When I first discovered Second Life in 2004, I was fascinated. Over the next several years, I got quite involved both artistically and professionally, the latter with a great team at The Electric Sheep Company. I had always been a painter, and thus focused on painting in art history, but Second Life inspired a much deeper appreciation of architecture.
My time in Second Life pretty much ceased in 2008, but I had some pretty cool experiences over the years in between. I really enjoyed engaging with the team at Linden Lab (creators of SL) and the many creative souls who flocked to Second Life to experiment with fashion (such as my friends behind Paper Couture), architecture and new forms of art.
Below are a few of my own “builds” from those years that I wanted to remember here.
Mexican-style church for one of our remakes of Tableau Island
The garden and platform I created in the clouds to display my photography book Avatar Expressions
I had the priviledge of designing and building a virtual museum for the New Media Consortium, one of ESC's early clients. It even had a faux-Calder hanging from the ceiling.
The interior of the museum had dual spiral ramps, and we got to open the museum with pieces from SF MOMA's collection. In full disclosure, it turned out that this design was a terrible way to view art in this virtual environment, but one learns by trying!
Probably the most special part was a secret room we made with interactive references to artists such as Mondrian, Haring, Demuth and others.
At ESC, we worked on some pseudo-replica pieces for some very big brands in retail, media and travel. In the earliest days of the company, I got to roll up my sleeves and help with our virtual creations. This project, a virtual replica of Laguna Beach, was the first thing I worked on with Electric Sheep.
I have to include a picture of Chester. This was a giant deep sea fish I made one night as a lark with Cory Edo, and then we made it "freeware" for anyone to grab. Amusingly enough, Chester became quite a hit, and we would find him all over SL, sometimes in the most unusual places.
Every year I tried to create something for both the Relay for Life fundraiser and the winter festival. This was my winter festival creation for 2006.