Safari SGT: Sauce by Maya Paris

 Personal:   are you flipped, gobby, arch, or tricky?
Would you like to be beckoned with an indistinct finger of mildness? 
  Where do you stand on soup?

A darkened room, 1800m up in the air. Red phone boxes. And immediately you're being asked to choose. Who are you? What do you like? What's your number? Should you jump? 
And you wonder - what is all this sauce?

Think about it. That camp yet classy British look. Having all your own teeth, or not.  Brewing. Fish eating chips. Being tempted to cross the line marked 'Do Not Cross'. Surprising sounds with poses and particles. 

What else could it be but a Maya Paris build?

This is where the inner joy of OpenSim becomes replete. 

That is because 'Sauce: This Time it's Personal'  by Maya Paris premiered as an installation at LEA 25 over on Second Life way back in 2014. Yet here we are, 8 years later, still able to bathe in the bliss of the build. 

That's thanks first of all to Maya's patience in porting it all over from SL to Aire Mille Flux, and no less thanks to Marc Moana aka Marc Blieux the owner of this jewel of a grid, who has kept it online all this time. The passing of the years has not diminished the fun of the build, or even messed up the scripts. (Well, maybe one, but you'll be hard put to figure out which.)

If you're just randomly gridhopping, you may have happened on this region, and completely missed all the fun, because it's not instantly obvious that the build is anything more than a luxurious looking Lido marginally marred by the presence of a bike wheel and tentacles and some dodgy cod feasting on chips in the middle of the water.

All pleasant enough, but the full ride is high above you (and if you need it, the teleporter on the Aire Mille Flux Welcome sim drops you off on the spot) at almost two thousand metres above sea level.  

It's not a Hunt or a Quest.  'Sauce' is all about looking for lurve and seaside fun. And by seaside, we are talking about seagulls with baleful eyes. Arcane arcades. Fish and chips. Sauciness bordering on McGill postcards, but never quite. The prom here is more tiddly-pom than tuxedo. There's just a hint of Punch and Judy. But most of all, the elixir of like. Or do I mean life. Both.

This wild ride is about being transported via red phone kiosks, explosions, and navigating the funnier side of personal ads, while pondering as to the exact point at which Hot Sauce becomes Love Potion Number 9. 

Or perhaps it's the same recipe? Kiss me quick, and we'll find out.

Like all Maya Paris builds, you are part of the art. From the moment you take the plunge and gamble away your avatar's dignity by turning off your AO and clicking around, jumping on the poseballs, or wearing some crazy object calculated to make noise or smoking bubbles, you're in the mix, you are the final touch in the masterpiece.

Joining in the fun is essential, and in her very brief Notecard, Maya suggests that the best way to enjoy the experience is in company - bring a friend!

 If you do visit alone, it's virtually guaranteed that you'll find yourself planning on bringing a someone special back with you another time because it's one of those places that cry out to be shared for the sheer exuberance of the atmosphere and the delightful seamlessness of the construction. You will lose yourself in the magic of the moments. 

The various skyboxes are calculated to give the sensation of plenty, of being a little bit lost at all times, of having maybe missed a turning or an attraction, rather like the feeling of a funfair where there is just so much going on you're enchanted and fall back into the moment because you just have to give up on understanding the pure randomness of it all.

You may lose track of time. It's all rather mesmerizing. But you're a bright spark, so no harm done.

Well, eventually you will have to take action, because the only true way out is by breaking down the wall, Maya style, by firing fish. 

Like all good things, your trip around Sauce will come to an end. Whether that means you have finally found The One, or that you simply managed to keep the seagulls out of your chips, in any case it's a victory. Go ahead and take the plunge. 

A big thank you to both Maya Paris and Marc Moana for allowing 'Sauce' to be one of the destinations in the new 'Self Guided Tour' project for HG Safari. There are half a dozen Art themed tours, each featuring six different destinations for a total of 36 places to see art, whether a single installation like this one, or an entire art gallery. To see all the Art trails (and the other trails with themes like 'History' and 'Film Lovers' to mention just two) please visit the HG Safari clubhouse on Avacon.

HG Addresses:

HG Safari clubhouse, Avacon   grid.avacon.org:8002:Safari

'Sauce' by Maya Paris on Aire Mille Flux grid.aire-mille-flux.org:8002:Sauce

http://mayaparisbluestocking.blogspot.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mayaparisbluestocking/