Atlas Obscura Pays a Visit

As many readers are probably already aware, Eric Grundhauser of Atlas Obscura recently spent some time exploring Second Life and published the results of his travels as Forgotten Wonders of the Digital World: Second Life. Pete Linden had been kind enough to put us in touch, and I, along with my partner Kinn, had taken Eric (as his inworld self, Baerf) on a whirlwind tour to several places in an attempt to provide a quick overview of Second Life's possibilities — The Far Away by AM Radio (photo above), Kowloon, Insilico, City Inside Out by Haveit Neox, Roche by ddsm2 Mathy (second photo), a Petrovsky flux by Cutea Benelli and blotto Epsilon at the University of Kansas's Spencer Art Museum sim, and also my home, ...riverrun..., because he was curious to see a private space (third photo, and one that Eric didn't publish).

From the start, Eric was a delight to work with and approached Second Life with an open mind, aptly describing it as "fascinating but daunting." Although his initial request was to visit "unsung or forgotten places...the older the better" we struck out to give more of a overview of possibilities, from urban to rural, from "real life" looking places to "not possible in real life" places. I'd like to extend my thanks to Eric, to Kinn, to ArtCrash Exonar (who posed in several photos, including the one above), to my friend and fellow blogger Inara Pey, who posted a lovely commentary on Eric's prose, and to the Lab for arranging the contact.