Burnt out for another year.

The regional Burning Man event in SL occurred last week. Mari and I have been building the Inner Child Camp together for some time now, and this year it was the only build we submitted.

Inner Child Camp is the virtual version of Kidsville from Burning Man. We are where kids can go to make their own Burn experiences away from adult stuff. (The Burn2 regions are moderate-rated, so non-sexual nudity is ok.)

The theme was “Carnival of Mirrors” – an easy one for those who play child avatars. 🙂 We invited Burn2 participants to explore their inner child by running through the meander, maybe battling in the mini-Thunderdome, bouncing high over the Playa on the large trampoline, and climbing across the camp on the ropes course.

Inner Child Camp, aka playing with forced perspective

Inner Child Camp… camp

We always build to the aesthetic of the first-life Playa, represented in our world by a ground texture and flattened terrain. Our builds are pieced together carefully with prims and mesh parts that would fit in the back of the iHaul truck we always have out there.

It presents a good challenge for us veteran SL builders. You are building for a very harsh and bright environment. There is no water, and any living things aside from humans are scarce. It is also a very temporary build. It should be able to be dismantled as quickly as it went up. The idea is that you are borrowing a natural resource, and should do everything in your power to not disturb or destroy it. Leave No Trace, y’all.

We had a larger parcel this time than we’ve had in the past, so more PE was available for our use, but we always managed to come in a handful of LI under that. This year we were able to add a full camp site to our build, in case any of the other kid avies needed a place to stay for the week.

I enjoy the Burn2 event for the art and music, and seeing a wide variety of creative people try to build for a very specific environment. Some are very successful

this camp had the best lighting effects 😀

and incorporate some SL-ness into their builds without losing the virtual Playa.

There’s also the banter in the builders’ group leading up to the event. The first-life Burners that have either always been a part or have been recruited recently to SL have fun educating those who have never been about what it is like.

BACON

We RP passing bacon sandies around (hopefully not too much sand in those…), and coffee is drunk round the clock as builders finish their camps, stages and art installations. Participation from all attendees is encouraged, and frequently takes on some aspect of role play.

I posted some of my own on my profile feed just before the gates opened. I chose a whiteout situation. Here is what that looks like on the first life Playa:

Day turns to night during the initiation into the 2008 Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert opens with an unprecedented 12 hour white-out sand storm Monday, August 25, 2008 in Black Rock City, Nevada

I pretended to get caught in a storm at Center Camp, which was only 100 meters away from ICC. In the right Windlight settings, that’s too far..

Whiteouts occur on the Playa during the first life Burn.

The dust is so thick and fine that you cannot see much around you.

Even if your camp, or that art piece is not far away, it can be very dangerous to navigate.

Many of the camps are still up on the Playa for your viewing and exploration this week, which is unlike the first life Playa.

Land settings allow us to return all the stuff left behind by participants. 🙂 In first life, you have a large crew spending a month doing this:

Restoration: identifying the unidentifiable after the crowd leaves

BURN ON!