All too easily missed as one crosses Montara Bridge in the mid-west of Sansara, or jumps up to the Montara Bridge Works Gallery in the sky or to any of the destinations highlighted in the information available on the parcel, this little waterside haven is a rewarding place to linger. The land description says, "Welcome friends and gentle avatars. The gallery is in the sky; ground level is by the water with a meditation pillow, reading quilt and more art. Pod boats go by in both directions. Posters for exploring other destinations."
The unique location and the care that has obviously been taken in furnishing this parcel give it a distinctive sense of place that has inspired a few useful observations on my continuing investigation into how to use 512 square meters of virtual space.
Hubbing
I'm going to call it "hubbing" when a place positions itself as a departure point (hub) for multiple other locations. If this practice contributes to a sense of place, it does so by giving a context that is more than the immediate surroundings.
There is a wall to the east of the shack, displaying posters and giving landmarks for other locations on the SecondLife mainland continents. An information card picked up from the news vendor highlights several more places to visit. A box of posters for still more destinations can be picked up for free, and there is a teleporter to the art gallery in the sky above the parcel.
The pod route that plys the waterway in front of the parcel only emphasizes how much this place is part of a living world. All this places the parcel in relation to a web of other places and weaves it into the fabric of our virtual world.
Minimal Palette
Like a painting, the plot makes use of a definite but limited range of hues in various shades. Nothing clashes. Blues and greens and earthy reds, for the most part, are dotted into the yellow sand and set against the weathered white of the building.
In particular, a line of blue runs from the news vendor, through the picture on the wall of the shack, taking in the hollyhocks and the papasan chair and bouncing off the skin of the elephant sculpture before filling the foreground of the water channel.
While the palette may be a conscious choice, I like to think that these lines of color tend not to result from deliberate design but come about from deeper aesthetic instincts. They are worth looking out for.
Informality
Of all the parcels examined so for, this one got the highest possible rating for "Informal". It's not very scientific, but this parcel felt like it fitted "informal" very well. A few things probably contribute to a sense of informality that might be identifiable here.
At the highest level, 'formal' is about alignment and elements of symmetry. Informal implies a looser placement of elements. The objects on the beach look as if they have been tipped out of the shack like thrown dice. Inside the shack, it is neat and tidy but elements of 'openness' and 'comfort' are also contributing to the informality. The fabrics on the seat and wall hanging are homey and slightly worn. These subtle choices of design have an equally subtle effect on how the place is experienced.
Distribution of Scale
This parcel, for the first time, highlighted another element that I think is significant in a way that it makes me what to go back and look again at previous 512 analyses. For want of a better term (and there must be technical words for this), I'll call it 'distribution of scale'. This is when the size of things in the visual environment is well distributed from large to small. In other words, there are some very big things, some big, some mid sized, some small and some tiny.
Very close, and to the south of the parcel is one enormous foot of the, even greater, Montara Bridge. The beach is almost tucked in below the bridge and completely dwarfed by it. Trees and the shack fill the next step down in size, followed by the wall, the hollyhocks, the furniture, down through to the parts of the 3D artwork and the very small items of ornamental glassware. In ones sense it seems obvious that there are different scales applying to different objects but it feels as if, on some level, a sense of the distribution of scale has influenced, for instance, how big to make the hollyhocks.
There's an analogy for this in music. You need Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass to create harmony. Too many bass instruments muddy the sound and too many high-pitched ones make it tinny and screechy. For testing in the future, is the idea that balance across scales of magnitude creates visual harmony.
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