The Gate
There was enough hue and cry about the opening of “The Gate” at the Odyessy Sim but for me it was a huge letdown.
I arrived early to see the setup for the art installation and it looked promising if not entirely new. The idea was to experiment which actual interaction betwen RL people in the gallery and the avatars inworld. Viewing RL on the big screen was no problem (without sound though) and some passers by were clearly seeing me since they indicated such with held-up paper signs. I even gave them a little dance in gratitude!
Then the first crash on what was at that time a fairly empty sim. A reslog and then another crash. OK – Gremliondens are forever in the work, so I changed platforms to the Mac where Second Life is more stable if slower. But by then the opening event was underway and a bizarre shock.
I rezzed in front of the now live stage only to find what looked like a heavily pregnant avatar sporting four erections quite literally on top of me. It was part of an opening sequence I was later told. The stage itself was heavily occupied by what can best be described as a virtual theatre troupe who were proceeding to themselves rez an inpractical number of objects to accompany their performance. This shot shows one of the few sucessful attempts.
I don’t have a clue what it was all about and wonder whether the live RL audience were taken with the aforementioned opening spectacle. A good few commentators inworld regarded it as the worst possible kind of PR for Second Life given the heavily publicised event.
At the end of the day there was none of the promised interaction, no sounds and no explanation of what was going on. The lag was also appalling. I left before the end.
If you care to witness this fiasco for yourself, I gather it will be in constant replay for the next three days. Be warned.
Mal Burns Second Arts 
Well we thought about adding sound, but dropped the idea because, basically, you would have just heard noise and sound from other installations (no to mention The Gate itself). It was a rather large space with a terrible acoustic.
The interaction could have been improved, for sure.
It wasn’t working basically because most RL people didn’t realize they were seen in SL. This has been partially fixed later by adding a second screen (so that people could see themselves in SL).
As for the Second Front performance, well it’s a question of taste i guess 😉 They certainly are bizarre. But bad PR ?
I think that for a mainly art oriented audience (in Brussels), it was a better introduction to SL than most press articles who only talk about money, marketing, addiction and illegitimate sex.
And btw, the cello girl isn’t linked to the Second Front. And actually there’s a nice story behind it. She’s been at the SL Gate for 3 days, and on Sunday she came to visit us from northern France 😉