The Alphaville Herald

Sex and the SL Mermaid

Jenn Villota: The Artist as a Young Av

Interview with a new and upcoming artist by Kris Dibou When I saw the pics for Jenn Villota’s gallery opening, I could not turn my head, nor scroll away. The thought passed through my head that I was in Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, X-rated editor’s cut. Indeed, it appeared that there were demons here, now [...]

Interview With Woodbury University’s Edward Clift

“Universities should be made aware that Linden Labs maintains global surveillance on all the activities of their student members and monitors them both on campus and off-site” – Edward Clift by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk Over the last two days, I conducted an interview with Dr. Edward Clift via e-mail, seeking his opinion on [...]

Step Off the Path

by Fiend Ludwig Veiled Conundrum: Second Life sculpture by Xantherus Halberd, 2007 [Editor's Note: It's no longer clear to me whether we sent Herald correspondent Fiend Ludwig to interview SL gallerist Xantherus Halberd before or after the metaverse meetup last month that was hosted by Xantherus's typist, New York artist Annie Ok, but here at [...]

Uri Sells Out. Again!

Herald Founder to be Judge for Coca Cola Virtual Thirst Contest Herald founder, cyberlebrity and international playah Urizenus Sklar has been tapped to be one of the judges in the Coca Cola “Virtual Thirst” contest. In this in depth interview, Herald stringer Mike “Boat Guy” Allers asks the hard hitting questions and probes the nature [...]

Desperately Seeking Family: Ageplay Adoption Agencies in Second Life

by Muffin K. Smith Jaelle Akula of New World Adoption Ageplay in Second Life has received a lot of media attention ever since early March, when Linden Labs distributed notecards to places that cater to people who seek sex with child avatars. The wording of this notecard, as reported in the Herald, includes the line [...]

Ludlow Joins Shirkeyjerk

Hotspur, Glendower, Mortimer and Worcester arguing over the future division of the kingdom at Bangor, in ‘Henry IV’. Painting by Henry Fuseli. Let’s see if we can reconstruct what happened. First, there was all the fluff and hyperventilation about Second life having 100k then 1 million then 2 million “residents”, followed by much ridicule in [...]

Bearded Eggheads Talk about Virtual Journalism and Stuff

Henry Jenkins just posted part one of a two-part interview with our own Nutty Professor — Peter Ludlow. In it Ludlow has some not very nice things to say about the Avastar, and some marginally interesting things to say about civic responsibility and virtual journalism, and also where the Herald fits in the magic circle [...]

Interview With the Agoraphobic: Fighting the Fear in Second Life

by Aidan Aquacade Meet Roberto, quite an eye-catching avatar who is one of the more interesting characters that can be found frequenting random areas of the Second Life world that we explore from day to day. Above Roberto’s head is a floating, spinning, square picture of his real-life self. This floating image of himself is [...]

BMW’s No-Drive Zone

by Fiend Ludwig [We sent Herald reporter Fiend Ludwig to test-drive some Beemers in Second Life -- only to find the project could hardly get into first gear.--Walker Spaight] BMW New World: Dude, where’s my SL car? Another corporate sim equals another deserted island. This formula, oft trundled out by the not-so-mainstream media seems, in [...]