trees are people too

This entry is a bit belated, as I wanted to attempt these ‘tests’ before our set was completed. Still, more ideas may be applicable, and it also gives a little background on the concept behind my set – how I saw it in my head.

The light was extremely bright, and I also ran out of batteries almost immediately (being the prepared media practitioner I am) so I haven’t captured possible angles yet, but this is a good idea of space and shape of my street, and also of how it might appear on small screen.

I am trying to explore the space, find a definition for it. Is it urban? Suburban? Industrial? It represents to me an interesting separation between nature and our modern lives. While the lane is composed of concrete and tar, and is mostly devoid of life, it also represents the intersection between our private lives and the common social space of the neighbourhood, as small elements of people’s lives spill out of the back of their homes onto the laneway.

This careful construction of closely aligned spaces was what inspired me to build an inner city laneway as my Second Life set. The construction of space as seen in cities represents an urban culture which, as Dalby points out in Environmental Geopolitics – Nature, Culture, Urbanity,

‘usually specifies itself as separate from wild, untamed nature…[and] is one that has a long colonial history of drawing boundaries and dividing nature into spaces which can be administered and altered to make them orderly.’

This urban culture, that inevitably shapes social and cultural spaces, has interesting ties to our real life identities and relationships with public and private spaces. Echoes of the construction of space is obvious in a space like Second Life – land is controlled, terraformed, built – but what this means for the identities of the inhabitants of a virtual space is much more complex. But as Dalby notes in his discussion of geopolitcs, the themes of space and power and the relationship between the two is recurring. Just as the cultural spaces are shaped and constructed in real life, they will provide an important understanding into social construction in virtual worlds.

And a short film, exploring this space yet again. (I needed practice please).