Category: Events

Second Life’s 17th anniversary celebrations officially opened on Friday, June 19th – although members of the Second Life Birthday in-world group have been able to access the celebratory regions since June 18th. Those looking for a general guide to the region and facilities can do so by following my Pocket guide to the celebrations, which covers some of the major activities and includes links to all the core locations within the celebratory regions and to the SL17B Shop & Hop event that also opens on June 19th.

The seven regions devoted showcasing exhibitor builds are packed with installations that reflect the breadth of creativity and activities available in-world. However, for this article, I’m focusing on some of the art installations that are now available for your enjoyment and appreciation.

Astonish

Ethereal II “Where Will You Go?” by Pixels Sideways

A tiered installation offering a touch of the surreal. At ground level sits a display that offers what might be a commentary on the physical / social distancing forced on us by the SAR-CoV-2 pandemic: a series of sculptures asking people to indicate what they would like to do: just click to register your interest.

The second element of the installation is overhead, reached by three teleport spheres. Forming a globe of the world, it allows those using the teleport spheres to walk around the world, again perhaps in a comment on our current and necessary inability to travel freely – and a reminder that once the threat of the virus has properly receded / been countered, we’ll once again have that luxury. It also, perhaps reflects the fact that as a virtual world, Second Life brings us together.

A further teleport leads to an underground “surrealist gallery”. This offers numerous poses that can be found by exploring with your mouse pointer to locate them or via CTRL-ALT-T to highlight them or clicking on the Polaroid images on the floor of the platform.

Direct teleport.

G.O.D by Moki Yuitza

G.O.D. – Galaxies of Dreams – is a digital installation challenging visitors to consider the things they might dream about if they were a god. In describing it, Moki notes:

Nothing more appropriate in the context of a metaverse like Second Life is, which in its conception is a perfect metaphor of a Universe. A reality built as a result of different dreams, but combined by the same universal order, the creator’s thought itself, where they magically find logic and harmony. In this universe, eternally balanced between order and chaos, the single creations represent the wish of declare the dreamer’s existence, itself in everlasting memory of the thousands flights of Icarus.

Direct teleport.

Captivate

• Alchemelic Adventure by d-oo-b – jump on a robot with a couple of friends and take a ride around the installation and pick an Alchemelic tune from the jukebox.

Electrify

Conversation With a Stranger by FionaFei

An interactive exhibition in which visitors are encouraged to consider how lack of empathy for others can divide us. Visitors are invited to sit on a chair facing one of the multiple seated characters as if in conversation. Words on the floor and floating around the figures force us to reflect on the life of the seated figure before them prior to attempting to judge them.

In this way, we’re given pause to further reflect on the fact that in the physical world, judging someone purely on their physical appearance / situation can so easily mean we miss the opportunity to connect with someone who may share similar interests, values or background to us.

Direct Teleport.

Further Installations Electrify

• The Dirty Grind IAC and Radio Grind – visit their installation and learn more about this arts and performance community in Second Life, find out about the groups members and their ground-breaking field trip group and grab your gifts.
• Join me in my dream. by Vincent Priesley – a novel examination of our voyage through second life as eyes looking at computer screens.
• Ciottolina Xue – Second Life is a ship: a celebration of the many journeys Second Life allows us to take.

Incredible

• Burn2, The Journey Home:  the trek to Burning Man in Nevada can be long, but here in SL at Burn2, the journey is a lot easier. Rez a car and take a ride to the “playa” for supplies at the top, and then get a ride back down!
• John Huntsman: a personal installation.
• United Artists of SL: UASL is an art group that supports all artists and art venues of SL.
• Tempest Rosca: a personal installation.

Pizzazz

• The Adventures of An Artist in Second Life – SecondHand Tutti – a personal reflection of an artist’s journey through Second Life.
• My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies: Solkide Auer & Magda Schmidtzau – A 3D installation (requires Advanced Lighting Model to be enabled; this should not impact viewer performance).
• Virtual Travels – Van & Oema – an opportunity to explore Second Life through images by two of the platforms photographers.

Sparkle

If You Have a Sense of Distance by Kerupa Flow

An installation guaranteed to challenge your perspective! Rich in detail, it comprises numerous elements that will cause you to consider your cognitive abilities. Is the picture of a girl really what it appears to be? Why do floor tiles bend and sway when the lines between them all move at a constant speed? How can a floor be flat when it appears to roll like waves?

An engaging installation that fascinates at every turn, perhaps best experienced with your viewer set to midnight.

Direct teleport.

Further Installations Sparkle

• Iconoclast Literary Arts Garden – a celebration of poetry, short fiction and literary works associated with Iconoclast Productions. With spoken word stories and interviews are featured on the audio feed.
• Journey by Vanessajane66 – a personal installation.
• Pyramid by Mac Kanashimi – a 3D installation built using the toothpick sequence.
• Odysseus And You Vita Theas – Second Life parallels with Greek Myth.

Stunning

Phoenix Artists Collaboration

The Phoenix Artists Collaboration is a community of artists and their patrons working together to promote artistic expression and creativity through and in Second Life. For SL17B more than 30 artists in the group have each provided an image within the “PAC Motel” gallery. Some celebrate the SL17B theme, others provide a glimpse of the artist’s talents, all are eye-catching and engaging.

Drop into the gallery, enjoy the art – discover the artists by touching the images and viewing their biographies – and learn about PAC itself.

Direct Teleport.

Further Installations at Stunning

• Art & Fashion on the Road by Marea2007 Praga – take a road trip with sculptures and text from two books that viscerally deal with the topic: The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara’s and Jack Kerouac’s On the road.
• Centaur Gardens by Haveit Neox & Lilia Artis – a celebration of Haveit and Lilia’s work and a reflection of their Centaurs’ Halls in the Verdigris region.
• My Haven by Ilyra Chardin – “Second Life, for me, is a safe place to learn, experiment, develop and express my imagination with my art. It is my haven.”
• The Tudor Dining Room by Tahiti Rae – “Welcome to the Tudor dining room! Working on my genealogy for 4+ years, I have a strong affinity for the Tudors, as do many. I believe there is a reason we have the draw. Only time separates us. Or does it?”
• Watch us wash the planet: Melodie Heart & Barry Richez – an ecology-themed 3D installation.

Note: for convenience, all SLurls to core SL17B event spaces and Shop and Hop can be found at the end of this article.

Second Life marks its 17th anniversary in 2020, with a week-long celebration of music, entertainment, art and more across 23 regions, seven of which are given over to exhibits from Second Life residents and through the companion Shop and Hop event.

Events officially kick-off on Friday, June 19th, with the full opening of the SL17B regions, where celebrations will start with the SL17B Music Fest, and the Shop & Hop event. However, members of the Second Life Birthday in-world group can access the SL17B regions from Thursday, June 18th.

The following is intended to offer an overview to the main SL17B regions, including SLurls to core locations, and offer an overview to some of the events.

Fifteen of the regions are (or will be) given over to the main celebratory facilities, with seven more devoted to resident exhibitions. The main facilities comprise:

• The Auditorium – where you’ll be able to attend (among other activities) the Meet the Lindens sessions (more below).
• The Welcome Area – pick up your Linden gift and free Swaginator HUD to seek and find unique gifts scattered across the SL17B regions.
• The Main Stage – focal point for the SL17B Music Fest.
• The DJ Stage.

The Auditorium and Main Stage each have three landing points apiece, and the DJ has two – again, all SLurls can be found at the end of this piece.

In addition, the core facilities also include:

• The Tapestry of Time exhibition – more below.
• The Gift Area fun fair: grab an assortment of gifts and ride the rides – again, more below.
• The Dinosaur Park and the tram ride.
• The drive-in theatre, showing official SL videos.
• The beach and cove: sunbathe or take a swim – and maybe try some scuba diving

The best way of getting around is via the Teleport Maps, one of which is shown on the right. These can be found throughout the regions as sign boards, and the SLurls to the event regions given at the end of this article will generally land you close to one of them. Just click on an individual panel to be teleported to that location.

The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Road Trips and Vacations” – although the Lab have made it clear that exhibitors do not have to keep strictly to that theme; it is the participation that’s important. Many have, however, attempted to offer a reflection of the theme in some manner, either directly in layout and content, or through more subtle touches – Bay City Alliance, for example, offer the opportunity to discover more about their leading members within a bus station.

As is common for SLB events, the mix of content is varied, and the representation of interests broad. Role-play groups, arts, communities, are represented across the seven regions open to exhibitors; some are static, others are interactive in nature. Social and support groups like Survivors of Suicide, together with social events such as 1 Billion Rising, whilst some offer social commentary.

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Events and Activities

In terms of major events, what does SL17B hold? Well, the best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below. Use the Week / Month options, top right to change the calendar view. Major events are also summarised below the calendar.

Meet the Lindens

Now a staple of SLB activities, Meet the Lindens features the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of, employees of Linden Lab at 14:00 SLT, Monday 22nd June through Friday, 26th June at the SL17B Auditorium.

You can find out more about who is taking part this year in my blog post, Meet the Lindens at SL17B – who and when, however, the schedule for the sessions is given below for ease of reference.

Day (14:00 – 16:00 SLT)	Lindens
Monday 22nd June	Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Tuesday 23rd June	Patch Linden, Vice President of Programme Operations
Wednesday 24th, June	Oz Linden, Vice President of Second Life Engineering
Thursday 25th June	The Marketing Team
Friday 26th June	Meet the Moles!

In addition, you can learn more about staff at Linden Lab by following the the SL17B Employee Social Media Campaign available on the forums and through outlets such as the official Second Life Twitter account

SL17B Music Fest

The SL17B Music Fest will take place on Friday and Saturday June 19th/20th at the Main Stage. The line-up of performers is:

Time	Friday, June 19th	Saturday, June 20th
09:00		Oblee (Obeloinkment Wrigglesworth)
10:00		F L Y (Flyqueen)
11:00	Opening Ceremony: Patch Linden	Seli Blackmore (Illdoran Nightfire)
12:00	Mankind Tracer (Seth Regan)	Shagpile Spyker
13:00	Winter	Mimi Carpenter
14:00	Nina Setner	Rogue Galaxy
15:00	Joaquin Gustav	Effinjay (Jaycatt Nico & Frogg Marlow)
16:00	Marqs DeSade	Melly Faith (MellyFaith Heartsong)
17:00	SaraMarie Philly	Dude
18:00	Edward Kyomoon (Donn DeVore)	Gabriel da Silva Namir (Gabryel Nyoki)
19:00	Agatha (Agatha Nowles)	Skye Galaxy
20:00	Erin Frog & Satin Galli
21:00	Ry Anne (Oxoryanneoxo)

Other Points of Interest

The Tapestry of Time

First presented in 2018, the region-wide Tapestry of Time presents visitor with a walk-through of Second Life’s history from 2003 through to the present day using images, text and videos. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region to be of interest to the historically minded.

The Gifting Area Fun Fair

The SL17B Gifting Area offers over 150 gifts from the Birthday exhibitors and from merchants participating in the Shop & Hop event. Gifts include several exclusive breedables and other commemorative pieces to celebrate Second Life turning 17!

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Linden Homes Preview Region

Once again, the Second Life Birthday celebration will include a special preview of the next Linden Homes theme that will be released by the Lab. A teaser image from Patch Linden to his Flickr stream has set off a lot of speculation in the Linden Homes forum thread on whether the new theme is something like beach houses or a refresh of / addition to the original Traditional Homes theme released in the first batch of the Bellisseria Linden Homes.

Patch will only say people should await his Meet the Lindens session on Tuesday, June 23rd for more – at which point the new preview region will be dropped into the SL17B estate – and I’ll obviously have a report!

SL17B Shop & Hop

As well as the SL17B celebratory regions, there’s also the Shop & Hop event. Opening on June 19th and running through until July 12th, 2020, it takes place in the familiar Second Life shopping event mall. For SL17B, Shop & Hop covers 10 shopping regions, each with 20 stores per region, making for a total of 200 merchants in all. Each merchant will have at least a 20% discount on all items, and some will have a gift people can pick up for free either at their Sop & Hop store or at the SL17B Gifting Area fun fair.

Refer to the complete list of participating merchants for more – including store SLurls!

Advice On A Better Experience

The SL17B regions – celebratory and Shop & Hop can get exceptionally busy. To help ease the pain for you:

• If you have a high draw distance, reduce it to 128m (or less if required).
• Turn off shadows in your viewer if you usually have them enabled.
• Go to Preferences → Graphics and reduce the slider Max # Non-Imposter Avatars to a minimum.
• Remove texture-heavy HUDs to free-up more texture memory.
• To assist the simulator, remove unnecessary scripted attachments.
• If you are using Firestorm and still encountering issues, try going to Preferences Graphics → Rendering and:
  • If you are running a 64-bit version of the viewer, make sure Restrict Maximum Texture Resolution to 512px (will require a viewer restart).
  • Use the Max Texture Quality Level drop-down to set texture rendering quality to Mid.

SLurls and Links

SLurls will be available to members of the Second Life Birthday group on Thursday, June 18th, and to all Second Life residents from 09:00 SLT on Friday, June 19th.

Core SLurls	Exhibitor SLurls	Shop & Hop SLurls
Welcome Area	SL17B Astonish	Shop & Hop Destination Guide
Auditorium #1	SL17B Captivate	Aurelian
Auditorium #2	SL17B Electrify	Frosted
Auditorium #3	SL17B Incredible	Gilded
Main Stage #1	SL17B Pizzazz	Gleaming
Main Stage #2	SL17B Sparkle	Golden
Main Stage #3	SL17B Stunning	Halcyon
DJ Stage #1		Jubilant
DJ Stage #2	Meet the Lindens Destination Guide	Snowflake
Gift Area		Sugarplum
Pod Tours		Tinseled
Tapestry of Time		Participating Merchants

 

The 17th anniversary of Second Life’s opening to the public at large – SL17B – is just around the corner (official starting on Friday, June 19th, with a preview for members of the SL17B group on Thursday, June 18th). And, as has been the case with SLB events over the last few years, the celebration will feature a series of Meet the Lindens sessions featuring individuals and teams from the Lab discussing their work and Second Life.

The two-hour sessions run from Monday, June 22nd through Friday, June 26th, each one commencing at 14:00 SLT. They will be held in the SL17B Auditorium (SLurls at the end of this article), with the schedule lining up as follows:

Day (14:00 – 16:00 SLT)	Lindens
Monday 22nd June	Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Tuesday 23rd June	Patch Linden, Vice President of Programme Operations
Wednesday 24th, June	Oz Linden, Vice President of Second Life Engineering
Thursday 25th June	The Marketing Team
Friday 26th June	Meet the Moles!

For those who may be unfamiliar with some of the above names and their areas of expertise:

• Ebbe Linden, as the Lab’s CEO since 2014, really needs no introduction. Open and honest, he has always endeavoured to keep SL residents appraised of business at the Lab – and on the management perspective of running Linden Lab and its products (SL and Tilia Pay). Should anyone want a potted biography on him however, I offer the one I pieced together when he officially joined Linden Lab.
• Patch Linden oversees the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, and the Linden Department of Public Works As such, he oversees things like the development of the new Linden Homes continent, the Lab’s games and experiences such as Linden Realms and Horizons, and so on. He is also responsible for managing the Second Life team, and the account support team.
• Oz Linden oversees the engineering side of Second Life – this encompasses viewer development, simulator development and a lot of the back-end services required by SL (e.g. the asset service, the appearance and baking services, etc.). This includes managing the development and implementation of SL projects and features.
• The Marketing Team comprises: Brett Linden is the Lab’s Senior Director of Marketing, who has been with Linden Lab for over a decade; Darcy Linden, Senior Marketing Manager, Maveric Linden, Tara Linden and Strawberry Linden. Key facets of their work include promoting and marketing Second Life and the acquisition and retention of new users.
• Meet the Moles! introduced at SL16B, and gives Second Life residents a chance to learn more about the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works – other residents who work in support of Linden Lab and Second Life in a variety of ways (such as building the regions for SL17B) and are paid for doing so.

The sessions will be hosted by Saffia Widdershins, and will be streamed via the Lab’s channels on YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, and Periscope. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have a written summary of each session for those who find watching video / listening to audio difficult. These summaries will also likely include audio extracts of any key comments made.

Additional information can be found in the Destination Guide Meet the Lindens pages.

Auditorium SLurls

Note that all SLurls will not be operational until the official “soft” and “hard” openings of the celebrations.

• Auditorium #1
• Auditorium #2
• Auditorium #3