Click here to visit "One Tree Hill", an impressive and powerful, experiential tribute to one of the most influential albums of the last thirty years, which as it happens, U2 released 30 years ago -- and as it happens, is the Irish band's tribute to America, making it a perfect place visit on America's birthday week:
Inspired by American tour experiences, literature, and politics, U2 chose America as a theme for the record... Thematically, the album juxtaposes antipathy towards the United States against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedoms, and ideals. Anger is directed particularly at the perceived greed of the Ronald Reagan administration and its foreign policy in Central America. Bono said, "I started to see two Americas, the mythic America and the real America", hence the album's working title, The Two Americas.
The experience was lead created by avatar named Karma Avedon, who designed a visual soundscape in Second Life to enhance the album's audio soundscape (which streams into the sim). She see political parallels between the year of the album's release and today:
"The first thing that jumped out at me were the similarities between 1987 and 2017," she tells me. "In 1987, we had the conservatives Reagan and Thatcher. In 2017, we have the conservative Trump and May. In 1987 it was El Salvador and today it is Syria. I did not want to get too political, but I saw a lot of similarities that just jump out at you."
More from Karma on "One Tree Hill" below:
The second thing that happened was I went back and listened to the album. It is funny, but The Joshua Tree is actually not my favorite album of the group, but as I listening to it again, I realized the lyrics were pretty amazing. I found that Bono's lyrics were visually oriented. They are very rough sketches and really open to interpretation.
Even though I am a fan, I really did not want to make this a some sort of "I heart U2" sim. My main goal was to try to figure out what it would feel like if you could walk into a song. I wanted to use virtual reality to visually create what those songs make me feel. A lot of it is lacking fine detail on purpose, I want people to look at it and let their imaginations fill in the blanks.
Even though my name is on it, I would like to stress that I did not build this project alone and have probably drug in every skilled or talented friend I have. I plan to add more to the project, which runs till 8/31, including some live performers and a gallery exhibit.
Also, I would love to stress that, as someone who tries to limit what she can put in SL financially, I am very grateful that a group like the Linden Endowment for the Arts exists. I absolutely would never have been able to do something on this scale without their help.
Hat tip to Ms. Strawberry Singh, who blogged about "One Tree Hill" and shot this video of the experience.
Comments