Chasing windmills in the sky

Traveling through Sound Art created by Edo Autopoiesis. Location Harmonia

Second Life™ is a giant collaborative exercise where creative people make everything in the synthetic world. A great part of the magic is seeing all these different imaginative manifestations co-existing side by side. Lesser mortals, like myself, are tourists in Second Life; we travel around exploring, we are an audience that interacts with the creations around us. We are not passively sitting watching (as we would be in front of a television) instead we are moving through and are able to become part of the scene we see.

Listening to ‘Sound Art’ described by Edo Autopoiesis’ as ‘A sound installation resonating with Second Life wind’. Visit Edo’s (real name Edo Paulus) website to hear for yourself.

I may not be able to write computer scripts, design islands and houses but I can photograph what I find with my virtual camera. I can capture images of what I see in my computer monitor, and I can compose freely from what I see; and create my own visual relationship with the artificial space. I can’t do that when I watch a movie as my view of the scene is (by necessity) decided for me by the director. But in Second Life I feel I am photographing my imagination meshed in with the imagination of others around me.

Trickster avatar created by Max Hatfield swanning around Sound Art windmills.

I once spent weeks writing a paper about imagination and I got completely stuck trying to understand how I could see things in my mind’s eye. What was my mind’s eye? Where was it? How can I see images when I close my eyes? Where are those pictures lurking in my mind? It was not a productive line of thinking and I wrote some embarrassing rubbish for my paper! There is, I discovered a need to ‘walk upon the water’ sometimes. Don’t look too closely or you will sink, eyes up, look around and keep on going! Let imagination roll around, avoid constraining it with too much reason!

The Trickster again.

Second Life is shared imagination; it is a land where imaginative people share their far-fetched imaginations; and it is a random world of the possible, the improbable and the utterly impractical. The only difference between the virtual world and the real world, is that we know the virtual world is a metaphor.

Archetypal Robots and Giant Donuts

Perfect Family by Eric Joyner

‘Robots and Donuts’ is an exhibition of paintings by the artist Eric Joyner. This show, promoting his book of the same name, is on display at the Museum of Robots in Second Life. If you (like me) have always liked those archetypal robot figures of the 1950s and 1960s you will enjoy seeing this work.

Malfunction Bay

Eric Joyner’s robots have an endearingly mournful air. It is hard for a robot to smile and this exhibition shows how care worn a robot can be. Clearly they have many concerns, issues with anger management (see above) and feelings of despondency. I can understand this, not because I am a robot, or am I? (See Botgirl Lives for more on such musings). I was thinking more about a friend who came from a family of four boys. Their father loved clockwork, battery operated, and remote control toy robots giving each boy a number of robots to play with. One day the four boys were angry with their father, and made their entire robot collection walk the plank out of their bedroom window. They even managed to set some on fire before they took their walk into electromagnetic infinity. Eric Joyner’s robots know about these things, you can see it in their eyes.

In the background is the painting ‘The Usual Suspects’. In the foreground you can see Cyberloom (dressed up in her robotic party frock) spending rather too long chatting to two swivel chairs believing them to be distant relatives.

‘The Fog of War’ depicts a battle with 300 foot high donuts, the dreaded arch enemy of Joyner’s robots. Following my visit to the ‘Robots and Donuts’ exhibition I was intrigued to see this report on the BBC . This news segment shows the US military testing out a robotic suit, they have already spent “tens of millions of dollars on development…” For a moment I had a vision of America declaring war on giant donuts. Some health experts might even agree that the real ‘axis of evil’ is the American diet? I then began speculating on how big a donut we could make in reality? Say we took one busy Dunkin Donut shop and poured a week’s worth of batter into a giant deep fat fryer, how big would the donut be?

‘Weary Traveler’ depicts a beautiful scene with its glimpse into the virtual world of Joyner’s imagination. We see a robot napping close to the edge of a cliff… and realise we are the robots.

For more information visit Eric Joyner’s own website and blog at http://www.ericjoyner.com/

Achieving ‘Mystical Serenity’ with advanced settings

‘Mystical Serenity a romantic isle’ is the perfect location to experiment with the Second Life 1.20.0 platform update. This romantic and peaceful island has lots of water, big skies and beautiful trees.

I took these first 1.20.0 photographs using advanced settings in the environmental editor (under World in the top menu bar).

Advanced sky settings set to ‘Blue Midday’ and water set to ‘glassy’ producing a soft pastels look.

‘Fine Day’ with ‘distance’ and clouds adjusted for compositional effect

‘Fine Day’ once again. You can move the sun in an arc across the sky and watch the changes in lighting and shadow. It looks pretty amazing, like watching time lapse photography speeded up.

Pirate ship in the distance and ‘Foggy’ setting.

‘Mystical Serenity’ has nooks and cranies galore to explore, the picture above gives a glimpse of a small sandy beach with a treasure chest and camp fire. There are many surprises on the island, but I won’t give them away!

Cyberloom with baby dragons, this picture was taken using the previous viewer and now seems less 3D when compared to the pictures taken using the new viewer.

The updated viewer takes a while to get used to. It gives a huge range of choices for how your virtual world can appear. We may soon see an explosion of gaudy images emerging from Second Life! The pictures above are from my first experience with the viewer. The next thing is to find a good reason to render a ‘Valdez’ oil slick or ‘Second Plague’ water effect!

Some will feel overwhelmed by the range of choices now available, but they can always leave their settings on default, and avoid the learning curve. The biggest concern is the demand on computer resources, but if I understand correctly you can open preferences, and move all your graphics sliders down low (if your system is having problems). I suspect many people are going to be updating video cards and some may be buying new computers to handle the updated graphics demands.

Take a look at the Torley Linden YouTube tutorial (below) on setting graphic preferences if you want to know more.

May you find ‘Mystical Serenity’ with advanced settings! Oh… by the way this island looks gorgeous on any setting but its a great place to hang out and practice with your viewer!

View from inside the volcano…

The center of Deja Vu Volcano

Cyberloom has recently met a number of educators who express anxiety about the World Wide Web with its social networking sites and virtual worlds. They are particularly concerned by the stories they have heard about Second Life. This platform has many parallels with the early days of the internet, and like the internet is often portrayed as a haven of sex and debauchery. (At the very least, virtual worlds are seen as distractions taking students away from their studies.) There is no smoke without fire, but perhaps it is also the sign of a viable new communication system when the sex industry runs in to exploit it? And another indicator is when educators run in to exploit the same medium for educational purposes?

‘Ritual Circle’ by Ian Palente on show at Art INTERSECTIONS

The history of Distance Education is a history of communication technology and as Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley say in their book Distance Education: A Systems View (2005) the Internet and World Wide Web provide Fifth Generation Distance Education. Moore and Kearsley suggest Correspondence Courses made up the First Generation, radio and television the Second; Open Universities the Third; and teleconferencing the Fourth Generation. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that Web 2.0 with podcasting, social networking, virtual worlds and virtual classrooms are Sixth Generation Distance Education? There are already a number of educational institutions working within Second Life and that number is steadily increasing. Take a look at Institutions and Organizations in Second Life to see a list of educational establishments and organizations already exploring this platform.

Avatars gather at the Dakota Playhouse, Deadwood (1876)

Now, by venturing into Second Life and returning with photographs for my blog I am participating in a long tradition of education through photography. Victorians took photographs of distant lands, science and nature then presented their images to genteel society as an early form of ‘edu-tainment’.

Cyberloom sitting on a coffee molecule at sunrise. (Location: Science Education Island Second Nature)

Perhaps my pictures and blog will help shift some preconceived notions? Hum… so does that mean Cyberloom could possibly be a form of edu-tainment for genteel bloggers? No… the truth is this genteel blog is edu-tainment for Cyberloom.

‘Second Life – Why would you go there? #3: Deep Sea Diving

Cyberloom at the bottom of the ocean.

Wearing a free diving suit courtesy of the Abyss Museum of Ocean Science, Gun (54, 41, 81)

Acropolis Gardens in the Sea of Basiat Underwater Park

Ghostly fish at Mystic Beach, Rainforest Reef

Trying out a dance pole in deep sea diving gear. Very aerobic exercise! (This place was a ruin before I started dancing I promise!) Location: Mystical Serenity a Romantic Isle

Relaxing on a surf board… paddling homewards. The weight of my diving gear is sinking the board… will Cyberloom survive?

A meme game

Blued Food’s ‘genetica’ on show at Quadrapop Tree until April 14th

Memes propagate themselves and can move through a “culture” in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways resembles a gene. Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene, recounts how and why he coined the term meme to describe how one might extend Darwinian principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Wikipedia

Cyberloom was asked to participate in a meme game by Sofian, editor in chief of Second Life At Hand.

Book meme 5:5:5 + poem

My instructions
The meme to disseminate:
You take the fifth book (from the left or the right) on the fifth shelf (from top or from bottom) of your bookcase (if less than 5 shelves you go and buy a decent bookcase) and you find the fifth line of the fifth page from which you take the fifth word, that’s all.

In a second step you arrange the letters of this word vertically, so as each letter is the first letter of a verse, and you build a poem, an aphorism, whatever you like referring to Second Life.

Here is my first try with “The Usborne Book of World History” where I find at page 5 and line 5: “milk, wool and animals for carrying loads.”

The fifth word is “for” therefore my result is as follows:

Frightened of the griefers I often stay at home but sometimes
Overcoming my fear I dare to go shopping and buy
Ridiculous outfits that will stack in my inventory.

My contribution to this internet meme game of Web 2.0
The fifth book on my fifth shelf is ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ by Lynne Truss. The fifth line on page 5 says: “Blair was stood” (instead of “standing”) we suck our…” Obviously not a complete sentence; however, it gives me ‘of’ to write as two lines of poetry… Well, I am not a poet and feel the need to camouflage my poor poetry by turning my lines into photo captions.

Orange bat clothes complete with wings, horns and hair

Fashion victim yet again! (blushing synthetically while you stare!)

Now I am meant to identify five others to play this game but I will confess something here. You know all the chain emails that make their way around the internet? The ones that say pass this email on to ten other people and you will receive $10,000 in the mail? Or, pass on this message and something really good will happen to you in three days time if you send this email to 16 others… Well, I am the one who breaks the chain. Sorry about that.

The idea of the meme is fascinating all the same. I recommend a visit to The Daily Meme, an evolving internet meme archive, with an incredible range of memes squirreled away for rainy day reading. After discovering the Daily Meme I began delving further into Google search, and found a surprising array of web sites devoted to the meme and memetics. To learn more explore the following sites: fusionanomaly and Meme Central.

Postscript

Having made my modest meme donation I see that Second Life At Hand wrote on April 1st:

Alors voila, j’ai décidé que j’allais arrêter ce blog, le fermer définitivement, en plus ça tombe plutôt bien avec les nouvelles restrictions™ que je suis bien incapable de circonvenir ou de respecter, avec tous les Second Life et Linden Lab dont j’ai truffé mes articles, comme autant de mines anti-personnel prêtes à me sauter à la figure à la moindre occasion…

Adieu monde cruel, tu ne me manqueras pas, j’ai ma pelouse à tondre et mes rosiers à tailler…

Rose portal to Real Life™

This is a reminder, that perhaps I ought to run through Cyberloom and put ™ next to every mention of Second Life™? (See New World Notes and nexeusfatale.com for an explanation.) Or maybe I will just go and prune roses too? I once read that Mark Twain disagreed with his publisher on how to use punctuation, and he placed hundreds of commas, colons, semi-colons and periods at the end of his text, with the advice ‘distribute as you see fit’. I can’t locate the source of that story or recall the precise wording; perhaps it is an urban myth? However, motivated by this tenuous memory, I have planted all my ™, © & ® at the end of this post. I also promise that these symbols are available for scattering throughout Cyberloom if strictly necessary… For now, I will nurture them here until they bloom and need a prune; if you know what I meme?

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™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™™

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ooxxooxx

Pre-pruned roses in perpetual bloom available in world at: Heart Garden Centre