Among Larre’s creative projects highlighted by NHK TV, is an enormous and intricate Second Life fun house, also featured in the virtual world’s Destination Guide.
Larre became Kiremimi’s guide as they explored together, the 3D art
that describes his inner world. 

Upon entering the maze, Larre’s world of 130 rooms, Kiremimi gasped.
Dropping herself through a hole in the floor, she felt,
“This is like ALICE IN WONDERLAND!”

From high atop a giant towering ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ type of vine, one indeed falls down a rabbit hole, beginning a journey which becomes “curioser and curioser” along the way.  Larre’s Fun House is part maze and interactive art exhibit, part obstacle course, and at times, panic room. He describes his goal as “something that cannot be accomplished in real life” and “a picture of his own visionary world.” 

The scope of his vision is vast. In fact he says,

“This is not even an inch of the full visionary world that I have envisioned.”

This adventure can be dizzying, at times puzzling, and takes many hours to complete. Even Larre can still get lost there, in a world he himself created.

As Kiremimi (Eiko Ikegami’s SL avatar) makes her way through the maze, she wonders, “Is this how Larre feels as he moves through life, due to sensory overload?”

Colors are vibrant, appearances and disappearances swift and surprising, which fits with what Larre has shared about the way he experiences Second Life: as “in color”, because he feels much freer to be himself in the virtual world. By contrast, “the real world” can seem “too black and white” for Larre.

“It’s a perception thing.”

“I just tend to find it relaxing and inspiring to basically just tune out of the world for a while. As some believe, we (referencing those on the autism spectrum especially) tend to think in pictures and video. I strongly believe that as well, and sometimes I tend to just zone out into a different dimension.”
– Larre

A short video: Kiremimi moves through glittering passageways,
searching for an opening. Larry’s preoccupation with his visionary images is predominant in this room.

While one room is an immersion in beauty, the next may bring about a burst of laughter. A few spaces, such as a library maze full of book doors where obstacles are plenty and possibilities few, seem to reach toward questions and clues about Larre’s distinct experiences maneuvering life differently from others, as an autistic adult.

Whether through building trance music experiences or time twisting fun houses, Larre makes bold choices and creates immersive, emotionally evocative experiences for others.

In Larre’s words, he is able to do “what I consider The Dream in SL.”

Above, a panned out view of the fun house from outside, situated atop a giant vine (left), and Eiko, at her home in New York, signing into Second Life as her avatar Kiremimi (right).

For a “neurotypical”, Larre’s world feels exciting and surprising, but for Larre himself, as he expressed to Eiko on the hilltop in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the intense, trance-like worlds he builds in Second Life are relaxing, even meditative. They are the primary way he lets others into what Eiko calls, his own hyper-world.

 

 

Photos and text by Stephanie Currier