New World Notes

Nemo Rises: Awe-Inspiring Underwater Steampunk City Inspired By Jules Verne Opens Today!

Today there is a place underneath Second Life seas that is not quite like anything you've seen: Click this SLurl link to visit Nemo, which as the name suggests, is a steampunk city inspired by that most original of steampunk novelists, Jules Verne himself. It's the work of Sextan Shepherd, who tells me he is a reporter in France's financial and economical press. In his off hours, however, he has been below the waves of Second Life, working over a course of nearly two months to make his vision of Nemo come alive. It is one of the most magnificent installations ever made in SL, full of rich details.

Take this clock in Nemo's exhibition room, for example, pictured after the break:

Midweek Machinima: The Mystery of Creamshop

In Second Life there is a place called Creamshop [SLURL], and though its main purpose is to be a retail store (homepage here), owner SAZAE Yoshikawa has fashioned it into something wonderfully strange, full of old-time nostalgia and nightmare at the same time. Someday I want to write about how profoundly odd and oddly beautiful it is, but for today, here's a machinima to suggest that sense:

What's the feeling you get when you visit Creamshop?

Deshima, New Roleplay SL Space Station Under Construction

Paulina Oceanlane of Who Let the Dorks Out explores Deshima Space Station, a massive, impressively detailed space colony still under construction but already boasting its own greenhouse and surrounding asteroid field. [SLurl teleport link] And what better way to explore it than as Paulina does, as a disembodied head with its own life support on a motorized unicycle? Oh yes.

I Like Banana's (Second Life Travel and Fashion Blog)

Banana Vella is the quirky name of a fashionista with a yen for SL travel -- and her blog is named the same. Amid sporadic fashion spreads, she lavishly illustrates her many travels in SL, and they're locations you'll want to visit too: say the underwater dreamland in Raimondo, the magical Bentham forest, and an island called Photon Pinks, "sim that looks like someone threw up candy all over it. I mean that in the nicest way possible!" Now won't you care for some Banana too?

New World SLurl: Visit the Alien Temple Island of Pteron

Direct SLurl to Pteron at this link

Last night at Lainy Voom's behest I visited the island of Pteron, which seemed to be an alien temple complex made from magic and jade. It's the creation of a Resident named Kei514 Flow, and it's ambient, ambiguous, and strange -- a wonderful place embedded with its own secret stories. As it happens, Ms. Voom recently added it to the Virtual Build Archive, which she compiles with Gala Charron. Machinima above, direct experience here.

New World SLurl: An Artists' Village Called Rendervisions

Direct SLurl teleport to Rendervisions at this link

Rendervisions is a lovely isle, home to a village of creators, and an immersive outcropping to a large online art community, called The Art Door. It is the work of Wynd Ling and Cherry Hotaling (above, at left and right), who I met just today on a cobblestone bridge above the island's waterfall, just beneath the spectacular steampunk store of Pandora Wigglesworth (which sits atop a giant robotic crab.) As we talked, a carriage drawn by a large bird occasionally passed by, as did an airship, gently drifting among the great trees.

And architect in real life, Ms. Ling first visited Second Life out of professional curiosity. "So I came and saw," she says, "and what I found was a land created all by artists, and I thought this was a perfect place to bring a community such as ours. So we did, and we teach the folks how to bring their real world skills here to become successful." She says her architecture background helped her realize the village of Rendervisions, home to artisan stores of the fantastic, such as Pandora's, and the airship overhead, scripted (as many of the other things) by Ms. Hotaling. However, in real life if you were to see her work, Ms. Ling tells me you'd see government buildings, university wings, and housing for the elderly; it's here in Rendervisions where her imagination gets unleashed. See for yourself: Direct SLurl at this link.

Nika Dreamscape Explores SL6B To Find Great Sites For You

Looking for great SL6B sites to visit? There's over 300 installations celebrating Second Life's sixth birthday, which is more than enough to prove the community's user-created content aspect remains strong, but as is often the case, also enough to totally overwhelm. NWN readers recommended several sites, and fortunately Nika Dreamscape is also doing excellent advance scouting through SL6B, documenting noteworthy installations with descriptions and photos. Here's her look at the Polaris installations; here's her tour through Cyro. (Above: Nika's pic of Nebula West by whyroc Slade: direct SLurl teleport at this link.)

Lainy Voom Archives Great SL Spaces With Machinima

Blackspot - Historical Ships and Adventure from The VBA on Vimeo

A couple months ago, machinima auteur Lainy Voom quietly launched an ongoing project with Gala Charron: the Virtual Build Archive, a growing compilation of great Second Life spaces, documented with machinima narrated by Ms. Charron. (Above, one of the latest videos, featuring Blackspot, a cove for authentically produced tall ships.) As with everything Lainy shoots, these are some visually arresting and gemlike videos, and the narration should further inspire you to visit and explore first hand. Though they may not know it, Lainy and Gala's Archive tracks nicely with a Stanford project funded by the US Library of Congress to document and archive virtual worlds, so they'll be remembered over the years. As we saw recently, obsolescence can suddenly come to even the best places in Second Life. See them all here.

Da Vinci Isle, a Second Life Locale for Romantic Exploration

Taking a break from fabulously covering events for New World Notes, Chestnut Rau takes up my challenge to explore and report on an under-appreciated Second Life sim. Her selection is Da Vinci Isle, a romantic island with an Italian flair (you can explore the place via gondola), with hidden nooks (such as "caves with bats and the best stalagmite and stalactites I have seen in SL"). I remember stumbling into Da Vinci recently, but don't remember how, and didn't linger long enough to see a fraction of its treats; Ms. Rau gives the place the appraisal it deserves. Go here for more pics, description, and of course, teleport SLurl.

New World SLurl: Drowsy, a Storybook Shopping Island

The island of Drowsy is a storybook town, a sprawling hamlet built around a seaside mountain, and it's full of wonders, nooks for exploring, from cobbled roads to a fairy meadow nearby, every detail rich with artistry and love.

It is actually a shopping island for the Japanese SL clothiers Kurotsubaki, BP, and Zero Number (I first read the announcement of its opening on the Kurotsubaki's blog), but the rich and textured details of the place demand you explore.

Consequently, it's the kind of place where fashionistas in high heels congregate alongside Kawaii avatars, and if you happen upon a couple of them floating along with balloons that lift you half off the ground, they're liable to give you your own balloon, so you can float too (to wit, below).