Players: Naxos Loon, Alpha Auer. Second Life, 2011. Photographs by Elif Ayiter.
A horrifying storm! High waves! High winds! Rain! And like as if all this is not enough there is also a huge Kraken rearing its ugly old head in order to devour us! But, amid mayhem and impending disaster Naxos remains utterly valiant! Refuses to succumb to the terrors of the abominable beast… Continue reading
Player: Alpha Auer. Second Life, 2008-present. Photographs: Elif Ayiter
What Lego is for a child in Real Life, the totally ingenious atomistic building system is for avatars in Second Life. This consists of geometric primitives that can be combined to build all sorts of crazy stuff. What makes this system into a play world that very closely corresponds to how a child plays with building blocks is that you do your building in situ, inside the world in which these constructs will then live. Continue reading
Player: Alpha Auer. Second Life, 2007-2012. Photographs: Elif Ayiter.
From Alpha’s Flickr set of toys:
So what exactly isn’t a toy?… would be a more appropriate question I guess: I was asked the other day what artistic style I was pursuing at Syncretia and, quite frankly, I was a little gob-smacked both by the question as well as my inability to give it a proper answer. Syncretia and Klein: Is what I do in my two SL homes “art?” If it is, this is one kind of art making activity that I have never indulged in so wholeheartedly and contentedly in my life… Continue reading
Players: Alpha Auer, Hardwarehacker Hoch, wolfgeng Hienrichs. April/May2008, Second Life. Photographs: Elif Ayiter.
It all begins when my neighbor Hardwarehacker Hoch decides to install a somewhat ominous security system on my island Syncretia – a drone which at first glance looks innocent enough. In fact it sort of resembles a cute little piglet: To the extent for it to be called as such in German – Das Syncretia Schweinchen… Continue reading
Players: MosMax Hax and Alpha Auer. April 2008, Second Life. Photographs: Elif Ayiter.
Die Rutschbahn (The Slide): It is a long long slide from a great height all the way into the water. You touch a red ball and land inside of it and get catapulted down. If you are in mouselook it is a somewhat grueling experience. The construction itself is a beautiful red wireframe. I went down quite a few times…
The Ball and Truck Races: The objective is to drive along an underwater canyon that goes around the virtual islands of “die Angewandte” and Synthetic University and synchronize the passing of the truck precisely to the falling of the red ball that belongs to the slide. Continue reading
Players: Alpha Auer, Hardwarehacker Hoch, MosMax Hax, wolfgeng Hienrichs 2007 – 2012, Second Life. Photographs: Elif Ayiter.
This post shows moments, captured mostly as souvenir shots which I somehow had the presence of mind to take while I was engrossed playing with my three closest play companions in the metaverse – Hack, MosMax and wolfie.
The images are in no particular chronological order, although I have tried to place them under 2 categories which are the games we played at Klein and those we played in the archipelago. However, much also occurred somewhere in-between these locations in that the play sessions were carried from one place to the other. Many other events took place at neither location but happened elsewhere on the grid. Continue reading
Player: Alpha Auer. January 2008, Second Life. Photographs: Elif Ayiter.
The ‘Hasis’ (which my friend Hardwarehacker Hoch made for me) are rabbits – albeit of a somewhat abstract type: Small, shiny spheres of varied color their resemblance to the real thing is achieved through their motion, which comes about as a soft hop as they follow avatars about. This compulsion to follow any avatar who comes along is precisely the reason as to why they will also frequently get lost.
The following is the documentation of a tale of make-belief: I could have just deleted the lost ‘Hasis’ and pulled out some new ones out of my inventory of course.
Instead… Continue reading
