A View Inside Of My Head

I take pictures at important points during building. This is a picture I took when I was coloring the Lotus Stage in SL9B at a later phase.

It was the moment when I saw the final image clearly. Though it was taken without adjusting Windlight and the camera angle, this is my favorite one. Even if compared with tasteful ones taken after the finish, I love this picture, though there are unfinished parts everywhere.

Also about an imaginary object, I think there are the right color and the right shape to be realized. I want to be closer to the right answer somehow. Every time I build, I am hoping so, and I squeeze my head feeling severe stomachache. During building Lotus Stage, I was always tenacious, thinking "there must be a better result". But facing the coming deadline, I couldn't help choosing other ones than the right answer, which must have been somewhere I couldn't reach. So, the completed work is the accumulation of those choices and decisions. In this picture I can see the results of my decision and the process of thinking. In other words, this is a record of a moment when the vague images in my head had finally started to appear solidly. It also means ithat was when I started to see the goal. When I see this picture, I remind of the quiet excitement that I tasted in a severe tiredness. It may be the reason why I love such an incomplete scenery.

Unlike pictures of the real-world scenery, colors or shapes in pictures of the virtual world have few chance factors. Almost everything is consciously decided, arranged, or created by people. That is to say, for builders, this kind of scenery had come from inside of their head. For me, it's "a view inside of my head" at a point in time.

 

Others In Working Environment

The body of the Lotus Stage is totally made of the default prims. Almost all the process of the default prim building is, from designing process, done inworld. That is, done online. Becasue the Lotus Stage was a stage for a large event, it was built in a prepared online venue.

Then people are there. Including trials and errors, working process can always be seen by other people. Moreover, those who are interested in making must be staring at prims I operate, sticking their camera on them. Some people talk to me suddenly in IM from far, like "how did you do that?"

 

People who could be in and out of the venue during the building period were only exhibitors and event managers. As we shared a purpose to make the event successful, they had never disturbed me intentionally. (In public places such as sandboxes, building activities may be disturbed in a spiteful manner.) Those who know building hardly came near me, not to prevent my concentration.

However, since this kind of job is not simple but it requirs many ideas, it can be said that the environment is not good for builders because they have to work with feeling the existence of other people.

If the work is done with mesh, that is the main method of the building today, most of the process doesn't have to be done inworld. Even all the process could be completed on an offline local computer until when we finally upload the finished objects into the virtual world. The building process won't be necessarily to be seen by others. It goes without saying that it's better for builders because they get more possibility to reach a good result as they can concentrate to their work itself.

 

Default Prim And The Ideal

The system of Second Life could be designed to allow us to deal with default prims also in offline, I think. It must have been more convenient, and the quality of works must have been enlarged. But it might be against the initial policy of Second Life, I also think. Because Second Life had a basic principle; activities done only in the virtual world, including building, will create the virtal world itself. Default prim was the exclusive building material to realize it.

On the other hand, Mesh was a new method which was intoroduced later. It had been an exisiting general technology for 3D making, and it was applyed also to Second Life. It can be said that Mesh was a being that was out of the initial idea of Second Life.

Even if it forced builders to feel inconvenience, Second Life aimed to be an independent virtual world completely separated from the real world. The default prim building is the way that follows the basics of Second Life.

 

Sharing The View Inside Of My Head

Since I decided to build Lotus Stage only with the default prims, I always had to be online. Then I had some online meetings with event staff. I mean, I met them through our avatars.

It was really an amazing thing that an avatar, someone's alter ego, appeared inside the structure which I was building. Moreover, the person talked to me about the structure itself. Contents of conversation was absolutely concrete, but the structure itself, which was referred in the conversation, was what had been done or what would be done just only by my own decision. Besides, there was no physical correspondence of the structure anywhere on the earth. It was like that a person who had penetrated "the view inside of my head" started to merge into my thought.

How was it for the person whom I talked with? The staff member must have been in front of a monitor like me. There must have been the same scenery as mine, that was displayed on the screen. And, because he or she was using an avatar, the person must have been perceiving my building structure with a somatic sensation, as an experience. My process of thinking must have been transmitted very directly. It was like sharing "the view inside of my head" between the person and me.

The building went like this. I was always conscious of building inworld*.

*Inworld: Inside the virtual world.

 

Feeling A World

There were other phenomena that made me feel so. It happened when I aligned the rail bridges behind the Lotus Stage, for example.

Casually I happened to look up the bottom surface, and saw the moon high in the night sky. Then I was startled and took this photo without even thinking. Though the moon was cheap that didn't do waxing and waning, and I used to see it besides, I felt like this; I am building inside a world.

Surrounding scenery changing every moment was peculiar to the virtual building, too. Many exhibitors built their works for this event near Lotus Stage. At first, only a few builders of public infrastructure had got started like me. A lot of square-shaped booths aligned like a grid were vacant in the beginning. Then a lot of exhibitors individualy started working there all at once.

 

Building Inworld

From the begining of Lotus Stage's building, I couldn't afford to look around the surrounding. Though I got to know later there were many interesting exhibits, I had had entirely no time to care about their working contents.

But when I was finally about to finish the stage, after I happened to move my view to a lateral direction, a lot of completed exhibits lying in rows suddenly came into my sight. I was startled and took this photo without even thinking again. Many people, including myself, had been creating a "world" there.

One year after this work was done, I came to take charge of a large-scale default prim architecture (Cake Stage in SL10B) again. But most of it was built in a closed private island, so it didn't have enough elements described here, and I am feeling it was a work in the virtual 'space' rather than in the virtual 'world'. Lotus Stage was the last work for me which was done interacting with the virtual world from the beginning to the end.

 

I think large-scale build with default prims done in this way will become more uncommon than ever before. However, I also think, this kind of public works with default prims is the best way to experience the virtual world in a deep manner. I feel I was lucky that I could get the "building inworld" experience.

 

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