A Date to Remember

This week has been busy in terms of dates, and it's fantastic. Yesterday, Norah took me to Rose Borchovski's in-world installation, The Inevitability of Fate. I had been before, but much more briefly and it became apparently very quickly that I had only seen half of what the sim had to offer. Norah's quick wit and considerate, empathetic brain deepen any and every experience, and I just love spending time with her.

but then the war came

Borchovski's piece is part installation, part experience, and part memorial. The Holocaust has had, now, a lot of artistic treatments, and there's always a danger in approaching a subject as painful and enormous as this with any kind of creative lens. It's too easy to dismiss, to belittle, and to appropriate. Of photographing atrocities, Susan Sontag wrote "people want the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance", but looking at a photograph of a past event is passive and in many respects, too safe to provoke anything more than compassion. 

That isn't to say that compassion is useless or pointless - not at all - but it is an "unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers". Compassion for the victims of the Holocaust has a limited ability to manifest itself in action because the event is past and, as I have said, attempts to create additional memorials are fraught with difficulty. 

At no point during the installation is the word "Holocaust" used. We are introduced to the characters of Beth and Lot, whom the narrative follows, and at no point is it stated that what becomes of them is a fate that was forced upon anyone else. It is obvious, though, from the semiotics and "the war" what this is about. In the subtlety, there are no label-boundaries, nothing separating the audience member from touching, if you like, the horror of what one might otherwise claim as a Jewish experience. At the same time, sitting before my computer, I know that I was not a part of this event, that I hold no claim over anything pictured on the screen before me. It is a flaw of empathy that we struggle to negotiate the ownership of suffering - and that, in my experience at least, we seem to find it easier to respond to the plight of an individual than to the mass murder of a whole.

I am tiptoeing, here, around my own explanation and analysis. I am wrighting, as opposed to writing, it out. If I can keep my foot out of my mouth, that would be a good start.

Beth reaches for Lot

Empathy and sympathy are dangerous, too, in that experiencing them whilst forcing ourselves to look at images of atrocity make us "feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering". If we look beyond the individual, do the multiplication to make the many Beths and Lots, we begin, too, to feel that "the sufferings and misfortunes are too vast, too irrevocable, too epic to be much changed by any local political intervention". Both of these systems allow for personal detachment, both from the event itself and from any responsibility to do anything other than remember it. "Lest we forget", we mumble as we file passed - and then we go home and put the kettle on and watch reruns of QI.

What the Inevitability of Fate does, then, is offer us a way in to the whole through the individuals Beth and Lot. There is a narrative to follow, but there is little to stop you wandering from tableau to tableau in any order you choose, doubling back to see them again or working backwards. It is still a flat image, yes, contained by the computer screen, but it utilises the liminal space of the virtual as best it can, and employs movement and sound in really interesting ways. Things spring up out of nowhere, other things drop down. You dance, you fly, you hide, you climb. You are bombarded, literally. You are given space to think.

 

There is no accusation in the installation, not pointed fingers. From the beginning, Borchovski has really worked to make the audience feel watched, but that watching is done by a faceless, nameless power that seems to be omnipotent, omnipresent. Placards fly up from the ground bearing the new rules for the new regime, and the voices that repeat them are heavily distorted, inhuman. You are watched by floating, disembodied eyeballs.

you are not allowed

A real effort has been made to include the audience in the narrative, with countless poseballs dotted through the tableaux allowing you to literally insert yourself into the frame. You do not, at any point, however, take the place of Beth or of Lot in any (virtually) physical sense. We are alongside, witnessing, sometimes joining in.

Happy Birthday, Lot!

 

up

 

in happier times

There are no images of atrocity, no reliance on the familiar photographs of the Holocaust that we have come to accept as part of a social consciousness (although there are some photos on display in the sim, they are not emblazoned across the walls and floors and burned onto the retina). Nothing about the scenes feels familiar in any boring, dismissive way, and there is so much going on that the act of looking and exploring never gets boring. At no point, either, does it become too much. The semiotics, as I have said, are recognisable, understandable, but not stale. 

Ultimately, I think the sim works because it can be understood as an expression and memorial of grief - Beth's grief for her daughter, Lot, who goes missing and can safely be presumed dead. We aren't asked to appropriate the horror that befell people who died before most of us were even born, and we aren't told to take to the streets and hang the descendents of those responsible. We aren't asked to imagine that we ourselves have been tortured or killed. We have all, at some point or another, felt the fear of potentially losing a loved one, and the personal horror of that is easily transmutable from the all-too-human and contorted faces of the models before us. 

 

Honestly, I think their expressions are the most human things I have ever seen in Second Life.

Lot and a forbidden book

Beth, in grief

 Again, personal grief is an individual route into an otherwise enormous and difficult subject matter, and taking such a personal interest in an event that categorically did not happen to you has criticism.

 

So much more could be said about this sim, and where it might fit within a canon of memorials and installations. I haven't touched upon the props we are given and told to wear as you follow the narrative (and which have an afterlife as they remain in your inventory when you leave the event). I haven't talked about the use of light, or the installation walls which are covered with names we assume are the names of the dead. I haven't made any kind of list of symbols for further analysis, and I haven't reached for any text books beyond Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others from which I have source all of the academic quotes in this post (if you'd like specific references, I will gladly give them). I haven't touched at all on the performance of guilt, nor on the significance of a memorial in an ephemeral realm. There is criticism in abundance of everything I have brought up here, but I wanted to focus now on what the sim achieved (which I think is a lot) and not what it may have wrongly assumed or been lacking in. But I think, for now, that I have written more than enough.

 

no chance

Thank you so much, Norah, for taking me here and letting me experience it with you. If you would like to visit the Inevitability of Fate, you can do so by clicking here - here! If you would like to share your opinions, comments are always welcome.

Wussy Tuna

~ (o.o) ~

This morning, I was whisked away, spur of the moment, by Ruina to Innsmouth. Although I haven't read any Lovecraft (shock horror - I know, I know, pipe down), I am familiar with some of his themes and ideas, and even if I hadn't been, this little town was a treat.

The sim is pretty old school in that pretty much everything appears to be made out of prims. But it's done really well, and there is obviously a lot of love in those broken buildings and rusted, broken cars. Right at the beginning, there's a tunnel bridge that reminded both Ruina and I of the film Beetlejuice, and I should have known then from that shared recollection how awesome this date was going to be. 

We toured the ruined town, getting rained on and being sure to steer as clear of the water as we could. There were monsters aplenty, and when forced to confront them, we realised that actually, they were pretty wussy.

The fish jokes are endless

The real monsters on the sim were Ruina and I, laughing at the poor fishy men and making awful jokes about feeding the fish lord Dagon tuna for his lunch. Coming out of His Almighty Wetness' hall, we came across a gentleman who attempted to engage us in roleplay. We played along, but only half, and pretty soon the poor sociologist was more scared of us than any finned god. We were pretty sassy.

On a more serious note - just for a moment - the sim really is fantastic, and there are some wonderful little details that really make it really interesting. You could spend a long time just wandering around it, and Ruina informed me that those little details change periodically, so it's worth stopping by every now and again for a peek. You can visit it by clicking here - here!

This stunning lady was standing in a church, right about where the cross would usually be. She's horribly beautiful.

I am always drawn to windows. I've yet to decide whether I like this shot or not.

And - less serious now - there are some brilliant poses just waiting for you to click on them.

Oh no!

Ruina, jealous, wanted some slime t0o. I had to take the picture from this angle because her cigarette really makes it.

I feel as if I haven't written substantially enough about this date here, but I don't know what to say beyond that it is a fantastic sim, and that I had a fantastic time. Thank you so much, Ruina, for taking me there!

And - I almost forgot. We got to meet the Great Cthulu. Cthulhu? Cthulululuh...lu? Am I spelling that right?! Anyway. Him. We got to meet him.

Yeah. Him. See, you knew who I meant.

A Date in Space

Ganymede Mojito - with extra sparkles. It was pink and tasted like strawberries. There's probably a metaphor in there*.

Last night, I received a message from sian asking if I wanted a quickie down at the Necronom. No, really, she did - she just didn't mean like that. Get you brain out of the gutter.

Sup, space girl

It was in the bar at Necronom VI that I first met sian. She offered to dance for me, and I pointed out in response, painfully naively, that I was straight. Quite rightly, she replied with "so?", and so our weirdly uncomfortable roleplay relationship began. sian said afterwards that she knew she could push it like that with me because I'd made it blindingly obvious that I wasn't going invite or enjoy any kind of sexual relationship with her. That wasn't what I wanted. She probably phrased it better than that. 

It's been a long time since I have roleplayed in the Necronom bar, and sian's invitation to go back there last night - on a date - was a strangely sweet blast from the past.

We stayed for about an hour, re-writing and re-working the little scene that began it all. It didn't play out exactly the same way it had before, but that's what made it interesting. We weren't there to write something groundbreaking, but the short scene we did create was full of juicy tidbits for our wider role-play story.

We aren't the only ones who have grown up since then - SL has changed, too. Our catsuits were effectively sprayed-on back then, and sian's baldness seemed logical to me because my hair used to fight with my body and stick through my shoulder and do all kinds of unlikely (and unfun) things. Last night, sian was wearing a little anime/sci-fi number that would have been a nightmare to make fit properly were it not made of mesh, and whilst Kitti's leggings were old spray-on favourites, her hair, shirt, hands, boots, necklace, eyelashes and eyes were all made out of new-fangled mesh.

sian

sian 's hips move at identical, precise angles, each step perfectly modulated. She stops, pulls her skirt down, twice, each slight movement exactly as before. "Would you like me to dance for you?"

Kitti flushed pink from the thick, smudged paint of her eyeliner down to the wide band around her throat. "N-no, thank you" she stammered. 

sian moved close, her lithe physicality as precise as her language. "I can supply companionship at all levels, from basic phatic conversation up to and including physical congress."

"Physical what?" 

sian 's tone was matter of fact. She could have been talking about accounts. "Sex." 

Kitti suddenly felt stupid, as well as uncomfortable. "Really," she said, "That's very, eh, kind. but I er." She had no idea what to say. Her discomfort was acute. She'd never had sex, and had never dreamed of having it with a woman. Or a cyborg.

Kitti

I've written quite extensively here already about the role of discomfort in role-playing, and sian possesses a seemingly innate ability to make my characters desperately uncomfortable - across the board. Her comfort-stomping-out boots crumble genre fences. I think it's about time she got a taste of her own medicine. I have fired a warning shot. Watch this space, creepy space girl. I'm coming for you. 

If you'd like to visit Necronom VI, click here - here! That link will take you to a little control-type room, and in front of you will be a map that you can click on to take you to specific places. We were in the shuttle bar.

*I googled "sexual connotations of strawberries" and wish I hadn't, although the results I got genuinely don't fit our little rp scenario at all. A humorous dead-end with that one.

Giant Mushrooms and an Alien Bike Ride

Aletheia

Out of the blue on Monday (I think it was Monday), the lovely Bunz IM'd me and invited me out on a date. Bunz and I met through a mutual friend, and we got chance to bond one afternoon at the bottom of the sea beneath my skybox when Party Cat went missing and Bunz volunteered to help find her. We didn't find her, but we did find a massive shark that you could ride on the back off around and around in circles. As you do.

First, Bunz took me to Aletheia, home of europa. Although I've shopped at europa before, I've never been to their in-world store, and it was pretty cool! Everything had a larger-than-life cartoon aesthetic, and the water was crystalline and beautiful. We bounced around on the enormous mushrooms, and tried to climb on top of the goblin statue you can see just on the edge of the picture above (but we couldn't - he was a hollow phantom and when I tried to stand on his head, I fell straight through him). I got the urge, too, to throw Kitti off the edge of the highest mushroom down into the water - so naturally, we gave in to my impulse. I tried to take a picture as we did it, but Bunz accidentally flew instead of jumping (non SL users: it's controlled by the same button), and thus all I managed to photograph was Kitti's hair de-rendering because I had zoomed too far out.

Bald Kitti and Non-Existent Bunz. Oops.

Next, Bunz took me on the most insane and hilarious joyride of my life...with ET.

Here we go

Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, eat your heart out!

When you arrive, a bicycle for two plus a fruit crate containing a wrapped-up ET appears on the floor of the forest. As soon as you hop on, the race begins. We were chased through the trees by police vehicles with flashing lights before we zoomed up into the sky, and cycled passed the Moon to recreate the classic ET image. After that, though, the ride stopped resembling any Steven Spielberg film and just turned to the insane. We were bombarded by all kinds of aliens and weirdos perched on different levels in the sky (but unfortunately, we moved far too fast for me to snap any pictures of them). They were hideous, and looked like something out of Monty Python.

At the end, we landed and the bike vanished, and ET appeared in a stereotypical flying saucer and took to the sky in the wake of a pretty impressive firework display and light show. However, I obviously triggered the button for ET's ascendance a second time when I tried to leave the scene because it started up again and the ever-charming Bunz laughed her head off and said ET wanted to abduct me. 

Attempted abduction

You'll be relieved to know that I didn't get abducted. We managed to escape off the mud and out passed a whole wall of aliens-for-sale. If you're looking for some aliens to jazz up your house or whatever, I'd recommend seeing ET about them.

I had an absolutely fantastic time. Bunz is lovely and hilarious, and this was a fantastic and certainly original date. I laughed for the duration of the sky bike ride, and for a good ten minutes afterwards. It was brilliant. I'd recommend it to everyone and I am seriously going to be taking/sending everyone I know to experience it :P.

If you'd like to see it for yourself, click here - here! Likewise, you can visit Aletheia by clicking here - here! Thank you so much, Bunz, for a great time.  

If you'd like to take me out on a non-romantic date, whether you know me in-world or not, please don't hesitate to send me a message :). I'd love to hear from you.

Om Nom Noming into Forever

Simon took this. His shots came out much prettier than mine.

So the feedback I've had to my proposal idea has all been positive, and I'm excited to say that people are starting to message me and ask to take me to places. This is exciting!

My first came on Saturday in the form of Simon May and the Pixel Pot Restaurant and Cafe. The only warning I had about where we were going was "for dinner", and Simon had never been to this place before either.

The restaurant was very prettily put together, with indoor and outdoor dining spaces and, across the way, a stretch of pretty prim-sea complete with a ship and a lighthouse. The best, weirdest and most interesting thing about the restaurant was that the owners provided a waiting-on service, a full menu, and what we ordered was actually brought to the table, in actual pixel-food form. I'm just going to let that sink in a minute.

This is one of my shots. See, not half as pretty as Simon's.

There it is, see. The waiter showed us to our table, sent us a menu, took our order, took it away to the kitchen for the "chef" to "cook", and returned with plates of exactly what we had ordered. Here's my spaghetti and meatballs, and Simon's tuna steak with asparagus. There were animations in the chairs that allowed us to simulate eating, and knives and forks were given to us to make the experience all the more authentic. We even had a glass of white wine each. And dessert.

I took a shot with the interface in view, so you could see the menu and how the ordering worked. And our waiter, Gavin :). In the background is the main restaurant itself.

The desserts too pretty to eat, even if we could.

The restaurant even has a reservation system, although it was pretty quiet whilst we were there. You do have to pay for the experience which, I confess, I found slightly odd since we weren't actually paying for any ingredients. However, the owners of the restaurant must still have to pay rent, and I guess we were paying for the waiter's time (and I have no issue with that). We spent about as much time there as I would expect to spend in a real life restaurant, and it didn't cost anywhere near as much as that real experience would have.

Whilst we were eating, too, the waiter, unbeknownst to us, took our picture, and when we came to leave, we were presented with the picture in a frame and stamped with the restaurant's logo. The idea seems more reminiscent of rollercoasters than restaurants, but I think it says a lot about the kind of experience the restaurant owners expect it to have been.

Simon remarked that it was funny how something as mundane and normal as eating could be transformed into something I considered to be weird in SL (and I do think it's weird, really weird), especially considering the time I spend in science fiction and fantasy roleplay and dress. We can be anything we want to be, and that is normal, but eating? Eating is weird. 

I see his point, but I think the strangeness of the concept is rooted in something other than flouting supposed impossibilities; it lies in necessity. It reaches back to the first essay I ever wrote about SL wherein I commented on virtual washing machines and toilets. Why worry about eating when you don't have to?

Of course, dining has become an activity for pleasure as much as need - for some, I guess it could even be considered a hobby. And whilst there is nothing stopping me from going out to a restaurant in the real world, it would take an awful lot of time, effort and money to arrange to go out to a restaurant in the real world with Simon because he lives quite a way away from me. There is something good and happy, I think, in the spontaneity of virtual dinners with faraway people. We take intimacy from breaking bread with each other, and after this experience, I think it's fair to say the breaking of virtual bread feels no different.

I found it absolutely impossible not to laugh. Set up with the repetitive eating animations and what was, essentially, plastic pixel food, Simon and I could have sat there eating for all eternity. The food would never run out. Our arms would never get tired. Our bellies would never be full. The waiter might get a bit bored, I'll grant, but unless he's got a hud that allows him to twist his avatar's face into an expression of annoyance, we might never know. We'd be om nom noming into forever. If that isn't funny, I'm not sure what is.

I'll be over here laughing in the corner by myself. 

The conversation was sparkling, of course, and Simon is a charming and always impeccably dressed companion. I had a great time, and it was certainly a unique experience in my Second Life. Thank you, Simon :).

If you're like to visit the Pixel Pot, you can do so by clicking here - here!