Virtual

page updated 04/15/26

VIRTUAL is where fiction collides with art for me (baker b.). In real life, I have had no gallery exhibits. In my primary virtual world of Second Life, I have a good number of “permanent” exhibits collected in several gallery structures. In real life, I live in a modest home. In Second Life currently, my primary avatar lives in a giant structure inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle from the movie of the same name. In real life I have nowhere to practice my chosen, self-made religion of TILE. In Second Life I have a Temple of TILE, and have even created, imaginary again, other religions with their own churches as rivals to its attention there. In real life I have trouble eating out because of a noise sensitivity issue. In Second Life I can manifest restaurants, coffee shops, and bars where my avatar can linger for days at a time if desired.

In 2010, 2 1/2 years into my involvement with Second Life, these advantages coalesced into the formation of my first virtual village called Pietmond, which existed in a small bowl of land — a sink. This sink, in turn, was in the same general area of 6 other sinks in the west central part of the largest continent of Second Life called Jeogeot. At this time, I dubbed the region Sunklands, which my blog takes its name from. My original idea was that other, like minded creators could build their own mythologies in other sinks, which could then be coordinated to form a new, higher whole in some way, Sunklands “activated”. This in retrospect obviously grandiose plan didn’t pan out, but the dream of interdimensional contact between otherwise self contained creators carried on with the photo-novels, leading up to the present day.

terrain map of Sunklands showing the 6 sinks; Otaki Gorge (lower central pink square) is where Pietmond existed

By the time of the first photo-novel in 2015-2016, Pietmond had evolved into the new, virtual town of Collagesity. All of my collage collections except Bogota had been completed by that time, and more or less permanent galleries had been created for each. From this point on, all new collages — more loosely related and more sporadically created like I indicated in the COLLAGE header page — were grouped under the Bogota collection. It was only in the last several weeks that a permanent gallery has finally been formed for it: Concrete, on the shores of Jeogeot’s Nawt Vaya inland sea. In a way, this returns the photo-novels themselves full circle. We have returned back to the beginning through the end. Along the shores of Nawt Vaya — a filled in, multi sim sink after all — I have found concrete truth and reality in a virtual land.

Collagesity, January 2016 (hi res map).

Collagesity, December 2016 (gallery labels only; hi res map again).

Collagesity, July 2017 (galleries in yellow; other prominents structures in white).

Nawt Vaya Free State w/ Concrete gallery up front and “Howl’s Moving Castle” in back, April 2026

https://vimeo.com/182915649
Collagesity video taken in September 2016 — thanks Pearl!

Details

To create the pictures for virtual galleries in Second Life, I simply uploaded PNG or JPG images from appropriate folders on my hard drive to my Second Life inventory, and then attached the resulting texture to what’s called a prim. The images in Second Life are not as high resolution as the original images, but increase in quality for later series.