Burning Life 2010

Burn 2

http://www.burn2.org/

Second Life’s Burning Life has always been a favourite few days of mine in-world and I thought it was over, finished, not happening again. Earlier this week  ( have been trying to write this paragraph for four days or more) out of the blue a friend TP’s me over to the new Burn 2 islands and I was instantly captivated again!

From the Burning Man website -
“In 1999, Philip Linden went to Burning Man, and came back with new ideas for the virtual world he was planning. Among them was the idea that humans abhor a blank canvas and will compulsively create form to fill void. They will provide their own content and entertainment and create a whole city (or world) when they are given permission and tools to do so.”

Phillip built Second Life and gave the resident the tools to create. Since then they have created a wonderful, artistic world. It is akin to what happens every year at Burning Man in the Nevada Desert when the real-world city of 50,000, is built by its citizens, who transport everything into the desert to build the community. Similar to Burning Man in Burning Life or the newly named Burn 2 there is a vast virtual desert covering six sims and made available to the residents of Second Life where they can go and build works of art, theme camps, art cars, music, performance, and there are usually several copies of the "Man." They have their work on display and being shared by the crowds for a few days but then cleared away with  the “land” being restored to its original condition.
From the website:

"This year's theme is "Metropolis - Civilization in the Desert." Exploration and expression of the urban reality in the style of Burning Man, where materials are trucked into the desert to build a temporary city that then disappears, leaving no trace."

The promo video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpitbiJq_lI and is well worth watching - it gives an overview of the whole thing.

I had not realized that a new event, BURN 2, was being run by a private community and is designed to be completely self supporting. I have been ignoring notecards, I realize that now ;-( There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all that I want to do and reading notecards that I did not realize the significance of went on the backburner :-)

My first visit, teleported by an avatar friend, Graham Mills, landed me in a circus area and The Stilts Bitches build with free costumes, stilts, unicycles etc.  It was wonderful and the result of very clever scripting, costume making and building work. Very enjoyable and quite mad :-) I can’t wait to go back. I really admire people who can create these wonderful artistic builds and write the scripts to make things happen, it is very clever!

There are so many very clever builds it is hard to choose photos to put on the blog. There are many more on Flickr and I will be adding to them through the next few days. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24572238@N02/sets/72157625225097522/.

See the two of us there enjoying the circus facilities: