REMEMBERING 9/11 IN SECOND LIFE

Six years ago today, Liam Kanno was in downtown Manhattan on a perfect morning, when the sky ripped apart.  He was three blocks from the World Trade Center when the planes went scything in, and as the buildings and ended lives collapsed around him, he stumbled into a stranger's house to survive.  Shortly after 9/11, he quit his high paying advertising job, abandoned his luxury apartment several blocks from Ground Zero, and returned to school, to study humanities.  He traveled the country, visiting remote monasteries, and painted.

Liam Kanno portrait by Rik Riel

In this striving, Liam submitted a design in New York's official memorial competition, and though the winner was selected in 2004 (bureaucracy being what it is) the real world site is nowhere close to being finished.  But there was another call for designs, this from Winfried Ferraris and Sundra Petrov, who had just taken ownership of an SL island they called World Trade Center, and were looking for a memorial to host there.  Liam created a new design, and this one was built.  Stark, elegant, and austere, it's perhaps an ideal testament to Liam Kanno's six year search for deeper meaning. 

Its center is a reflecting pool, surrounded by four obsidian walls which list the names of the dead, set off by intermittent rain, and the warm glow of an eternal sunset.  The above video is a very imperfect glimpse of the memorial.  Instead, clicking this SLURL link will teleport you directly to the site.

Sundra Petrov and Faction Starostin

When I first visited the World Trade Center site over the weekend, in large part due to powerful posts by Aleister Kronos and Rik Riel, visitors were already trickling in.  (The official opening is planned today-- event listing at this link-- at the very moment when the first plane struck.)  Many who came stopped to lay flowers, wreathes, and other tokens along the wall, and as I toured it early this morning, the site was already ringed with these.

"Most of the time visitors don't say much," Liam tells me.  "They change their clothes into gray suits and dresses, and talk about who they lost. They visit the names on the walls, and give each other hugs.  So from the virtual reality aspect, it's amazing to see that SL can be used to help others share and express."

"Watching the massive towers fall was unlike anything I've ever seen," Liam continues, explaining his design. "The scale was immense, and I wanted to give as much scale to this build as possible... still, at the same time I had the intention of making it as intimate and private as possible, and wrap the visitor in the space."

Unlike Maya Lin's Vietnam memorial, which this evokes, the names of the fallen remain at a close remove, just out of reach.  "Personally for me, when I saw the people fall from the towers... the biggest thing for me is that I could do nothing ot help them... they were there, but no one could catch them.  So in the design I have in-world there is about a three foot gap between the names and the walkway."

With memorials, there is a temptation to clutter the experience with information and effects, as if to force a preconceived reaction from the visitor.  (Especially true of virtual sites, where building costs are so low.)  This wasn't how Liam Kanno created his.  "My main goal was to be considerate of others experiences, and not overpower them with architecture.

"I felt that by showing how the 2996 names occupied space," he says, "that would be enough."

Winfried Ferraris and Sundra Petrov say they intend to make this a permanent memorial, and there is a donation box at the location, to help fund its hosting.

Comments

[Aleister Kronos]

A fine post.

[CS Kappler]

Love Liam’s work. He was in the original 2004 WTC memorial competition.

http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/ent/entI=832739.html

as was I.

http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/ent/entI=858907.html

Both visions evolved, responded positively, to the oportunities available to design and express in materials that do not exist in Real Life — for example phantom textures, holographic solar systems, glow effects.

Already, the value of Second Life as a laboratory for architectural design has been proven many times over; firms can assemble in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost, renditions of RL designs.

In our own memorial project, we chose to step past what was possible in Real Life, and incorporate phantom textures and holographic effects into our design.

The other advantage in SL is mutability; our architecture is expected to change, so there is little reason to create a structure, any structure, that is intended to be wholly static. To do so leaves a great deal of value on the table. Our project will change over time, which was the intent of my original design submission back in 2003.

9/11 is many things, and many memorials.

I’ve said this elsewhere in solemn words…

http://www.slnn.com/article/wtc-speech/

…and in simulated stone

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Celestial%20Requiem%20NYC/143/122/21

All regards to all the builders of all the many memorials in Second Life, and to all the many, in all the worlds who have yet awakened from the fitful nightmare that shrounds their hearts, and seek some measure of comfort and hope.

If any memorial, if all of them combined, help but one heart rest easier, and look up again to hope, then our collective works are well worthwhile.

[Erbo Evans]

I just had an opportunity to visit the memorial myself. Danielle doesn't want to visit at all--it's too painful for her--but I sent back some pictures. I had to TP out myself after a few minutes, as it was starting to get to ME.

I was left thinking the same words I posted on the day itself, over at EMinds...six words I will always remember:

"Never forgive. Never forget. Never again!"

[John Branch]

I admire what I can see here of Liam's memorial design (I'm not yet in SL), particularly the three-foot gap between the walkway and the wall of names. There's an unbridgeable gap between us and those who died at the WTC on Sept. 11, 2001, and this seems to me a fine way to represent that.

I'm curious about something, which I might be able to work out for myself if I did some research into the statistics. Actually two things. One is the reliability of that figure of 2,996 names. I got the impression some years ago that it was impossible to be sure exactly how many people died; since there was no question of just counting bodies, it became a matter of collecting names, and there may have been people in the buildings (undocumented immigrants, e.g.) who weren't known to be there or who weren't reported for some reason.

Another question is whether the names of the hijackers are included. Clearly, most of the people who died were killed as a result of the hijacking, but it's possible to say that the hijackers themselves were victims of noxious metaphysical beliefs that drove their actions. So it's possible to count them among the needless deaths, if one takes the view that their noxious beliefs were a necessary (though not sufficient) cause of what happened. Yes, I hold those 19 men responsible for the mass killing that day, but I count their own deaths among the losses. Does anyone else?

[Mike@]

Nowadays the memorial is almost empty most of the time. But I go there frequently anyway, to spend a few minutes of quiet contemplation and thinking, specially when something makes me mad in RL (or SL).

John B, you're saying the perps death is a "loss" ?

I think I'll go to the memorial right now.

Mike@
http://articulos-interesantes.blogspot.com/search/label/Second%20Life