Okay, yes, it's true; after two weeks of being completely offline against my will, then another week of playing catch-up, I'm finally starting to get out to other Second Life activities again, so as to actually have stuff to write about at this blog! As always, your tips and suggestions are most welcome, and can be sent to inthegrid [at] gmail.com; for example, the other evening I heard from friend and former advertiser Samantha Poindexter, who has apparently been attending an event regularly that she thought I would dig.
And dig it I did! It turned out to be a regular exhibition that's given by a visual artist in SL named Kala Pixie; she specializes in particle effects, of all things, but takes a very different approach to it than the way we usually think of the subject. See, for those who don't know, objects in Second Life can not only be static objects, but can also contain scripts that will trigger different animations and the like; a popular example is a prim that will exude a series of glowy abstract Photoshop images in a repeated pattern, as if you were literally looking at a hallucinatory rainbow or something, or a 3D version of the screensaver you had back in the late 1980s.
Most of the time in the grid, such particle effects are put to annoying use in jewelry for young people; bracelets, for example, that will drown a danceclub in pulsating neon light every 60 seconds, or fill a room with little transparent hearts that slowly burst while you watch. (Such jewelry is so prevalent among young people, in fact, that it's unofficially known as "bling" and is banned from a lot of the more popular clubs.) Ah, but that's not how Kala uses particle effects; she instead marries them to an open outdoor pavilion, a viewing platform of sorts where a whole group of people can gather at once, then orchestrates what amounts to a cross between a fireworks show and a Laserium one, the effects themselves manually controlled by her throughout the course of the show.
Oh yeah, that's right, you can already imagine the possibilities; picture the most kickass stoner-rock laser show one could ever put on, with the effects literally happening around your body at eye level, but also with the chance to suddenly pull your view back 100 meters and watch the whole thing at a wide angle. It's cool, I tells ya! In fact, as I was mentioning to Kala that night, she might just have stumbled across the elusive "holy grail" of Second Life, that for three years everyone has been seeking but no one has yet found; she might just have discovered the very first type of live event in the grid that people would pay a cover charge to attend.
See, this has been a huge problem in the grid among artistic entrepreneurs, the ones who are paying the thousands of dollars to manage live-event islands in the first place; that although people will flock to such things as musical performances there, very few of them are willing to pay any kind of decent money to do such a thing (besides perhaps an American dollar or two as a tip). And this is to be expected, of course, in the digital age in which we live; in a world with YouTube, RSS, streaming radio and the like, it's becoming more and more difficult to get people to voluntarily pay for digital content, and more and more complex schemes are having to be invented as a result. In a way this is great, of course, especially for the end user; but someone's gotta pay for that theatre or club where you're all gathering, and oftentimes the owner can't afford to foot the entire thing simply as a fun hobby.
Kala's show, though, is something else entirely; it's an experience you literally cannot get in any other medium besides a live 3D online environment. That's part of the problem, of course, with trying to make money there from live shows, stripper clubs, movie nights and the like; in all those cases, ultimately you're just recreating something that can be naturally done better in the real world, with your customers reminded of it every moment they're there. The "Particlarium," though (as I call it, anyway -- "Particle Laserium," get it?), is not an exact recreation from real life; it's kinda like a fireworks show, sure, and kinda like a laser show, but with an extra element that one usually doesn't get at either. As I was saying to Kala that evening, if she were to package this together with musical themes (an all-Radiohead show, for example), and offer it to the general public every Saturday night (which, let's face it, is when a whole lot of bored stoned people are on SL), I could easily see lots of people willing to pay 5 American bucks for a 90-minute show. If you sell out a show (approximately 50 tickets), that's $250 in hard real cash you're making every Saturday night, just for putting on a freakin' laser show for a bunch of cartoon characters. Ah, if we could all have such a life!
Anyway, Kala is not anywhere near doing such a thing yet, but she does right now take private appointments all during the week; she has no official price for such a thing, but simply encourages you to tip her afterwards whatever you feel the experience was worth. (UPDATE: Kala actually does have a fixed rate for a one-hour show; it's L$750, or about 3 American dollars.) To schedule a show (and especially to schedule a group show, hint hint), simply IM "Kala Pixie" while in the grid. Thanks to both her and Samantha for the thoroughly entertaining experience the other evening!