I’d posted a photo blog about this over at the Herald awhile ago and, once again, Draxtor Despres shows us his brilliance in the video above.
This is one of those situations where it’s all about the images – text couldn’t possibly have shown how cool the build was.
Of course, text is practically necessary if you want to make the alternate point: this kind of thing can only come from an indie group. A larger company wouldn’t see the point in a build like this, and there would be a certain rough-around-the-edges look that might be lacking. It only took a few people to construct this gigantic piece of art, but if you had a group with more than a few in it they probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Sometimes there’s a beauty in roughly-hewn work. It’s raw. The imperfection makes it pure. The more regrettable it is, the more beautiful it is. It’s an encapsulated moment in time.
Of course, that’s when it’s private. Publicly that pimple is forever blighting your face. There aren’t that many people out there that can pull that off. William S Burroughs, of course, or Tom Waits… but not me. I’m just not that cool.
Some time ago I remember having a conversation with Prokofy about my deleting a bunch of my old stuff. I made a bunch of videos during a period of time in my life where I was angry and feeling overwhelmed. Lots of political ranting and pontificating, but you know… like most things a person gets passionate about, it was a little extreme. A few months roll by, you look back, and realize you don’t feel that way anymore. So what do you do?
You could leave it. “That’s who I was” and all that. The problem is that if you leave it you’re stuck with it. It’s just as potent a message today as it was six months ago, and it’s saying something you don’t agree with. It’s saying it with your face and your name. You really want to live with that?
So to hell with it. Gone. All of it. I did a full purge.
Of course Prok wasn’t all that happy about my little anecdote. Aghast, he wanted to know how I could do such a heinous thing. That was my WORK. My CREATION. I poured my time and effort into that. How could I just get rid of it?
Easy. I hit the Delete button. Yes to confirm.
It’s like those people desperate to build a dynasty, or the ancient mumifiers, or that Singularity-obsessed cultish clique that obsess over the preservation of themselves into eternity. These people are so desperate to keep their particular combination of thoughts and feelings preserved for all time that they never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, not everything needs preserving. I don’t at all regret the loss of my sixth grade spelling tests, or my terrible high school attempts at poetry, or even my first few short stories that amounted to pretentious exploitation pieces. Time passes and you either slough off the old skin or stunt your growth.
So you know, enjoy what you read here because tomorrow I might just go ahead and wipe it out. No regrets.
Another killer report from Draxtor Despres, this time about CSI NY coming to Second Life via the Electric Sheep Company. He covers the innovation, excitement, and controversy.
Professor Robert Bloomfield, who chooses the guests for the Metanomics series, has invited the creative director of the ESC to come by on Monday at 11am SLT. (Click here for event info.) It’s my job to make this happen smoothly of course, so I’ve been doing a little running around getting the event partners lined up so that we don’t overload the servers and crash everything. If you’re interested in helping out make sure to join the “Metaversed Event Partners” group in SL.
I’ve never seen it better illustrated than in this blog entry by Joel Greenberg of the Electric Sheep Company. Here’s a sample paragraph:
“Yeah, but no one’s there,” said one of the Young Critics, who brought up the Wired article at the beginning of my talk. I said, “Go to GooglePlex at 9am on a Wednesday, you’ll say the same thing. Does that make municipal stadiums failures because 80% of the time they’re empty? You need to go to events.” The great opportunity for entrepreneurs is to make finding those events easier.
Preach it brotha!
Seriously, it’s a blog post you’d probably miss otherwise but is definitely worth your time. Don’t skip past the wandering preamble either, it’s important.
Yet another incredible report from Bernhard Drax (or is it Draxtor Despres?). He caught Dizzy Banjo’s event that I missed (dammit), spoke with a Linden about midi, and all sorts of amazing things about music in the Metaverse.
Sadly he has to take a break from SL while he does a job in RL, but he promised to be in touch in December where we’ll be getting together to do something amazing. Can’t wait ’till Christmas!