Stories from Second Life: DB Bailey’s LOCUS

Did you ever wonder why so much of the architecture in Second Life seems to strive to model reality? David Denton did, and his work on LOCUS in Second Life seeks to go beyond replication to explore new possibilities for expression that can only exist in a world without weather, gravity or budgets.

Known as DB Bailey in Second Life, David set out to design a place which allows “each building to have an individual architectural expression, working together as an aesthetic whole”. Currently located on the region known as Cetus Institute, eventually LOCUS will be housed on its own island.

LOCUS takes the approach that architecture in a virtual space should reflect the unique character of that space, while fostering a sense of community. In that regard, it’s possible to walk together throughout the space along tree-lined boulevards. At the same time, vertical signs hover above, providing orientation for airborne avatars.

It’s not surprising that such a creative place would attract a community of artists and designers. There are exhibits by individual artists, galleries and design showcases, and clearly the range of artistic involvement will grow. As Denton and his partner, Alex Noble (Happiness Merryman in SL) describe their goal:

The overall direction for the project is to create a community of design oriented entities, each connected to its Internet website, drawing traffic to and from the websites and Second Life. LOCUS will be a colony of virtual versions of websites that would encourage the meeting and interaction of website visitors. The intention is to strengthen the connection between SL and RL as well as to promote the sales of RL art and design services through the SL venue.

LOCUS is still in development, but stop by — there are already installations by well-known real life artists Robert Wilson and Daniel Maltzman, and showcased Second Life designers such as Eshi Otawara, with more to come. Or take the elevator up to the top of the tower (originally built for Burning Life), which features music by Second Life’s own Dizzy Banjo.

Feel free to discuss in the forums. I’ll join you there.

--
Original blog post by Robin Linden: http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/02/06/stories-from-second-life-db-baileys-locus/

This strikes me as a sales tool inworld to boost sales at the RL gallery. Good luck with that.

My house doesn't model reality - it has no walls on two sides and floats 600m up with no means of support.

@Cincia - I think it's more about bringing art to a broader audience who might not otherwise have access to it.

@Shockwave - Sounds cool! There are plenty of wonderful examples of architecture in SL that go beyond what's possible in the real world. There are also many very exact replications. What I find exciting about this particular project is the blend.

I think you should try to add a slurl link to these stories. And tell more of these stories. A constant forum thread theme on the XStreet forums is where to go see stuff like this. 30,000 sims and growing means we need monthly or weekly listings of places to go see that exceeds the capabilities of the current Showcase. (Showcase is still good but doesn't support telling a story like a well written review article with links to supporting websites, etc.)

Second Life is the largest stage in the history of the planet so this *is* entertainment. We need entertainment guides. And better ways to find things like websites that list stuff like boats, animations, prefab galleries, etc. And role playing action venues where the residents are the actors. There is only a couple of feeds for "fashion" and those are restricted as to who is allowed to participate so they are effectively shutting out new and superior talent to favor a few select merchants. We need ways for new talent to become visible as well as making shopping for a diversity of things easier. XStreet has categories but the UI is lacking in style and ambiance. We need better ways to discover the wonderful experiences the residents of Second Life offer.

So yes write more stories. Can't just write one as a parting shot ya know. Who will be doing this after Feb 15th?

Hey there short timer!

Shouldn't you be in your office with the door closed playing WoW on LL time or something easy/slacking?

I love this feature of stories from Second Life, I hope someone else will pick it up.

I have no issue with people promoting RL sales of art, or music or whatever, I think that's a positive move for the platform and it's good to see a common theme area being developed like this.

First off, Robin, we really hate to see you go. As a long-time SL resident, I remember the days when LL and you, in particular, used to really cheer lead for art in SL. I truly believe that your early efforts, Robin, are why we have so many wonderful works of art currently available to us in SL.

Yes, there are many wonderful builds/places in SL. There are even more that no longer exist, many because LL have long since stopped being cheerleaders to anything located on the Mainland. A wonderful blend of realistic and only-possible-in-SL is always greatly appreciated, but I wonder if this blog entry would have been posted had a move to a private sim not been upcoming? Perhaps if my partner and I started telling people (falsely, in our case) that we were considering moving The Riverwalk from its Mainland home of over 4 years to its very own private sim, LL would feature it, and the nearly three dozen RL and SL artists whose works are shown (in the spirit of a true "art park", the majority of works are shown at no charge by us - never have, and never will).

I remember Pathfinder telling us years ago that if Bradder and I could not find a way to make money from a full sim's worth of land, we had no business being in SL. I am thankful that that thinking does not carry over to RL - think of all the wonderful, FREE, spaces such as parks and beaches we would not enjoy.

Great places are always worth shouting about, just do not limit the shouting to private sims.

@Ann Sorry about that! That was dumb. Here you go. I'll get back to the rest of you a little later. Have to go have a meeting now.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cetus%20Institute/35/201/31

Fascinating topic. Thanks for the SLURL. I'm off to check this out.

I have wondered, from time to time, whether we'd eventually see more realistic architecture & landscaping, as Second Life grows, or instead see a new style or two that exploit the freedoms of imaginary 3D space. I'm wondering if certain conventions of virtual architecture will eventually part from the conventions of architecture in real space.

I suppose, but haven't seen research on this, that the similarity between SL space and RL space offers important cues that help people navigate.

I once read that human visual systems are biased to recognize horizontal and vertical lines -- the theory being that it's an evolved skill, based on the shapes of the most important things in the world around us (the horizon, trees, cliffs, for example).

For those after the SLURL, it's:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cetus%20Institute/5/110/31


I've done a short follow-up story here:

http://www.metaversejournal.com/2009/02/07/locus/

As per my story above, I had a brief chat to DB Bailey and I was a bit mystified as to why the subject of the story was unaware of its publication?

I couldn't of said it better PeteWyrm. I have nothing more to add, as nothing more needs to be said.

Well done.

Cat

Parts of it strike me as being somewhat pretentious such as the huge display of the artists' names that distract from the pieces themselves when a smaller display of each artist's name would have done just as well.

Overall this project is very well done though I think and it definitely is an interesting topic to artistically display.

@Robin - that's not what I understand from "The intention is to strengthen the connection between SL and RL as well as to promote the sales of RL art and design services through the SL venue." Am I misinterpreting, and if so I don't see how.

I agree....we have a Large airship/art gallery, with 3 floors of great original art. next to a floating city with 15 rentals and a mall level, situated directly above a castle on the ground, so we can fly rockets through the center of the sky city (BTW, search for Sky City, if you wanna see). Speaking of coexistence, we are mainland, and every neighbor around us has a very modern/castle like theme, based on our lake, and the 3 castles around it.

Ive extended the linden road through our 2 Sims there, and CHEER for all things SL, and yet....we are unknown....

I am not knocking either Art/Creativity, or the post as a whole... but with the millions of prims that have been set down in SL, with a lifetimes of exploration, entertainment and emotional involvement wrapped up in the slice of data mass... why LL would promote just one place? In all the years I've been here, this is indeed rare.

Art and Creativity is in abundance in SL, and to be honest, I have seen better presentations of builds with artistic merit, so why promote this one? The SL blog does seem a very prominent place to do this.

As others have noted, a better form of search engine is required for SL, as it grows expotentially, and dynamically changes on a daily basis. Our ability to see this world, is deminishing.

"Stories from Second Life" is an ongoing series, they've done a few of these now

It is great to see places like this in SL. I have always believed that Secondlife would someday be the foundation for a new Virtual Wide Web (VWW). Imagine interacting in a virtual inviroment while checking the weather or how the stocks are doing. Our Children will be a generation who will someday say, "Wow, mom and dad still use the WWW. Thats funny!"
It is nice to see forums like this representing places in world that reflect unique ideas. I also enjoy, like many, the exact replicas of RL places. Like Seattle. Go there, check it out. Its really cool!

NICE AN EVER EVOLVING PLATTFORM OF DREAMS MEET LIFE OR LIFE MEET DREAMS I WAS BROUGHT IN OR INTEGRATED THROUGH MARK JOYNER!!!FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER jesus1973 see you there

LL would have to increase stability to a mind blowing range; in order for this platform to rival/replace that of the www. When I think of SL as a web platform I think of what Vista has already done; or add on's like Isis for mozilla. It isn't that it cannot be done as anything can be done in all things 0110. It's that SL lacks the ability to search effectively or load effortlessly. More so IMO it's a cute idea to walk threw a virtual amazon/3d/webspace. But I would much rather explore what the imaginations of other users have created vs walking threw a 3d commercial space. I realize LL thinks there is room for both; but this user has no interest (and never have) in SL being used as a commercial platform. This blog entry was to get us to see that if it is used for the sake of "art" even though it is commercial. It should therefore be acceptable. Naw; I know when I hear a sales pitch. Clever but far from convincing.

There are many many builds in SL that should be noticed; I am glad one got noticed. When you have been given nothing for years; you will take what you can get.

Of course SL is headed towards a more commercial application. It always has been.

Cat

Sounds potentially interesting and worth a look; how about adding a landmark/SLURL????

It's always interesting to explore the charged conceptual space between recreating RL and creating virtual-only art and architecture. It's also encouraging to see serious consideration of SL art and architecture in this blog--or anywhere. For all the vibrancy of that creative community, it gets less considered attention than many other in-world endeavors. (In stark contrast, for example, to the superabundance of spectacularly redundant fashion blogs.)

I know of one blog that treats this subject explicitly: http://npirl.blogspot.com/, and that might be a point of interest for those engaged by this topic.

I, for one, would be very interested in other social media on this subject. It's an important topic for Second Life.

David Dentons builds are fabulous !!
I am impressed how many architects find their way to SL
and show off what they can do without any RL physic rules.
I hope this will be the perfect playground for them for
a long time ^.^





Oh and ....I am still not over the Sim Name LOCUS...
it means toilet in german...sorry *lol*

The whole business of duplicating reality in SL has always amused me. I want to create something that's beyond reality. That's why I live in a hole in the ground, and the closest thing to a normal building I've currently got in-world is an open gazebo hanging from a floating 40-meter planet earth, one of several houses of various kinds hanging unsupported next to an impossible road 700 meters above Tigger.

Start off at the flying saucer parking lot at secondlife://Tigger/22/80/701. The Coonspiracy is as close to a non-linear build as SL supports, tied together with teleporters and stargates across two sims on two continents.

Is the implied value-assignment ('can only exist in a world without weather, gravity or budgets' being on a higher plane than 'strive to model reality') the most useful way of looking at this?

We've all seen many builds that could not exist in the real world--yet aren't very compelling or interesting. And isn't their lack of general acceptance due to the fact that they don't take much in the way of talent or imagination or skill to create?

A possible parallel is the fact that many of the most highly-regarded painters of the last century (e.g. Picasso or Matisse), though they painted in what was anything but photo-realism, were actually quite capable of painting in photo-realism.

Similarly, the most acclaimed non-realistic builders in SL might well be those who possess the ability to dazzle us with realist builds, too (should they choose to do so).

I'm just saying that a value system that implies 'unrealistic is more worthy of acclaim than realistic' might be over-simplifying the situation.





This is an excellent point.

If there were some sort of article in the TOS that said 'no realistic builds are permitted', I'd predict that SL would not have grown to the size it has.

Most of us probably find SL more enjoyable because we can find both realism and non-realism within its capacious borders.