“The Linden Endowment of the Arts is an official Linden Community Partnership program whose purpose is to help new artists, cultivate art in SL, and foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration within the art community.”
Project Name: The Colour Out of Space @ The Blasted Heath, West of Arkham
My goal is to reveal the Colour Out of Space @ the Blasted Heath, West of Arkham – an inspired depiction of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 story depicting a “particular region” where “nothing new [had] ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields” after the meteorite “fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the… Gardner place.” One by one the family and livestock all went mad or died, all while “no sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen… everywhere those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth.”
The perimeter of the region is lush, normal, green vegetation. In the center of it lies the Blasted Heath, an ashen grey circle hosting only diseased-looking, unnatural growths, and ruins of ancient homes. The well where the meteorite landed is the center and feature of the region. It emits a sickeningly luminous glow of colour. The region will be partially flooded which will clue fans of the story into the time frame as existing after the story ended – the story mentions a reservoir that allow the Blasted Heath to “slumber far below blue waters” where “the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.”
On a basic level, I want this build to be a visually interesting place to visit and photograph. But I also aim for something more. First, I’d like for it to be informative enough that even those who are not previous H.P. Lovecraft fans can get into the installation. I’d like to incorporate eerie sounds, movements, lights, and animations to urge visitors to go insane during their stay in the Blasted Heath. I hope to evoke thoughts and feelings about fear, death, and madness. By linking those deep topics with a focus on the “Out of Space” aspect of the installation, I hope to impart that feeling of insignificance when faced with the vastness of the Universe.
Please keep watching this blog for more updates about this art installation!
I’m really happy to announce that I received the region this week… here’s an overhead view of the island. My avatar is the little black mark near center.
Immediately, I set to changing the sky, water, and land texture.
A start to the creation of the well where the meteorite landed at the Gardner place.
Here’s to those who might have read this far but still aren’t sure what this is about.
Second Life is a virtual social world created by the people who use it, like me. We use an avatar which can look any way we want it to. It’s free to log in (with plenty of freebie avatars, items, etc) but you do have the option to spend, or make, real money.
SL is not a place for those with a short attention span. Since it’s not a normal “game”, there are lots of controls to learn and quirky things to get used to. Then, you have to figure out where to go and what to do. It’s a 3-Dimensional world. In it are games, shopping centers, art installations, galleries, movie theaters, etc. There’s a huge variety of interests represented in SL because it’s created by the “players”.
You can talk with people or communicate by typing. Or you can avoid people altogether. The real point I want to make is that SL is interesting anndd it’s open source annnndddd Oculus Rift works with all of Second Life. I hope by the time Oculus is available in 2016, that this build of mine will still be up!
MIASNOW in Second Life 