A meditation on virtual permanence and the architecture of memory
By Sudane Erato
I had occasion to spend a few minutes sitting on the Platz, on one of the benches surrounding the old landing spot in the center. The day is New Years Eve, 2024. The sun time is 5 am and the sun is just rising behind the Schloss. Snowy, quiet (as quiet as the Platz ever is).
20 years. 20 years of history surrounds this spot. People dismiss virtual reality as something “not real”. But that place is as real as anything in the so-called “rl”. 20 years of my life has centered on that place embedded within the kosmos of human history, and hundreds if not thousands of others have similarly encountered each other in that place. Like the environments of “rl” human history, the rocks, the plants, the buildings of this place have all evolved with time; but the “place” is the same place, the streets follow the same paths, the property lines follow mostly the same lines as they do in “rl” human history. Sitting in the Platz I feel echoes of the countless friends and persons unknown to me who have passed through there, interacted, lived their lives there since time began in September 2004.
Directly ahead of me is the Rathaus, a beautiful newer construction by Mizou Vavoom which replaced the old Rathaus built by Kendra Bancroft. In that old Rathaus, on the second floor, the community government of the CDS grew. It was born in an ancient amphitheater on the hill behind it, where the Schloss stands now, where the first Representative Assembly met in the waning months of 2004 when “Neualtenburg” was still in Anzere. But after Linden Lab moved our sim, and all its contents, off to a solitary private island in the vast SL sea, that amphitheater was removed, replaced by a Schloss constructed by Kendra for the honor and glory of Ulrika Zugzwang. The RA then moved to a long building occupying two parcels on the south side of the Platz… two of the three eastern ones… my memory dims. But before long we moved the RA to the second floor of the Rathaus. It was there that we met for many years, including one momentous event when we declared independence from the tyranny of our founder. In the years that followed, much other conflict and tumult continued, forming and shaping the CDS as we know it today.
Directly behind me sits the beautiful Kirche, built by Rosie some years ago to replace the older Kirche created by BladeDancer Pendragon for the original Neualtenburg in Anzere. It was in that original Kirche, shortly after I first rezzed in November 2004, that I met Gwyneth Llewelyn, who held a series of discussions there about theology and religion. I gravitated to those discussions like a moth to flame… Gwyn can surely testify that I was a regular participant, constantly jumping up and down in my enthusiasm for the topics which Gwyn so ably and incredibly guided. It began my deeply enduring relationship with Gwyn and her partner Moon Adamant.
Like the Rathaus and the Kirche, everything around me has changed, but in the most profound ways, everything remains the same. I sit in one of the benches around the stone circle at the center of the Platz, a circle which originally contained the TP arrival scripts… at that time every tp to a sim required that the sim have a designated arrival spot, so that everyone arrived at that location. The circle remains now, without its historical function (fortunately).
All the shops surrounding the Platz have changed… even the walls around the city are new, though not THAT new… they were replaced by Dianne Mechanique many years ago (2010??). To my recollection, the only original content remaining from ancient (2004) Neualtenburg are the snowy rocks on the western edge of the sim placed there by SL mole Eric Linden, the tiny Ski Run sign saying “Paradise” just to the east of the rocks, and Kendra’s famous clocktower at the entrance to the Altenburg section of town.
Ahh… everything changes… this is a living place. But it truly is a profoundly “real” place, a place located here for 20 years, and a place that may be here hundreds of years into the future, long after all of us are gone.
May it be so…