The other week I wrote a fairly disparaging preview of Secondfest, the festival held at the weekend in online virtual world Second Life. How ironic, then, that my boss should then urge me to “attend” that very event with a view to writing a first-hand account. I ummed and ahhed, but come Saturday afternoon I realised that the previous night’s indulgences were going to preclude me from doing anything remotely interesting in real life (henceforth known as “RL”, to use Second Life lingo). So why not?

Since I’d never explored Second Life before, I first needed to create my avatar and all that malarkey. Soon “Mulango Negulesco” was born. What was interesting was that I immediately felt inferior to the other people I saw around me because I was stuck in the default, bog-standard white t-shirt and blue jeans getup. I needed to fix that, but figured that with no money I wouldn’t be able to.
It took me a while to get off the orientation island, but eventually I found Secondfest using the “search” function. This meant that rather than flying around aimlessly in the virtual world (yes, in Second Life you can fly), I could teleport straight there. Nifty. After wandering around a bit I came across a fancy-dress box, which handily allowed me to upgrade my togs for free. Soon I was sporting a tie-dye t-shirt, a suitably twattish jester’s hat and, er, a black feather boa (it seemed like a good idea at the time). I hoped my outfit would not invite derision.
Now it was time to try and find the action. I am useless at reading maps, so the one that was considerately printed in The Guardian (sponsors of the event with Intel) on Saturday I might just as well have used as bogroll. But eventually I figured out that the various tents were colour-coded, so I just had to find a coloured path and follow it.
There were a number of different stages, but the first one I found myself visiting was the Dance stage. Cinematic Orchestra were playing - there was audio and video of one of their performances (presumably recorded at a RL festival somewhere), and a fair few punters dancing wildly to the, um, very laidback music. Although everyone looked ridiculous flailing around to what to my ears sounded like chill-out tunes, I did feel a bit of a square just standing there, so I clicked on the “Dance” sign by the door and voila - I got to choose from ten different dance styles. In the bottom left of the screen was the chat function, and there were a fair few “woooooh!”s coming from enthusiastic dancers. The majority of the chat, however, seemed to be of the “why cant i hear da muzic” or “HOW DO I START DANCING” variety.
Once Cinematic Orchestra’s set ended it all went a bit quiet and nobody seemed sure what was happening next. Not that this stopped people dancing wildly, of course. I decided to head off and find something else.
After wandering around for a bit, and spending a ridiculous amount of time messing about with my avatar (you can alter just about anything about your appearance), I found the Indie tent. Simian Mobile Disco were playing, but it was at a very low volume and the video stream seemed to have disappeared. It was around this time that I received a message stating that the video streaming hadn’t quite gone according to plan, and so it would be just the music from now on. A bit of a shame, really.
Digitalism were the next act in the Indie tent. I’m a big fan of their new album, so I figured I’d stick around a while to see how it came across. This is when things started getting a bit more interesting. As you’ll see from the screenshots, all kinds of psychedelic stuff started happening - floating multi-coloured orbs, streams of coloured lights, a Saturday Night Fever-style dancefloor. Plus one person seemed to have the ability to change into a Transformer, which was either really really cool or really really clever / cynical marketing for the forthcoming movie.
Everybody seemed really friendly, and with the music being perfect club fodder there was lots of “woooh!”-ing once again. “Professor Secondfest” seemed to be the man with the ability to conjure dancefloors and lightshows out of nowhere, though he said he could only do them for a limited time each. At one point the application crashed on me, and I was actually quite panicked at what I was missing. On my return, though, I wondered how much more I’d be able to gain from the experience.
At this point I should probably have made more effort to talk to people, which I think may be where a mental block afflicts me. You can check out people’s profiles, but unless they’ve actually bothered to fill them in you really have no idea who they are or whether they’re the kind of person you’d want to get to know. Maybe that’s old-fashioned RL thinking which has no place in a virtual utopia, but it’s something I couldn’t shake. Eventually I realised that “Seven Ages Of Rock” was about to begin on BBC2, and that won out for me.
I’ve avoided games like The Sims for years for a fear of becoming addicted and having to give over hours of my day to them, and I still blame Championship Manager for that ‘D’ I got in A-Level Economics. Will I go back to Second Life? Well I haven’t uninstalled it from my laptop yet, and I’m not saying a definite “no”. I did get the odd tantalizing glimpse of what the game could offer, and I dare say if I was off sick for a week I’d kill some time on it. But at a time when I find it hard enough to find time to catch up with my favourite TV shows, see friends and family, go to the cinema, see bands in RL, download music and read my dozens of RSS feeds, I think Second Life will face a tough fight to become a priority in my life.
Abi Silvester, editor of Hippyshopper and Crafty Crafty, was another n00b at Secondfest. How did her experience compare? Stay tuned for her account of her experience, coming soon…

Possibly related:

1. Secondfest , Second Life’s virtual festival - noob’s review number 2

2. SecondFest in association with The Guardian and Intel - the music festival for people who fear people

3. Secret Garden Party on the end of the worst festival review in all eternity

4. Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” recreated by virtual YouTube band

5. Rock en Seine festival review: Faith No More, Calvin Harris & The Prodigy entertain gay Paree

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Posted by sophiebruce on Monday July 2nd, 2007 at 3:35 pm