June 07, 2009

Getting my hands dirty again - my SL6B booth

People have been complaining that I was rather uncommunicative the past couple of days, did only reply sparsely to GTalk, did not show up a lot on Plurk and was rather busy in-world. The reason is that I was busy building my SL6B booth, and I am quite pleased with the process and result so far.

The theme of this year's SL Birthday Celebrations is "The future of virtual worlds". While exhibitors are encouraged to give their vision of the future, the nature of the 20 sims assigned for the expo are somewhat limiting. A barren, volcanic rock - supposed to be an asteroid - with dark ground textures. An sky featuring permanent starry night. And a grid of roads and paths reminding of the Bladerunner movie.

I initially had a different idea for my exhibition space, trying to build a futuristic version of the tower of Babel. But at the same time I wanted my contribution to be educational, so I needed some display room. Seeing my assigned plot and the atmosphere of the sims, the ideas started to float and almost automatically this type of museum-style building emerged.

One key feature about my building is the concept of "floating words". I chose the words "Language", "Culture", "Context" and "Understanding" in the major languages of second Life and have them floating around my space like bubbles in sparkling water. They are small enough and few enough to (hopefully) be not annoying.

Here is a closeup of me with some floating words around me. So this is what kept me busy the past days, and now I need to work on what I will show on the 32 display panels. What? Thirty two? PANIC!!!

3 comments:

Trinity Dechou said...

In between your panic for the 32 panels you should admire the build, looks excellent on this sim.

Well done
=)

Zitro said...

looks awesome from the pictures, ill try to visit as soon as possible! good job!

Anna J Tsiolkovsky said...

When I think of the future of virtual worlds, a barren asteroid in a night sky does not come to mind. What are they playing at?

Making readable panels in that dark environment is going to be a pain. Your build looks beautiful, and making the panels full bright just so you can read the text or see the picture wouldn't be fun.