RMB City remembers New Orleans

I went to New Orleans for the first time in August 2005. As soon as I hopped on my first street car I felt I had found my feet. It was all that I imagined and better and I settled in as hard as five days would allow. Five days after I left, the city was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. I felt my heart breaking as I watched events unfold on the news. Ironically, I had been at a conference full of archivists – experts in preservation. After the disaster I remember a woman contemplating the ruins of her house. She held up a wet and torn piece of paper. “It’s my grandmother’s gumbo recipe!” It was her most valued possession.

Years later, the city still struggles to recover. In November 2008, Chinese artist Cao Fei (an artist with seemingly boundless energy) and architects Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix (MAP Office) collaborated on a project for Prospect 1, the largest international biennale in America, based in New Orleans. The artists created an environment in SL at RMB City. They illustrated and animated a line drawing depicting an area of the Lower 9th Ward (part of the city hardest hit by the flood). The installation was projected into the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New Orleans, and allowed gallery visitors to wander around the sim using ready-made avatars. A blogger for the Times-Picayune – the local paper – described the installation:

“Translucent waves sloshed over us from time to time. Buildings regularly collapsed... Drifting zombie-like through the sparse, lonely landscape was an endless loop anxiety nightmare -- an accurate depiction of post-flood New Orleans, wouldn't you agree?” (read more here)

I wandered around the colorless setting, admiring the strong black lines of the drawings. It took me a while to find a tiny square prim (on the ground near the trailer) that turned on the animations. Once I clicked on it, the sky immediately darkened above; clouds gathered, rain fell, waves pushed against the illustrations, which suddenly seemed as vulnerable as the gumbo recipe on paper. I sat in a little shed and felt the cold waters creep up around my ankles. A bigger disaster than Katrina would be if we forgot what happened there in August 2005. To read more about recovery activities in New Orleans read here.

NOLA

Had a great time with my pal Colleen, wandering around New Orleans. I went ahead to scout out a church. Churches in sl offer a bit of respite from the short-skirted, Amsterdam-lovin’ crowds. I’ve found opportunities for decent conversation and quiet at the Friends Meeting House, Mont St. Michel and now the Cathedral of St. Louis on Jackson Square. In the cathedral I came across a woman sitting in a pew, head in hands, “Katrina Relief” hovering as her group tag above her head. Habitat for Humanity/Katrina Relief boxes dot the landscape. Colleen and I hoped that Mardi Gras celebrations here would benefit Katrina victims in the way Second Life Relay for Life does so successfully. The University of New Orleans in rl has stated that, in case of another disruptive hurricane, they intend to host classes in-world http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7171%20. We spent a bit of time thinking about Katrina and then wandered around the place, wishing we could find the Napolean House or Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop (bar). We rounded the corner and there it was! Lafitte’s! Albeit a prim coated version of the crumpled vision on Bourbon Street but still – a place we recognized and loved. We were so excited we celebrated by drinking rum and cokes and smoking ciggies and cigars at the same time.

We had an interesting chat about the men we’ve met online who, though never purporting to be anything else, surprised us when their rl was revealed. I found out my first mate in-world was a 55 year old math teacher from Georgia, newly divorced. He sent me a link to his myspace page, which showed him shirtless holding weights or grinning with his teenaged sons, the page filled with comments from buxom 55 year old blondes…As nice as he was, not my scene. In fact, just the kind of thing that should send me scampering away from this kind of online interaction altogether, if it weren’t for the possibility of escape to places like Caledon, a sim dedicated to 19th century living, where I spend most of my time.

It’s funny meeting people in-world. Some folks are revealing, like the math teacher, and others clam up the moment you ask anything remotely related to rl. I’ve got a lovely new acquaintance that I enjoy spending time with, and, though she’s shown me her rl blog, she never talks rl when in-world. I suppose a good lesson for me, who reveals all readily, in my Italian way, to whoever makes the mistake of pausing next to me for too long…