Burning Man Seeds “Second Life” Virtual World
Apparently, Philip Rosedale, the creator of virtual community “Second Life”, was influenced by an epiphany he had while at Burning Man. It’s a unique vision coupled with a now functioning “virtual” community realization. Some of the art and costumed avatars are so Playa first life! Snip:
One thing that struck me was a long passage of Au’s about how much Rosedale’s 1999 visit to Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts festival held in the Nevada desert, influenced his view of what the virtual environment he was building should be.
“‘So you’d lay on the pillows,’ Rosedale recounts, eyes twinkling at the memory,” Au writes, “‘and you’d feel like an exotic Asian king, and you’re looking out on the parched (desert); the line of sun starts at the edge of the rugs, and you see that hot desert, and you imagine you’re Kublai Khan on a bender…They were just structures of the mind…It reinforced that idea that what we believe in or what we make of things is all that is real. It was unreal because everything was clearly made of found materials and was transitory. But it was real, because when you were there, it was real to you…It had this mystical quality that demolished the barriers between people.’”
Rosedale’s epiphany? There was a magic going on out there in the desert–a way that people dealt with each other and laid down their disbelief–with which he wanted to imbue his virtual world.
Read more: Book review: ‘The making of Second Life’ by Daniel Terdiman at CNet.
See the previous “Burning Life” post for more about virtual regional burns.
