Category: Exploring Second Life

I’m starting this piece with an apology. In early March, Kika Yongho dropped me a note card about her new parcel Photo Café, which had just opened at that time. With all that’s been going on in the past month, the note card slipped down my “to visit” list to the point where I didn’t get around to popping along until Easter, a month after I’d received the invitation to visit.

Occupying a little under a quarter of a Full region utilising the private region Land Capacity bonus, Photo Café is defined as a place where Second Life photographers can socialise and participate in moderated text chat about all things related to photography and photographic art in Second Life. The location – and its related group ~ Photo Café – Photographers ~ is operated by Kika Yongho, Duraya Resident, Kapaan Resident and DaneAlbion Resident.

The setting is open to all to visit, with visits commencing on a sky platform where acceptance of the local Experience is required to progress. It sits as a disused railway cutting arcing between two tunnels in what might be a rain forest style of environment and with the second of the tunnels forming the teleport point to the ground on attempting to walk through it after accepting the local Experience.

The teleport leads to the “mouth” of the tunnel at ground level. Primarily designed by Violette Rembrandt and SL partner Lucifer Morningstar – the couple behind the Wonderland 2.0, a place I wrote about in November 2022 – the setting continues the tropical / rain forest theme whilst folding into it a sense of fantasy and other-worldliness in which strange giant fungi and floating islands vie with tall trees, tumbling falls, all watched over by a full Moon and a ringed planet under a blue, star-spangled sky.

Central to the setting is a huge and ornate gazebo – the unmistakable work of Elicio Ember – which serves as the focal point for meetings  and discussions, its floor area circled by chairs and sofas, the rule of debate / discussion mounted on boards. A small art garden forms the centrepiece to the gazebo whilst the columns and upper reaches are draped in vines and plants, helping it to blend into the surrounding landscape.

Within this space is a little secret, one that continues the fantasy theme. It’s not entirely obvious in nature. In fact when I cammed around the meeting area and saw what lay under it, I anticipated the teleport would lead down to it; so I was intrigued when I found myself high up in the sky, standing within one of Desert Blossom’s Void Dreamscape scene rezzing environments and a choice of over 40 scenes waiting to be rezzed. Getting back to ground level from the Dreamscape also had me a little mystified, as I didn’t spot any obvious teleport (although I did find the Flower Gate leading outside), so resorted to using Firestorm’s Teleport History to drop back down to the ground.

Oh? What’s that? How do you find the way to the Dreamscape? I’ll let you find that for yourself. All I’ll say is, ladders that appear to go down through holes may in fact go up. Also, remember, teleports here are experience enabled, so you may want to try walking on / through the ladder, rather than trying to touch-teleport (I had to bump into it a couple of times for it to work). How the scenes might be used is a matter of choice – but they do make interesting photography backdrops.

As well as the gazebo, with its curtain of waterfalls backing it, the location offers other places to sit and relax, including a beach house and – sitting high-and-dry on the rocks – an aged submarine.

I gather discussion groups are held every two weeks, on Saturdays at a noon SLT, with the most recent having been on April 8th. More information on the location and the group can also be found at the Photo Café website, where information on events and transcripts of past discussions can also be found by those interested in joining the group.

Once again, apologies to Kika for not writing about Photo Café any sooner.

SLurl Details

• Photo Café (Midnight Party, rated Adult)

Blue Finch is the name given to a Full private island designed by Second Life couple Grant Wade (GMi7) and Dianna Wade (DiaMi7) which has been featured in the Editor’s Picks and Nature and Parks section of the Destination Guide. A Moderate rated region, it offers a warm greeting to visitors:

Welcome to Blue Finch Ridge. Uniquely beautiful and enchanting. with a rustic warm quiet charm. Romantic hideaways but please No adult activity. Be respectful.

Blue Finch About Land description

This is a place of serene beauty, one which at the time of my visit lay caught in the colours of spring. It sits as if a part of a rugged coastline, a rocky island cut off from the surrounding hills of its brethren courtesy of the not-to-distant see having stretched its finger deep inland, flooding the lowland to surround the island, leaving it sitting within a deep inlet or bay, the main channel of which sweeps inward from the north-west.

Across the island and tucked into its south-east corner where it is sheltered by the nearby hills, sits the landing point, occupying a pier gazebo as it extends out over the water. It is here that visitors can join the local group, read about the region and offer their support towards the region’s upkeep and their appreciation of the settings or teleport directly to the event / activity areas within the region – but I obviously recommend using your pedal extremities to explore the setting – and take your time doing so.

As the About Land description notes, this is place to visit and appreciate for its beauty. Offered under a basic EEP day setting, the region is well suited to almost any daytime settings, and I hope the images here demonstration, having been taken using my default personal EEP settings.

Once across the bridge and on the island, there are numerous paths for visitors to follow, with stepping stones and bridges of various kinds ensuring the waterways cutting through the land do not hinder and path of exploration.

All of the paths lead to somewhere interesting, be it the little fishing hamlet along the south side of the island, the pottery centre up on a high plateau, the old castle that serves as the movie centre, sitting over a wide cavern forming the gateway to the north-side beach, or more directly down to the eastern beach. And this is barely scratching the surface of the region.

Throughout the region are multiple places to sit and pass the time, look-out points, the event spaces, and various public buildings where time can also be spent – my favourite being the little coffee house. And all of it is wrapped in an engaging soundscape.

However, this is not a place to be written about – it is a place that should be appreciated first-hand  – as such I’ll finish with a couple more photos and a strong recommendation you drop in and see Dianna and Wade’s work for yourself.

SLurl Details

• Blue Finch (Pottery Hollow, rated Moderate)

 

Shawn Shakespeare pointed out to me that, after a extended absence from Second Life, Small Town Green is once again open for visitors to appreciate.  This being the case I recently jumped over to take a look.

The work of Mido Littlepaws, Small Town Green (or Small Town, if you prefer) is a place which has featured in these pages a number of times in the pas. My very first visit being almost a decade ago (!) in the summer of 2013 – although I didn’t actually write about it until winter of that year. Further visits followed through until 2016, when the Mido halted her builds for a while, although Small Town Green re-appeared in 2019, which marked the last time I wrote about it.

To be honest, I have no idea if Mido has has iterations of Small Town Green between then and now, but I’m happy that I’ve been able to rediscover it thanks to the nudge from Shawn; Mido has a way of building highly attractive region settings which are fun to explore, with this one taking the form of two islands, hugged in the arms of surroundings hills.

The largest of these two islands has the landing point located on it, sitting on a curled tongue of land holding within it a small, round bay open to the outer waters on one side, where a wrought iron and wood bridge arches over a narrow neck of water. This curling spit of land touched the ruler-like wall of a raised tramway, itself separating the land from a pair of wooden piers, one of which offers the opportunity to take a kayak out onto the water – possibly the easiest way to reach the second (and smaller) island.

I admit that I initially took the smaller island to be a private home whilst initially exploring, and so didn’t pay it too much attention. However, it appears to be open to the public if you do opt to paddle over to it, and despite what looks like a little bit of unfinished landscaping, it presents a charming bath house reached along a lantern lit path overseen by a bamboo copse and bamboo fencing.

Back on the main island, a path follows the curve of the landing point’s tongue of land, offering two directions of exploration. The first runs west and then north, passing through a little field of brightly coloured flowers and past a ruined house with little places to sit and relax, and thence over the little bridge mentioned above. Eastwards, the path also swings to the north after a short walk, passing between tramway and an expanse of nanohana to offer a choice of two further routes.

The first is a grassy trail running between trees and sheltered by their boughs, and the second a waterfront boardwalk arcing around the bay’s inner shore and under the outstretched arms of sakura trees which have sprinkled their blossoms on the waters. Both of these routes recombine at a set of steps leading up to the arched gateway of a little town sitting on the north side of the island, the path linking with the one from the little bridge in the process, the two thus forming a looped a walk around the little inlet.

The little town carries with it a very western sensibility, comprising two cobbled streets that cross one another and are marked at their extremes by arched gateways under which the cobbles pass and end. Two pubs vie for attention at point the two roads cross one another to form an erstwhile town square, the signs of the hostelries staring at one another from opposite diagonals, possibly seeing who will blink first. They share the streets with a mix of business places, some backed by what might be townhouses. 

The majority of the builds here are, admittedly, shells, with the exception of two places of refreshment. The first is Murphy’s Old Ale House as it looks across the square at its rival. It boasts a cosy interior, complete with a little furnished apartment over it, reached by a separate doorway. Just down the street and alongside the steps connecting town to aforementioned looping paths, sits the Café Expresso 

Throughout all of this, there are numerous places where visitors can sit and pass the time during a visit, and it would be remiss of me not to suggest viewing the setting under its intended EEP settings (World → Environment → make sure Use Shared Environment is checked). It really gives this iteration of Small Town an extra sense of depth and romance.

SLurl Details

• Small Town Green (Smalltown, rated: Moderate)

Lex Machine (Archetype11 Nova) is back with another visually stunning region / installation which – as with all his designs – is sure to both engage and challenge the eye and mind. Occupying a Full private region utilising the Land Capacity bonus, this is again a build that offers visitors much food for thought: a journey through modern life and the potential for questions who – and where – we are.

Entitled Saturated, the installation involves a flat landscape which – in keeping with the region’s name – is saturated to the point of waterlogging as it sits just above the waters of the surrounding sea. From it springs, apparently at random, figures, statues, objects both familiar and strange, mixed with a scattering of vegetation.

Mermaids mix with radio / telecommunication towers mix with figures apparently in suspension and towers of static-filled video screens, whilst laptops and old computers lie discarded in powdery piles and figures stand with cameras and screens or radios in place of heads, the body of an automatic handgun points skywards, and more. It all seems so chaotic, so unconnected, so jumbled and surreal; what could be the connections between these disparate elements? Perhaps the easiest way is peek at the region’s About Land description.

Rain, it can bring life. But when the ground has had it’s fill, first comes damage, next destruction. Death is last. Are we saturated?
Are we better off with these constant inputs or was less more? When was the last time we savoured anything?

– Saturated’s About Land description

With these words, we gain a framework of context, one fleshed out by the landscape before us: a statement on life and our ever-increasing reliance on -addiction to – technology (perhaps most aptly defined by the figure “snorting” Facebook and the litter of computers and laptops and cell phones strewn over mounds of a white substance like some form of new cocaine), and the fears (re: the Terminator-style figures leaping out of screens of data) and polarisations it brings to our daily lives.

The polarisations might be best indicated by the family gathered to the north-east, where mother, father, and child all have heads replaced by screens symbolising the manner in which technology has reduced daily living and personal time to the need for everything in our lives to become a matter of public record with meaning only given through its presence on social media. At the same time, this demand to be publicly accessible contrasts with the ability of technology in enabling us to hide behind masks of anonymity, as represented by the figures wearing / carrying masks, or with Russian doll-like heads. Meanwhile, to the south-east, the figure stabbed with syringes suggests the divide generated by the easy passage technology gives to the passage of misinformation into our lives, warping our common sense against the realities of science and medicine.

Elsewhere the symbolism might be clearer such as the large eyes watching over everything like Big Brother – although whether we see this as the state or in the form of corporate goggling-up of our data (or both) is a matter of personal choice. But really, there is such a richness of metaphor to be found within Saturated, that trying to write about it is no easy matter. From the apple and serpent (our end of innocence? the beginning our our fall simply born by our coming into existence?) through the presence of mermaids and flying fish (the explorations of the unknown? the free flight of the imagination we once had?) to the reimagining of the March of Progress, there is so much to say that is difficult to translate into the written word.

Simply put, Saturated is – as with all of Lex’s builds – something not to read about, bot to experience for yourself – and I encourage you do do so.

With thanks to Moon Cloud.

SLurl Details

• Saturated (Golden Horizon, rated Moderate)

Yoyo Collas is back with a new Homestead region design for people to enjoy. Called Borkum, this is an easy place to visit and well suited for helping those of us in the northern hemisphere get ready for the coming of spring and summer and the inevitable thoughts of getting away from it all.

Borkum is a photogenic Island . A great place with many hideaways…time for feelings…dancing…time for two…lonely beaches all by yourself listening to music or enjoying the awesome people and views.

– Borkum About Land description

This is an easy-on-the-eye place to visit – as is the case with all Yoyo’s designs – offering an entirely natural setting in the form of a sunny island, largely given over to a sandy beach and grassy spine rising from south-west to cliff-edged north-east. The landing point sits to the east side of the island’s hilly back, the beach sweeping around it from east through south to west, the grassland rising gently up towards a little gathering of buildings towards the northern end of the island, the grass hiding a spread of lavender and yellow flowers which are the focus of the local sheep.

The buildings on the island suggest that this might have once been a place for processing fish prior to moving them on the mainland for sale. On the west side, sitting at the southern end of the cliffs, is a former industrial building, now converted into a comfortable apartment-style house, its cosy interior mixing with its slightly run-down exterior offering an attractive personification of shabby-chic, whilst facing a small shed or out-house across the lavender and yellow flowers.

This outhouse also appears to have undergone a transformation from what might have once been a storehouse to an artist’s retreat, a deck extending from its east side to overlook and overhang the run of the beach as it reaches the start of the cliffs. Further evidence that this might have been a working location sits below the warehouse-converted-to-a-home, where a small wharf has a trawler tied-up alongside.

Beyond the house, the grassland levels into a table of land pointing the way towards the candle-like white lighthouse with its bright red top. The land here forms something of a meadow where horses – a common and welcome element in Yoyo’s designs – are grazing peacefully, a fence along one side of the hilltop preventing them from going down into the shallow valley and upsetting the sheep (or vice-versa!).

Scattered across the island are many places where people can escape and relax – in the house, along the beach, out in the shallows just beyond the sand, among the horses as they graze or at the foot of the cliffs and so on. There’s also a kiteboarding rezzer located on one side of the islands beaches, but I confess that when I tried, the boards I rezzed refused to respond to my keyboard inputs; you might have better luck on your visit. Further around the shore from the rezzer is a little boat where those who wish can also try a little bit of fishing.

Peaceful and finished with an easy soundscape and with a local EEP which gives it the feel of a tranquil watercolour painting, Borkum is a delightful visit.

SLurl Details

• Borkum (Golden Place, rated Moderate)

I received an invitation from Clifton Howlett to attend the opening of his latest Homestead region build, and while I was unable to make the event on Saturday, March 18th, I did manage to hop over a couple of times over the weekend and take a look around. Working with Coralile Resident, Clifton is a region designer who puts together imaginative settings which offer places in which to retreat, relax, explore and have fun, each one a little different to the last.

With Forgotten Hope, Clifton and Coralile have come up with a most unusual setting. Hidden from much of the light of day yet still rich with natural growth, it takes a new turn in presenting both a place of mystery for those who like to create stories about the location they visit in-world, and a place where personal time and a little fun can be has for those just seeking to unwind.

A veil of darkness cloaks its mysterious depths, enticing explorers and spelunkers from far and wide to uncover the dark secrets it harbours. Amidst abandoned huts and a submerged ‘plane [you can] embark on an adventure like no other and immerse yourself in the eerie atmosphere of this enchanting location.

– From the Forgotten Hope description and opening invitation card

A journey through this underground location – quite where it might be is up to you to decide, but for reasons I’ll come to, I thought of it as perhaps a little twist on the Lost style of mystery – commences within a fairly nondescript cavern. Here, smoke from a slightly out-of-control wood fire pit is slowly – and doubtless suffocatingly – filling the space, encouraging people to seek escape through the arch of a tunnel to one side of the dome-like cavern.

Lit by a smaller fire held in check by a rock of stones, the tunnel floor is wreathed in creeping mist as it descends down roughly hewn steps and doglegs its way into a second chamber. This appears to have been long-used; chests of hand written scrolls sit against the round walls, together with barrels of who-knows what – dried food? water? both? – and stacks of candles and other signs of human occupancy. It is a place suggestive of age and darkness – if anything is to be gleaned from the scrolls at least.

An arch leads to a further small cavern where more oddments can be found – including, somewhat incongruously, an upright piano complete with stool and sheet music which all look in remarkably good condition. Both form a strange combination – the chests of scrolls contrasting with the piano and the heap of mouldering mattresses; however, the mystery of these caves is liable to fade into the background after passing through the wood door tucked to one side of this little dome of rock.

Beyond the door is a split in the rock, a narrow defile, a cave taller and somewhat brighter in natural light than those on the other side of the door, perhaps suggesting that daylight is not that far away – a feeling added to by the presence of vines on the walls. Someone has gone to great lengths to lay a path of carefully cut and placed logs to ease passage over the floor of this defile, complete with a hand-made ladder to help people over a rocky lip to reach the cave mouth beyond. This sits high up on a cliff face, the ground and surface of a body of water fed by water plummeting from further around the high cliffs and visible above the tops of trees. However, its is not open land, but rather a vast and high cavern.

Mist rises from the waters below the cave mouth to fold itself around the trees, and thin strands of cloud float around the cavern’s high roof, the sunlight which dapples the water falling through a jagged hole in the cavern’s dome, the stray clouds around the hole acting as a prism to break the light into finger-like beams of illumination pointing down into this netherworld of a place. In doing so they fall upon the element which gives this place a Lost-like feel: a partial carcass of an airliner broken and semi-submerged in the water and, perhaps the cause of the rend in the cavern’s roof.

Here is where more mystery grows: was it the people who survived the ‘plane crash who built the path lading back to the entry caverns – and the platforms with their ladders providing the way up to (or down from!) the high cave? Or were they merely the latest inhabitants of this strange world? The evidence of long-term habitation is intriguing: at “ground” level, there is a ramshackle cabin built into the remnants of a once massive tree; there are remnants of cut-stone walls suggesting ancient buildings; board walks and decks pass out over the shallow waters to connect with the the rest of this huge cavern space. Trees grow throughout, whilst a range of wildlife sitting beneath their boughs and amidst the wild grass.

If the cabin and other structures located here were built before the nose of the airliner arrived – then who built them? Who was responsible from shipping the large boiler system sitting within the corrugated sides of a ramshackle shed in the second large cavern? Is this a retreat from the world, or a place where people can end up apparently stranded by misfortune – or some form of strange experiment in the human condition? Maybe the weird hooded figure lurking within the setting has some of the answers; or perhaps you don’t find them important.

If you don’t, there’s more than enough to keep you occupied here – the large deck sitting over the water of the first of the big caverns is home to DJ events and dancing, whilst scattered throughout the caverns (and up in their rocky walls) are places to sit and cuddle or read a book, with sofa and wine available by the bottle whilst the local wolves, snakes and alligator are content to let people freely come and go without being in anyway bothersome.

A strange but engaging world, Forgotten Hope makes for an engaging visit and serves as a spark for the willing imagination.

SLurl Details

• Forgotten Hope (Mundo Virtual, rated Moderate)