Explore a Randomly-Generated Maze of Mental Anguish -- Coming Soon from Bryn Oh in Second Life

Bryn Oh is an acclaimed artist who's used Second Life as her canvas for many years, even earning a grant to do that from the Canadian government and patronage from master filmmaker Peter Greenaway. "Eloise and Jane", her next Second Life-based installation -- expected to launch this Saturday -- is featured in this sneak preview above. 

"Jane and Eloise was inspired by the medium really," Bryn tells me. "I wanted to tell a story in a very SL way.  In real life, you stand in a gallery and look at things on a wall while rarely interacting with them.  In fact, if you do, a security guard will give you stink eye if not worse.  So you are a passive observer to the art.  Separate. 

"In Second Life we can be active participants to art and so I wanted to make something that stretched the idea of what art can be.  So this is a hybrid between an environment, narrative and a game.  The story itself is quite dark, but should you find the exit then you get an alternate ending which is happy."

As that suggests, the installation is a maze which, she explains, "symbolizes the mental anguish and survivor's guilt of the sister named Eloise, who must preserve herself at the expense of her sister Jane, after a storm sinks their canoe.  The maze and its monsters represent the terrible thoughts that plague a person in bed at 3am, eyes open in the dark staring at the ceiling.  The work is meant to be conceptual yet also something that can be fun to do with friends."

Dark and fun! The maze itself is also quite cool in concept, generated randomly each time through complex scripting:

 "I didn't want people to be able to memorize the maze which meant it could not be static.  So then that meant the maze would need to build itself randomly, a start, corridors, 'safe' rooms where the monster can't get you, 'mouse holes' or walls with tiny doors only avatars can fit through, and then an exit.  These elements and some others all randomly are constructed every hour right now, but that can be longer or shorter.  It is all scale-able.  The problem is that pathfinding the monsters could not be used because with pathfinding the monster has to be told ahead of time where the walls would be, but with a random generated maze, the monster would never know how to navigate since the walls are always changing.  Long story short, everything in the maze talks to each other while remaining lag friendly."

Again, this should be open on Saturday -- follow Bryn Oh's Twitter for updates.

Comments

[Lyse Brinch]

I use SL to escape all that stuff, not enter into someone else's mental anguish. Oof.