| Second Life Page |
To BURN2 |
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| 07 December 2012 | ||||||||
This year the Dreamland Red Rose Clan (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shax/64/226/24) joined in BURN2, the Second Life extension of Burning Man, a festival setting every year in Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Tens of thousands people are involved, creating from nothing a real town of creativeness with artistic installations and events, directly made by participants, and completely disappearing without a trace at the end. Both in reality and in Second Life, an almost nostop series of events and performances take place in addition to exhibited installations, reaching their climax in the man fire, the burning man, a regeneration rite reminding natives traditions all around the world that celebrate this way the link between men and mother earth and the cyclical nature of experiences we can make. The Burning Man was born in 2004 from an intuition of Larry Harvey who conceived the venture and drew up the ten values that identify this event. Everyone can join the Burning Man creating works as gifts and as such demanding nothing in return and not having commercial purposes. What matters is the inventiveness of people or groups involved, shown with complete freedom and respecting everyone. At the end all was built will be removed, leaving the place of the event as it was before its beginning, without a sign and friendly to the environment hosting all this. What aroused our interest , was just the “virtuality” of this event: both in reality and in Second Life pieces of work appear from nowhere and disappear in few days. And this is after all a good metaphor of life: we come into the world, we express our vital and creative potential and then we leave this place-event, bringing along only the sense of the experience made.
Considering that this year the suggested theme was Fertility, we immediatly thought to Yggdrasil, the ancient druidic tradition cosmic tree, simbolically representing universe and its evolutionary process. The idea was that visitors may experience a trip through four worlds (the four stages mentioned by ancient druids), travelling across Annwin, where inanimate matter and primeval roots are seated, moving to Abred world, that of shapes appearance, then in the world of Gwenved, the wolrd of our potential and bien-etre, up to the empty ring of Keugant, where the First Cause and the deep sense of everything are showing theirselves. The plan was rather challenging but, working in team, it has been an interesting and amazing experience. First of all we can say that Second Life provides great chances to creativity. Bits are a very pliant and versatile tool, and in this virtual world the switch from imagination to representation has a strong directness. An unusual depiction of the Life Tree has come out, turning it into a teleport system that allows travellers to go through the four worlds, finding in each of them pictures, interactive items and gifts. A symbolic trip providing food for thought on life virtuality and on its enigmatic meaning. A journey into the wonder of a fertile universe constantly generating new forms and new experiences, as in a cosmic essay to understand itself. We are not perfectionist builders, but the Burning mood is even this, to have the chance of giving body to our insights using expressive techniques available in Second Life, to learn while building, to try giving shape to our imagination's pictures. Here there are all types creations, made by people with very different skills and it is just this sensations of free creativeness to make this event really interesting.
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