Obsessed with Kubrick - In virtual worlds, your passions can materialize

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

UPDATE! The Kubrick Rooms have a new home. Teleport directly from here.

With a name like Rumpledink Robiani and a somewhat scruffy but nevertheless Hellenistic avatar to match (high forehead, tousled hair and piercing eyes), I already expected more than the regular fare from the character whose Second Life® installation I had just visited thanks to a tip from Impossible IRL'er Esther Shim. What I did know is that the person behind Rumpledink is obsessed with film, and in particular, the cinema of one director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor: Stanley Kubrick.


Rumpledink’s avatar, immortalized and illustrated by in and off-world artist four Yip

Now, I know a thing or two about film having been nearly as preoccupied with it as I am now with virtual worlds, but Rumpledink’s ardor easily exceeds mine. This born and bred Brit really knows his stuff and he’s made it possible for you to learn more about his idol with his meticulous creation and tribute to Kubrick’s films, the Kubrick Rooms (teleport directly from here).



I'm sure I didn't catch all the tributes and hints of your Kubrick Rooms. The orange bathroom… it is at the hotel (The Shining)? I'm not real good with horror.

Rumpledink: Yes, I'm the same. I'm not a big horror fan, but love Kubrick. Great scene. It is when he goes back in time and meets the caretaker, Delbert Grady. Grady spills a drink on Nicholson and takes him into the bathroom to clean up. He tells him "No, you are the caretaker here. You always have been."



Have you seen "The Killing" - an early black and white Kubrick flic? (I thought surely I’d stumped him)

Rumpledink: Yes, and will be showing it at my little Redrum cinema soon :) I’ve got a load of his early shorts, too.
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Indeed! It also seems that Rumpledink is not the only Kubrick fan on the grid. He and Violet Morellet were chatting one day and discovered that both of them were constructing a tribute to "A Clockwork Orange’s" more than zany Korova Milk Bar, where the milk served there is laced with drugs.


Violet and Rumpledink have thoughtfully provided animations on site so that you may become a coffee table. While researching for this post, I learned that there is a real Korova Milk Bar in White Plains, NY – This shot by Rumpledink

Rumpledink: She was going to stop making hers. I said, “No, finish and add with all my other rooms.”

What were the odds that you would both be doing it… and meet?

Rumpledink: I know… right! And the freaky thing was they (the rooms) were the same… the way we were building it.


Say hi to HAL and the Eva pod in the 2001 A Space Odyssey room

The centerpiece of the installation is the War Room from Kubrick’s 1964 insanely strange comedy "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," featuring Peter Sellers in three distinctly different roles.





I learned a few days ago that Rumpledink is going to lose the land the Kubrick Rooms sit on, so if you have 1,000 prims to spare and love Kubrick, here’s your chance to rescue one of the better virtual tributes we’ve come across.