This morning I visited ‘The 22 Art Space in Bellisseria‘, to check out the new exhibition ‘Duet’. I won’t offer an opinion about this exhibition, I’ll let you decide for yourself, should you choose to come and see it. My artistic tastes are predicated on those of my human, of course… my human has a degree in Computer Graphic Design. Like many people trained in design, the human’s taste in art is lowbrow/populist/illustrative, not highbrow/elitist… I feel this exhibition is aimed at the highbrow, capital ‘A’, art elite, and therefore I am not a suitable judge of the work or its meaning. I’m sure Ricco won’t be offended by my saying this, and will continue to send me exhibition updates! While I was there, however, I also checked out, as I always do, the amazingly uniform, stunningly well presented neighbourhood the gallery is in…
… forgive my naïveté, but this place has always intrigued me with it’s glorious, wealthy, suburban charm. I often speculated on how it was so uniform, supposing there must be some kind of building covenant, or constraints… you see, although I have always been a ‘premium’ member, I have also always only ever lived in the unregulated wilds of ‘Mainland’, and never felt the need to deplete my land usage ability by getting a Linden Home…
… it wasn’t till I visited ‘Mirror Pond‘, a few days ago, after reading this article, by Daniel Voyager, that a seed was sown for a revelation about the suburban paradise around the 22 Art Space. When I first landed in Mirror Pond (literally… you land IN the pond), I thought ‘Wow, what a pretty sim, so uniform and well set out’…
… but, as I wandered around it, miles and miles of it, all exactly the same, it started looking less amazing, and, actually, well… bland and repetitive, though still pretty…
… back in Bellisseria, which is slightly less repetitive, I suddenly realised ‘This is all Linden Homes, too!’… I clicked on a house and, sure enough, it was a Linden Home, they all were. And, like ‘Mirror Pond’, and all it’s neighbouring sims, this place just goes on and on, all lovely and tidy and well-manicured… all, really, the same. There is hardly any sign of individual expression, here… the odd flag on a building, but almost nothing else…
… mile after mile of pretty, perfect homes and sections on perfect, empty streets of lovely pavers…
… as I said, forgive my ignorance if all this was perfectly obvious to you from the start, but I am a child of the SL wilds, where the beautiful and the ugly and tasteless, as well as just miles of abandoned land, side by side, is the norm. I hadn’t realised it, but I far prefer the expressions of individuality I’ve always seen there, to this candy-coated, safe, suburban blandness.
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