keeping it real

There are a few days left before the deadline – Friday 4 March at midday SLT – in this competition round. To remind you, the idea was to put together an album about Furillen. This could contain just a few pictures, or you could use additional media such as video.

The brief was to convey what Furillen represents to you: from a place to sit around and think during your quieter moments on the grid, through somewhere in Second Life you feel is a ‘home’ spot, to … whatever you might think about the place. This could also include reference to the real Furillen – but of course, this isn’t compulsory!

The reason for asking you for an album was simple. Many people were submitting several pictures in previous competition rounds and finding it difficult to choose. So this is a logical extension of being able to submit several pictures. Just put them into an album on your flickr stream and give them a title – that’s all you have to do.

I won’t organize a vote this time around because the entries are likely to be quite uneven. Instead, I’ll ask one or two people who are separate from the Furillen crowd to cast an eye and give their view, and come up with a ‘winner’.

But what I hope for every time we have a competition – and this time is no different – is that the taking part matters more than the outcome. You all love taking pictures, after all …

All of which got me thinking about what I would do for a competition like this. What does Furillen ‘represent’ to me? Well, this has changed over the few short months of the sim’s existence. What started out simply as a challenge to ‘make’ a sim that – in material terms – looked a bit like the real Furillen and was inspired by articles like this, mutated into a more committed attempt to create a sim with a social, artistic and creative life of its own.

The flickr group, the music stream, the competition, the events, this blog … all are designed to support that project. I enjoy it all – from the people I have met at the sim, to the things I have learned while preparing for events or making things happen, to the occasional – usually completely silly – jealousies and controversies that come up there.

But in the end, life itself – ‘real’ life – is far bigger and more important to all of us. We can shrug our shoulders and smile indifferently at the grid’s stupidities – its pettiness, its jumped-up little artistic revolutionaries and faux celebrities …

… because life itself provides a far greater context than anything the grid might throw in our direction.

By far the most interesting conversations I have had with people who visit the sim take place against this much bigger backdrop.

This, in a nutshell, is what Furillen means to me.

And yes, of course … I know you didn’t read any of this …