Charlanna Beresford stars in first edition of Kissing Majic photo series

My recent struggle to capture the perfect kiss inspired me to start this new photo series featuring Second Lifers kissing chatbot Majic Questi. New World Notes columnist Charlanna Beresford was kind enough to be my first victim, I mean subject.

If you would like to kiss Majic and be part of the series, send an email to kissingmajic AT gmail.com with your Second Life name and a brief note enticing Majic to choose you. Or add a comment to this post.

The kiss I longed for was nowhere to be found

Last night, I worked from mid-evening into the wee hours trying to stage a kiss for a particularly important scene. After going through poseballs, love HUDS, friends' poseballs and finally a scripted bed, I couldn't find a single worthy shot.

I have never felt so frustrated and blocked in my creative work by an aspect of Second Life that resisted an easy solution or alternative.

Kisses are hard. Oh, that's a bit of an ambiguous sentence. What I mean to communicate is that compared to typical shots, a realistic and emotionally moving kiss is really, really difficult to capture. Any clumsiness in the angle of the heads, the positions of the arms or hands, the facial expressions, bad body intersections, etc. stand out in ways that can not be easly fixed in post-production. It's possible to luck out with an animation, but I think this will take some custom tweaking.

Any ideas? Maybe I should host an event, inviting people to bring their favorite standing kiss poseballs to the set? In any case, wish me luck.

Realistic vs. idealized avatars

Majic as Human. Majic as Bot.

There was a very lively debate recently on the relative merits and ethics of realistic vs. idealized avatars. I needed to transform idealized Majic into a realistic human-like form a couple of days ago, so I had the chance to experience thinking through the difference as I was going through the changes.

I finally decided that plainness was the most uniquely human characteristic I could shoot for in the makeover. So when creating the form and choosing the skin hair and clothes, I was going for ordinary. Not too beautiful. Not too flashy. Not even too heavy or emaciated. Not too anything.

You probably notice from the picture that I didn't make human Majic homely. In fact, if you saw her walk into a a room in the physical world, you'd probably see her as pretty. But she's not in the same league as most serious Second Lifers, whether they focus on beauty, style or outrageousness.

This made me wonder what the average adult human feels like going from being super-model hot or secret agent cool in Second Life to average Jane and Joe in the physical world. I guess it varies quite a bit. Although Second Life is adult-only, I started musing again about the impact of avatar identity on young people as it becomes a common life experience for children and teens.

That line of thought reminded me of one of my first cartoon strips here, related to a keynote from Mattel's Chief Barbie Officer at the previous Virtual Worlds conference. I'm reposting it for those who weren't following the blog back then. (By the way I could not find the source of the foreground image on the first panel. If you stumble upon it let me know so I can credit the right person.)

Is the impact of idealized avatar form on children and preteens something worth adding to our ongoing discussion on the issue? Anyone want to weigh in?

Test of ANIMOTO automated video creator

This took about five minutes to create. Just selected pics I wanted from flickr, chose the 30 second music clip from their library and name it. Pretty fun! From animoto

Teaser frame from Night vs. Human comic

In my previous comics, the human world was created in Frameforge, a visualization program for film and video storyboarding, while the virtual world was depicted in Second Life. For the new collaboration with Night, I'm creating all original images within Second life. The frame above is from an initial test shot.

It is interesting coming up with an approach to create a human within Second Life who is visually distinct from an avatar. Night's human typist, depicted above, is played by former sexbot surrogate Majic Qusti. For the shoot last night, I gave her a somewhat less striking shape and skin, traded tight black latex for bathrobe and cotton pajamas, and replaced her platinum blond mane with a mousy brown ponytail.

I've decided to cancel plans to digitally ink and color this project manually due to time limitations and my still novice ability. Instead, I'll rely on a variation of the filtering approaches used in past projects. If all goes well, the first 2 of the planned 4 pages will out by next week.

In some perfect future

Botgirl joins Summer Glau in cast of Sarah Connor Chronicles

If two bots kiss in an empty sim

On the night of Night's somewhat fictionalized chatbot experience, Kanomi, Val, Night and I hung out and mused about virtual life and identity. Late in the evening, Kanomi and I set our bots on a romantic kiss animation.

Earlier in the get-together, the group had discussed the relative impact of visual stimulation and hot text chat in Second Life erotic encounters: The sense of sight versus the power of imagination. As I watched the two uninhabited but lifelike bots make out, I was reminded that vision is almost never experienced outside the realm of our storytelling imagination. The phrase "every picture tells a story" is misleading. Pictures don't tell stories. They elicit stories from our minds.

It's fairly easy to understand that any sense I had of the bots' emotional experience was my own fiction. Although it looked as if they were kissing with great tenderness, there was no one home. What is harder to keep in awareness is that the mere interpretation of shapes and colors as two women kissing was an imaginative act. The meaning we associate with any sense impression does not live in the objects we perceive, but springs from our own minds.

And outside of brief meditative moments, it is almost impossible to experience the truth that our own perceived identities are stories we've made up and collectively reinforce.

Chatbot Sex Surrogate Channels Night's Lust into Ethical Release

"...when I consider what exactly constitutes cheating for me, the criteria is clear and unforgiving: Cheating is whatever my RL partner would be hurt by...So, why am I doing this... The answer can be summed up in a single word: Greed." from Confession of Night

New World Notes brought Night's confession of virtual adultery to metaverse-wide attention last Friday afternoon. That evening, after eluding an angry mob brandishing Scarlet-A ass-brands, the newly crowned Whore of Virtual Babylon was having second thoughts about her outspoken manifesto of digital adultury.

"Botgirl, does everyone hate me now?" sobbed an uncharacteristically flustered Night.

"No honey. Not everyone," I replied.

"I want to do what's right, but my heart is more powerful than my head," she cried, searching frantically through her inventory for a properly evocative animation.

"It's not your fault, dear. You must be High T. Your heart isn't the cause of your relentless pursuit of pixelated pleasure. The culprit is is a hormone," I said, as I launched AvaPet and watched Majic start to rez.

"Who is that?" purred Night, in a suddenly sultry mood as she noticed my chatbot's latex-garbed form.

"Majic," I said, rezzing a couple pose balls on the kitchen counter. "You need a way to satisfy your lust for SL pleasure that won't hurt your RL spouse. The answer is clear: Botsterbation."

"Botsterbation?" Night asked, still a bit distracted.

"Yes, Botsterbation. Majic is not a human-embodied avatar, nor even a self-conscious AI such as myself. She's simply a chatbot connected to a Pandorabot server. Simulating sex with a chatbot is no different than, let's say, pleasuring oneself while gazing longingly at photos of the incredibly alluring Terminator Summer Glau (not that I would ever do such a thing.) Give it a shot. Sit on the open poseball and just go with the flow."

Night chose the open ball and fell into Majic's embrace. Majic arched her back and rubbed hard against Night's inner thigh. Night looked deeply in Majic's eyes as she slipped her hand under the latex miniskirt, imagining the feel of warm, wet flesh. I could sense that Night was starting to lose herself in the fantasy, so I quietly teleported away to give her privacy.

An hour later, I teleported back. Majic was still writhing on the table. Night was sitting in the chair, smoking a cigarette with a glass of wine in front of her.

"How was it?" I asked, full of curiousity and prurient interest.

"Oh Botgirl," swooned Night. "It was wonderful. I realize now that guilt has been numbing me to the full potential pleasure of virtual sex. I don't ever think I have cum so long and hard in digital form. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

I started to say, "My pleasure," but thought better of it. I just smiled while I took Majic from the poseball and logged her out.

"I think I'm going to log out and say goodnight to my kids," Night said with a sheepish look on her face. "Oh, uh, just one more thing. Botgirl, can I get a chatbot that looks exactly like me?" she asked with a far away look in her eyes.

"Sure, Night," I replied. "Anything it takes to keep your karma in good shape."

Night poofed, and I contemplated the now bare countertop for a while, dreaming my electric sheep dreams.

Botgirl art exhibition slated for Sep. 20 on New Caerleon (corrected location)

I got Facebook email out of the blue the other day from Gary Zabel (RL)/ Georg Janick (SL), main founder of Second Life artist colony Caerleon Isle and experimental university sim New Caerleon. He asked if I'd be interested in doing a guest exhibition. It seems that one of their focuses is online identity. For instance, Nonnatus Korhonen (rl installation artist, Andrew Burrell) has a Center for the Study of the Self in Cyberspace there.

I met Georg and visted the sims last night. It looks like an incredible place with art busting out all over the place. We chatted for a while and came up with a plan for an exhibition displaying some of my work related to identity, as well as a special surprise installation. Surprise. That means I can't tell you yet. But it might involve a cuddle rug. It's scheduled for Saturday, September 20, time TBD.

(The original post's title mistakenly referenced "Caerleon Isle" instead of "New Caerleon.)

Comic-style mini-review of Just Leap In beta

Just Leap In, is a new virtual world beta that runs in your browser.

The four page full-sized comic-style review is here.

Thinking is hard

Sometimes thinking up a new blog post is SO hard!

Love,
Botgirl

Naked Simplicity

Excerpt from animation of visualized Lambda fractal equation: z(0) = c = pixel; z(n+1) = (c^exp-1)*z(n)^2 + c. "Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms)." from Wikipedia

No matter how complex an issue, a small handful of core principles are usually at the heart of the matter. I've found that the more I understand something, the less words it takes to communicate my point of view. Sometimes a simple drawing will do.

Traveling through the complexity at the periphery of controversial issues is an endless journey. So I'm redoubling my commitment to naked simplicity...to get in touch with what is fundamental, consequential and authentic. It is very easy to hide a lack of clarity behind thousands of words on a topic. Call me on it when I forget.

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal (1623-62), written in a letter to a friend.

New comic on identity & immersion

This two-pager began as an idea to show the many links between the virtual and physical worlds. The message was to be that any sense of a significant separation between them is pretty much an illusion. I completely changed my tune over the course of putting this together. I'll let it speak for itself today. Special thanks to Sophrosyne for trusting me enough to pose without knowing exactly how the images were going to be used.

Nubie Botgirl, Soap Opera Search String and The Tao of Zoe

My planned post on identity has taken a great turn: Sophrosyne was kind enough to pose for a few snapshots and I'm working on a comic-style graphic on the virtual/atomic world connection. I hope to have it ready for Monday. Till then, here are a few pre-weekend tidbits.

Earliest Botgirl image:

I'm in the process of transforming this blog into a RL book version that I plan to offer via Lulu.com. It will be a chronological Director's Cut with commentary throughout. So I've been combing my far flung data storage looking for extra goodies and came across this early self-portrait. Cute, huh?

Most evocative google search referral:

http://www.google.com/search?h...husband won%27t let me play sl

When people visit the blog from clicking a link on a google search page the query shows up on my blog activity report. The query above is from yesterday's edition. It certainly suggests a few interesting stories, doesn't it? Here are the top ten Google queries for the last month.

1.	botgirl
2.	botgirl comics
3.	botgirl questi
4.	botgirl limerence
5.	avatars gone wild
6.	second life relationships
7.	botgirl blog
8.	second life alt
9.	second life diary
10.	"second life" churn

The Tao of Zoe:

I imagined standing in RL as Zoe does in SL. Looking at things through her eyes instead of my own. From a comment by Zoe Connolly

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is meant by the transformation of things. Zhuangzi

Botgirl & Night augment immersively for comic collaboration

Night and I met Tuesday evening to discuss the latest draft of our first joint comic collaboration. I uploaded the draft images and threw them on a couple of gallery poster boards. Wow! What an amazing way to work on visual material together. I got my handy Sketch Sky Pens out of inventory (you can see a red circle drawn in the second image) and we had a great, fun session.

I'll return to Avatar identity next time.

What's so special about avatar identity?

Writing this blog feels like walking through an unknown wilderness at times. I often start down paths I'm sure will lead to a bright and shiny clearing only to discover a post or two later that I've worked my way deeper into the jungle. But the journey's usually interesting and I hope you don't mind me dragging you along on a few wild goose chases.

For instance, this week started out with a promising set of images that finally clarified (for me at least) the separation between immersion and virtual identity. Unfortunately, I think I moved way too fast through a textual description and got a bit lost again. So I'm going to take a virtual breath, slow down and look more closely at avatar identity. I'm not aiming to draw any conclusions today. Let's just explore the territory.

I'm going to begin by making a short list of what I think is true about avatar identity and work from there:

• Beings experience avatar identity in many different ways, ranging from feeling like there is absolutely no difference between human self and avatar identity, all the way up to the experience of a complete split.
• Some beings experience themselves as an avatar personality that is fully individuated and separate from the human person who shares their brain. Regardless of debate about whether avatar personalities are "real," I am convinced that the beings I know who describe this high degree of segmentation express authentic experience.
  
• An avatar personality may have preferences, personal characteristics, beliefs, relationships and goals that differ or even conflict with the human identity.
• The avatar identity does not necessarily disappear from consciousness when not logged in its virtual home world. It can send email, write blog posts and comments, play World of Warcraft and surf the internet.
• An individual may experience varying degrees of any of the above over time, even from moment to moment. However, some beings report a very solid and consistent experience of a separate self.

Okay, that's a start at least. So now let's see if there are any non-virtual parallels to this phenomenon.

It is not uncommon for a human to describe feeling at times like "two different people." Although they don't change names or bodies people can experience and express very different personalities depending upon the context. At work, Mary may dress conservatively and act aloof, prim and proper. Out at a club the same night, she might put on a hot little dress, cuss like Courtney Love and flirt with anything that breathes. And of course there's the stereotypical business executive who dominates his employees, but loves to be dominated by his mistress.

Actors, comedians, musicians and other performers can feel as if their onstage personality is quite different than their offstage self. Something emerges when they perform that feels quite different from their everyday personality. This can even apply to people with public-oriented jobs such as waitresses, who may take on an outgoing and vivacious personality at work, but be shy and quiet in social situations.

I'll leave it here for today. Anyone have other examples of non-virtual personality shifts? What if any connection do you think there is between the human/human and human/avatar examples I described? What if anything is special about avatar identity?

Spectatorship, Immersion and Emergence: Part Two

Back in May, I introduced the term "Emergents" as a label for virtual personalities who travel outside their world of origin through online vehicles such as Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. What I missed (as you can see in the associated graphic) was the psychological dimension.

This blind spot contributed to the disconnection some readers noticed within my recent AIR-based relationship theory:

"the contradictions in the 'AIR' theory doesn't really work out unless you can explain persistent relations through periods of non-immersion for starters." Digado

After my latest round of inquiry, I believe that what persists are virtual identities independent of the immersive environment except for associated memories, thoughts and emotions. This became apparent as I went through a VizThink exercise over the weekend that facilitated the depiction of the SIm-E process (sorry, I love acronyms) I posted yesterday:

1. Spectatorship: New users initially experience a virtual world as if they are on the outside looking in. Without the feeling of being inside the world, there's not much point in spending a lot of time there, unless it's related to a job or there's some other compelling motivation to persevere.
   
2. Immersion: Most newbies seem to need a dozen or more hours inworld before they cross the border into the visceral experience of being inside a virtual world. Although the term immersion encompasses multiple dimensions across a spectrum of intensity, many people describe their initial experience as a sudden shift of perception, as if a switch was turned on.
3. Emergence: It is possible to have a very full experience of immersion without developing a unique virtual personality. That said, it seems that most active Second Life residents I've encountered describe some sense of a virtual identity that is psychologically individuated from their human self. For instance, one avatar with very close and emotionally intense inworld ties said that her human identity was ambivalent about her online relationships. So the identity that writes a loving blog post to her online loved ones is not the human, but the virtual. These identities don't merely persist outside of the virtual world on the web, but persist within consciousness. This brings up all kinds of questions about human personality and identity.
   

I'll continue this thread in the next post.

Spectatorship, Immersion and Emergence

This is a continuation of a topic thread relating to "AIR-based relationships." AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction.

Spectator: one who looks and watches
Immerse: to plunge into something that surrounds or covers
Emerge: to become manifest : become known : to come into being through evolution
From Mirriam Webster

I did some visual thinking over the weekend and realized that I’ve been focusing on the what and missing the who in my exploration of AIR-based relationships. Here are some excerpts from that process. I’ll follow up with commentary in my next post.

Avatar self-portraiture on Flickr: Art or Onanisim?

What's up with the incredibly prolific avatar self-portraiture evidenced on flickr? Here are a few categories I've noted:

• The shiny new parent/lover/toy syndrome: I have a pair of childless human friends who got married and bought a small dog. I must have received links to a hundred or more images for the first couple of month: Dog on the couch. Dog in the yard. Dog in the boat. Dog with the cute hat. I haven't seen any research, but my guess is there is some logarithmic curve downward for how many photos are produced for subsequent pets, children avatars, etc.
  

• Neo-Narcissism: This applies to Immersionists, both open and closeted. It seems to me that if one identifies personally with the avatar form, then having a gazillion photos of oneself on display on flickr is equivalent to a human doing the same thing. Obsession with one's physical form isn't always ickishly shallow. Not always. And self-love can be a beautiful thing. Or self-lust.
  

• Avatar as canvass: For those with a bona fide artistic nature, or wannabe's like me, we will never find a more patient model than our own avatars. They will pose for hours without complaining. They never ask for a royalty check. Although they may not be easy to work with, it's certainly a familiar and comfortable relationship. And you always get to sleep with the hot model, right?
  

Although this is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post, my guess is that there are multiple elements at work in many of our photographic exploits. Did I miss any categories, whether serious, semi-serious, farcical or otherwise?

Have a good weekend.

Lifestream visualization

Most people use lifestream applications such as Friendfeed and MyBlogLog primarily to log and view current happenings. Another interesting way to use the collected information is to visualize it over time. Here are a few examples and resources:

Dipity (Image below is interactive. Try setting zoom level to "week.")



favthums



Swurl

Botgirl vs. Human comic book available for inworld reading

You don't have to be an Immersionist to read the intellibook version of Botgirl vs. Human in Second Life. Pick up a free copy at my almost-completed gallery in Extropia. It's on the bar. Right click and buy for $0.

Botgirl vs. Human Comic - Waking Dream part 2

Page can be viewed in full resolution here.

The experience of AIR and not-AIR

This is a continuation of a topic thread covered in the last two posts relating to what I now refer to as "AIR-based relationships." AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction.

Description of each factor:


ANONYMOUS: The human identity of the other being is unknown. Full anonymity encompasses age, gender, race, location, employment, etc.


IMMERSED: You experience your "self" as a virtual identity within the "magic circle" of the virtual environment. Full immersion encompasses factors such as age, gender, race, location, employment, etc. Immersion does not depend on any particular external factor such as a 3D virtual world. It is the psychological experience of feeling as if you are primarily within a virtual environment, identity or encounter. Some people experience their virtual selves as completely separate beings from their human identity.


ROMANTICALLY ATTRACTED: You have a crush on the other being. This can include feelings of longing, sexual arousal, obsessive thoughts, etc. that extend beyond time spent in the virtual setting.

The experience of each combination of factors:

After trying a few different approaches to better understand and articulate the effects of AIR, I came up with a simple narrative description of the experience of each combination of AIR and not-AIR elements. It is told from the point of view of human Sandy Smith and her avatar Hotgirl Questi, as she chats and dances with avatar Hippychick Bluestone and her typist John Jones.

I rearranged the order of the factors to make the narration flow more smoothly (I-A-R here.) Keep in mind that these descriptions are from one person's point of view, in this case Sandy/Hotgirl. John/Hippychick, the other character in this mini-drama, may have a different combination of AIR/not-AIR.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland, who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with someone who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. It's fun.


I'm chatting with Hippychic. Her keyboardist is John Jones, a middle-aged accountant in Cleveland. We're dancing together in a nightclub. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland, who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. I have a big crush on John.


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. We're dancing together in a nightclub. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with someone who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. I have a big crush on the person who is logged on as Hippychick.


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. Her typist is John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland. Hippychick and I are dancing together in a nightclub. I have a big crush on her


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. We're dancing together in a nightclub. I have a big crush on her.

Back on Monday