New World Notes

Top Four New World Notes Posts from Last Week

• Linden Lab Attempts to Cut Second Life Land Loss By Significantly Cutting Setup Fees (But Not Monthly Tiers)
• SL/RL Artist: "The SL Art World Isn't Pushing Hard Enough"
• An SL/RL Art Installation on the US Right's War on Women
• Linden Lab Won't Likely Lower SL Land Tier Rates Due to "Economic Realities"

Linden Lab Won't Likely Lower SL Land Tier Rates Due to "Economic Realities"

UPDATE, 11/21: Bumped up for Comment activity.

I didn't attend the first live broadcast of Lab Chat, a co-production of Linden Lab and various Linden Lab promoters/paid consultants, but Ciaran Laval did and has a report, including this notable point that was discussed by CEO Ebbe Altberg:

In terms of Second Life and land, Ebbe said that Linden Lab were continuing to look at options for land, but there were some economic realities for Linden Lab that had to be taken into account when it comes to Linden Lab making changes. Therefore, slashing tier remains an option that is not really viable, Ebbe didn’t say that, but reading between the lines, that’s the reality at the moment.

The "economic realities" being this:

An SL/RL Art Installation on the US Right's War on Women

Click her to visit a new Second Life art installation called "Too Many Flowers" by Nebulosus Severine, a longtime metaverse artist who's back creating works after a long hiatus. As it happens, her installation is being streamed directly into a Malaysian art gallery right now, at a show called "Circle Jerks". Despite the title, the installation is essentially about the years-long war the American religious right wing has directed at women's rights, so as you'd imagine, the imagery is fairly disturbing (if vividly realized):

SL Flickr Stream of the Day: Cypriss Hill is a Gamer's Delight

An SLer named Cypriss Hill has created a Flickr stream that is an unending cascade of beautiful gamer-style badassery full of face punching and things that explode and go pew-pew so you really should just check it out right.

Hat tip: Caitlin Tobias, who first told me about Cypriss Hill. Speaking of which, I now have this stuck in my head so thanks for that:

There's 1,680 Second Life Blogs... Almost All About Fashion

Via occasional NWN-contributor Canary Beck, this impressive summary of the SL ecosystem:

I’ve charted our most recent Blogging Second Life statistics and can share that 86.8% focus on Second Life fashion. The total number of blogs in the list are 1,680...Long-term readers of this SL Blogger Support may recall seeing similar numbers in March 2015, which showed similar proportions. At that time, nearly 87% of Second Life blogs in our database were about fashion, with 1,308 blogs listed at the time.

Not sure all of them are still monthly active SL blogs (i.e. with at least one new post in the last month), but that's a staggering number. Also, back in 2009, here's how many SL blogs were counted:

SL/RL Artist: "The SL Art World Isn't Pushing Hard Enough"

"The Second Life Art World Isn't Pushing Hard Enough" is a great rant from SL artist Aemeth Lysette, who is also a pretty accomplished artist IRL, laying out the reasons for that title. Such as:

Exhibit A: Second Life has missed its own honorary party in the mainstream art and fashion world. When’s the last time anybody pursued somestill life shots like this? Or this? That’s a serious callback to SL and our snap-to grids. When’s the last time you saw a virtual body of work like that? This is the kind of aesthetic we’ve seen with vaporwave, with past fashion collections, and nary a fuss was made on the grid about this at all. How? And why? When did we become so blind to what the rest of the world was doing that’s clearly inspired by us?

Exhibit B: Most of what is considered fine art and put on a wall is not fine art. Blogging pictures are great and can still be art, but that’s like visiting a gallery, expecting to see fine art, and seeing a bunch of Annie Leibovitz shots and no paintings. That’s what we have. A lot of Annie Leibovitz and Vogue editorials. Where’s the work commenting on the culture of the game, the administration, making fun of ourselves and talking about how we relate to one another? We can’t call ourselves a proper society until we have art like that.

Much more here. The thing is, lots of actual, well-respected artists have been using Second Life as an art venue -- only, they're not from the SL community, and they're not targeting the SL audience only. Take this project just covered by New Scientist:

A Second Life Island Club Devoted to Deep House

If you dig deep house music and/or visual tours through beautiful virtual scenes, you should totally click play and push the volume up:

This is Club Xanadu, an island-wide club devoted to deep house, and I love the visual and audio ambience they brought to the place.

NWN Survey: Do Second Life's New Sim Setup Discounts Make You More Likely to Buy a New SL Island?

More context here as originally reported here. Results published next week!

The Stylishly Quirky Second Life House of an SL Fashionista

This is the Second Life house of Emiliana of Haha Die, and as befitting her hipster style, it's decidedly retro and quirky:

I love how it feels so lived-in and believable, while still maintaining a high level of wacky whimsy. (The rooftop trampoline, the swan boat, the whale.) It's a place you'd want to live in or at least visit in either SL or RL. Speaking of which, click here to visit in Second Life.

I Can't Stop Looking at This Beautiful Interactive 3D Gear

Because look (and play):

Triple gear by Henry Segerman on Sketchfab

As it happens, this gear was created by mathematician Henry "Seifert Surface" Segerman, who created Second Life's legendary tesseract house, and has since gone to create 3D printed objects of this kind of geometric beauty.