Wednesday 11 April 2007

The Giant Head - or Making Reperes

If you follow 3pointD.com, you may have spotted a brief mention of the Reperes HQ build in my recent article about the Jardin Des Halles competition. The Reperes HQ build is the result of another competition, won by Virtuool, under crazy French wolf-man, Joshua Culdesac. In their blog, Virtuool describe their entry as "an incredible 3000 prim assembly, [that] will permanently stand on Reperes island as a strongly attracting object with a highly positive influence on local traffic." 3000 prim?!! Yes, dear reader... an impressive total methinks.

Anyway, with these facts rattling around in my head I sent my virtual self off in search of Reperes Island, to verify the facts for myself. (Well... to be honest... just to have a nosey around.)

Reperes claim to be the first market research company in SL. I have no way of confirming or denying this, though I would point out that Square 1 have also been in Second Life for quite some time (before their recent move to their own island sim). In any event, on arrival you will find you can sign up to take part in surveys, and receive a modicum of payment in return.

Most of the island is currently taken up with a variety of thematically disconnected buildings, with little obvious structure to them. There is a "main reception" below, and a number of odd office and presentation blocks dotted about. I would assume, from this apparent randomness, that Reperes are still working on the overall look of the island.

However, I wasn't there to check out the island - I was there to check out the 3,000 prim Giant Head, in all its glory. And so... without further ado... here it is:


It contains office, meeting and presentation spaces, and is based on scans (what technology Joshua? You need to remind me!) of an actual human head. I like the semiotics of this building, the idea of "working inside the head" kind of works for me... and it is a highly imaginative response to the Reperes brief. An interesting addition to the architecture of Second Life, and one to get your head around.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Market Truths, winner of the Electric Sheep's business plan contest is another pretty successful market research firm doing business in Second Life. They seem to be doing well, and have actually released a few pretty interesting studys to the SL population. Check them out. Search for Pebbles Hanya.

Anonymous said...

Hey Aleister ! I'm afraid the answer to "what kind of technology was used for that" is :"a pen and some patience !-)

Piper Pitney sliced a human head which we the outlined with box prims, one by one. We then assembled the slices and built the floors and the elevator.

What hapened to the RL head is the question : maybe I shoudl ask Piper about this ?-)

Meet you soon in-world !

Joshua

Timbo said...

Eeewwww...!

I'm pretty sure Piper used some fancy tech to do the "Slice images", and didn't just slice up a head. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

'scuse me... too early in the morning for these thoughts... now where's that barf bucket?!