This week’s Highlights from the Second Life Destination Guide has a host of attractive looking destinations, but I had to start somewhere, so I started at The Vordun Museum and Gallery. The blurb tells us :

The Vordun Museum and Gallery is a new art and history experience in Second Life. Featuring the use of experience keys, visitors can get a real life feeling of being at a museum. Three new exhibits will be featured at The Vordun, featuring various art by masters and Second Life residents, and a historic Titanic experience.

Inara Pey has already posted an excellent review : The Vordun: a new art experience in Second Life. I heartily recommend that you read it, but I will say that the experience does largely live up to the hype.

There are currently three exhibitions on offer; European Masters, 300 Years of Painting, Lip Service, which will run until September 19th and A Night To Remember, a Titanic experience and I mean that as in, it’s about the Titanic ship.

The three exhibitions provide different experiences. The first, European Masters, 300 Years of Painting provides the visitor with a HUD and also makes use of Second Life’s experience keys feature.

The HUD has a number of clickable buttons which will serve two purposes. The first is that it takes control of your camera to direct your screen to the painting in question. The second feature is that an audio commentary then plays which gives you background information on the painting.

This works incredibly well and provides for a pleasurable experience. You can of course opt not to use the HUD and just view the paintings yourself, but the HUD definitely adds richness to the experience.

A Night to Remember is, as I said earlier, a Titanic experience. This is a historical experience and also, an interactive one. You will be offered items, such as a passenger card which will later provide you information about that passenger. This can be worn and you will see the name of the passenger as well as which class they were travelling in.

This is a poignant and extremely well presented experience.

Lip service is an art exhibition, covering, not surprisingly, lips. The artist, Celeste “Jim” Forzwy is, we are told, a 28 year old artist from California and the exhibit is interesting. The fact that The Vordun showcases original Second Life artists as well as exhibitions that contain content that is known further ashore than the virtual world is an extremely welcome addition.

On top of all this there’s also a gift shop from where you can buy merchandise related to the exhibitions.

This is an extremely well presented venture, it is a well designed venue and contains some interesting content that demonstrates that despite being over thirteen years old, Second Life is still a platform with great innovation.

This is a venue that is well worth visiting, even if you decide that the interactive options aren’t for you, it’s worth just looking around and enjoying the ambience and design.

SLURL To The Vordun Museum and Gallery : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fancy%20Decor/153/108/26/