Junction – Goole Opens Up in Second Life

On Sunday 7 November, Junction – Goole celebrated its first birthday – in Second Life. In case you’re not familiar, Junction is an arts venue with a theatre, cinema, café and workshop. In 12 months since opening it has brought cinema back to the town. It even has a School of Rock, for 12+ muso-hopefulls. On its birthday, Junction invited visitors to explore ‘Airborne’, an exhibition by artists-in-residence IOU, inside their even newer building, in Second Life (SL) & accessible by the magic of the interwebs. I logged on & got ready for the party (i.e. sourced new free hair from a SL shop and teleported to Junction).

Junction (SL) has been built by IOU, in painstaking detail to match its real world equivalent. I downed a glass of pink champagne & listened to speeches in the company of other human avatars and a horse, before sidling off to see Airborne. It’s early days here, but as Chris Williams, Junction’s Marketing Officer says, ‘..It puts Junction and Goole at the forefront of breaking boundaries, embracing technology and searching for new ways to reach audiences.’ He says that plans for the space are emerging, with potential for symposiums, exhibitions, community-programmed work; to host events curated by other real life theatres, and for the local high school to use the space for extra-curricular classes and workshops. Imagine that!

Now I’m not an expert, but I’ve spent some time in SL and it fascinates me; the incredibly detailed & imaginative spaces, the creativity & determination of its inhabitants to make it their own, the social & formal learning potential it offers, the chance to test progressive ideas in a low-risk environment; and the sorts of visceral, non-gravity-restricted experiences it can open up to people anywhere with a fast web connection. Surely this is the way much of the web will work in the future?

Second Life caused a flurry of excitement a few years ago remember? The San Francisco start-up allowed you to create a moving, walking, typing, flying character known as an avatar. In the guise of your alter ego, you could roam around a world realised by its inhabitants (and a bunch of techies from the start-up, Linden Lab) that is constantly changing shape as the furniture is moved – as people build, delete, re-build and so on.

Early on, the big corporations moved in, followed swiftly by a wave of media stories. Would we all get sucked in, stop washing ourselves, paying the bills, feeding the kids? Was this the apocalypse? There were all the usual thrills and threats, perceived and real, that go with a new, wild frontier.

Sex, probably the least interesting aspect of SL, seemed to obsess some critics, as though a natural segue from the UK publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the 1960s to the launch of this *depraved* new world. In summary, we were on the cusp of breaking humanity FOREVER because we would become obsessed with our taller, nicer-looking avatars and how much better they were at secretly pulling online while the real-life partner gets the tea-on…bla bla bla….

Meanwhile, a currency had evolved and the land-rush began, as investors swooped in for the good stuff. Others earned income from building houses or objects, by hanging around venues to make them look busy, or by exhibiting art that people could display in their virtual homes. The Daily Telegraph reported concerns over money-laundering. And in 2006, Second Life was reported to have a GDP of $64 million. The economics of this virtual free-market are fascinating in their own right. Read more here if you’re interested.

Museums, galleries and other arts institutions jumped in & good for them. The Liverpool Philharmonic delivered a real world live concert simultaneously in real life (RL) and SL with mixed success. Urbis mirrored the opening of ‘Hacienda’, its exhibition celebrating the golden age of Madchester. Talks, performances, gigs, parties & lectures took place…even Glastonbury Festival turned up and tuned in. Reuters embedded a journalist there.

Tim Guest, wrote a revealing book about meeting people with Second Lives. Unlike the knee-jerk media, he wandered off and uncovered some truly compelling reasons why some wanted to spend more and more time in SL, including a group of physically & learning-disabled adults who found it liberating to experience new places and meet people via a shared avatar.

Back in Second Life people, not just institutions, were knuckling down & getting creative. Architects wondered what it meant for building design; allowing their clients to examine a prototype fully before any bricks were even laid. The lack of weather in SL also means that rooves aren’t vital & the average height of an avatar is 8ft. In other words, space can be defined and used differently – experiments happened.

SL designers became increasingly sophisticated. The growing movement of Steampunk fans building their utopia there, created various worlds like New Babbage to illustrate their love of all things neo-Victorian; from airships to burning-barrel racing. Watch the 2010 Burning Barrel race here.

Rob Wright, aka Robbie Dingo, recreated Vincent van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night, as a 3D walk-around environment. Dingo’s astonishing ‘Watch the World’ was sadly gone in the blink of an eye, but it marked a leap forwards for how SL could be applied and rendered. Watch a clip here showing you around, or here to see ‘Watch the World’ being made.

Back to 2010. When I heard Junction was opening in SL I felt conflicted. On one hand, Second Life has been experiencing a lapse and general online ‘meh’ in recent years. People have moved out and on, citing reasons including Linden Lab’s *management*, the high price of owning land and the slowness or ‘lag’ experienced because Linden hosts the whole of this immense world on their servers. Other platforms are emerging…

But, despite the growing pains, I think Second Life can be a weird and wonderful place, and a natural environment for creative organisations like Junction to take risks and allow the unexpected to happen. We may know it by a different name in 10 years, but this here is one of the more remarkable mass experiments of our time. Until then, I hope more like Junction take a look at SL’s possibilities, and hats off to them for being the first of Yorkshire’s professional arts spaces (that I know of) to take the plunge. The doors are open – go get involved.

Notes

To visit Junction, SL: At the top of your Second Life viewer, click ‘WORLD’, and select ‘WORLD MAP’ from the drop down menu. In the search box (the box with the ‘Find’ button next to it) type ‘Nedben’ In the ‘Location’ boxes (there are three of these in a row with numbers in) type ‘248’ in the first, then ‘213’ and ‘112’.Click the ‘Teleport’ button to arrive at the front of Junction.

If you don’t have an avatar yet, go here to join in the fun. It’s easy: http://secondlife.com/

I am Banana Donegal on SL if you want to send me a message or say hi.

P.S. It’s easy to get to know what’s happening in SL via the web, blogs or YouTube if you prefer to maintain a distance rather than jumping in. Start by googling SL + YouTube.

*And on the subject of how SL might extend our experience of looking at art, here’s a video clip showing the Van Gogh Museum in SL, where you can step inside the pictures.