Or you can join us for our Watch Party in the beautiful Designing Worlds studios in the Garden of Dreams, where we’ll be discussing our peep into the past – and our own Second Life memories.
In this episode we look back to 2010. It was billed by Linden Lab as the Year of Delight – and whether or not that was a true prediction will, we hope, emerge within the show. But here are some clues – two changes of CEO, massive lay-offs, viewer wars, rows at the SL7B … it all makes for a fascinating discussion with our resident historian, Marianne McCann.
And there are other treats in the shape of extracts from shows in 2010, including not just Second Life but visits to other grids like the Reaction Grid and the beautiful Heritage Key, as well as fascinating Second Life locations.
And there’s even a little fore-warning of the coming of mesh, with what was a very rare occurrence in those days – the appearance of a Linden on the show!
Again, many places in this show have vanished – but there are a few you can visit!
In this episode we look back to the early years of 2008 to 2009, and we are helped by Marianne McCann, Second Life historian, who shares with us some of the features that arrived and frictions that enraged the residents of Second Life in those years, and by Wildstar Beaumont who has ransacked his photo archive for us!
Elrik learns about Seven Seas Fishing on his first show as co-host
And you have a chance to see extracts from the very first show, Mr Merlin’s first appearance as co-host, the story of the changeover from MetaMakeover to Designing Worlds … and much more!
This is the first in a two part show covering 2008 and 2009 – the second part will be shown next week.
At a time when there are many ongoing discussions about the Metaverse (in a broad sense – for example, see this recent essay by Philip Rosedale: https://medium.com/@philiprosedale/value-creation-in-virtual-worlds-696604a694d1), it can be interesting and instructive to look back to previous experiments. such as the Reaction Grid.
The show, filmed by Treet TV (in the days before we became an independent production company!), features clips and segments from our exploration of the Reaction Grid and discusses them with Kyle Gomboy, the creator of Reaction Grid, and Chris Hart, the Chief Technical Officer.
The Reaction Grid has been created primarily for Education, and education and experiments by educators provide some of our excerpts. Hayley Dunning is working with students aged between 7 and 14 to build an island that shows something of the history of Michigan – and shows us something of what they have created – including a functioning water wheel!
Reaction Grid: MyMichigan
We also explore the fantastical mathematical builds of Wizard Gynoid who are been creating some models that are not only Not Possible in Real Life – they’re Not Possible in Second Life either!
Being able to see and move through these models certainly gives a whole new perspective on the possibilities of immersions.
Reaction Grid: The New York World’s Fair
We also talk to educator Viv Tragfalgar about why she is developing a sim in the Rection Grid, and then visit one of the most stunning builds on the Reaction Grid – a work in progress, which is a re-creation of the 1939 New York World’s Fair – and we meet Paul Van Dort, who is working to create an amazing immersive experience here!
Reaction Grid: Wizzy
Sadly, the Reaction Grid no longer exists, although many of those involved with it continue to use technology to develop their teaching and their work.
The Home and Garden Expo opened last Saturday – but in today’s Designing Worlds show, we’re going to be looking back to the very first show we filmed at the Expo – that was the second Home and Garden Expo in 2009.
It’s a chance to see what Second Life looked like back in 2009, and compare the latest homes, furniture and garden products on sale then – with the way that Second Life Homes look today (to say nothing of the avatars!). In fact, this was the very first episode of Designing Worlds, the rebranding of MetaMakeover, as our partners SLCN changed over to being Treet TV.
The Expo on Palladium
The 2009 Expo was twice the size of the 2008 Expo consisting of four regions and 55 different participating stores. Our sister publication Prim Perfect had a pavilion at the show where they’showcased new designers as part of their Prim Perfect Pathfinders project – and you can read about the show in much more detail here: http://bit.ly/32lAidp (although we wouldn’t recommend you trying to teleport to any of the links!
The Expo on Iridium
But here ARE some links you can use – the current Second Life Home and Garden Expo opened on Saturday, and will be running until March 20th.
And don’t miss your chance to enter the this year’s Home Decorating Contest!
This year there are sixteen very different styles of homes on Hope Street on Home & Garden Expo – Hope1 – http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hope%201/217/24/23. There are moderns, historic builds, rustic homes, and even some water-based homes (a houseboat and a pirate ship). There are three tiny homes in very different styles too!
House 14: Tour de Marlborough and dairy by Silex zapedzki of Never Totally Dead, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
These homes will be decorated by sixteen contestants who will have 350 prims (land impact) each to decorate the Home and the surrounding Garden area.
Each contestant can decorate in any style they wish that suits their house, but they MUST include at least three items purchased from RFL vendors at the Home and Garden Expo.
House 9: Houseboat Calypso by Christhiana of Needful Prims, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
Timetable:
Entries to be submitted by the end of March 4th
Decorating to take place between noon on March 5th – the end of March 12th.
Voting will run from March 13th – the end of March 19th. Votes will be placed by adding Lindens into the kiosk in front of each house.
The result will be announced on March 20th.
To enter, fill in the form on the web: https://forms.gle/ttKRqNVSJG8Dm1F96 OR complete the notecard embedded in the easels around Hope Street, or in the signs for the individual houses and post it in one of the blue mailboxes by the end of Friday, March 4th.
Today is February 14th – traditionally Valentine’s Day – but for the last ten years it has also been One Billion Rising in Second Life – a four region collection of art, music, poetry and dance to celebrate and raise awareness.
So today we’ll be looking back ten years to that very first One Billion Rising in Second Life. But at 2pm SLT, Elrik Merlin will be playing a set at this year’s One Billion Rising in Second Life on the Stage at OBR Unite – and we invite you to come and join us – and watch the video later!
In 2013, we took several peeks behind the scenes at how the event One Billion Rising in Second Life was created – and how the music video “Break the Chain” was created in Second Life as well!
We will be filming this year’s event, which we’ll be showing later in the season.
This week, Monday 6th July at 2pm SLT, we are taking a look back at Alien Isles, a marvellous place with wonderful quirky art created by Lorin Tone, Judi Newall and their friends – such as Madcow Cosmos, Glyph Graves, Alazarin Mobius & Photon Pink. It was a place where some of Second Life’s most notable artists came to have fun.
Unavailable on the web for a number of years, it recently found a home on our new Archive channel (which is full of goodies!).
Many people were sad when the beautiful – and fun! – Alien Isles announced its closure back in 2011. We decided then that we would make our planned return to the region to visit again Lorin Tone and Judi Newall (who had featured in an earlier show about sound creation – sadly, no longer available).
Alien Isles
The end of live filming by Treet.TV provided a few hic-cups, but we found a brilliant cinematographer who joined our team – Laslopantomik Yao – and with Elrik acting as our sound engineer as well as co-presenter, we got our footage in the can before the Isles closed!
Today we have very exciting news. Recently, Designing Worlds have created a separate Archive site on Vimeo to make available what we think will eventually be over 40 of our old shows, most of which have been unavailable on any channel for some years.
Over the years, a great many things have changed or Designing Worlds. Well, WE’VE changed for one – originally for the first fourteen months of the show, we were MetaMakeover! Then, when our original producers and hosting channel SLCN became Treet TV, we became Designing Worlds. And our early shows appeared on the Treet TV channel, and were re-routed to our blogs using a service called Vopod – which eventually failed.
But when the main Treet channel also closed, many of our old videos disappeared. They were stored on a remote server and, over the years, retrieving them became a hideously complex process for the erstwhile Treet team, who had moved on to new and demanding projects. Over the last few years, though, we have managed to retrieve some of our favourite and most popular shows.
Now these shows are available again as we launch our new channel – Designing Worlds Archive on Vimeo.
30 shows have already been uploaded to the channel – the process is a little slow as we can only upload 5gb each week. So more will be coming!
In this show from the archives, we look back to one of our history shows where – in celebration of our tenth anniversary – we ran a series of shows looking at the events of all the intervening years. In this show, we look back to 2008 – 2009, right back to Designing Worlds’ beginnings as MetaMakeover, a show on SLCN.
We’re helped by Marianne McCann, Second Life historian, who shares with us some of the features that arrived and frictions that enraged the residents of Second Life in those years (e.g. <cough>the Homesteads row</cough>), and by Wildstar Beaumont who has ransacked his photo archive for us!
And you’ll have a chance to see extracts from the very first show, Mr Merlin’s first appearance as co-host, the beautiful virtual Dresden Art Museum, the story of the changeover from MetaMakeover to Designing Worlds … and much more!
The room made over – from the first episode of Metamakeover
This is the first in a two part show – we’ll be showing the second part soon.
Relay 2018 – RFL Support, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
Designing Worlds is back – for a whole new autumn season!
Join us at 2pm SLT today, Monday 17 September for Designing Worlds at our studio in Garden of Dreams in Second Life, for the first episode of our autumn/fall season, when we take a take a look back at the builds of the Relay for Life in Second Life weekend, the major event held in Second Life to raise funds in aid of the American Cancer Society.
Relay 2018 – RFL Survivors Caregivers, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
We talk to Nuala Maracas, the Second Life Event Chair for 2018, Stingray Raymaker, the American Cancer Society representative in Second Life, Jenneh Thursday, the team captainof Meli’s Maniacs, who created a very popular campsite build, and Mac Pierce, who was a featured designer. We also stopped for a word with our fantastic photographer, Wildstar Beaumont, who talks about the Sail for Life event.
And, of course, through our tours and Wildstar’s beautiful photographs, there’s a lot to see!
Relay 2018 – RFL Support, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
Ships in Rosehaven, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
The final episode of this season of Designing Worlds, as we conclude our celebration of ten years of the show – looking back to 2017 – is now on the web!
We look back to our visits to the Second Life Museum of Nuclear Warfare, Rosehaven, Feed a Smile, Octoberville and the Linden Endowment for the Arts. We celebrate another 10th Anniversary – that of Radio Riel, which occurred in 2017. And we travel off-grid to Inworlds, and we look forwards too with a visit to Linden Lab’s new platform – Sansar.
Antfarm on Sansar, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
Saffia will be in discussion with our resident historian, Marianne McCann, and Wildstar Beaumont shows more photos from his archives!
And we remember some people we have known over the past decade who are now, sadly, no longer with us in either the virtual or the physical worlds.
Feed a Smile, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
And that’s the end of this season – but we will be back in late May with the start of our new season – so watch out for that!
Designing Worlds 