The charming nation of Victoriana has an exhibit at the Pavilion entitled, "The Origins of Victoriana." My mistaken assumption was that this would provide a historical perspective on the early days of the nation and now it changed over the years. Instead, I found something entirely different: a photographic documentary of how various buildings in Victoriana were inspired by so-called "Real Life" counterparts. (Steelhead has done something similar.)
The exhibit is on the second floor of the Pavilion, and occupies a great deal of space - these Real Life buildings must have been quite inspirational!
Each Victoriana building is pictured with its counterpart. I was astounded at the number of nations from which residents drew inspiration: England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam (!), and I believe I saw one from Turkey.
I looked to see if my typist had visited any of the buildings, and came across the Crawford Notch train station (inspiration for the Victoriana Forest train station), in New Hampshire, U.S.A. (This train line extends into the White Mountains and, ultimately, the Mt. Washington Hotel, where the Bretton Woods conference was held in July 1944; the agreement from that conference pegged countries' exchange rates to the price of gold.) I had a near-miss in the Disneyland train station (inspiration for the Lakeside station in Victoriana): the typist has only seen the Florida version of Mr. Disney's empire.
It was quite interesting to see how close some of the Victoriana buildings came to their counterparts. Because of the limitations of Second Life, less-elaborate buildings came closer than more-elaborate structures. I admired the handiwork of both sets of craftsmen.
2 comments:
Upon my first visit to Victoriana I commented to a friend that I was experiencing a sense of deja vu. I wasn't quite sure why, but I felt it had something to do with the buildings. In retrospect, this was not surprising. The majority of the original buildings are within a few miles of where I live in Sydney.
That would have been an interesting addition to the exhibit: rez date for each building. It sounds as though the Victoriana founders' typists are antipodean. (Hmm, now that I think of it, that word sounds Northern Hemisphere-centric.)
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