"at home" with Truthseeker Young

Posted by Alpha Auer... ;-)

How easy can it be to write about someone that you really like and yet maintain your objectivity? Well, if the reasons that you like the person have something to do with the context of what it is that you have to tell, I personally see no big conflict of purpose...

Truthseeker has imagination. This is why I befriended this person. Truthseeker has a sense of humor. Again, this is why I befriended this somewhat androgynous personage, of whom I have absolutely no idea as to their gender, their age, or anything else related to their Real Life flesh and blood existence. And guess what? I am not even remotely interested in any of that. Truthseeker is possibly my one true solely virtual friend and I have befriended him/her through my interest in his/her art work, writing a glowing review of one of his/her installations basically during a time when I did not know this wonderful person from Adam/Eve. So, methinks that it is perfectly possible for me to write a blog post that does not reek too strongly of nepotism about the extraordinary home and the charged virtual days of my colleague Truthseeker Young.
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(Photographs courtesy of Truthseeker Young.)

The obvious place to start I suppose would be Truthseeker's avatar. This slender creature of vague Meso-American or possibly African descent undergoes the occasional modification but some features have stayed in situ, more or less since we met: The back pointing open jaw, displaying an ominous set of teeth ready to bite the living daylights out of anyone who would dare to sneak up on this seemingly frail individual from behind... The staff, of course. The staff has had its share of transformations, however it is always there, in all of its glory... And of course, the goatee. But is this just a plain old a goatee? Or some magic appendage that seems to miraculously sprout forth from Truthseeker's chin?

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And then of course, there are the stories that happen around Truthseeker:



We are crouching on the rooftop in anticipation of any kind of "undesirable element" to creep up. In which case, I guess we will proceed to pour hot virtual oil on them or something?

As it turned out later, an eminently sensible strategy it was too. Recently the place was in fact taken over by some highly undesirable squatters...



Alpha Auer: You were invaded???
Truthseeker Young: More like infested! A mother fighterjet & her miserable little young tried to roost in my front yard! Execrable vermin...

One day later:



Truthseeker Young: oh! OH! OMG!!! d00d, where's my gun... ohhh, nonononono...this ain't good...

One day later:



Truthseeker Young: aah, crap! I thought I'd chased them off, but last night when I came back home, they were back, and they'd built a NEST outta my FENCE!!
Alpha Auer: the "crouching on the rooftop watching vigilantly" pose thingy isn't helping you too much over there is it? :)
Truthseeker Young: /me glowers & mutters curses from the acceptable distance established by the mother jetbird

(Photographs courtesy of Truthseeker Young.)

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And then there is Truthseeker's house, what this proud parent of a three year old Real Life minx calls the "space_age_bachelor_pagoda", rezzed high up in the skies of Extropia. When first I saw it, it was a thing of floating splendor, imagination and grace, the likes of which one would be hard pushed to find maybe even in places like Bangkok.



But, recently this magnificent dwelling has acquired a far more anthropomorphic cast - indeed to the point where Truthseeker could not help but remark that he/she thought the house looked somewhat stoned.





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We make art in Second Life. We rezz sculptures and buildings. Installations and soundscapes. Entire sims even. But isn't the thing that we are really busy creating, the thing of paramount importance, the thing that has never really happened before (or only in a very narrow "staged" context), our "self"? Indeed our many selves? Our very lives? The endless stories that we spin, the tales we tell to ourselves and to others. The magnificence of the fairy tale narrative come to life as an avatar.

Avatar Art?

It seems to me that we all do it. That every person who becomes immersed in a virtual world becomes involved in this strangest and most hard to explain and analyze of creative processes. At least this is my sense as well as my own personal experience. However, when a person possessed of the levels of visual talent, of imagination, of intelligence and of humor that Truthseeker so obviously is, becomes entangled in this magical mesh of make-belief the outcome becomes what I have tried to feebly describe above.

Extraordinary!

You can teleport to Truthseeker Young's home directly from here. More images and stories of Truthseeker's virtual life can be found on his Flickr photostream here.