We have a very mixed and varied population in Second Life. You can choose to be whatever you want. The handsome rugged guy, the girl next door, the sun sleek and oiled beach babe, neko, furry, goth, cyber punk. One community that has a slightly lower media presence is that of the tiny.

The main centre for tiny orientated events is the Raglan Shire sims and in charge of these islands is Zayn Till. With the forthcoming Art Walk on the Shire sims I grabbed Zayn quickly for a chat about the tiny area and Art Walk.


Trinity Dechou: Why did create a cluster of tiny orientated islands?

Zayn Till: I had purchased 4 sims in august of 2006 from a friend (Jenna Fairfairplay) with the intent of renting out land to folks to be able to pursue their Vision within Second Life in a safe environment. 4 sims became 6 and then I kind of realized that it wasn’t enough to simply rent out sims. I wanted to actually do something with them and have a community.

I had kind of always had a thing for tinys (was a bunny in another chat program 13 years back - Worlds Chat) and we had an opportunity to invite Wynx and Nora who were looking for land at the time to move onto one of our sims.


They agreed and we moved the Raglan Shire sim next to Heron Shire and Athen Shire & started to grow as a tiny themed community. This went well.. the community grew quick.. and Raglan became a very happy creative place. More sims were attached and soon we'll have 8 dedicated sims comprising the Raglan Sim Cluster. With tons of different locales ranging from forested to Old World Wharf to Tropical to Sci Fi /Space themed, there’s plenty of places for folks of all types and sizes to hang out and explore... live in at the 2 residential sims or shop at the various commercial areas about the sims.. add in all the fun activities and events we put on and WHAM. Its a neat place for folks to congregate and be a part of :D

Trinity Dechou: What's the main aim of these sims?

Zayn Till: To have a large enough place with lots of locales for folks to explore and enjoy so that the community can do just about anything they like there. Participate in activities, play games, learn at the various classes we have from time to time.. all of it. Raglan and the cluster is here for anyone to come and feel welcome at. The community itself is very friendly and free of drama. a rarity in SL :D

Trinity Dechou: When did you, and why did you start the art walk?


Zayn Till: The 1st Raglan Shire Artwalk was held shortly after it became a tiny themed sim. I think.. June of 2007.

The Idea came from where I live in Real life... Seattle Washington.. I live in an artists loft building in downtown Seattle. Every month they have a Artwalk here. I love the idea. While I’m not a visual arts artists, I am a musician and have always had appreciation for the Arts.. I thought the Artwalk concept would be AWESOME in conjunction with Second Life so BAM!! I organized the 1st Artwalk, we had about 20 artists show their works on Raglan Shire, everyone enjoyed it so WHAM! We had another in October of 2007! We had about 25 artists that time and it was another great turnout. This time around for the 3rd Artwalk we have 70+ Artists and the Artwalk is spread out over 3 locations on 3 of the Raglan Sims so its very exciting :)

Trinity Dechou: What kind of feedback have you had in the past about the art walk?

Zayn Till: Nothing but positive feedback! IT’S ART! People take art for granted most of the time, but when you actually put it in front of their face and go "LOOK!!! ART!!" they tend to have a positive reaction and take interest in it again.. who knows maybe even get inspired enough to stop taking it for granted or even pursue it. People by nature are creative, most just forget this and bury it down trying to pursue mundane things like money and material stuff. But every so often, if you put ART out for ppl to see.. .. they'll have a positive reaction.. even if they don’t like what they see, it will make them think.. and thinking is always a good first step in the creative process :D

Trinity Dechou: Any future plans to develop the sims or the art walk?

Zayn Till: Ya sure.... i guess... hopefully more people will continue to get involved so the next one can be even bigger :)

I must say having lived within the shire region of sims for a long time the tiny community certainly know how to party! I have always found them to be very friendly and as helpful as possible, with a real sense of ‘community’ I must say I personally find tinys friendlier than most.

The artwalk runs from 29th May to the 1st of June. You don’t have to be tiny to take part in the Art Walk and you also don’t have to be tiny to go and view just heed the advice of Zayn if you are not tiny and “watch where you step”

Occasionally you find things in Second Life that jump straight out of the screen and grab you. In this case the leap of faith was taken through my speakers.

Captivating an audience at U21 Global earlier was a band called Chouchou. I am sure you have heard the name or seen the pictures, after-all the Chouchou sim is one of the most photographed places of late. However if you are like me you might not have heard the music. With a haunting voice juliet Heberle (lead singer of Chouchou) could be likened to Morcheeba in tone and makes the listener drift off into a quiet relaxing place, which to do in Second Life is sheer and complete escapism.

After the concert I managed to speak with juliet and asked her about Chouchou

Trinity Dechou: Firstly, can you tell me a little about ChouChou?
juliet Heberle: Chouchou is a Japanese music group existing only in SL. It's formed on July 2007 for searching new possibilities of music.

Trinity Dechou: Did you play Second Life before forming ChouChou?
juliet Heberle: Arabesque, the other Chouchou, and I started SL together about a year ago, but we didn't know what to do at that time like everybody else. We tried little bit of everything like creating objects, making textures, building something and so on. Then one day I thought maybe doing the radio program could be interesting, so I started my own radio program which is in Japanese only. And arabesque said, "why don't you sing songs for your radio show?" He composed music for me, and that's the beginning of Chouchou. :) I had never sang as a singer before we formed Chouchou.

Trinity Dechou: What does Chouchou mean?
juliet Heberle: It's a french word meaning favorite, but we also love the sound of it. And we both like Debussy, and Chouchou is the nickname for his daughter.

Trinity Dechou: You said above you had never sung before you started ChouChou. Did you have any problems or fears singing?
juliet Heberle: I'd never sung in front of people as a singer, but I've always loved singing, so it was fun. :)

Trinity Dechou: Do you find that singing and performing in Second Life helps your confidence?
juliet Heberle: I think so. And we're not presenting only music, but also spaces, atmospheres and stuff.

*To see the complete presentation by Chouchou visit the Chouchou Sim*

Trinity Dechou: How can people find out more about Chouchou, other than visiting the sim?
juliet Heberle: We have our MySpace, official blog and our group "Chouchouholic"

Trinity Dechou: You said above Chouchou only exists in SL, no plans to take that into RL?
juliet Heberle: Well, recently, a Belgium record company really liked our music and asked us to release an album from one of their record label. It'll be very small production, I guess, but we're very excited about that because it's going to be our first album. We never know about the future. We're going with the flow, but so far, we only perform in SL. And we kind of like it because performing only in SL is very unique, we think. :)

Trinity Dechou: What kind of feedback have you had from the residents of Second Life when you perform?
juliet Heberle: People always loved our performance, and we're so glad about that. Some people have said to me they felt like they were in dreams during the show.

Trinity Dechou: Your performance sounded very professional, what technical aspects do you have in place to ensure that level of sound quality, and do you sing live?
juliet Heberle: arabesque composes and edit all the song of Chouchou. He is very talented composer and particular about sounds and qualities. All of our songs are created with lots of sounds and instruments except sign 0. And some of them are electronic sounds and edited for each song. Each of them is very important, even if it's a very tiny clipping noise. And with all of that, we present our music. In some of our songs, vocals are also edited and have effects to perfectly go with each songs. Those songs are impossible to sing in live, unless I have my private PA or something. :) But other songs which don't have so much effects on vocal, I sing in live.

Trinity Dechou: Where and how regularly do you perform in Second Life?
juliet Heberle: I guess, 2-3 times in a month. :) We always send group notices for our performances at our place. :) But we usually don't send notices for other performances requested from other people at other places because of the limitation of the number of access to the sim.

Trinity Dechou: Excellent, Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me juliet.
juliet Heberle: Thank you so much. :)

Selina Green (co-owner of Publishing & Book Islands) hosted an event about Second Life Love at the recent SL Book Fair. I, along with the 40 or so other avatars who attended, enjoyed a very interesting debate regarding Second Life Love.

So what of Second Life Love (Slove)? What does it mean? How do you fall in love with an avatar? Do SL relationships affect RL?

I’m sure for many of us when we sign up for a Second Life account the idea of falling in love with someone seems far fetched and something you’d hear on a late night news report, along with stories of evil, ex-gambling, terrorists that seemingly run about our grid.

Plain fact however, if you stay in SL long enough and spend time building friendships someday, sometime something will go further. Many people play Second Life to escape RL in some way. Many of us may look different to RL people but we often wear our hearts on our sleeves.

I don’t profess to have the answers, but in asking some pertinent questions it might provoke you to think a little bit more about your actions and your loved ones in real life and Second Life.

How exactly do you fall in love with someone in a virtual world, someone you have never met?

Personally, I can give AN answer to that question as I have done it. Trinity doesn’t look like the real life me, however she is me. She has my personality, my feelings, my heart and my soul. I was very lucky to meet Aimee Trescothick, initially as a friend at the original Lava Pit a long time ago. Through various reasons after the Pit closed our paths crossed again. We began to develop a friendship, mutual understanding, respect and ultimately love for each other.
How did it happen, honestly, I don’t know. We shared many common interests, sense of humour and love for shiny guns. Over time instead of casually chatting we looked forward to seeing each other. We watched out for the other one logging on and doing more and more together. I would assume most other couples who meet and fall in love follow this similar path. You enjoy spending time with someone, you lean on them for support, and you express hopes and fears. Eventually something shifts in that relationship to something more, a lot more.
Okay so what next? Well of course you chat in other places, exchange phone numbers and learn even more about each other. Pictures, everyday life text messages all go towards growing a bigger picture of someone.

Then you meet. No, I am not going to go into details, that’s between Aimee and I, but from personal experience meeting was everything we thought it would be, and more. However, I know we are lucky.

Aimee and I of course are also lucky in the fact neither of us had a real life relationship at the time. I know lots of SL couples that have RL partners. Is that cheating? Surely for most (besides xcit’ing sex) SL relationships are on an intellectual and emotional level. Some would argue passionately that of course it’s cheating; however some also argue that SL relationships actually help RL relationships. Second Life has been accused of causing Real Life marriages to break down. Surely if you are married in real life there is a fine line between what is acceptable even in a virtual world? In this world you can move in together, build a house, live together, have a baby and also get married. It is the closest thing you will find without actually being together in real life.

I have fairly recently had the pleasure of becoming friends with a gentleman called Peter Stindberg. Without going into details, Peter is married in SL and in RL to someone else, as is his SL Partner. Peter is in a far better position to give a different opinion on RL/SL cheating than I am, here are his thoughts: