cyberloom

Joining up the dots with Connectivism…

cyberloom — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:10:12 +0000

I have signed up to participate in the MOOC titled “Connectivism, Networked Learning, and Connective Knowledge, 2012″ with George Siemens and Stephen Downes acting in the roles of instructors.

I have been a fan of Connectivism for quite a while without even knowing it. It is intriguing to be given a name for something that previously had no name. A name is rather like a diagnosis i.e. we often hear how someone who is unwell experiences a sense of relief when they discover that the thing that is making them ill has a name. A name gives power, it propels us into the world with intention. A name can also cause problems, perhaps it is not the name so much as the qualities we attach to the name; the traits and characteristics that we pour upon a name. That is, a name can quickly turn into something dangerously vulnerable to judgmental and limiting thought. The most damaging outcome of such examination is dismissal, reaching a quick conclusion before running off saying it is all quite worthless and there are better things to do with our time,

Oberon Onmura: Wave Fields. Art installation in Second Life

As we in the MOOC address the thorny issue of “What is Connectivism” we have been pointed towards a range of reading materials and taped interviews that address “Connectivism”. I get the sense that if it was at all humanly possible Connectivism would avoid being named at all. For once it was named it was pigeon holed and then pecked to pieces by a thousand questions. However, (rather nicely) Connectivism survives being cut into a million pieces. In fact, it invites such activities and even thrives upon the process. (It is called Connectivism after-all!)

As a blogger (however erratic I might be in this art) I was fascinated when George Siemens stated in an interview with Rick Schier that he (George) had been an active blogger since 2000 and had established his blog elearnspace in 2002. George explained that he recognized that blogging presented a completely different type of learning, a learning that was fundamentally connected in nature. Blogging provided him with the ability to share resources with others, to find one individual and use that individual as the node to find more individuals who were addressing particular subjects. The individual’s blog became the starting point of George’s learning, a connection, the golden thread that lead him into the maze of the web and guided him to the treasure of new knowledge. The process of blogging formed the connections that in turn opened doors to his new learning.

Oberon Onmura: Wave Fields. A rare moment of stillness amongst the moving cubes.

Anyone who has blogged for a while recognizes this process of joining up the dots to create a picture. The connections we make in blogging act on two levels. One is on the internal level, where we write and discover through writing that writing itself is a form of thinking. By writing and thinking we discover connections in our thoughts that we did not know were there lurking (un-named) in our heads. We then move to the external level where we are out in the space beyond ourselves, in the space we share with everything in existence (it is a conveniently vast and limitless space that accommodates all that we know and all that we don’t know).

Blogging allows us as bloggers to literally embed connections (web links) in our writing and these links draw us out of the introspective space of writing and pull us into the external space shared with other writers. We can then in turn communicate with each other and build up layers of understanding through the connections we either simply find or that we consciously create. The act of embedding links gives us the power to connect to targeted locations out in cyberspace. Links allow our writing to take on a new dimension, embedded urls plumb our thoughts and take our readers directly to thought touch points.

Oberon Onmura: Wave Fields. The sea of cubes is in perpetual motion. Creating then breaking patterns.

By recognizing the multi-dimensional space of the web and seeing how we can creatively connect with nodes across the web we are drawing in space. (Connecting the dots.) These drawings render new understandings and the process of recognizing these new understandings show us the amazing commonalities underlying human thought, action and creation. At this point I see Connectivism standing up to be counted as a theory that can help us to see and then (once seen) navigate the new galaxy of knowledge brought to our awareness via today’s technology.

Oberon Onmura: Wave Fields. A passage through the cubes is starting to shift and change.

Images in this post: Second Life Art installation created by Oberon Onmura: Wave Fields (This exhibit closes on January 31st, 2012)

Oberon Onmura’s “Wave Fields” – an ever-changing landscape of cubes that create undulating waves of visual movement as they form, activate, and disintegrate.

Popping Science Bubbles

cyberloom — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:33:14 +0000

I once read that cocaine was God’s way of letting somebody know they had too much money. Quantum physics may be God’s way of saying we are taking ourselves way too seriously. As Kevin Kelly says on Google+ “We are vast and empty… Atom-wise, that is.” This was Kelly’s response to Professor Brian Cox’s BBC Lecture ‘A Night with the Stars’.

The video features the professor, a £Million diamond plus a number of British celebrities who volunteer themselves to be used (embarrassed) in the cause of making a complex area of science more fun and accessible. Apparently the professor is on the receiving end of some criticism for his recent (successful) show ‘The Wonders of the Universe’. I wonder how many of these criticisms emit from academics known to don funny medieval robes from time to time? Ultimately, if folks learn something new about existence from a popular science program then that distant butterfly did flap it’s wings.

Log Rolling Avatars and Virtual Identities

cyberloom — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:25:19 +0000

I think of avatars as vehicles, a means of travel within virtual worlds. They are frozen fragments of our kaleidoscopic self-image(s). Avatars as vehicles cost a lot less than a car and are capable of taking us to outer space one minute and far beneath the ocean in the next. Mosaic pieces of self spinning through the electric hum of cyberspace.

A log rolling self portrait ? Lady Fog avatar on the island of Cocoon.

Visitors to different virtual world locations often adapt their avatars to blend in and belong. (Avatars tend to be rather conformist, but don’t tell them that.) Creators of both whimsical and educational locations in virtual 3D worlds encourage tourists to kit out their avatars according to the relevant theme. By encouraging visitors to ‘dress’ appropriately they can become more fully immersed in the experience of their visit. For example, if you visit the *1920s Berlin Project in Second Life it is suggested that you wear the (free) 1920s clothing provided. This helps avoid the faux pas of wandering around pre-war Berlin dressed as a medieval knight or a Nasa astronaut (basic considerations for experienced time travelers).

Treehouse and balloon on Cocoon Island (designed by rikku Yalin)

To my mind, this shows how we wear the places we visit in online 3D worlds (just as in our physical apparently-more-real-world). With this in mind, I have recently been entertained by the idea of donning a Second Life avatar and then giving myself the task of seeing what place the avatar might wear… Hence the post where Lady Fog is liberated from a framed picture in the Meta_Body exhibition and carried away by mechanical flying boat to the island of Cocoon.

Animated avatar & possible Queen of the Crows ('Fog' avatar courtesy of Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu)

Avatars are playing an ever greater role in our online lives. You do not have to visit virtual worlds to have one. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and a multitude of other social networking sites use avatars nowadays. In fact, at Gravatar.com you are encouraged to zip up your ‘Globally Recognized Avatar‘ and prepare it for travel across the internet where it can be used on (as they say) a ‘kajillion websites’. These gravatars are colorful cubes that we can stick in the comments box on sites (strangely parallel to sending letters with a postage stamp on an envelope). WordPress provides free patterned squares of color to those who lack a gravatar thus enabling them to leave a little decorative stamp of individuality in the comments area below posts. (Try it and see, you will be given a colorful cube with a geometric design (that looks surprisingly like a quilting pattern) should you decide to leave a comment below this post… Theoretically, once you have experienced a Gravar first hand you will be so stirred with the hunger to establish your own virtual identity you too will set out to establish your very own cube of portable social presence.

Peaceful view with distant ruins (Cocoon)

In a way, a gravatar is our digital portrait. The poor person’s land grab in the digital void. The rich and famous commission paintings of themselves; these are highly controlled portrayals designed for posterity, destined to be the lasting record of their lives, forever posed in a good light. Well, whether you use the term avatar or gravatar, these pictorial signatures are cost cutting self-portraits and part of their economical use derives from the fact that they acquire significance from their surroundings. That is, you are saying something about yourself not only from how you depict yourself in your image cube but also in where you place your avatar/gravatar. The location soaks into your little avatar stamp and flavors it with peripheral information about your tastes and sensitivities.

Cyberloom dressed as in Meta_Body's 'Fog' avatar seated upon a flying elephant.

This seems a good place to finish this post with an important statement about myself. I leave you with a picture of Cyberloom wearing borrowed avatar clothing, traveling through digital space seated upon a comfy cushion on a flying elephant. It really does say a lot about me.

Happy Space Traveling.

Post notes & credits:

*1920s Berlin Project in Second Life is actually a role playing sim in Second Life. This means site-seers are welcome but it is important that they wear the clothing of that period and allow those who are actually role-playing (i.e. imagining themselves in Berlin at this time and exploring their stories) are not interrupted. See the interesting article about this sim written by Jo Yardley, make sure that you check out the comments section as there is additional information posted there as well.

The Petrified Gallery: Meta_Body Exhibit created by Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu.
Slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/126/113/703 (Please visit the gallery to see more of the avatar creations of Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu.

Cocoon at slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Strand/143/125/39/ created by rikku Yalin

Out of the Painting and into the Cocoon

cyberloom — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:32:49 +0000

A tale about a woman who escapes from the trap of a painting where she was held like a dead moth in a dusty case. Where was she from? Where was her home? Who was she? What dastardly magic had caught her and imprisoned her in art ?

Delicatessen and Fog Painting

There is a very special art gallery in Second Life, it is a huge shadowy room filled with paintings that glow in a dark cavernous space. It is intriguing to learn that all is not as it seems at the Meta_Body Exhibit found in the Petrified Gallery, for here we discover that these paintings can be brought to life. We the viewers supply that ‘life’… With just a few simple mouse clicks that lightly touch upon the canvas we can become the strange and mysterious beings of the paintings. (Truth be told, if we should ever pause long enough for thought, such activities could be seen as some form of arcane magical practice.)

Lady Fog running for the exits

I selected the image titled ‘Fog’ and before I knew it I was the lady known as Fog! It was almost as though the woman in the portrait had jumped down from her gilded frame and was making a run for the exits with my soul in her possession. Her shoes were very thin ballet shoes and they made a light swishing sandpapery sound as she ran across the dusty floor. Her dress was rough to the touch and she smelt of hessian sacking, garlic and hair spray. The next thing I knew I was trying to yodel like an Alpine shepherdess but found (rather sadly) I sounded more like a cheap imported fog horn. This ululating caused a fabulous mechanical flying boat to materialize, the astonishing machine then lifted me right through the gallery roof and high up into the dark skies overhead.

Lady Fog escapes the gallery by mechanical flying boat (the Morpheus Meriman)

The flying boat flew across the electric night of virtual space and I wondered where Lady Fog was heading as the stars flew past us and I concentrated on not falling out of the flying contraption. As dawn broke across the digital heavens the flying boat began to descend to a land I later discovered was known as Cocoon. To be continued

Dawn over Cocoon

Meta_Body

Meta_Body
The virtual experience of the body is not exactly an experience of the flesh. These sensations, albeit having a physical sensorial aspect, continue to be experienced in our bodies behind the screen, not in our avatar body. The virtual body is a metaphorical body, all language, therefore open to experimentation and possibility.
In this new project, Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu invite you, once again, to rethink your bodies through your avatars, making available all kinds of skins, shapes, body parts, clothes, etc. All these items will be fully modifiable, shareable and copyable, thus challenging the audience to become creators and also share their derivative work with us, in the All My Independent Women RL exhibition. While the avatars will be available in the Second Life Sim Delicatessen, the pictures and machinimas of the derivative work will be displayed at VBKOE, Vienna, giving a glimpse in RL of the new creative flux, beyond the concepts of author and work of art, happening online.

The above text is taken from Meta-Body on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/capcatragu/6175364863/in/photostream

Post Credits:

The Petrified Gallery: Meta_Body Exhibit created by Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu.
Slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/126/113/703

Mechanical Flying Boat by Sextan Shepherd

Cocoon at slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Strand/143/125/39/ created by rikku Yalin

The Black Mirror

cyberloom — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:55:16 +0000

The computer could be described as a ‘Black Mirror’.

The black mirror is a device apparently used by sorcerers and made famous by the witch in Snow White when she chants ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ When the witch was asking her question of her (black) mirror she was ‘scrying’:

Scrying (also called seeing or peeping) is a magic practice that involves seeing things psychically in a medium, usually for purposes of obtaining spiritual visions and less often for purposes of divination or fortune-telling. The most common media used are reflective, translucent, or luminescent substances such as crystals, stones, glass, mirrors, water, fire, or smoke. Scrying has been used in many cultures as a means of divining the past, present, or future. Depending on the culture and practice, the visions that come when one stares into the media are thought to come from God, spirits, the psychic mind, the devil, or the subconscious.

Wikipedia

In the case of the computer maybe we are scrying when we use Google?

The Black Mirror (above) by Failed Inventor - This photo was taken in Second Life in August but I am sad to say the mysterious space known as 'E.O.C. - Eye of Calm' has evaporated. As Failed Inventor himself wrote about the passing of his exhibit: "Once a surrealistic immersion into the serene eye of a hurricane.Now but a breeze on the ocean..."

soror Nishi is the ‘bee’s knees’ (InWorldz)

cyberloom — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:34:53 +0000

I have been flying around Soror Nishi’s island like a bee buzzing around flowers. soror is inspired by plant forms and provides a bug’s eye view of the architectural sweeps of tree branches, sprouting bulbs and bulging stamens.

Xmess Daisy Tree (closeup)

It is intriguing that she uses such vivid, almost cartoonesque colors to create her fabulous plant emporium in the virtual world of InWorldz. The colors lend a bright humorous feel yet close examination reveals soror’s organic creations have near cousins in our duller toned, earthy world.

Complex thorny thing by soror Nishi

This virtual garden center is built upon tiers which reach high up into the skies of InWorldz. Visiting avatars fly through these layers and this ‘visual-movement’ of traveling through 3D space provides a sense of what it must be like to buzz around a flowerbed! (I half expected to see neon colored pollen dusting my avatar’s knees as I flew from flower to flower.)

Seed clouds by soror Nishi

If you visit, watch out for the layer of seed clouds topped by ghostly mushrooms. My sense of scale went haywire as I flew through this cloud. It seemed for a moment as though bubbles of giant coral were hovering above great whales basking in the InWorldz sea, then I realized the ‘whales’ were corn on the cob shaped seed pods suspended in the midair just below me.

Telepathic Swamp Lily by soror Nishi

soror Nishi’s work can be found in Second Life as well as InWorldz. Virtual world artists are not tied by the gravitational pull of just one virtual world, they are increasingly inclined to travel across the digital vacuum of cyberspace, pollinating new worlds with their ideas and creations. having said that, no more appropriate plant can end this post than soror’s ‘Telepathic Swamp Lilies’

Inworldz Landmark: Rainbow Country, soror Nishi Island (36, 90, 21).

Squatting on a virtual lily pad (InWorldz)

cyberloom — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:43:12 +0000

soror Nishi has created a gorgeous island within Inworldz. I believe I read somewhere that InWorldz provides a 10,000 feet height allowance to builders, soror takes full advantage of her height quota and has placed in the center of her island a strange giant bean stalk / elevator type structure, this inclines at a gentle angle and allows you to ascend through many levels of soror Nishi Island. The photos below show just the first level, the water gardens that house fabulous giant lily pads. My avatar is squatting on one of these lily pads having managed to single out a particular pad and ‘Set as Home’ on an earlier occasion. So far soror has shown no signs of evicting me and I wonder whether some of the other lily pads have become homes for other itinerant virtual world wanderers?

Lily Pads and the Old Pine Tree by soror Nishi

The Copper Beach by soror Nishi

The Lantern Tree Grove by soror Nishi

Inworldz Landmark: Rainbow Country, soror Nishi Island (36, 90, 21).

Following Hypergrid Jumpers #2

cyberloom — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:28:06 +0000

Here are a couple more photographs from my quick visits to alternative virtual worlds (see previous post for more information). Of course, it is quite arbitrary what pictures I come back with. I just point my avatar and jump into the new world then wander around. I have no guide books, and if I see a green dot lurking in the nether regions of these new worlds I find am far too shy to go and say ‘hello’ I come from Earth etc. I clearly need to re-visit these worlds and afford them a decent amount of exploration time. However, for now the fun is simply finding it has become pretty easy to hop off into new worlds.

Lost on German Grid this sun wheel island caught my eye

Mind you, this could be the start of a new sport. Jump into an unknown online 3D world and look for certain items in each world… You must return with a flower, a hat, a work of art and an animal, sounds more fun than stamp collecting don’t you think? It certainly is a worthy challenge for Grid Ninjas. Anyway, for now I have two images to share. One is a sun shaped island I found whilst lost on the German Grid (see above) the other is a rather charming view of Fleep Grid’s Chilbo.

Fleep Grid: Chilbo

Following Hypergrid Jumpers

cyberloom — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:43:55 +0000

Reaction Grid Alpha Test flight (I actually got stuck in the air here but I was very philosophical. I had entered a test grid after all).

John “Pathfinder” Lester is living up to his nickname with ‘Be Cunning and Full of Tricks’. His blog leads the way to unexplored 3D spaces that lie beyond the jupiterian shadows of Second Life.

A recent post Report: The Hypergrid Adventurers Club tests ReactionGrid’s Opensim 0.7.2 Alpha Grid described how 10 intrepid Hypergrid Jumpers gathered together to jump from one Open Sim Grid to another. They visited four worlds:

New World Grid - an Eldorado of vacant tiki huts

I decided to follow in the footsteps of the Hypergrid Jumpers. This grand adventuring involved adding each grid to my Imprudence viewer by filling out short forms with somewhat convoluted web paths. Unfortunately, I did not jump from one grid to another as I have not fathomed how this is accomplished. Instead, I visited each world one by one, returning home for a nice cup of tea before flinging myself off into the unknown (well unknown to me that is).

The mood of mystery and adventure inspired me to add fancy lighting effects to my souvenir photographs. I use this artistic license to convey the fact that I am visiting lesser known worlds in outer-cyberspace.

New World Grid - The Cloud Lounge

To be continued…

Pixel Light Travel

cyberloom — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:31:31 +0000

Cyberloom wearing alpha.tribe scuba gear to enable 'Pixel Light Travel' at Burn2

Virtual travelling has its problems don’t you know. Teleporting is great and I wish it was physically possible to pick a location on the other side of the planet and then just be there. One day, maybe this form of travel will be perfected? Perhaps we have already caught a brief glimpse with the recent surprises at Cern where experiments suggest that subatomic particles have traveled faster than the speed of light. (See the BBC article ‘ Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern‘.)

Traveling around Second Life’s Burn2 event on a busy day means dealing with enormous lag. Teleports can be as slow as a wait for a Zone 5 seat on a domestic airline jet in the US. Then, once you arrive at your destination you find your avatar behaving like a random quark as it negotiates digital space. I know I am not the only one having ‘funny moments’ in the digital desert, every so often I see another avatar standing still while their legs run really, really fast on the spot.

The solution is for everyone to reduce their avatar rendering by flinging off their pixel coverings. Better yet, pick up Alpha Auer’s free scuba gear at alpha.tribe. Just wear the wetsuit (without any accessories such as an aqualung or neko ears) and your avatar can achieve the stunning avatar rendering of 100.

Visit the alpha.tribe store in Second Life to pick up your scuba gear created by Alpha Auer.