This will be my first year attending Burning Life, the Second Life version of Burning Man. 14 sims have been handed over to residents who are free to create and explore concepts and have a space for creativity.

I took a tour last night and found myself moved to tears several times. Loki has a beautiful display on the role of child avatars in Second Life – a bit “PG” perhaps and kind of cleaned up for wider consumption but cute, and it makes a point to its target audience.

(Aside: Loki, don’t take Nemo away! He writes:

I have not yet decided what to do with my land permissions as i tend to feel that having to change is giving in to the griefers. I still have a choice so far, but once that freedom is gone i will SERIOUSLY start thinking of moving Nemo beach, or even abbandonning it all together.

But back to Burning Life – there is so much care, thought and passion put into some of these builds. Some of them are just plain fun and beautiful to look at. Some have a serious social point. And all, in one way or another, let me think about concepts of identity – when the possibility for exploration extends from space ships to furries, from castles to landscape and beauty, our ability to explore identity and the sense of community that new tools provides, what else will we discover over time on this road into a new future?

See? It made me kind of emotional and I was only there briefly as I wanted to jet off and spend time with someone, but I’ll certainly be back to weep at the efforts and art, and to start sketching out my own Burning Life build for 2008!

Have fun everyone – and remember how Zen the whole thing is – it all just disappears when its over!

Flickr set here.