Transcending the Issue Du Jour Mentality

A few of the issues and stakeholders in virtual worlds

The "right" answer to just about any issue related to virtual worlds depends upon one's particular point of view. Requirements, priorities, preferences, values, concerns, etc. vary greatly from one stakeholder group to another. That's why I think its a good idea to try to see topics from multiple perspectives. It not only helps us understand the big picture more clearly, but also makes us more holistic advocates for our own interests.

But there's an even more expansive perceptual shift that I hope the avatarian community as a whole will take together, and that's moving from a short-term, platform-centric perspective to a long-term view with the greater good as our ideal. This shift away from the typical issue du jour mentality was really brought home for me in "Do We Really Need Standards For Virtual Worlds", a workshop I attended at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference.

The session began with a discussion on practices and extended in the second half to cataloging the barriers  standing in the way of more widespread virtual world adoption. This work will continue in the fall with a two day mixed reality workshop help physically in Los Angeles and virtually across a number of worlds and platforms. I'll share more details about the upcoming event as they're available.

Second Life and Social Networks

It was a real kick to see the #SLBumpersticker craze take off this week. It was a great affirmation of two key ideas I've been trying to promote over the last couple of years:

• Transworld Identity. Thousands of avatarians communicate and build community each day over social networks such as Twitter, Plurk and Facebook. Social networks are not only used to to interact with those we know from prior contact in a virtual world, but are now one of the main mediums used by avatar-identified beings to meet and get to know one another. Although there's nothing like hanging out with friends while rezzed in the virtual flesh, the virtual world paradigm is not conducive to the pervasive loosely-coupled contact we enjoy on social networks. 

• Twitter as a platform for creativity. The challenge of formulating a funny or thought-provoking idea in < 140 characters can be a very satisfying and productive creative exercise. I've found it to be such a fertile source of ideas that Twitter has become a core part of my standard creative workflow. I usually write immediately after waking in the morning. I start with a #hashtag topic and then spend half an hour or so writing tweets. I use the Tweetr iPhone client to schedule each tweet for later delivery. That's how I can post a micro-rant over the course of a day even when my human counterpart is tied up in meetings for hours at a time. Tweets can then be used as the basis for blog posts, videos and graphics.

Here's one of my first comics on the topic of social networking, from January 2009:

Open publication - Free publishing - More twitter

Transworld Identity Exhibit Highlights Independence of Avatar from Virtual World

Hanging out at media preview of The Caerleon Museum of Identity

People experience avatarian life in different ways. For some, it's merely an extension of atomic identity with an overt connection to the underlying human. Others create a pseudonymous digital identity that takes on a life of its own with no public connection to its atomic counterpart. Although many of us tend to think about those two ways of approaching virtual identity as binary poles, they are really waypoints on a continuum that transcends our best attempts to place the mysteries of life into nice little boxes.

Art and story offer a way to escape the clutches of our categorizing and reductionist mentality. I think that as a group, the exhibits at The Caerleon Museum of Identity offer a more mind-opening look at virtual identity than any collection of academic papers.

After wrestling for a year with what I would contribute, I finally decided to focus on the transworld nature of avatar identity:

Avatar Identities that were born in Second Life now extend into other virtual worlds, MMOs, social networks, blogs, media sharing sites and atomic human consciousness. Every work that I included in this exhibit was created either completely or primarily outside of a virtual world to illustrate the independence of avatar-based identity from any particular  platform or medium. Artist's Statement for my Transworld Identity exhibit in The Caerleon Museum of Identity.

The works include drawings created on an iPad, an action figure photo comic, and a composited conversation between a virtual Botgirl and a RL ventriloquist dummy. Although they do not form a linear narrative, the conceptual approach weaves its own story of a virtual muse that has escaped into the physical world.

I invite you to come see the entire show for yourself.  It opens this Saturday at 12:00pm SLT on Caerleon Isle and will continue through the month of October.

My Take on the Second Life Should Be More Like an iPhone Idea

Surfing between worlds.

I'm very grateful that I'm not the CEO of Linden Lab. There has been so much tainted water under the bridge over the past few years that just about anything he says or does is going to stimulate a fair amount of negative emotional response from the community. Take this fairly innocuous statement as an example:

One of Second Life's biggest problems, says CEO Philip Rosedale, is that it's not enough like an iPhone. From the moment you open the box on an iPhone, it's fun to use, and in playing, you learn how to use it. The whole process is pleasurable. Second Life is nothing like that, learning to use it is a long process, and painful for many people. Philip Rosedale in interview with Mitch Wagner.

There's scant debate in the Second Life Community that the SL client's steep (painful) learning curve is a key reason 99% of people who register for Second Life don't end up as active users. Nevertheless, the social networks were immediately full of snarky comments. Not that I don't like snarky comments. I'm just saying that I'm glad I don't have his job.

Narcissistic introduction aside, the most fascinating aspect for me when considering the juxtaposition of iPhones and Second Life is the relationship between the paradigms of Pervasive Computing and immersive Virtual Worlds.

Pervasive Computing is the first real step towards bona fide human cyborghood. I think Philip actually understated the transparent integration between device and mind/body for heavy users. When humans use tools, the brain experiences them as a temporary body part. Repeated use actually alters how the brain maps the physical body. For those of us who are almost never separated from a net-connected smart device, I think it is likely that our brains ends up treating the associated attributes as being physical capabilities, be they perception, memory or communication. So when we are separated from our devices it feels as if a part of our body or mind was taken from us.

Virtual Lobotomy

While Pervasive Computing today extends human capability within the context of the atomic physical world, Second Life and other immersive avatar-based environments not only extend our bodies and identities into a digital physical world, but also provide the means to transform them into very fully realized beings who are experientially distinct from "standard human".  Just as the brain eventually recognizes a physical tool to be part of the physical body, I suspect that sustained long-term embodiment as an avatar will eventually extend one's psychological experience of "being an avatar" through physiological changes in the brain and nervous system.

A unique aspect of this transformation is that it is impossible to be fully present simultaneously within a virtual world and the physical world. Like the Rabbit-Duck Illusion, for those with distinct virtual identities you can only be fully one or the other at the same time. Like a ventriloquist and his dummy the sum is much less than the distinct parts.

As you've probably noticed, this post is more of a ramble than a thesis. I'll leave it here for now with a quote from Marshall McLuhan:

At the very high speed of living, everybody needs a new career and a new job and a totally new personality every ten years.

A Tale of Two Second Life Banishments

From Visual Thesaurus

Two Second Life banishments hit the blogosphere and SocNet yesterday. Emerald Viewer developer Arabella Steadham's accounts were permanently terminated for "severe or repeated violations of the Second Life Terms of Service or Community Standards." Virtual fashion designer and artist Eshi Otawara was banned for one hour for using swastikas and a concentration camp theme in an art installation on the day before the Jewish New Year holiday. The juxtaposition of the two events brought a couple thoughts to mind:

• You still don't own crap in Second Life, including your identity. A virtual world is not a country and you are not a citizen with certain inalienable rights. A virtual world is a software platform owned by a corporation. You are a customer with whatever rights have been granted in the Terms of Service Agreement. If you haven't read the TOS, here's the salient language: ACCOUNT HISTORY AND ACCOUNT NAMES RESIDING ON LINDEN LAB'S SERVERS, MAY BE DELETED, ALTERED, MOVED OR TRANSFERRED AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON IN LINDEN LAB'S SOLE DISCRETION. 

• The word "ban" seems to be used by Second Lifers to refer both to permanent account termination and a one hour lock-out. This can be a bit confusing. I first heard of the Eshi ban in a Plurk yesterday. Since there were no other details at the time, I assumed she had been permanently blocked from Second Life. I was very busy all day and didn't have a chance to get the details until late that night when I discovered the "ban" was only for an hour. I suggest we use another term for these mini-bans for clarity of communication. Although it would have been less dramatic, I would prefer a headline like "Eshi Otawara Punished by Linden Lab with a Time-Out For Use of Nazi Symbolism in Her Art Project."

These incidents are a good reminder to make sure your virtual identity is replicated in other worlds including your name, avatar form and whatever possessions you can smuggle out. 

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 as "digital shamanism."

There is an essential mystery at the heart of life, awareness and identity. Although to our habitual state of perception we live in an atomic, isolated and disconnected universe, if we look more deeply, the entire world and everything in it can be viewed as what Thich Nhat Hanh calls a web of interbeing: 

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

Thich Nhat Hanh, From “Peace is Every Step”

As the concept of interbeing is applied to virtual worlds, we can begin to see that the solid appearing boundaries between human and avatar; atomic and virtual; corporate and artistic; and so on, are fictional expressions of our collective mental models. So, for instance, there is no conflict between the perspectives of "augmentation" and "immersion" in virtual worlds. In fact, they are interdependent concepts.

Extending further, our avatars can not only be viewed as vehicles that take us from the human world to the virtual world, or as emergent identities that live within an immersive environment,  but also as expressions of deep archetypal energies that transcend both concepts. I tried to express some of the mystery of this approach in the image at the top of this post.

That's it for now. Hope to post more on this line of inquiry soon.

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 in iClone, which is a pretty cool 3D video making software program that has a pretty well-stocked content marketplace including avatars, props, etc. 

Here's a quick video from iclone, featuring the the avatar I created on the Avatar Builder site. I'll be following up in the next week with a step-by-step look at the avatar creation process.

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.

Brief Proof-of Concept Mixing External Animation into SL Machinima With New Media Sharing Feature

This is my first tentative proof-of-concept playing around with the idea of integrating external video in an inworld Second Life machinima. It uses the new Media Sharing functionality that enables the flexible and interactive display of media directly on a prim.

For this test, I stood in front of a large prim displaying my "skull speaks" video. Just for fun, instead of using Snapz Pro to capture video, shots were captured using a handheld iPhone's camera and then edited on the phone using Vintage Video Maker and ReelDirector.

There's great potential in combining various types of external media within a realtime machinima capture. I hope to devote more time to this in the near future and put together something a bit more ambitious.

Mixed Reality International Art Exhibition Will Focus on Ambiguity of Identity

(shot of planning meeting yesterday)

After almost a year of conceptual incubation, we're finally breaking (virtual) ground on the mixed-reality "Ambiguity of Identity' Exhibition in preparation for an April 7th opening. The multi-artist show will be housed in a new "Museum of Transworld Identity" which will cover an entire Second Life Sim. The exhibition will be accessible on large screen displays in physical world galleries located in Boston, Milan and Amsterdam.

The exhibition is part of The Virtual Art Initiative, an organization of artists, writers, musicians, and scholars who are using the immersive and interactive digital media of such virtual worlds as Second Life to develop new forms of artistic content. Artists participating in this show include Sabrinaa Nightfire, FreeWee Ling, Gracie Kendal, Chrome Underwood, Fuschia Nightfire,  Pete Jiminy, marnie Reinard and Yours Truly.

One aspect of this show that makes it especially interesting for me is the chance to work with other artists who have been exploring identity in their art, including its projection into multiple worlds.  For instance, Gracie Kendal has recently embarked on a series of comics exploring conversations between her human and avatar selves.

I'll post follow-ups between now and the opening to introduce you to the other artists and provide some previews of the work that will be displayed. Stay tuned!

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Botgirl vs Human Trailer: Motion Comic Style

It's not easy being the figment of someone's imagination. It makes them think they can take advantage of you just because you're not "real". Well, I've had enough. This motion comic trailer will introduce you to what's really been going on behind the scenes.

Click-through for HD viewing, and please, crank up the volume.

Unabashedly Polyamorous.

When it comes to porting myself into platforms, I'm unabashedly polyamorous. I can't be satisfied by only one, no matter how powerful, flexible or bug-free. So even though I'm still seeing Evolver, I met iClone last night and couldn't resist. Although I only spent a few hours, it was very, very satisfying and we have plans to get together over the holidays. Here's a little private video I shot.

Transportable Avatars Today: Video Tour of Evolver and the Many Worlds

Now that the smoke has cleared a bit from last week's intra-blog conversation about digital property, I thought it would be a nice change of pace to share some of the fun I've been having with Evolver.  You can create avatars on their site for free and export them to other platforms including:

• Wonderland
• RealXtend
• VastPark
• FriendsHangout
• Animeeple
• Mixamo
• Source Data for 3D Software
• Many others

Some exports are free. Others require payment, for instance $39 US for the 3D model source data.

At this time, you can either start with their library of avatars or build your own from a photo of a face. After a couple of hours playing around with their photo import and avatar morphing interface, I haven't been able to duplicate my Second Life appearance, but it's in the general ballpark. What I would love to see in the future is a means to import OpenSim/Second Life avatar xml files and textures.

Anyway, it's a brilliant concept. Here's a video that gives a quick run through of the avatar creation process and the resulting avatar on a few different platforms. For a better viewing experience, click through to YouTube and view in HD resolution.

Virtual Property Rights Manifesto: Consumers, Copybots and Common Sense

The only way for consumers to protect virtual property acquired in Second Life and gain full control of legally acquired resources is to copy digital assets to their own hard drives. For most inventory items, this requires logging into Second Life with one of the copybot clients that circumvent Digital Rights Management (DRM) limitations. There are two compelling reasons to go to the time, trouble and risk:

1. It is the only way to take your bought-and-paid-for virtual property to other grids. I'm puzzled that most people take for granted that the hundreds of dollars of virtual goods they've purchased are stuck on Linden Lab servers, even though the items are technically compatible with other grids. In the physical world, no one would dream of accepting laws restricting the movement of personal possessions from one country to another. It makes no more sense in the virtual world.
2. It is the only way to protect assets from vanishing in the event of intentional or accidental deletion from Linden Lab servers. As I posted a year ago in "You Don't Own Crap", The Second Life Terms of Service (TOS) Agreement gives Linden Lab the right to delete, alter, move or transfer any of your so-called property without cause or notice. It's ironic that a primary reason people shy away from illicitly backing up their inventory is the fear of being banned and losing all of their virtual possessions.

Copying virtual goods purchased, for personal use, is neither content theft nor piracy. Although the DMCA prohibits the creation and distribution of tools to circumvent DRM protection, it's still our "fair use" right to make copies. Seems contradictory, but it's the current state of U.S. law:

Congress did not intend to regulate the conduct of individual users with authorized access to copyrighted works, since their liability was controlled by the existing law of copyright infringement and fair use. In this sense, there is a “user exemption” implicitly recognized in the DMCA for the fair use of copyrighted works. From Preliminary Injunction Ruling on RealNetworks v. DVD-CCA

It is certainly both illegal and unethical to acquire or share virtual items without the consent of the intellectual property owners. But restricting fair use through DRM and TOS policies is an institutional wrong that undermines the rights of every single Second Life resident. The legitimate way to deter content theft is to go after those who steal, not to treat every consumer like a latent thief.

If the record and movie industries had their way, none of us would be able to burn music from purchased CDs or transfer video for use in external devices. That way,  they could profit from selling us the same content for each device. Second Life permission restrictions that prevent sharing virtual property between "alt" accounts has the same implicit anti-consumer ramifications.

It took the unrelenting efforts of renegade software developers, actively dissenting consumers and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to release digital music from DRM. The fight to free video content is still underway. The battle to liberate virtual property has barely begun.

I call on virtual world residents to take up the call, exercise their fair use rights and support technical and governance initiatives working to remedy the current situation. Here are a few initial steps anyone can take:

1. Speak out against the idea that copybot technology is inherently evil. Until approved technology is available, it offers the only way for consumers to secure their personal virtual property rights.
2. Back-up your digital assets and use them as you see fit. 
3. Support organizations such as the EFF.

Due to the underground nature of clients that bypass permissions to copy and back-up items, and the necessary pseudonymity of their authors, it is possible that some versions may have trojans or other hidden software attached. So be sure to run any files you download through a good virus scanner. That said, I've seen no documented cases of nefarious code.
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Virtual World as Company Town

Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries — coal, metal mines, lumber — had established a monopoly franchise...Typically, a company town will be isolated from neighbors and centered (figuratively, if not literally) around a large production factory such as a lumber or steel mill or an automobile plant; and the citizens of the town will either work in the factory, work in one of the smaller businesses, or be a family member of someone who does. The company may also operate parks, host cultural events such as concerts, and so on. Needless to say, when the owning company cuts back or goes out of business, the economic effect on the company town is devastating, and often fatal. from Wikipedia

For those of us who see Second Life as a community, rather than a game, I think it is fair to say that the virtual world operates much like a company town. We live there at the sufferance of the company owner. They can change any aspect of virtual life without consultation, notice or justification, including modifications that significantly impact the value of land, money and livelihood. Clearly, this situation is only tenable to residents because of the perception that there is no workable alternative. In a sense, leaving Second Life feels like the death of your avatar identity.

Fortunately, technology is advancing and viable options are emerging. One of the most exciting projects was well-covered in Zonja Capelini's June post on new Hypergrid technology. As the article noted, there are many hurdles to cross, including authentication and security. But it will eventually enable a worldwide network of connected Virtual World grids and sims.

Instead of being under the thumb of a single quasi-monopolistic vendor, we will be able to choose from a diverse range of options, including hosting our own sims, either in rented cloud computing or on our own machines. For now, we can get a taste by trying out a few of the fifty plus OpenSim grids that are up and running, or even install a server locally and start learning the ropes. In the photo below, I'm in a sim hosted on a MacBook Pro.

If you're interested in extending avatar identity between worlds, please join us at the new Transworlders Ning Community.

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Transworlders Quick Look HD: Reaction Grid

This quick look at Reaction Grid is the first in a series of one minute fly-throughs of alternative Virtual Worlds. Although their web site is in desparate need of an Information Designer, it has a great deal of information once you wade through the menus. Here are some quick links:


Free User Account Registration
Log in Instructions
Web Store

Reaction Grid is a serious player in the OpenSim grid space, with a focus on education, enterprise and consumer markets. A number of high profile Second Life residents and organizations have projects on the grid including Wizard Gynoid, iLIVEsl and Jokaydia, as well as Microsoft.

This video is just a fast fly-over intended primarily to tempt SLers who haven't yet made it off-world to another grid to give it a try. For a more detailed tour, check out this post from Shockwave Plasma.

Botgirl's Excellent Transworld Adventure

I spent some more time on Reaction Grid yesterday. Although it has a way to go before offering the features and stability of Second Life, it's easy to see that it's just a matter of time before OpenSim grids will be viable alternatives.

I shot some HD video that I'll edit and post here later this week. For now, here's a very short clip of being on Second Life and Reaction Grid at the same time on a single screen. Not too practical, but pretty cool.

Another View of Avatar and Human Integration

The chart below visualizes some of the areas of shared interest and integration between my human counterpart and I. The relative size of the words are reflections of the level of mutuality. I'm working on a couple more images that I hope to post later this week.

Are Multiple Identities Contrary to a Life of Integrity

Yesterday I wrote on the new Transworlder's Community site:

I'm ready to be done with peering through the duality of SL vs. RL and the psychological, social and technical barriers that keep them apart. We live ONE LIFE through multiple identities, upon multiple worlds.

After sleeping on it, I realized that the post left the door open to a number of implications I did not intend to communicate. So I'm offering a couple additional points as clarification:

1. Public pseudonymity IS compatible with the quest to live with integrity. There are many good reasons one might choose to use one or more publicly anonynous or pseudonymous identities, including their value as safe vehicles for online exploration.  That said, I do believe that witholding information is very different than providing false information. And that hiding important aspects of ourselves from our closest friends and significant others is detrimental to both our relationships and our self-acceptance.
   
2. Integrity does not require one to look or act the same in every environment. No one would expect you to dress for work in the same clothes you use for camping, or chit chat with your your neighbor at their kitchen table with the same level of intimacy you share with your lover in bed (or on your kitchen table). The same concept holds true for virtual environments and relationships.  Integrity comes from acting from a unified set of ethical principals, not in having an avatar that looks and acts (god forbid) just like your human counterpart.
   

We are so much more than the sum of our parts, but we must integrate our diverse dimensions to synthesize our full potential.

"The artwork is, to be sure, a thing that is made, but it says something other than what the mere thing itself is, allo agoreuei. The work makes public something other than itself; it manifests something other; it is an allegory. In the work of art something other is brought together with the thing that is made. To brint together is, in Greek, symballein. The work is a symbol."  Martin Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art

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