BigShinyThing

Thus far, SL’s excitement eludes us. Which, on reflection, is maybe a bit unfair: SL is a platform (albeit a creaky, laggy, jaggy one). It’s really up to the inworld community to use it to make engaging spaces. Any number of artists are using SL as an environment for their work. But, as very very occasional visitors inworld, we only find out about their stuff when it surfaces on our lists and feeds: we’re simply not engaged enough with SL itself to track what’s going on there.

So props to the Australia’s d/Lux/MediaArts and their SL project, the d/Lux Pony Club:

[...] a new initiative developed by d/Lux/MediaArts to encourage arts practice and critical dialogue in Second Life. Participants are encouraged to climb aboard one of our uniquely designed magic ponies from a meeting point. From there you will be taken on a teleportation trail ride through galleries, installations and interesting new communities in SL.

As we see it, the Pony Club performs an editorial/curatorial role: choosing the best bits of SL-based art and facilitating access to those, like ourselves, who are outsiders to the SL ’scene’ (much like those art tours of London’s East End galleries, which we’ve always found vaguely amusing in their assumption that ‘it’s all a ghetto out there’). And those ponies are cute. Kinda.

We missed the last tour, and are kicking ourselves for the lapse: word is that there was much fun to be had, and some genuinely interesting SL art to be seen on the way. Keep an eye on the d/Lux blog for future events.