(For those who don't know, I occasionally tool around within this strange little videogame called Second Life, which leaves gameplay and content up to the players of the game themselves, through a series of ingenious open-source tools. As a result, you can find a surprisingly high amount of mindblowing artistic experiments within the virtual universe there, known as the "Grid," created by a series of cutting-edge creatives from around the world; I've been filing reports about such projects since spring of 2006 at one website or another, under the collective title "Gridhopping," and thought it was time to finally bring the series of reports here to the CCLaP site. To see all the past reports, please visit the Second Life category page here at the site.)

Hey ho, I finally got an excuse to port into the Second Life Grid recently for the first time in forever, which makes me happy even though my low-end computer here at home drives me crazy at the same time. In this case it was to attend the opening party for a new space in the Grid called "Dr. Muglerstein Island," created by infamous '80s fashion designer Thierry Mugler; for those who don't know, Mugler was one of the first designers to popularize the boxy, angular fashions of the early '80s, a style that naturally fell out of favor in the '90s but has been making a comeback in the retro-crazy 'aughts. The island, then, is designed partly to promote Mugler's small line of '80s-retro clothing still available, as well as his now larger collection of watches, perfume, jewelry and more; and partly it's designed as a social space for his customers, a cutting-edge hangout where bulbous trees grow out of riveted iron plates, and where space-age attitude collides with mad-scientist architecture. You're always sure to have a fun time in Second Life when the dress code calls for "dark angels, Furies, aliens and mutants," and this was no exception; I want to thank everyone over at Mugler for sending the invite my way. Anyway, Second Life residents can visit the island themselves by visiting [Buzz Painter 128/128/128], or non-residents can watch the Muglerstein machinima commercial over at YouTube. Oh, and there's a lot more screenshots from this party (21 in all) over at my Flickr account, for those who would like to see more.

By the way, the rumors are true; that for the first time since getting my own beginner's plot there a year ago, over in an unusually calm upper-class residential area of the South Continent I like to call "Linden's Vineyard," one of my next-door neighbors has gotten sick of the game and has sold off land directly adjacent to mine, which I of course eagerly snatched up. Anyway, that now triples the amount of space I own in the Grid, from 512 square meters to 1,536; it's enough land, in fact, that I now have to start paying a monthly "property tax" to Linden Lab (owners of the server my land is hosted on), to cover my share of the bandwidth charges my land creates for that server. What that means, then, is that I've finally decided to get serious about something else I've been talking about doing for a year now, which is opening a small business within Second Life called "Fabb" specifically to create cool Modernist-influenced prefabricated housing, gazebos, retail environments and other buildings. After all, there's a real call for this kind of stuff in the Grid, what with the hundreds of thousands of individual people now (I think) who each own virtual land there; you can think of most residential estates there, in fact, the same way you would an account over at Facebook, for example, with the houses I and others sell being the equivalent of widgets that Facebook users can download and display on their page, little customized things to stick on that land to showcase to everyone else your tastes and interests.

The screenshots above show one of the first three buildings I'm going to initially offer through Fabb, hopefully starting in just a few weeks from now; this one is called the "Asimov," consists of approximately 70 prims (or "primitive shapes" such as boxes and cylinders, the building blocks behind all creations in Second Life), and will technically fit on a beginner's plot of 512 m2 but is realistically designed more for a 1,000- to 2,000-m2 residential plot instead. (Fabb's other two first offerings, then, will be even simpler, expressly to accommodate the beginning land owners who constitute the majority of prefab home buyers; one will be a smaller house called "Ion" consisting of only 40 prims, while the other will be an even simpler Mod-style gazebo for those who would rather use their prim count to do landscaping.) I'll probably end up selling this, then, for US$8, which works out roughly to 4 pounds, 5 euros, and 2,000 "Linden dollars" (the micro-currency actually used within the Grid to conduct business); that price, then, will get you not only the house you see (including animated doors and tintable windows) but also a bunch of optional add-ons like a rooftop helipad, underwater lounge, fancier staircase and more. (Oh, and they'll come in five different color schemes too, to integrate better with the different types of terrains found within the Grid.)

Anyway, thought a certain amount of people might be interested, which is why I mention it; and once again, there are a lot more screenshots of the house (30 total) over at my Flickr account. And by the way, for a limited time I'm offering the following deal -- that I'll give people a free copy of any of the three buildings they want, in return for letting me put a landmark at the Fabb store over to their property, so that customers can actually go check the house out "in the wild," so to speak. As always, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com to express an interest.