You’re walking in a desert through an extravagance of imaginative builds on all sides, but then you see something strange, a rectangular build, orange and yellow in color, with some spheres and other shapes inside. If you enter the property and hit the "Play Media" icon on your Second Life viewer, the magic begins.

Music plays and every surface comes alive with video. One brief moment is captured in this picture, but it’s only one moment. It’s constantly changing. You can see more moments of it in the slide show that follows this article. It’s "Personal Video Dome" by an Australian, 1Earthling Rang (say it aloud), "Unique SL Video/Color Experience … designed to play video from all surfaces." This writer found it mesmerizing.

Nearby, you’ll see the colorful "Rainbow Serpent Lodge – R/SL" in the camp of Sundog Branner, whose self description is "Creative soul in Oz … Colour alchemist, rainbow warrior, cosmic composer". Words fail to describe Sundog’s build. His own description of it is, "13:20 Time = Art The Dreamspell – 13 moons : 20 tribes r/evolve – r/sl".

You’ll find "Honest Punky’s Used Cars and Foreclosed Buildings" a little south of Sundog Brenner, in Noiz Noyes’ camp. It’s a petrol station with fuel pumps, a space ship between pumps, a collection vehicles, a machinima you can watch, and boxes, piles and piles of boxes containing items such as "Nashville Tomb of the Templars" and "Nashville Stonehenge", virtually all of which you can get copies of for free. Most of the items being given away were created by Punky Pugilist.

Nestled between Sundog Branner’s and Noiz Noyes’ camps you’ll find "Candlemania" in the camp of Arrow Inglewood. Here you’ll find a variety of flames, including a candle headlight in the basket of a "@Delux Hobo Bicycle". The bicycle was created by Athos Murphy.

Return to 1Earthling Rang’s Personal Video Dome just north of it you’ll find a very different camp, "Beyond my lifetime", in the camp of zeusdinne Baroque. At one end, a spaceship blasts off while at the other end, a mammoth stands over a camp with a campfire, an animal skin stretched out to dry, and fish hanging from a framework of tree branches. In the middle, between mammoth and rocket, there’s a rug with meditation pose balls. There’s picture of the campsite in the slide show below, but it was taken a few days ago. Zeusdinne Baroque has added items to the site since then.

At the southest corner of the sim, next to the Burning Life-Elko sim, you’ll find the camp of Hellahond Nightfire. Here, gargoyles and dragons stand guard over several animals and what appears to be a bee perpetually raises and lowers a basket between the ground and a "Birds Dance Platform" overhead.

You’ll find ten more pictures of the builds mentioned in this article in the slide show below, and you can learn more about Burning Life at its website, burninglife.secondlife.com. The pictures in this article and slideshow were all taken in the Burning Life-Quinn sim. The sim is closed now while builders are still constructing their creatings, but you will be able to visit it from October 17-31, 2009.

While taking pictures in the Burning Life-Limbo sim, I met two builders who exemplify one of the things I like best about Second Life: it’s global nature. We come from all over the globe, nearly every country, and speaking a wide array of languages. Without a virtual world such as Second Life, we’d be unlikely ever to meet, but in Second Life we can work together, play together, learn together. It’s an unprecedented truly global community.

The two builders are Penelope Parx, a German who came to Second Life to build, and Ally Aeon, an Italian designer and artist in both her first and second lives and who is using Second Life to learn English. She’s doing a fine job of learning. I’ll cover their builds in a future article. They are in the Burning Life-Nightingale sim, which I haven’t gotten to yet.

Yesterday I wrote about meeting OhMy Shalala riding on the bumble bee she had built. Today I visited her build, which is exactly what you might expect a bee lover to build: a gentle flower rising from the lifeless desert floor, looking like stained glass against the sky. You see it pictured here. It’s in the Burning Life-Limbo sim. In addition to this picture, I have ten more pictures of other builds in the slide show below. It contains pictures from the camps of Athena Rickena, Chimeracool Burner, Fabs Bonetto, Khloe Carter, OhMy Shalala, Pyewacket Bellman, and Vanshon Flow.

You can learn more about Burning Life at its website, burninglife.secondlife.com. The pictures in this article and slideshow were taken in the Burning Life-Limbo, Burning Life-Pyramid, Burning Life-Tungsten, and Burning Life-Zero Mile sims. They are closed now while builders are still constructing their creatings, but you will be able to visit them from October 17-31, 2009.

Burning Life 2009 is coming! It will be open October 17-25, but beginning today I’m publishing a series of previews of what you’ll see. Based on the famous Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, Second Life‘s Burning Life festival adheres closely to the spirit of the Burning Man. A cooperatively built city arises in the desert, a paragon of creativity, community, and excitement, and after it’s over every scrap is removed, leaving only bare desert floor. I’ve written about it previously here, here, and here. Now people are busy building their creations, which are overall very impressive. You can see advance views of Burning Life 2009 in the slide show that follows this article. The build pictured here is by Wick Umino.

While I was there today, a large bumble bee flew in from the desert sands and stopped, hovering in front of me. It was a "Giant Tamed BumbleBee!" and in a seat suspended from it was its creator, OhMy Shalala, a woman who loves creating in Second Life and who in real life is an avid gamer, musician, and photographer. She makes one person, two person, and five person versions of the bumble bee; you can see the single person version in the slide show below. OhMy has a build in Burning Life, which I’ll visit for a future preview article, and she’s a Burning Life ranger.

Be sure to check out the slide show below. It contains pictures from this week’s meeting of Burning Life rangers and of Burning Life builds in the camps of Artistide Despres (whose artwork was in the recent art auction), Cienega Soon, Patio Plasma, Salmon Carpaccio, Vicero Lambert, Wick Umino, and windyy Lane.

You can learn more about Burning Life at its website, burninglife.secondlife.com.

You can have land for free at Second Life‘s Burning Life festival, which will be held October 17-25, 2009. Not only won’t it cost you anything, it also won’t affect your tier if you already own land. You don’t even have to currently be a Second Life member (though you do have to join to get the land; basic memberships are free)..

However, this is not ordinary land. You will possess it only for a week, and you should consider it only if you are excited by the idea of Burning Man and Burning life, by the idea of people coming together once a year in the desert to cooperatively build a city from a barren desert, letting imaginations run wild, and then dismantle everything a week later, leaving the desert as barren as it was before, without a trace of what was briefly built there. You can learn more about Burning Man at www.burningman.com and at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_man. You can learn about Burning Life, Second Life’s version of Burning Man, at burninglife.secondlife.com. This picture (http://www.flickr.com/photos/andromega/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) is from a past Burning Life

There are four ways you can get land at Burning Life; it’s all free, but on the condition that people who get the land adhere to the spirit of Burning Life: working together cooperatively as a community; nothing commercial, no sponsorships, no logos, and no tip jars; and adhering to the Ten Principles.

1. Walk-in campsites: These will be available in two half regions beginning October 17. It will be like camping in a national forest without designated campgrounds. You can claim some space and build there, as long as your building is done cooperatively with or at least respecting other builders in the area and not using more than your share of prims.

2. Land Rush: These will be about 275 parcels ranging in size from 1568 square meters with 350 prims up to 3360 square meters with 750 prims. These will be given to the first avatar who claims them in staged releases for about a week beginning around September 14.

3. Small Art Sites: These are about 90 parcels that will be given away in Land Rush style. They are in an areas called "open playa" that’s designed for smaller art works. Parcels are 576 square meters and have 300 prims each.

4. Theme Camps: These are 52 plots that will be awarded to "whoever proposes the most amusing, amazing, or interesting ways to engage their fellow Residents." If you’re looking for ideas, Linden Lab recommends taking a look at the Theme Camp list for the real life Burning Man festival, held every year in the Nevada desert.

For more information about getting free land at Burning Life, read the Burning Life process page. You should also consult the Burning Life home page.

Just like Nevada‘s famous Burning Man festival, Second Life‘s Burning Life festival is a completely non-commercial, non-paid endeavor, an organized magical city springing to life from a barren desert and then a week later vanishing without a trace.

One of the ways you can become involved in Burning Life 2009 is by taking a volunteer job there. Volunteering, both in the real world and in Second Life, can be enormously satisfying and is a great way to meet people. There’s a wide range of volunteer positions available, either preparing for the event, working during it (October 17-25, 2009), or in a year round position for this annual festival. You don’t have to make a major commitment. You can commit to working only as many hours as is convenient As of today, there are 25 jobs that require less than ten hours a week, 20 jobs that require a 10-30 hour commitment per week, and three jobs requiring a 30-50 hour commentment.

The jobs in this temporary city in a virtual desert fall into the categories of Administration, Art Department, Burning Man Regional, Communications/Publicity, Community Services, Department of Mutant Vehicles, Department of Public Works, Performance, and Rangers. The jobs available include Volunteer Coordinator, Porta Potty Artists, Linguists, Tour Guides, Costumers, Builders, Pyro Specialist, Lamplighter/Drummer, and Ranger. These are only a few of the jobs available.

If you’re interested in volunteering, be sure to first read the Burning Life Volunteer Rights & Responsibilities page. Additional training will be required for ranger positions. You can find the list of available volunteer jobs at the Burning Life 2009 Jobs Page and you can apply for a job here.

I’ll be writing more about Burning Life 2009 in coming days and weeks.

Back in 2003, a group of software developers in San Francisco were too busy creating a new virtual world called Second Life to attend something else they loved, the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, so they did something audacious. After getting permission from Burning Man organizers, they created their own Burning Man in Second Life, which they called Burning Life.

Burning Life became an annual tradition and in October 2009, Second Life will hold it’s seventh annual Burning Life. The following machinima created by Loki Eliot is a teaser to give you a taste of what’s to come during the week of October 17-25 during Burning Life 2009:

I’ll be writing more about Burning Life 2009 in coming days and weeks.