The Space Between These Trees

While exploring the grid with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, we discovered a sim called The Space Between These Trees. It turned out to be an immersive art work, for want of a better description, created by AM Radio and was a mysterious but fascinating place.

On arrival you receive a compass, some snow sounds (to make crunching noises as you walk across the snowy ground of the sim) and a message to look for the door in the NE corner of the sim. The area looks quite desolate, with some leafless trees, a cabin and a lake. We walked toward the cabin and had a look inside. It was basically a two room building, with a very small hall area containing a sink, over which hung the enlightening sign “What you send down the pipe will eventually come back and its always more disgusting the second time you see it” plus a bedroom that was very sparsely decorated. However, the room was bathed in the beautiful golden glow of a Dutch interior, offsetting the lack of comfort of the furnishings.

We left the cabin, passing a frozen lake with violins embedded in it, and went to the NE corner of the sim where there was a door floating in the air. Above the door it said “touch to enter”, so we did. I wonder if AM Radio is a fan of Alice in Wonderland

The door turned out to be a portal to another bleak looking land, this time covered with parched earth instead of snow. There were about a dozen radio telescopes, an airplane, jeep and a trailer with a table next to it. On the table sat a picture made by AM Radio, headphones and a flashlight. When you clicked on the flashlight it took you to a Flickr page showing a time lapse machinima of the radio telescopes made by AM Radio. I put the headphones on but didn’t hear anything; however they did make me look like an alien, which is probably pretty appropriate for the landscape. Perhaps we were supposed to try and contact E.T.

We returned to the door and went through again, expecting to return to the first sim, but instead we found ourselves on a lonely road, with a stalled car and some umbrellas floating around, sort of a weird cross between Mary Poppins and North by Northwest. There was also a dead tree suspended mid-air. This area was the final artwork in the sim.

I don’t know what the meaning of any of this was, but the scenes were all very beautiful and done with a great deal of delicacy. For a haunting and surreal experience, The Space Between These Trees is a great place to go.

Hibiscus Hastings