Our Camp Got Finished for Burn2

We got finished. Whoo. Three levels with graphics and some freebies

Problems...there are a few

1. lag lag lag...takes a while for the textures to load, it's hard to move around, and music streams can't be heard by everyone at the party. SL has got to do something so events can attract more than a couple of people without everyone being stuck in lag soup.

2. Most people so far have been paying attention to the artists and scheduled music. I understand that attention..the art is gorgeous and well worth seeing. We had fun building...and that's all that's really important.

The first floor is the rites of committal...a passage tomb filled with items found in tombs in different cultures. There is a statue of Anubis, images of modern funerals, Indian cremation pyres, and Ghanese art coffins.

 The second level is rites of commendation...items and images of things we do to help the dead move on to or have a happier afterlife. There is voodoo and a senet game and images of the weighing of the souls by Anubis.

The third level is rites of commemoration...celebrations in honour of the dead. We have a family ancestor altar and images from the Day of the Dead and Asian festivals honouring the dead, including the Japanese Obon festival's ceremony with lit floating lanterns. There's a reincarnation wheel - click on it to see what you will come back as.

Burning Man in SL

I bought a plot with my machinima buddy, Marc, on the playa for the SecondLife version of Burning Man. We're also in the lottery to win a couple of additional plots. You can check out their webpage at http://www.burn2.org. The image is from their blog to announce the theme...Rites of Passage.

Marc & I previously discussed studying memorials in SL - so one idea for our camp is to look at rites of passage involving death. This idea, of course, put new life in the machinima I was making about death of the human behind the avatar. If we can finish it, we hope to show it at our camp. It depends on how the plots are set up...we might not be able to control the media settings, especially on a little plot. It's a good idea tho.


For me, being in this event is kind of a rite of passage. I've been moving from content consumer to content creator in SL.

• I used to make sculptures for me; now I have a store where I put them up for sale along with houses that I build. I'm learning about communicating in different ways in world.
• I used to watch machinima, laughing at the Divas and marveling at the art. Now I'm acting in them, recording voices, and writing and directing. 
• Last year we visited the camps, watched them burn the man - we went as spectators. This year we will be part of the action. This camp will be something we create. We will make things to give away. We will share the "death machinima" , as we call it. 

It's still a long time till the event. We don't even get our plots assigned till the end of August! Arggghhh. We need to decide if we're going to volunteer for one of the departments to help during the event. It depends on our plot idea develops. One involves a lot of updating throughout the day and interacting with the people who walk by - that might cut down on the volunteering.

We also discussed making some machinima there at the SL Burning Man. It would be interesting to see what you could record in one take with no editing. Or play around with a news format and have "man on the street" interviews. There will be live performers and street theatre and avatars dressed in their best weird outfits. So a lot of opportunities to shoot and practice editing (for me...Marc is already experienced)