June 2016 – Page 2 – Ciaran Laval

June 20, 2016

Second Life’s 13th Birthday Celebrations Are In Full Swing

The Second Life Community Celebrations to mark Second Life’s official 13th birthday are in full swing and there’s a lot going on, so much going on that for a visitor it may be a tad daunting, but fear not, there are ways of finding out what’s going on.

Your first port of call should be the Second Life Community Celebration Website because this will contain detailed information.

The website contains blogs, event information, region information and much more. Now an important thing to note here is that there’s a hell of a lot going on and this is useful to know because it means that if you find a region is full and you can’t get in, there’s a very good chance something else will be going on at the same time and you may very well be able to get into that event.

As an example, Monday’s schedule for 4pm SLT (16:00 SLT) offers :

DJ Tarantula Bombastic – DJ Stage
Live Reading Of HP Lovecraft – Auditorium
Maxx Sabretooth – Cake Stage
Retune Resident – Live Stage
BubbaC John – Stage Left

So there’s a mix of DJ’s, live music and storytelling at the same time, so plenty of choice.

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June 19, 2016

Second Annual Medieval Faire To Benefit Relay For Life Runs Until June 26th

The Second Annual Unmasking a Cure (UAC) Medieval Faire opened on June 17th and runs until June 26th. The event is a fundraiser for Relay For Life in Second Life and items will be on sale for that purpose with all proceeds from those sales going to Relay For Life.

The faire is in the style of a renaissance faire and activities include jousting, en garde, sword play, magic, archery, and horse racing. There will also be entertainment with a dozen live performers and numerous DJ’s entertaining the medieval masses.

There are over 50 merchants participating at the faire too so if you want to kit out your avatar or just take a look at the wares available, this may be the faire for you.

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June 17, 2016

Second Life’s Thirteenth Birthday Celebrations Start This Sunday

Time machine time, back to the annals of history, all the way back to June 23rd 2003 :

Residents and prospective residents,

Welcome to Second Life!

I am pleased to announce that today, Monday June 23rd, we are releasing Second Life version 1.0, and opening the service for general availability.

We’ve been able to reach this milestone through a combination of very hard work in creating a unique new technology and product, and the amazing efforts and engagement of our Early Creators and beta residents.

A ‘ball-drop’ ceremony was held in-world last night to celebrate the release.

Along with the many early residents of Second Life, let me salute our entire team of ‘Lindens’ for bringing this amazing experience to life. It has been a tremendous effort and, well worth it.

Philip Rosedale
aka Philip Linden

With that, Second Life was officially born. This Sunday, June 19th at noon SLT (12:00 PDT I think!) the doors will open for the Second Life Community Celebrations to mark Second Life’s 13th birthday! Hurrah!

The brief version of the schedule is :

Sunday, June 19, noon SLT: Opening Day
Thursday June 23: The Birthday
Sunday, June 19 to Sunday, June 26: Sims open with performances
Monday, June 27 to Sunday, July 3: Sims open for viewing, no performances
Sunday, July 3: Staff party
Monday, July 4 to Wednesday, July 6: Breakdown
Thursday, July 7: Sims go offline

However that’s a very brief version of a celebration that will involve DJ’s, Live Music, Panels, Entertainment, Interviews and much much more.

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June 17, 2016

All The Old Paintings On The Tombs They Do The Sand Dance

Whilst reading last week’s Highlights from The Second Life Destination Guide I noticed a place called Plagues of Egypt. The blurb informs us :

Explore this Egyptian-themed build representing the Egyptian plagues circa Moses and the 10 Commandments.

So I decided to go and take a look.

The location is a parcel named Xiao Tiangang on a region called Devils Mind. This is certainly an atmospheric parcel and I found myself sliding my feet on the street, bending my back, shifting my arm and then pulling it back.

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June 15, 2016June 15, 2016

LaTurbo Avedon Talks To ArtSlant About Art And Digital Existence

Christian Petersen over at ArtSlant has published a great interview : The Wednesday Web Artist of the Week: LaTurbo Avedon. This is an interview with digital/virtual artist, LaTurbo Avedon but what makes the interview great for me is that it goes beyond artwork and delves into areas of avatar identity, creative spaces and much more.

I speak a lot about how good Draxtor Despres Drax Files : World Makers series is, because it gets to the real physical person behind the avatar, but Christian highlights another way of how avatars can evolve and how lines between the physical and virtual world can blur :

The artist LaTurbo Avedon may be a computer-created avatar but she is very much alive. Her identity has been created through very real experiences and interactions over numerous websites, social platforms, and gaming consoles. The notion that there is a “real” person behind the avatar becomes increasingly meaningless as the division between all of our online and IRL identities blur and dissipate.

That’s a fascinating way of looking at how avatars can evolve. LaTurbo Avedon has evolved via many platforms but she has deep roots in Second Life which go all the way back to 2006 and in her time in Second Life LaTurbo built and ran a club, which exemplifies a strong engagement with the environment because running clubs, even in the virtual world, is not as easy as some may think.

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