Flea in NPIRL ‘Garden of Delights’ #2

Corra Nacunda avatar by Flea Bussy looking for flowers to eat in ‘Florilishiousness World’ by Scarp Godenot.

I decided to experiment with the size of my photographs. These images can be be seen much larger if you:

1. Click once on the image in the post.
2. Then wait until your mouse cursor turns into a plus sign.
3. Now click again and see the images super-sized.

Photographs below show more of Scarp Godenot’s installation ‘Florilishiousness World’ which can seen in the NPIRL ‘Garden of Delights’. in Second Life.

Flea Bussy’s avatars can be found at Grendel’s Children, Dragons, The Birdworx, and more! in Second Life™.

Please see preceding post: “Flea in NPIRL ‘Garden of Delights’ #1″

Flea in NPIRL ‘Garden of Delights’ #1

Bronze Sigil Knight (avatar created by Flea Bussy ) standing on Kazuhiro Aridian’s installation looking across at ‘Heterotroph’ by Madcow Cosmos.

After mentioning Grendel’s Children in my earlier post ‘Avatar boutiques and virtual vestibules’ Flea Bussy of Grendel’s Children sent me some fabulous avatars! Now I understand why people say ‘Woot!’ in IM, the surprise brought on a ‘Woot!’ of my very own.

Another view of ‘Heterotroph’ by Madcow Cosmos.

Naturally I wanted to take some photographs of my new avis and set out to find suitable Second Life™ backdrops that would be worthy of these avatars. I decided to aim for the ‘Fantastic Art’ style of illustration. I thought the combination of Flea Bussy’s avatars, the dreamy and grotesque environments of the NPIRL Garden of Delights (hosted by Rezzable), and Second Life’s ‘advanced sky editor’ would help me achieve this goal. I found this plan much harder to achieve than expected! For one thing this ‘collaborative collage’ of virtual art works taxed my laptop to the limit! I half expected to see a pall of smoke floating up through the speakers. Undeterred I continued, and now return to my blog to show the results of these adventures featuring the first of my Flea Bussey avatars, the Bronze Sigil Knight (male). I may not have achieved Fantastic Art, but with a few voice bubbles (and more time) I almost have enough material to begin a graphic novel!

Installation by The Messenger, NPIRL Garden of Delights.

Closeup of the Bronze Sigil Knight by Flea Bussy inside The Messenger’s installation.

If you have an account in Second Life find the time to visit this astonishing art exhibition. This is Fantastic Art on an epic scale in the virtual world. “Taking a page from Hieronymous Bosch, Rezzable and NPIRL have enlisted the participation of over 100 of Second Life®’s artists, architects, builders and coders to construct the NPIRL Garden of our collective dreams, spanning four simulators/islands to illustrate: the Underworld, Earth, and Paradise.” (Bettina Tizzy, NPIRL Garden of Delights. May 2008).

View showing the heavenly wings and halo of my Knight. (Beneath the avatar you can just glimpse Miki Gymnast’s ‘viewing platform’.)

The Yeti Bing installation called ‘Perfect universal companionship’,

When you visit the NPIRL’s ‘Garden of Delights’ make sure you attach the hud provided! This helps you to teleport from one installation to the next, and it also gives you the name of each artist. On my first two visits I didn’t want to be restricted and it was fun just flying around exploring. (I like to escape tour guides when I visit English stately homes too.) However, I finally decided to attach the hud and discovered an amazing number of hidden installations that I had missed earlier. (I hear the muffled cheer of distant tour guides.) I also encourage you to return several times because this is a truly extraordinary experience with much to see and savor.

Flight over The Garden of Delights (showing Soror Nishi’s exhibit)

Imagine a giant art gallery in real life opening its doors, and its pictures! In this gallery there is no standing behind a red rope attached to brass stands, or being watched closely by suspicious security guards checking you don’t sneeze on the paintings. In Second Life this giant gallery exists, here we can interact with the art, become part of the work. Here the art wants us to walk right into it; installations like NPIRL’s ‘Garden of Delights’ are constellations of small virtual worlds hosted by a mammoth virtual mother world!

‘The Grotto of Lost Souls’ by Jopsy Pendragon.

NPIRL focuses on work that is ‘not possible in real life’. Some might say this virtual art is not ‘real art’ but when I read my green tea leaves I see it is an art form that will continue to grow and evolve, real life will find more ways (than Second Life art exhibits) of taking us into the ‘Not Possible!’

Tune in again soon for another virtual journey, with another Flea Bussey avatar from Grendel’s Children.

For more information about Fantastic Art take a look at:
The Fantastic in Art and Fiction at Cornell University

The little people of the web

As I am typing this I have a little avatar at the bottom of my screen keeping an eye on me. This avatar is about one inch high and is called a weblin. I have only just discovered weblins (they have been around for a while apparently). I heard about them on Fleep’s Deep Thoughts and I went to investigate over on weblin.com to find out more for myself. When I got there I was met by a cheer leader weblin who waved poms poms at me and gave directions on how to make my practice-weblin ‘be angry’ and wave.

I had been struck by Fleep’s Deep Thought’s statement about weblin.com: “I think this is something of a paradigm shift, and another transitional step to the fully immersive 3D Web or whatever you want to call the evolution we see happening with online social networks and virtual worlds technology.” Fleep further speculates on the use of weblins for education saying in effect they could provide a form of social presence for scattered students.

I think Fleep might be right about this. I recently took a distance education class and missed the relaxed conversations (about the class) that take place during the coffee breaks of face to face meetings. I wrote about this missing element in an earlier blog post ‘Virtual Coffee’ suggesting Second Life could play a role as a location for virtual coffee breaks. But Second Life is a huge unwieldy beast compared to these diddy little weblins! I can see online class discussions taking place with weblins running around providing a useful additional feature. Weblins are less formal than email as communication can be carried out in chat, and the visual back drop to the interaction would be class discussion threads. This visible prompt would provide a ’social presence of place’ lending a context and meaning for the class chat. In fact, I wonder if any educators are using weblins to add more dimension to online courses already?

A swarm of weblins on MSN poised to become my friends!

I downloaded the beta version of weblin and I am now experimenting with it. So far I have discovered that when you sign in for your online email accounts with yahoo, gmail and msn swarms of weblins appear. They announce themselves with heavy foot steps and speak or gesture with bird warblings. It is fun to explore, though I cannot fathom why total strangers want to be my friend just because we both popped onto the same web page. I found myself with only one other weblin called ‘Dennis’ on the BBC news page, but I couldn’t think of anything cheery to say to her considering our backdrop of natural disasters, murder and football stories. I guess I am not a fully fledged social networker?

Cyberloom says ‘cheep’ in a skirt and jacket (one size too small) standing next to a weblin chap with pointy ears.

Now, it is intriguing to consider that one inch tall pixel representations of humans can inject some degree of ’social presence’ (see earlier posts Social presence Theory and Second Life & Social presence and skin deep reality). Obviously size does not matter when it comes to reinforcing the impression of talking with another human being, our minds just need to latch onto the image of another human? (Hence the success of chatting bots?) I also wonder about the social presence of location when applied to meeting on web pages. That is, the web pages will determine weblins behavior and conversation. For example, MSN is a communications watering hole, a focal point for people looking to meet in chat-rooms or simply aiming to email friends. Other web pages will draw weblins with common interests. I was going to take my weblin for a walk across different sites to see how many other weblins I could find but my weblin vanished! I discovered I needed to download a Firefox plugin (for a while there I thought my weblin had run off with the Greek chap with pointy ears to a more ‘mature’ page… I need to talk to her/it?)

In the meantime, as weblins walk slowly to and fro across the bottom of web pages determining Fleep’s possible paradigm shift, I wonder how, when and where my weblin can find clothes that fit will her?

Avatar boutiques and virtual vestibules

‘Noface’ on a surfboard. Avatar created by Flea Bussy of Grendel’s Children.

You don’t have to know how to play an instrument to enjoy music, and you don’t have to be a programmer to enjoy the creations of programmers. I don’t know how to make virtual worlds myself but the idea of them captures my imagination. I have been thinking about a future where virtual world platforms might become a tool that most of us use every day. Wondering what this might look like, and how such ‘tools’ might be applied brought on this post. I add into these speculations, the rather reluctant acknowledgment that money turns ideas from possibilities into reality. That is, market forces shape both the ‘real world’ and the virtual world. Sometimes delightful creations materialize out of this relationship between the people who are good with money, and the people who have imaginative ideas (sometimes, we just end up with bland mediocrity). From this starting point I began to wonder whether it might be more grounded and realistic to wonder whether shops might become virtual worlds in their own right?

Arrival area at Grendel’s Children, Dragons, The Birdworx, and more!

These musings stemmed from hearing a thought provoking presentation by Fox Diller, CEO of Magrathean Technologies on May 1st, 2008 as part of the ‘Train for Success’ series. This is a fascinating series addressing different virtual world platforms (talks are held in Second Life every Thursday). Fox Diller explained how open-source OpenSims and Magrathean’s D-Gig stand alone simulator (a free download available to us all) can offer a secure virtual world. That is, totally self contained environments tucked away behind firewalls where people can meet, train and collaborate on projects etc.

During the course of his presentation Fox Diller speculated upon a future where your avatar in Second Life could ‘drop a door down from your inventory, type in your user name and password, and open the door into the sim (of a virtual world) and walk in.’ Your avatar will arrive dressed in the virtual clothing of one world, to walk around in another world, while retaining their original outfit. You may well say to yourself what is so great about wearing the same (albeit uncreased after travel) virtual clothes? Why bother to go to these lengths just so your digital self projection can look good? (Others will wonder why anyone wants to go into virtual worlds in the first place but they probably prefer watching television and won’t be reading this.)

Aztec Hunter avatar by Flea Bussey

Well, there are people who want their avatars to look good! Some spend hours developing their avatars turning them into personalized moving art works. Many use avatars to ’say’ something about their values and interests, attempting to project a personalized ’social presence’ into the vast chasm of neutral, impersonal cyberspace. Take a quick look at flickr and you will see how many individuals post ‘vanity’ photographs of their carefully coiffed and manicured avatars there! They go into Second Life, shop for clothing, hair, shoes, skin (and many create their own) they then perfect their look, and photograph the results. (And then start all over again perfecting their next ‘look’.)

Many blog posts have been devoted to this preoccupation with self identity and avatars, and no doubt many more are to be written. At the same time, researchers are investigating this phenomenon and Linden dollars are being made exploiting it. But don’t lose sight of the fundamental idea being explored here; that objects created in one virtual world can be carried to other worlds. Take a step away from the mysteries of avatars, and the twists and turns of social presence that they represent, and take a quick look at the implied possibilities of transferring objects across virtual worlds.

Airship avatar by Max Hatfield (perfect for traveling across many virtual worlds?)

One thought is that a virtual world, such as Second Life, that permits user creation could become the industrial capital of virtual worlds. I can see individuals building virtual castles, galleons, spaceships, furniture, clothing and (inevitably) weapons that could then be sold to the avatars of other gaming and social worlds.

There is one big problem to overcome (at least one!) when it comes to walking tours across virtual worlds. It is likely that these worlds will not want to lose their ’subjects’, after all they represent income. The big commercial virtual worlds probably won’t want us crossing over their thresholds into other worlds. I suspect they might even start hunting down the Narnia wardrobes hidden in our inventories and super gluing the virtual hard wood doors shut.

Grendel’s Children store staircases

Well, perhaps shops might be a solution for this? A classic commercial solution? Shops would address these issues in a ‘I scratch your back, you scratch my back solution’. For instance, a store like Grendel’s Children in Second Life could become an avatar boutique for many virtual worlds. A virtual hub connector, perhaps even becoming a virtual world in its own right? Avatars would simply walk in from their respective synthetic environments to purchase their outfits. Presumably such a virtual boutique would pay some kind of ‘portal rent’ to each virtual world? Virtual stores would become vestibules to many virtual worlds. “You want to go ‘There?’ Up the stairs, first door on the left.” “World Of Warcraft? Go past the dragon statue and take the stairs to the top floor.”

Avatar display wall, Grendel’s Children in Second Life

Grendel’s Children is an imaginative feast of avatar possibilities, their creations are both fabulous (in the full sense of the word) and decently priced (many are totally free!) As they say in their FAQ notecard:“Why are prices so low?” “Basically because even though a lot of time and effort goes into the things that are made here we’re not charged for the raw materials and the only cost we need to cover is Land Tier. If you like our work, however, all tips are appreciated. Check the item for the creator’s name.”

It would be wonderful to believe that virtual shopping worlds might be run along the creative and collaborative lines of Grendel’s Children. The worry is that virtual salesmen of the future will study customer profiles then alter their sales-avatars to resemble the customer’s avatar, thus inducing a false sense of empathy and trust to ease sales!

‘Infested Terran’ avatar by Ryan Snook (Grendel’s Children). Or, is this a virtual world mobile phone salesman (before he has adapted himself to match your personal profile?)

Update 11 March 2009. Just read a post in Virtual World News titled, ‘RocketOn Rolls Out Virtual Goods Shops Across The Web’.

Check out this quote taken from the article:  
“We view the Web as a virtual landscape that’s now undergoing a real estate boom,” said Steven Hoffman, co-founder and CEO of RocketOn.  “A few years from now, we’ll have tens of thousands of virtual stores and objects placed all across cyberspace, so every location you think of as a major destination will also have a corresponding virtual environment waiting to be explored and experienced.”  (Alicia Ashby. Virtual World News 10 03 09)

3D mind maps and Web 2.0

Angelgate Particle Exhibit

New worlds appearing in the virtual skies

I can almost hear the crackling pops as new virtual worlds suddenly appear in the static void of cyberspace. The megastar Second Life™ has a little competition; perhaps one day soon one of these new virtual worlds will entice Second Lifers to switch allegiances? Kzero recently provided some insights into the behavior of users in the post ‘Running the numbers: vSide’

It helps to follow the innovators, you can observe their mistakes and problems, and build something that improves upon their initial idea. ‘Followers’ frequently end up with a superior product, and the innovator finds themselves getting left behind, financially unable to justify investment in improvements. On the other hand, many followers are not necessarily improving upon the original vision of a product; they are just jumping on board the ‘band wagon’. But then, perhaps the fact there is a ‘band wagon’ means that a concept (in this case the concept of virtual worlds) has reached mainstream acceptance?

Looking through Truthseeker Young’s ‘threads’

The chuntering stage

When the first passenger train, the ‘Rocket’, was introduced to the public, sensationalists speculated that people would faint due to the high speeds the train could achieve compared to horses. There is always a sizable swathe of humanity that becomes very anxious when faced with innovative ideas and inventions. For example: planes were met with ‘If God had meant man to fly he would have given us wings.’ ‘Television will turn us into zombies’ or ‘Mobile phones will give everyone brain tumors’ etc.

Virtual worlds are in the midst of navigating their way through this chuntering stage as those who say ‘I just don’t get it’ are convinced that virtual world travelers are forgoing ‘real life’ for synthetic existence. Virtual worlds are gradually being recognized as a form of communications that can network us with others and information data. The Internet was created to share knowledge, and we are social animals who want to discuss what interests us. Hence the evolution of Web 2.0, with its social networking tools, enabling us to share conversations about quantum physics or Paris Hilton (or both at the same time if we are so inclined!)

Angelgate Particle Exhibit Camera Tour

Managing information overload

The problem today is that there is so much information ‘out there’ we can easily begin to feel disconnected, even alienated. The more we conduct our business (both commercial and personal) in virtual space, the more abstract our work becomes. It feels harder to relate the different experiences of the concrete world with the synthetic world. But this is where the potential of 3D worlds lies. These synthetic worlds use the metaphor of the concrete world, and this metaphor can potentially help us relate to masses of information. That is, if we move into a 3D virtual space we can place ourselves within relationships to information and data (and each other). We can represent ideas in 3D creating an immersive virtual mind map.

I am taking classes at a university that recently published its class schedule purely online. Classes are now tucked away in a system of drop down menus and filters that sift through the classes for me. Seems a shame though! I miss reading what other departments are offering and feel caught in a linear ‘outline’ logic system that disconnects me from the bigger picture.

Entrance to the blue orb by Kolar Fall

Imagining 3D catalog / galleries

Now, imagine putting the catalog in a 3D environment. Each department would represent itself three dimensionally, could be a building, object or symbol, and the same for classes. I could wander into each department and explore its programs. For instance, I could walk into the business school and see what they are offering (prerequisites would float like balloons above the particular class). If I want to know more I can click on a class for an information note card. To sign up I click on an enroll button that takes me through to a registration page.

Imagine visiting other universities in the virtual world and taking a look at their catalogs in exhibition areas, or galleries. Class catalogs are a form of education, in and of themselves, as they introduce us to other disciplines and educational possibilities. A problem with academic institutions is that they constantly refine themselves into ever tighter discipline areas that fail to relate to each other. Ideas become vacuum packed and creativity decreases as the cross fertilization of ideas becomes increasingly difficult. Online class catalogs run the risk of extending this compartmentalization.

Inside the purple orb: Jopsy Pendragon’s ‘Seraphim Monument’

Information disconnect

We are putting more and more information online while simultaneously struggling to integrate and relate to this same information! When information loses its ‘tangibility’ (e.g, the paper based catalog) by becoming virtual, we feel we have symbolically lost something. However, we can come full circle and make the virtual information symbolically tangible by being able to directly relate to it within the 3D metaphor of the virtual world. With the financial pressures being placed upon businesses, non profits and academia more information is going to be published virtually. The sense of disconnect will increase with this remote placing of data. Virtual worlds have the potential to help us resolve this ‘lost in space’ experience of information anomie.

Inside the yellow orb: The Chakra Symphony by Brigitte Kungler

The next phase of virtual world development may well begin to provide us with this virtual 3D mind mapping environment, helping the data of our concrete worlds relate more naturally with the abstract data of cyberspace…

Pop! And another virtual world materializes…

Social presence and skin deep reality

‘Rome is full of energy’ by elros Tuominen

Communication technologies have been created to help us overcome the physical separation of distance. The measure of the success of these technologies revolves around how much we can create a sense of immediacy, and closeness to each other (despite the miles between us). If we can understand just what makes up social presence then we can deepen our understanding of ourselves, our minds and each other. I define social presence as ‘how much we experience others as breathing, thoughtful, emotional beings with whom we might share some degree of empathy’. (There are far more intellectual definitions of Social Presence Theory, I have simply created my own definition to reflect those aspects of SPT that interest me personally as a virtual world traveller.)

Detail of light sculpture by elros Tuominen

The illusion of compressed distance does not necessarily equate with a comfortable sensation. I am thinking of a friend who described using voice in Second Life to chat to the avatar of someone who lived in another country. She said she felt as though the person behind the avatar was in the same room, and it was scary because she had no idea who the other person was in reality.

Perhaps, today’s sophisticated technologies sometimes feel too real and immediate? Heightened reality is not necessarily what we want in our communications nor does it automatically provide strong social presence. Seeing and hearing each other does not immediately produce mutual understanding, as we all know from face to face situations! It may even be the case that we desire a little distance from each other’s physical, and social presence, to experience each other’s essential self or ‘essence’? That is, we want to get past the distractions of real world, skin deep, appearances to reach each other’s (more genuine?) inner self. As it is, we can determine our appearance as avatars in virtual worlds, then adjust them to represent selected aspects of ourselves. We seek different levels of reality for different situations, and avatars perhaps become an emotional expression of self? Maybe this is the reason why people have more than one avatar? Each avatar reflects different dimensions of our personality and can be selected for different situations? (A rubric cube of selves?)

Ivory Tower Library of Primitives (textures display detail)

When business people are wheeling and dealing they tend to trust conservative clothing and want to glimpse the whites of each others eyes. (As though that conveys a more honest interaction?) But what’s this? Businesses are making use of Second Life as a communication platform to use for virtual meetings. How do they dress their avatars I wonder? (Do they have the added pressure of being ‘known’ in the real world and so will they be judged by their avatar’s appearance in the virtual world?)

There was an interesting discussion recently on SLED’s listserv about how avatars should dress to be taken seriously by those who are ignorant of virtual worlds. One idea put forward was that (when introducing Second Life to *Sluggles) people could dress their avatars in something akin to interview suits for such occasions! Others felt this was not the solution, as avatars are a form of self expression and people should stay true to themselves! This conversation thread was the result of the funny (but could have been much funnier) sketch about Second Life users on the Jon Stewart Daily Show.

Appearance in the virtual world is becoming more significant as the numbers of avatars increase. (And don’t forget the ‘augmentalist v immersonalist’ debate!) Our avatars are unique communication devices in and of themselves. They are created by us in Second Life (and other virtual worlds) and acquire unique features turning them into digitalized, yet strangely emotional, fingerprints of ourselves as we sit at our keyboards.

Neko avatar with butterfly wings and leopard skin spots in the grid!

At the same time as having their appearance constructed by us, our avatars become the medium of communication once we are inside our selected virtual world. Here we are, now able to mine down through layers of communication tools to end up with these personalized ‘speakers’. (The layers: personal computer via a modem; connects to a server; that runs a program; within which we create an individualized communication tool called an avatar; who can communicate with other avatars!) We talk about getting new skins for software applications, this metaphor of ‘skins’ comes full circle when we acquire virtual skins for avatars. The avatar becomes a personalized software device or communication application. Add into this picture the knowledge that, at this very moment, developers are creating ‘doors’ in virtual worlds which will enable us to walk from one virtual world into another using our personal avatars!

Maybe the next step will be to create avatar building software that has an embedded ‘degrees of reality’ dial in the preferences section? Then, according to our personal comfort levels, and different virtual environmental situations, we can adjust our avatar for any and every occasion in the metaverse!

Sluggles: Cyberloom’s description that borrows from J.K. Rowling’s ‘muggles’ to describe people who are ignorant or skeptical of how Second Life can be used as a communication platform.