In December, I wrote a piece concerning Asterion Coen’s full sim installation formerly at LEA28. While I do admire Asterion’s builds – as I said in that article, they are a veritable tour de force of prim construction, and clearly demonstrate that the prim is far from dead as a building material – the installation itself appeared to be bereft of purpose.

As such, I wondered at the time I wrote my review as to the purpose of the installation, and the ideal behind it; questioning whether things had gone a little off-course due to something like a lack of cohesive guidance from the LEA or some other issue had caused the purpose of the installation to have become a little lost.

Asterion has since contacted me on the matter, and his comments have helped put things into a better perspective. Here, printed with his permission, is what he had to say:

About the content itself, The project should be as described in the LEA form, but some unwanted and unavoidable RL issues in my company meant I was unable to spend time on my SL projects (LEA and others).

If the LEA28 sim looked unstructured and just showroom, with lot of parts everywhere, it’s because I didn’t have time to finish everything as I had little time available for SL. Things were made worse because an inventory issue meant I lost a number of sections for the buildings. The military vehicles, for example, were to be a part of a museum I originally built for Bourbon Island [now apparently closed], but which vanished from my inventory.



Those issues, in addition to my RL ones, made it impossible for me to finish the sim. Had the time been available, there would have been another platform about space and an underground moonbase (in lava tubes). This platform would have been accessed via a shuttle, a lift and other vehicles. The project would have meant people would not be allowed to fly, and would be asked to move around using the vehicles provided and along designated paths.

We can never predict how RL will impact our SL times and work; when matters take an unexpected turn, sometimes we have no choice but to re-prioritise and deal with some matters later. In Asterion’s case, problems with RL appear to have coincided with a period of his SL life that was especially busy, and unfortunately, the latter suffered.

While it would be easy to second-guess what might have been done differently or how things might have been handled better, the fact is that at the time, things were dealt with in the best manner that appeared to be possible. The result was less than satisfying for those of us visiting LEA28 and equally – if not more so – for Asterion himself.

For my part, I’d like to thank him for taking the time to contact me and let me know more of the circumstances surrounding the installation at LEA28. I certainly and sincerely hope that real life does settle down positively for him in 2014, and look forward to seeing more of his creations – particularly those with a “space” theme (!) – within SL in the future.