayed true to the basics of the story whilst also adding their own twists and turns quite outside of Conan Doyle’s plot in order to keep their offering fresh and exciting to an audience.

So why not join Cale, John and Kayden as they read from the 1902 original, and discover just how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unfolded this apparently supernatural tale of giant hounds and murder, and the pivotal role played by John Watson himself?

18:00: Magicland Storytime

It’s a Small World of Folktales at The Golden Horseshoe in Magicland Park with Caledonia Skytower.

Caledonia continues a journey around the globe, beginning with her feet wet from Pacific waters and heading west – surfing with the Sun through stories from different lands. THIS WEEK: The Americas!

Monday September 26th, 19:00: A Spectre is Haunting Texas

spectreGyro Muggins reads Fritz Leiber’s 1969 novel telling of a world in which Texas had secretly run the United States from 1845 through until the Third World War, after which the former state conquered the entire North American continent.

Of it was never given out to the general public in the states, who never had no brains or guts nohow & flustered easy, that this assumption of leadership was annexation–but it was always known to the Speaker of the House & the senators who counted in Washington that secretest treaty Texas was boss…With the coming of the 3rd World War & the atomization of Washington, New York, San Francisco & so forth, secrecy became unnecessary.

Now, Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna & the Bubbles Congeries, has arrived in what he believes to be Canada. He’s come to reclaim family mining interests, but finds Canada is now N. Texas, ruled over by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual “good ol’ boys” convinced of their own moral superiority.

Tuesday September 27th, 19:00: Selections from The Outlander

outlanderDiana Gabaldon’s Outlander series started by accident when she decided to sit down and writer a novel “for practice” in the late 1980s, and to learn what is required to write a good book and whether she had the capacity to become a writer.

Published in 1991 as Cross Stitch in the UK and Outlander in North America, that first “practice” novel went on to spawn an entire set of novels – and a television series as well.

Caledonia Skytower reads selections from Outlander, which follows British Army Nurse Claire Randall who, after the end of World War Two goes on a second honeymoon to Scotland with her historian husband Frank.

Whilst visiting a set of standing stones, Claire hears a strange buzzing, faints, and awakes in the Scotland of the 1740s, where first she encounters Captain Jack Randall, an ancestor of her husband, and then a band of Scots which includes the dashing James Fraser, who presents Claire with an unexpected romantic attraction. Thus, whilst trying to find her way back to her own time, Claire in thrust into the turmoil of the Jacobite movement, find her self caught in Fraser’s love for her, and more besides.

Outlander will also be the subject of a Book Discussion at Community Virtual Library central, at 17:30 SLT on Wednesday, September 28th.

Wednesday September 28th, 19:00: TBA

Check the Seanchai Library blog for updates.

Thursday, September 29th, 19:00 From the Shadows – Tales that Haunt

With Shandon Loring in both Second Life and Kitely (check Seanchai Library’s Kitely event announcements for specific grid location details).


Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.

The featured charity for September-October is Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a childhood cancer foundation dedicated to raising funds for research into new treatments and cures for all children battling cancer.

Additional Links

Future Shock: sci-fi machinima in Second Life

Future Shock: sci-fi machinima
Future Shock: sci-fi machinima

Future Shock is an ambitious and intriguing new Second Life Machinima series produced by Pryda Parx, the first episode of which was released on You Tube on September 16th, 2016.

Future Shock is set in a dark future world where technology is designed to keep everyone safe and secure. At least that’s the way it is meant to be,” Pryda told me as we discussed the concept and the evolving series. “A place where technology dominates and where real life and virtual worlds intertwine.”

Unfolding over nine episodes, the story is told in something of a non-linear manner. Individual segments run to around 4 minutes each, unfolding part of the story, but as Pryda notes, “to get the most out of the audience will need to pause, rewind and revisit previous episodes; there are a lot of subtle connections between episodes which will not be apparent when first seen.”

Is technology helping us, or...
Is technology helping us, or…?

This is the case with the first segment, IP Credit, in which we are given a view of what appears to be both the real and the virtual as they intertwine. We know nothing of the character(s) we see or anything about the environment or what is going on. There is  clue to the immediate events we see in the episode’s tag-line, but how the scene fits with the rest of the story arc is something we’re going to have to return to and consider later.

“I wanted to make something for the interactive YouTube generation,” Pryda says of the series. “Something to entertain, but also to provoke debate on technological and social trends and to explore what the future might actually hold.”

What lies within - and why?
What lies within – and why?

A further striking element of the series is its presentation. Outside of the virtual realm, the world is predominantly monochrome: dark skies, dark pavements and floors, grey walls, grey people. Where colour is used, it tends to emphasise the presence of technology which, as we see as the scene unfolds, perhaps isn’t entirely benign. Dialogue is also minimal (and non-existent in the first segment, although the language can be strong when it does occur in later segments), a technique which further draws the audience into the unfolding story.

The first series has taken Pryda around a year to put together; work which unsurprisingly has required her involvement with a lot of tools – Blender for modelling, GIMP, Audacity for the distinctive audio, etc.  The remaining segments will be released on YouTube at two-weekly intervals, with the last release occurring just before Christmas.  There is also an introductory teaser, which can be seen here.

Nor does it end there. “There is a lot of background content and a coherent framework for world in which the story is set, ” Pryda told me. “Much of this background will play out over the two series following the first.”

So, if you’re on the look-out for a new and quite stylish sci-fi, which intertwines a number of themes in a unique style and approach, why not give Future Shock a go? The first segment is embedded below, and the series can be found on Pryda’s YouTube channel.