Sabre & Mace

Digitally produced in Second Life, Sabre & Mace is a real company that offers a unique service created for the online environment of Second Life. The service provides virtual characters the opportunity to experience death as a way to permanently close their user account. The project examines the notion of feeling sentimental toward a virtual character and examines the link between sentimentality and tangibility.

Our research showed that a great deal of second life residents have multiple avatars. One player with whom spoke had 14. He said that he used a many of them as platforms for different sides of his real life personality, and for others he invented entirely new fantasy personalities. However he admitted that some of his created avatars had fallen by the wayside and he no longer used them. It is this type of forgotten and redundant Avatar that this project focuses upon.

Produced in colaboration with Tony Mullin
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Process of the Service

1. Client teleports to our company headquarters after seeing an advert for our service in Second Life

2. Client signs an agreement which states that at some point in their 'second life' they will be collected by one of our agents and taken back to headquarters for avatar termination

3. The client also draws up a 'Last Will & Testament' which allows us to distribute their land and assets to stated persons. At this point the client also reveals the username and password for the specific avatar's account.

4. The client continues their second life until at a random point in time they are visited by a company agent and taken back to headquarters.

5. The final arrangements are made and the 'Will' is amended if necessary. The client is then taken on an experiential journey behind the scene of the company, moving through the control room and past the cryogenic chamber until they reach the termination room.

6. At this point the client is instructed to walk into a room which is densely populated with 'prims' (primitive construction objects used in Second Life) designed to crash the users system.

7. Once the clients system has crashed, we log into the clients account and retire the avatar for good, whilst taking a data grab of the avatar

8. The terminated avatar is immortalised as a statue within the commemorative gardens of Sabre & Mace.