Field trip to Avalon

With Fizik's permission I've posted screen shots from my recent tour of Avalon in Second Life.

The first three shots show the Mrs. Jones clothing gallery. An avid Mrs. Jones collection wearer was nice enough to model a few pieces for me. And yes, most of them would give the wearer very unusual tan lines in RL ;)

The remaining images relate to Avalon's artists in residence. They have living quarters and a sculpture garden with some interesting pieces. The most intriguing one is a cat surrounded by a flock of birds. It looks like a still sculpture, but Fizik told me it's actually a moving sculpture with an extremely slow motion setting. You can't see the sculpture moving but every time you come back it's progressed to a different position. The early 20th century Italian futurist movement lives on in 2L.

I didn't really get a shopping mall vibe from Avalon. The Mrs. Jones gallery was definitely commercial in the sense that there were logos and products prominently placed throughout, but it felt more like a funky SoHo boutique than your average American mall.

Comments

[magicback]

1.

Interesting, I really like the "Birds surrounds Cat" sculpture. It seems that Mrs. Jones is just another, but not a dominating, aspect of SL.

In RL there is a big risk of large retail concerns taking over the best location of any city and transforming the city center into a big retail outlet. It appears that the "cost of entry" is low enough that there can be a balanced variety of things to do.

In one of the shots I see people who appears to be in swordplay.

In the Synthespian thread I advocated financing of more creative works.

So, I guess what I am looking is for the middle ground between SL and RPGs.

Frank

[MM]

2.

I've been to Avalon, and I must say, the whole affair is really well done. The screenshots don't do it justice. Some of the sculpture there is just incredible.

[Betsy Book]

3.

In one of the shots I see people who appears to be in swordplay.

That was also a sculpture. The figures appeared to be frozen in action, but now I'm wondering if they were on the same time-delay that the bird/cat sculpture was.

It was definitely nice to see a commercial space in which the art seemed to take visual precedence over the retail store. It's more common to encounter the opposite situation. The best RL example I can think of is the Smithhaven Mall in Long Island which has an Alexander Calder theme. Calder was a 20th century artist who made large colorful mobiles and still mobiles called "stabiles." The mall is filled with Calder and Calderesque objects and the food court is even called "Calder Court" (lol) It's a really interesting mesh of high/low culture and has that sort of "let's bring some fancy-shmancy art to the masses" feeling to it. Avalon has a very different feeling. More like "art first, then maybe if you feel like it, do some shopping."

[magicback]

4.

Betsy,

Your comments reinforce my sense that SL is moving toward the trendy SoHo upmarket segment of online worlds.

I always wanted to run a cafe/art gallery/performance space when I retire. Perhaps I can open one in SL and be the first online digital artist to sell a piece of work in RL for US$10,000.

Fanciful wishing,

Frank

[Fizik]

5.

If anyone is interested, we do have a pdf with more information on the Mrs Jones experiment with Second Life.

available at:

http://www.riversrunred.com/redpapers.php

[Fizik]

6.

oh and we also have a web site dedicated to the Avalon project:

www.spacethinkdream.com

thanks

Fizik