Open Forum: What's Burning Life Mean In Second Life's Post-Burning Man Era?

On the Linden's official blog comes news that there will, after all, be a Burning Life 2008, fifth in an annual tradition, an impromptu, temporary art community created and then disassembled in a vast virtual desert expanse, running parallel to the real world Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert.  Phaylen Fairchild created an evocative machinima promo for BL 2008 here.

Of course, when Philip Linden announced he was stepping down as CEO, my immediate take was, "The Burning Man era of Second Life is over." Creating a world where new users were dropped into a confusing, strange place surrounded by eccentric and creative avatars of all shapes and sizes helped foster a passionate, tight-knit community of early adopters-- but it was also an impediment to Second Life's growth, which reached a plateau of 550,000 monthly active users last year.  (As famed as Burning Man is, last year it was only attended by 47,000 people-- miraculous for an arts festival in the middle of the Nevada wasteland, but not necessarily the best role model, if you're trying to create a virtual world accessible by anyone with a broadband Internet connection.)

You can see the distinct cultural shift in the way Philip Linden's replacement, M. Linden, talks about Second Life. Philip is apt to talk about transformations in human consciousness and even immortality, as he did at the end of my book; when I interviewed M. last month, by contrast, his focus was more on the first hour user experience, streamlining the interface for the average person, and practical "use cases" of Second Life, for education and corporate enterprise applications.

All that in mind, what's the meaning of Burning Life in its fifth year?  In 2003 and a couple years afterward, Burning Life was a central part of the culture, but the last couple years, it seems to have receded, as the world grew in cultural diversity, and non-Linden events like The Garden of NPIRL Delights came to the fore.  Is there still a role to play for an official site for creative improvisation?

Update, 5:55pm: The excellent In Kenzo, Burning Man and SL habitue extraordinaire, has rich thoughts on both in Comments.

Comments

[evonne ~inKenzo~]

Interesting. I'm looking forward to participating in Burning Life for the first time as an artist this year.....for the last five years I have been embroiled in the Burning Man art scene as a curator and artist liaison producing hundreds of RL art pieces. Last year my job was to climb hundreds of sculptures and interactive installations and make sure that they were SAFE for the public. In Second Life we do not have these limitations....lighting, fire, pyrotechnic safety, kids who break their back climbing sculptures late at night....it just won't happen that an avatar will die at Burning Life. At Burning Man, people do get hurt....I still have a broken coccyx from 2002. So viva le burning life....no more broken bones! I hope that Burning Life takes one thing that BM does close to heart.....create a COHESIVE CITY that people can navigate! At Burning Man we GPS every piece of art on the playa and we make it very easy for everyone to find everything. My voice is on the Burning Man art tour every year and anyone can download MP3s and hear me yap about the great installations. Burning Life should be 10X as good, considering what tools we have at our disposal. There's no reason why live art should be any better than virtual art! That's the power of NPIRL.

This year at Burning Life we are creating a model of a large scale installation that will be built and will travel around the world in 2009 for arts and music festivals. It is a sound, power and light generation installation with unique interactive elements that we cannot begin to mimic in SL....the true amazingness of some art cannot be captured in virtual space. Still, SL works as a great model-builder, a place to get the artists working together beyond pencil and paper before we try to build a 40' temple made of pure power.

[Ann Otoole]

I hope it turns out well. I think they need serious help with communications though. I can't figure anything out about it except there is the usual anti-LL effort getting going the moment the blog announcement was posted. There are multiple web sites all purporting to be official and one has a camp lotto with the entry buttons disabled.

At the moment it looks rather amateur. Someone who knows how to lead a Burning Life thing, preferably someone that knows a lot about burning man from being there, go lead this to success please. Some of us don't know diddly about burning man and even less about burning life. I think this event warrants a much more diligent effort at communicating.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

This Burning Life has an added political element, in that I believe that it is LL's chance to demonstrate that Linden/resident events really can be properly managed and not fraught with censorship issues.

As we all know there were a lot of complaints about various prohibitions at SL5B, and also there were many about the previous Burning Life, neither of which are worth repeating here, given that they are all fully documented still on the Aethernet. Many people have been expressing opinions along the lines of "I will not be participating in a Linden-run SL6B, if I do anything it will be organised and run by residents only".

This Burning Life is absolutely crucial in determining whether that becomes the popular sentiment, or whether residents - or those residents that are aware of history - abandon the idea of artistic collaboration with LL. It really needs to avoid _any_ hint of censorship, minimise any restrictions to the least permitted by law and make those explicit from the start.

[Trinity Coulter]

Dusty Linden knows a lot about Burning Man and Burning Life, Vicero Lambert (who has been working on technical infrastructure for months now) does as well. On that basis, you might assume the event will be successful.

It will be successful. There's no doubt. But the problem I see more often now is not whether these events are really successful, but if they are actually building community and strengthening Second Life. As Prok recently pointed out in the new FIC list, some people appear to be on the Lindens "good list". Even if there is some reality to such a list, membership in it is very tenuous. The problem is that despite the Tao of Linden forbidding politics, its very clear that politics is VERY alive at Linden Lab.

Its forbidden for a reason. Because its hurtful to the mission. Always. Whether its Linden-to-Linden or Linden-to-Resident.

Gwyneth Llewelyn had an excellent post about this trend (or percieved trend) in her blog recently http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/06/19/the-sl5b-drama-crowdsourcing-fiasco-or-devious-plan/

My question to your readers might be, what do you do with your time in Second Life, and where do you see it going?

[GavinLeigh Wake]

It's hard to tell so early on how the festival will develop, and how it will come across. I always hoped that the important values were those of freedom and experience.

For those newer members to SL's community it's an opportunity to build without having to own land. A chance for something different. Plus people get to see a cross section of avatar work from across the virtual world. Because the event is not sponsored corporately there is some freedom to create things people want to build, and not what they are expected too. Oh and yes I have taken my clothes off at Burning Life... something I don't do elsewhere.

Am I happy with the way this years event has been developed... Not 100%. Will I give it a chance... Yes. As to what significance Burning Life 2008 holds for the future, well that has to be seen.

[Ann Otoole]

I see Dusty has performed a great work of communicating with the maturity policy for the event. Hopefully this will cut off at the knees the hostility against the event and we can all enjoy a great Burning Life 2008.

[Harleymc homewood]

Once again Linden Labs are doing their best to render Second Life irrelevant through their promotion of Burning Life 08.
The promotions for this event are themed American Dream and the imagery is tied up with the flag of the "United States of America" and written in English.
So what's the problem?
1 Most Americans have Spanish as their first language, followd by Portuguese.
2 The majority of Americans are not residents of the "United States".
3 How alternative is it for anyone who is not a citizen or resident in the "United States" to aspire to an stars and stripes American dream? Amswer not at all!
US cultural hegemony is NOT alternative.
Burning Life? Just say NO!

[Katt Linden]

The theme of Burning Man has nothing to do with any theme for Burning Life.

I'm sorry that you don't care for the Burning Man theme, Harleymc, although I'm pretty sure it was intended to be very tongue in cheek -- but it isn't related in any way to Burning Life.

Thanks,
-- Katt Linden

[sharici magic]

Nevada wasteland? Your mama.

:-)