Back in December, it was part of an art showing at Misprint Thursday's Artpounce gallery. Here's an announcement for that show: http://virtualartistsalliance.blogspot.com/2009/01/artpounce-gallery-opening.html
Here's what I wrote for that show:
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The Billboard House
The Billboard House is built by me, Cinco Pizzicato.
There's a 'blog I like to read called BLDGBLOG, by Geoff Manaugh (not an SL name). BLDGBLOG is a sort of visionary/sci-fi architecture 'blog, dealing with a lot of what-ifs and strange narratives having to do with architecture and 'the built environment.' It's a very good read, and Manaugh has a publishing deal to put a bunch of his articles in a book. So look for that release soon. BLDGBLOG is here: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/
Anyway, one of the entries on BLDGBLOG is this one: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/single-hauz.html
It talks about a project by front architects in Poland. The project is Single Hauz, which is a one-room house on a mast, like a billboard. Basically: The Billboard House.
This was obviously in my mind when I volunteered to do some landscaping for the SL group called Arbor Project. The Arbor Project is a bunch of volunteers donating tier and effort to beautify Second Life mainland. The recent rule changes against abusive advertising, for instance, is the result of tireless lobbying on the part of the Arbor Project.
The Arbor Project also takes donations of 'junk land' in the midst of ad farms. Some landowners buy up the tiny parcels piecemeal, and end up with a bunch of junk land that they don't know what to do with. If they abandon it, the microparcel extortionists could get it back. If they sell it at a cheap price, then the extortionists buy it, and if they sell it at an expensive price, then they're an extortionist. So it's hard to know what to do.
Enter the Arbor Project, which takes the land as a donation. The Arborists make the place nice, and then give it to whoever will join it back up to larger parcels.
But for the purposes of this notecard, what you need to know is that Arbor land tends to be former advertising land. I use the term 'advertising' loosely, because it was never really about the advertising. These parcels exist as a form of extortion; the 'ads' were just there to be annoying.
So with this in mind I thought: What if you could put a house on one of these weird parcels? It could be a tiny outhouse of a house... Or it could be... The Billboard House! This idea satisfied my sense of irony, and so I began building it.
The Billboard House is only 16 primitives, and will fit on an 8x20 meter parcel of land. That leaves a grand total of 6 prims available if the parcel isn't any larger. Many one-prim-wonder articles of furniture exist, so this could be doable. One could also alter the house to, for instance, not have a roof or window prim. The stairway could be removed, since no one will use it anyway. :-)
Also, the 'back' side of the Billboard House is texture-aligned so that if you drag a texture to the four prims that make it up, you can display artwork of your own choosing. This could be real advertising, or it could be anything at all. It is my hope that users will take the opportunity to be creative rather than commercial, but once you let these things into the world, who knows what will become of them.
So that is the story of the billboard house. It is available for free, copy/mod/trans. Use it in good health.
-- Dec. 2008, Cinco Pizzicato
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The pictures:
Interior:
I like to think it's not really a house until there's a place to drop your keys and pocket change by the doorway. So here's that place:
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