Replacement Candidate for Augmentation vs. Immersion Paradigm
As I was trying to gain some insight on the issue of Second Life Culture earlier this week, the long-standing “Augmentation vs. Immersion” paradigm kept nagging at me. It’s another Second Life topic that is plagued by ambiguous terms that often confuse more than clarify the underlying issues.
As a good Venn Buddhist and VizThinker, I thought through [...]
What’s Behind The Recent Focus on Second Life Culture
Culture has become an increasingly vital topic in the Second Life blogosphere over the last six months or so. This issue has emerged in response to an unprecedented series of actual and anticipated changes in technology and governance that will likely impact the status quo of almost every Second Life sub-culture and community of interest.
We are [...]
New Video: A Brief Meditation on Digital Shamanism
Extending ideas from the last couple of posts, this video plays around with the idea of using virtual reality to support internal visualization and imagination. In good Transworlders fashion, it was created using elements from Second Life, Frameforge and digital photography of the atomic world.
Digital Shamanism: The Psychological Dimension of the Transworlders Paradigm
Most of us tend to ignore the deeper dimensions of being that hide beneath our mundane states of mind. It struck me today that the idea of “Transworlders” not only applies to movement between virtual worlds, but also to travel through inner worlds and states of consciousness. And even to what might be thought of [...]
Avatar as Vehicle of Enlightenment
A comment by Gwyneth Llewelyn on “The Power of Name in Post-Pseudonymous Virtual Identity” revived my interest in the avatar as a vehicle of enlightenment. Here’s my first post in what I hope will be a series of brief explorations:
The visceral experience of being embodied in an idealized form within a richly symbolic environment is a foundational Vajrayana [...]
This is Your Brain on Social Media
(image by Emilio Garcia under Creative Commons license.)
I’m pretty convinced that the consistent and pervasive use of social media subtly shifts the mental ground of human consciousness. But as Marshall McLuhan often noted, our present environment is usually invisible. So I devoted most of yesterday’s tweets to playing around with the medium through some tongue-in-cheek [...]
Being: Chapter One of an Experimental Approach to Blogging
Here’s my first go at a new approach to blogging. This post originated in a series of tweets yesterday on the topic of #being. I’ve made a few edits of my original tweets and added some additional content to flesh out the ideas:
Embrace the past. If it feels alive then slay it because it should [...]
The Power of Name in Post-Pseudonymous Virtual Identity
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
From Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
——————————-
As I was thinking [...]
I’m not Dead, Just Semi-Retiring: In Search of SLPurpose
There’s nothing I love better than to find a great novel that extends into an ongoing series. But no matter how great the initial volumes are, most serializations eventually get stale and repetitive. It’s a rare fictional character who can stay fresh over the course of more than a half dozen outings. And in some [...]
iClone Avatar Builder: High Speed Video Demo
Here’s a follow-up to last week’s short post on iClone Avatar Builder. For this version, I recorded the entire process of creating an avatar, from uploading an image through importing into iClone, and then edited a version at 6oo%-800% realtime speed so as not to bore the crap out of you.
I Finally Solve My Supergirl Barbie Problem
Those of you who follow this blog know that Supergirl Barbie has been a thorn in my virtual side for a very long time. Since my human counterpart would not be swayed by my threats, I decided to take matters into my own hands by hiring a pint-sized plastic mercenary to forcibly remove the little [...]
Quick Look at New iClone Avatar Builder Site
You don’t need to be Einstein to create an avatar using iClone Avatar Builder, but it’s fun to play around with that idea. The new site is a private label version of Evolver, which I’ve reviewed here before. The unique aspect of the new version is the ability to export a complete avatar for use [...]
Second Life Creatives as Digital Folk Artists. Plus Late Breaking Video.
Folk Art: Art and objects made by people who are not artists, using styles and materials from where they live. The Museum Network
As I was browsing through Raw Vision the other day, it occurred to me that most of us who make art in Second Life are not trained artists; and that the sculpture, machinima, [...]
Twinity Marketing Sheds Interesting Light on Second Life
These emails from Twinity arrived at the same time this morning. The top version came to me; the second went to Fourworlds.
As you can see, they are either doing A/B mail testing (evaluating two or more versions by splitting them within a mailing list), or using different versions that target specific attributes, such as avatar [...]
Don’t Ask for Whom the Punch Line Tolls…
On January 28th, I used this image of Carol Channing and her dummy as a visual punch line for the blog post headline: “The Future of Avatar Identity? Taking The Real You to its Logical Conclusion.”
LOL, right?
Look what showed up on my human counterpart’s desk today:
That joke is not so funny anymore. After the [...]
“Through the Looking Glass” Art Exhibition Opening in Six Countries and Second Life
“Botgirl and Monk” One of my works in the show.
The “mixed reality” portion of the multi-artist art exhibition I first wrote about back in March 2009 is finally opening April 7 in galleries in Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Brazil, the USA and Second Life. Through the Looking Glass will feature the work of more than twenty artists [...]
From Impotent Pissing and Moaning to Voting With Our Virtual Feet
Linden Lab has once again exercised its right to institute sweeping unilateral changes that negatively impact the avatar community. Recent modifications of the Terms of Service and Third Party View Policy erode and constrain resident options and expand legal claims by the Lab.
I posted the image above exactly two years ago today. Since then I’ve watched wave after wave of [...]
Are we not 1984 Sheep? We are Brave New World Rats!
Pervasive computing is like a giant Skinner Box.
I’ve been working all week on a post about the shift from mass-media-fueled propaganda to the operant conditioning environment of pervasive social computing. It’s taking a lot longer than expected, so for now, here’s one of the images I’ve been working with as I VizThink my way through.
The spark [...]
Quick Look: Digimi Transworld Avatar Creator
Digimi is a new avatar creation provider, joining Evolver as a resource to create customized avatars that can be exported for virtual world and game platforms. I’ll post a detailed review next week.
Mini-Rant: Second Life is FarmVille and I Feel Fine
Teleportation in virtual worlds lets you travel faster than the speed of light. Maybe that’s why three or four years as a Second Life avatar leaves so many rezzerati waxing more nostalgic about the good old days than great-aunt Moonbeam on the 40th anniversary of her acid-drenched, mud-covered deflowering at Woodstock:
“Before Philip sold out to [...]
Surfing Realities Through Juxtaposition of Physical and Virtual
My ongoing reading of Marshall McLuhan has shed a lot of light recently on my own artistic work and inspired a new project. I’m going to share a few relevant quotes here, along with insights they sparked:
The hybrid or meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. Marshall [...]
Botgirl and the Living Dead Doll
Here’s another short concept video combining physical world and virtual world source material.
