Virtual Dance on the Atomic Plain

A meditation on the connection between the virtual and the physical; the digital and the atomic.

Motion Video Created From a Single Second Life Image

I've been wanting to play around with parallax video creation for a long time and finally had some time last night. This video was created from a single image captured in Second Life. I opened the original photo in Photoshop and cut it into foreground, middle-ground and background layers. I then filled in the holes of the background image to replace the excised avatar and tower sections. Next, I imported the finished layers into Motion and created a 15 second video by animating each layer separately along with an overall 3D camera move. I opened the resulting video in Final Cut Pro and added effects and titling. This is a very simple experiment playing around with parallax animation. Check out this video from the World Wildlife Fund to see what kind of amazing results are possible using the technique.

All Mystical and Shit Revisited

One my favorite tangents this year was a series of music videos springing from the tweet, "You don't have to be all mystical and shit to appreciate the mystery." After the first two, they went spinning out of control into absurdity.

Row Your Boat

Unofficial entry in this week's Single Frame Stories challenge, for the prompt, "stream."

Even Deeper and More Mysteriouser

Another mix of Second Life machinima and content created in external animation software. 

Enduring Judgement in your Underwear

When I targeted Second Life marketing in a new parody video, I didn’t consider the collateral damage. The intention was to make fun of the airbrushed banners that tied together cool people with cool avatars. But the implication in the parody was that there was something inherently wrong or pitiable about someone who might not fit our consumer culture’s image of beauty and success. Here’s a 100 Word Story that tells a different tale:

 Enduring Judgement in your Underwear

The worst (and defining) experience of Joe’s life was the night at sixth grade camp when he was humiliated in front of a cabin full of classmates. Pants below his knees. Bent face down over a cot. Flogged with a broom handle. For the sin of being pudgy, pimpled, uncoordinated and socially awkward.

Thirty years later he sees yet another snarky “parody” about a fat, underwear clad, middle aged Second Life loser holed up in his mom’s basement. It still hurts. 

Joe sighs and gets back to work. The charity event he organized in Second Life is in full swing.

Mysterious and Deep

Another little ode to the pouty Barbie avatar archetype in Second Life.

All Mystical and Shit: The Video

Joyous Travelers

This is the musical version of a Shatoetry I created for Crap Mariner's SL10B installation.

soaring

beyond

past

trauma

and

fear

we

are

joyous

travelers

living

our

beautiful

dreams

through

an

epic

journey

Post-Pretentious Artist's Statement

Another MovieStorm for iPad video. 

Tinkerbell in Hell

I've been playing around a bit in IMVU while researching alternatives to Second Life's land-based business model. Along the way, I came up with the concept of "Tinkerbell in Hell" for this week's Single Frame Stories challenge. The prompt was "flight." I shot this video and a still photo in IMVU.

A Slit-Scan Dubstep Second Life Machinima

I saw a slit-scan dance video the other day and thought it would be fun to do a Second Life machinima version. This was shot with an iPhone using WaveCamera.

I used to believe that my mind was free from gravity . . .

I used to believe that my mind was free from gravity . . .
that the pull of Mother Earth had no dominion
in the realm of awareness, thought and identity.
For a time, I seemed to have escaped both the dictates of biology,
and the laws and constraints of the atomic world.
I raced faster than light beyond the known universe,
danced in the silent vacuum,
and stared into the face of a hundred suns.
But all the while there trailed behind me
a chain of perfect weave.
Unseen or mayhap merely denied,
Her life-giving umbilical was all that sustained me.

(My entry in this week's 100 Word Stories challenge)

A Seriously Strange Machinima Shot in Cloud Party

If you're wondering, it's about consumerism, objectification and the joy of creativity.

Virtual Worlds: A Dream and a Nightmare

They just started selling land in Cloud Party. A 100m x 100m island goes for $14.95 US per month. If you pay five months up front they'll throw in a sixth month for free. I decided to grab one. Not because of what it offers right now, but to participate in the realization of the platform's potential. (You can see it for yourself here.)

Except for virtual worlds, our net-connected lives are pretty much experienced as a seamless whole these days. Movement between social networks, search engines, blogs and news, entertainment sites, etc. is almost transparent. The ability to effortlessly jump in and out of a 3D virtual world in the midst of everyday surfing is a game changer. And it's a step towards making my Avatars Everywhere dream come true. 

I've introduced half a dozen virtual world virgins to Cloud Party by simply sending them a link. In less than 60 seconds they were in the world and starting the integrated tutorial. Not a single one of them would have gone through the brain damage of registering for Second Life, downloading and installing the client, and figuring out how to get around. Although Cloud Party is in early beta today, it's easy to see how it has the potential to significantly expand the virtual world market once the feature set has matured. 

I made this short video to show that Cloud Party can already serve as a legitimate machinima platform. It has a long way to go before it offers features comparable to Second Life and OpenSim, but it's good to have another tool in the kit.

A Slightly Tongue in Cheek Trailer for Cloud Party

You can download the video from Vimeo if you'd like to see the full 1080p glory. I'll post a more serious piece later this week describing why Second Life is no longer the virtual frontier.

Shira and Mira Returning in New Star Trek Parody

I've started building sets for two planned Love Toy sequels. Action will take place both on the Starship Enterprise and in Shira and Mira's cute and deadly little apartment. Here are a few of the living room props coming together on my work table.

Here's the New Application I'd Love Linden Lab to Release

There's been speculation recently about stealth products Linden Lab may have in development. After playing around with Blue Mars Mobile over the last week, I'm yearning for a Second Life mixed reality machinima app. Here are the key features I'd love to see:

- Bring your existing Second Life avatar into a 3D environment on your iOS device
- Use clothes, attachments, poses and animation from your SL inventory
- Choose from mobile-friendly virtual sets
- Rez a limited number of objects from your inventory into a virtual set
- Rez an additional "alt" avatar into scene
- Mixed reality option to overlay avatars on physical world video stream
- Accelerometer syncs avatar positions to physical world orientation
- HD recording for both virtual and mixed reality
- Ability to stream video to TV through Airplay
- Integrated Second Life Marketplace including $L purchase

The current Blue Mars Mobile app is very limited. There are only a few built in animations. There's no way to walk around the 3D space. The selection of content in their store is very limited. Even so, it's easy to imagine the potential of a more robust application that offers better avatar control and the vast content library of the Second Life Marketplace. I think it would be a game changer if people could extend their Second Life avatars and identities into the physical world environment.

In the meantime, I finally figured out a cheat for Blue Mars Mobile's lack of support for landscape orientation. I shot this video with the phone in landscape orientation and used an AR marker to force the avatar to rotate 90 degrees. I then removed the AR marker from the shot and the avatar stayed in that orientation. Finally, I used an external program to rotate the saved video 90 degrees for proper orientation.




The avatar is bailey3554. The song in the background is "Ta douler" by Camille

Disruptive Game Changing Second Life Redux on Ambien

I took a late night run through Shaker last night after getting an email reminder about its grand opening party. Shaker is the latest media hyped entry in the virtual world space. Check out these quotes:

"A lot of people are going to take one look and write it off as nothing more than a Second Life redux. But it's not. It's got more to it than that." Fast Company 

". . . I say this is going to be an important company in the social world."  Robert Scoble 

"I have to hand it to Shaker, it is more like a real bar than any other virtual chat room I've been in." PCWorld

I've been around the virtual block a few times and the only conclusion I can draw from quotes like those are that the writers are obviously tripping on something. So I decided to shoot a little video that would simulate being in Shaker under the influence of Ambien. Enjoy!

The Future of Augmented Reality. Minus the Nipples.

Yesterday morning I decided to record my Blue Mars Mobile Avatar in various settings throughout the day. The idea came as I was stopping at a grocery story on my way into work, so I launched the program and logged in. To my surprise and delight there was a glitch in the software and my avatar rezzed with no shirt.

Now as far as I know, nudity is not allowed in Blue Mars Mobile. You can't delete your last shirt or pants layer. The best you can do is replace it with something equivalent to tan pasties or a g-string that doesn't blend very well with the underlying skin. But as you'll see in the video, it looks like the nipple-less skin layer was actually exposed.

I took this as a miraculous event and stealthily recorded throughout my shopping trip. It was a bit rushed and tense, since if someone glanced over my shoulder it might look like I was watching porn.

"But I was making an avant-garde video!"

"Tell it to the judge."

I made it out undiscovered. Unfortunately, I couldn't recreate the bug later in the day so I couldn't shoot any more topless video. So here's a very short video trailer I put together for the longer version that never was.