A repository of ten thousand indignities and the harbinger of God knew what

Total Eclipse of the Self

2010-07-12T15:30:00.003-04:00

This post is part of the hilobrow.com artist in residence series for July 2010. It is re-pulished here with closed comments for archival purposes.

In late 2001, Soft Cell's Marc Almond appeared with Rosenstolz on Eurovision as the guest musical artists. They performed a cover of the Klaus Nomi song Total Eclipse of the Sun.

This video is an incredible layer of schmaltz with bizarre overtones. And it's not clear in the least who, exactly, this performance is for. Does the glowstick-waving audience know the history of the song? Does AnNa R. know? She seems to be enjoying herself but it's unclear this is an homage. Nor does the keyboardist who leaves his Korg-pounding perch to egg the audience along (sit harder! wave faster!) seem to posses an ounce of irony.

Does Almond understand? By the time the flames start you're left wondering if this was all orchestrated by the post-Church-of-Satan singer (who sports a ginormous gold cross to offset his platinum hair). My favorite part of this video occurs near the very end (4:04). AnNa is lost in theatrical drama and Almond sneaks an... eyeroll? A look around? A grimace plays across his lips. He knows, or thinks he knows.

last dance,
let the entire cast dance,
do the dismembered blast dance
as we get atomized

By the time of this performance, the song's original performer Klaus Nomi had been dead of AIDS for 18 years, passing away at age 39, one year after Almond's cover of Gloria Jones' 1965 Tainted Love hit number one on the UK pop charts. Watching Klaus himself perform his song is striking because: 1. It's absolutely, unequivocally, technically better. And 2: It is far more beautiful.

But Nomi didn't write Total Eclipse, Kristian Hoffman did, and in this performance you see Nomi wearing his signature plastic tuxedo, a look borrowed from David Bowie, for whom Nomi sang backup during Bowie's appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Arguably Almond and Nomi borrowed from the same new-wave-glam-rock-punk-80s meilieu, but clearly they are different people operating in a different universe. Almond's smirk says it all, while Nomi's expression, even under the layers of kabuki makeup, remains refreshingly honest. There is no deception here. The mask is the man.

Nomi never mocked his audience, he simply performed and you were free to watch and laugh, or rejoice, or both. Professional boor Rush Limbaugh uses Nomi's cover of Lesley Gore's 1964 You Don't Own Me as the theme music for his "Gay Update" (a selection I like to believe was slipped in by a surly intern or music director. Surely Limbaugh isn't clever or erudite to catch the reference?) Nomi's version is sung as much for his audience as it is for an imaginary partner, and as a perfect counterpoint to his Nomi Song (both songs released the same year). Limbaugh may be poking fun, but it is Nomi (or the imp of the perverse) that gets the last laugh and always will.

Artist are nothing without their communities. The best of us borrow freely, the worst of us scream originality as a banner of quality (the bottom of the barrel enforce this by strong-arming each other with takedown notices). But value is not about authenticity or even originality, it's about engagement with the audience. Almond does not engage the actual audience on Eurovision. At best, he engages me, ten years late, watching this performance and bemused at the eye roll. But Nomi's engagement with his audience was far more immediate and let's say it: democratic. Nomi refused to pass, his role was never aggressive or even subversive, but playful and direct. Nomi is Nomi. Take it or leave it. But if you do take it, you welcome and acknowledge yourself into a particular club, mark yourself as a freak, a Nomi-lover. This step requires that you own your Self and the performance of it so completely that the makeup becomes permanent – the nafs is at peace.

My First Question

2010-07-12T15:29:00.006-04:00

This post is part of the hilobrow.com artist in residence series for July 2010. It is re-pulished here with closed comments for archival purposes.

I have a recurring dream in which a house that I have just moved into contains a hidden panel, a door or passage that leads me to a room full of ephemera. The key element of this dream is a large collection of stuff which has been hidden from view for ages, locked away in mid-use, forgotten completely and is now mine to catalog and explore.

A lifelong history of exploring the underground and the occult then, but always a lingering discomfort with the attendant notion of transgression. Not because of a fear of authority, but because of a peculiar fact that the presence of authority implies: To transgress, to trespass, implies that the space you are exploring is guarded, owned, and worst of all, fully known and understood.

The spaces that I wish to explore are none of these things. I want the forgotten, the lost, the secret that has no keeper. I want the story that no one remembers, the item that defies explanation, the room with no discernible purpose. I crave the interstitial thought, the letter that fell through the cracks.

Like this one I once found in the basement of my house:

Postmarked Somerville MA 4PM Dec 16, 1956

Postmarked Washington D.C. ??m Mar 8, 196?

RETURNED TO SENDER

Address and return illegible.

Dear Hay:

A friend of yours and his wife are at Dea__ness Now - Dr. and Mrs. Gangan. He told me you had been ill and I was so sorry to hear this. I do hope you are fully recovered and well. Do take it easy!

I was so delighted to find someone who actually knew you. Naturally, my first question whenever I meet anyone from So. America is always "Do you know Dr. Hayer" and while everyone answers "I've heard of him" or "a friend of a friend knows him", Dr Gangen was the first one to say "_____ him personally!" So I got some first hand information!

I understand you have a fine son and I'm so happy for you. I know you must be very content. Sometime when you have a spare minute drop me a note and tell me about yourself + your family. You know I'm always interested. My best to you and your family for the Next Year ________

Best wishes,

Nan M_____

A letter that could not have been more perfectly designed for my imagination. All of the possible identifying marks have been obliterated, except for the 10 year gap between postmarks. Where has this letter been? Where is Dr. Hayer, and what sort of Doctor was he? I don't really want to know, but Nan if you're reading this, I have it. Dr Hayer never wrote you back because he never heard from you. I hope your life was a happy one, and 1957 treated you well.

.Sub<->Way. I

2010-07-12T15:29:00.005-04:00

This post is part of the hilobrow.com artist in residence series for July 2010. It is re-pulished here with closed comments for archival purposes.

In naming the mechanical conveyances that carry us under our cities, I far prefer the word subway to underground, metro, ubahn, tube, T. There is a mysticism inherent in subway that does not come through in the others. Sub of course synonymous with "under" but evoking a much more subtle layer of invisibility. Subsonic, subliminal, just beneath the surface. Way: A path, a method of movement, a method of being, a transformation from A->B. A coming to understanding, an invisible transversal, a slicing through the darkness towards comprehension.

This idea requires you to accept that you are traveling through something and that it is vaguely unpleasant: The domain of vermin, alligators, ghosts, aliens, homeless camps, miasma, mutant turtles, terrible disease, supernatural predators, rats, things that lurk with too many legs. This is the realm of forgotten lore, the missing. This might be the hellmouth. The world of the Morlocks.

The British colloquial tube and Paris' official Métro both negate these feelings of horror by replacing them with something more comforting . And indeed there is something close to homey about those stoic black and white images of families huddled along the tracks in Aldywich tube stop, safe in camaraderie from the Nazi onslaught above, towels draped gamely over the third rail. These are people who take deep comfort in their technology, safety in the depths:

Similarly, engaging a ride on the Métro make one feel positively pneumatic - part of a bright new future circa 1900, speeding through the vanquished darkness ad astra on bright winged steel rollers.

But these are both polite covering of the horror, a gentle turn of the cheek, an application of foundation over the bruise. The interior of subways are everything the tunnels are not. Clean, safe, well lit, bright, carrying people (yes) but also advertisements: news from above ground, promises of life in the sun. Most of all the interior light turning the windows to mirror, inviting you to stare out at yourself.

But when the lights go out, when the bones show, there is nothing pleasant at all.

The same Aldywich line, a different kind of bombing:

But this kind of violation is deliberate and angry, a wrongness wrought from within. What I mean to evoke is not this (although it's part of it), but rather the sense of outerness. That which comes from noticing that you are being swiftly and efficiently shepherded, as a child who doesn't fully realize why they must hold their parent's hand.

Face pressed against the glass as that child would, you are afforded faint glimpses of the world you are being threaded through — mysterious doors, debris, cryptic signage. As an adult this act is slightly embarrassing, requiring you to break the bubble of social convention — to rudely block out the environment that has been so carefully provided for your comfort and convenience, and to do it deliberately. To suggest to your fellow riders that there is something just on the other side of the glass.

And what is there? Waiting for a brush of a fin or a tentacle, a vague disappointment when we arrive and with a slither and hiss and the doors exhale us onto a tiled platform, so formal and civil with its gates of control, perched on the mouth of a rough cut tunnel.

To Be Continued...

Meta-Fore!

2010-07-12T15:28:00.002-04:00

This post is part of the hilobrow.com artist in residence series for July 2010. It is re-pulished here with closed comments for archival purposes.

A Letter (of Sorts) to my Readers (such as they may Be):

In the parable of the brows I am still looking for mine. Some of my favorite performers simply shave theirs off. One of my favorite painters (or painter-myths, really) has only one. The long dark unibrow of the soul, with a glass of The Damned at the ready (could it be: the brewery is Unibrou).

Hibrow will not love you because Hibrow cannot. Lost in purity of examination, sharp edges and gleaming surfaces. Hibrow you wish you could fuck but will only ever fuck you. You can be seen with Hi, but Hibrow cannot love because Hibrow is incapable of love.

Lobrow will be your friend. Lobrow will bring you nachos and share the last drag. Lobrow you can call at 4 am when you want a milkshake and you will have one, but Lobrow loves you because Lobrow loves everyone. Lobrow, let's just say it: is a whore. It is a professional matter - Lo must, by rights, love everyone equally - which is to say Lo has no particular love for you.

An old fashioned idea, but true: while there is solace in requited love, there is beauty in unrequited love.

I attempt to live guided by trickster spirits, which is itself a deliciously contradictory phrase: guided? spirits? live? On a good day our friend Hi would describe it as a quest for Flow (although it's more like being Sick and I never liked Csik). On a bad day he'll tell me to get a job and stop being such a bum. Lo will suggest we party behind the A&P and Fuck The Man! anyway, and I am somewhere in the middle, laying on the sunbaked roof of an early 90s Toyota Corolla, in a fugue state from second hand plastic-smoke drifting of the smoldering cities of apocalypse, refusing to cast myself in either direction, knowing I will (must!), but for this moment staring pointedly at the vaunted but unreachable sky, deliberate in my refusal, back pressed against road-weary metal and horribly, painfully in love.

With apologies to Dave Hickey, then, what I will do is sing you some love songs. I will share my browse, and if in the end we are not in love, then at least we'll always have the infinite negative capability of the void that, being a thing equally abhorrent and oddly comforting to us both, will draw us to huddle our meager bodies in epic, pointless protestation. We can block this leak together, or drill a relief well with our teeth, or meet for milkshakes behind the A&P.

As You Wish, and pass the bourbon.

=^^=

Crowded Tree Clearcut: The Long Slow Suicide of Linden Lab

2010-06-10T10:31:00.004-04:00

Crowded Tree by victoriouspower jun (click for original)

Background for the 2 of you who don't know what this is about and still want to read it.

Per usual, this and everything on my personal weblog is my opinion and has nothing to do with my employer. This article is pure conjecture.

@magzjam asked me if I would be blogging about this and I said I didn't care, which is true in many ways, I don't care about Linden Lab anymore, and certainly not enough to give them advice they won't read and don't want. On the other hand, I realized that what I meant to say was that Second Life is NOT Linden Lab. Or as @poid put it more succinctly: Second Life is a community, not a fucking web browser. This will likely be my last post that mentions Linden Lab. They are a lost cause and not worth our energy. I will, however, continue to be involved in the arts community for as long as there is one to be involved in. You are all still my friends, and always will be.

---

Linden is in a tough spot - they make a product which serves a community (variety of communities, really) that they don't particularly want and never really enjoyed dealing with. Far from mainstream, Linden's open-ended "alternative to first life" platform invites participation first and foremost by outliers. Their core constituency is the long-tail: loosely grouped individuals who are looking for something other than what they have. By definition, this means under-served, marginal and yes, undesirable, communities. This means subcultures and lifestyle choices which don't play well in prime-time. To be sure this isn't ALL that Second Life is, but to watch what's happening lately: it's like they held a successful Woodstock and then wondered why nobody wanted to buy a timeshare condo there.

From the beginning this has been an uncomfortable balance, but until now it WAS a balance. Take a look at any of the Jira entries, thousands of blog posts and millions of conversations to take note of the vitriol and invective that Linden's most loyal customers unleash. Reading the long running blogs of some SL's most serious users one wonders why they need enemies. But Linden was able to keep this in check and even move (never quickly enough, but move nonetheless) towards better things. Their secret weapon was of course their staff, drawn from and deeply invested in these communities.

There was a time not that long ago when it was unusual for a SL resident not to at least know the names of all of the Lindens. More recently I was speaking to a resident (about a year and a half old) who asked me what exactly "a Linden" was.

So 30% is a number, the mathematics of a corporation. It's uninteresting really, until you look at WHICH 30% LL has laid off. Mark Kingdon has effectively fired the entire support layer that buffers Linden Lab. This is the "thin Linden line" that filters and communicates the community to the company. In short, Linden Lab has deliberately and forcefully excised the only part of their organization that actually matters for long term survival. They have also declared rather loudly that: Sorry Poid, it is a fucking web browser. At least as far as the company is concerned.

Which, is why I give them 12 months on the outside to sale or shutdown.

Linden has exactly two assets:

1. Their community

2. Their platform

The burn rate is incredibly high on number one. The Lab's approach seems to be to try and replace the current customer base with a new influx of more desirable customers (where more desirable equals higher paying and easier to put on mainstream media. If mainstream media cared anymore). What they fail to understand is that any community is an ecosystem, and in a situation where the platform itself is unattractive and substandard, if you fail to support your creative community, you've effectively destroyed the reason for everyone else to be there. Linden doesn't make anything beyond a platform, and they're laying waste to their community.

So what about that platform? Far from ideal, but pretty decent. To Linden's credit, they have invested a huge amount of time and effort into stabilizing the grid, and it's working. Some of us remember weekly *intentional* outages, and multiple weekly unintentional grid crashes. It's been a while since I've seen "object missing from database." So any reasonable company in this position would seek to expand their platform. It's now more stable than before, why not work on the most obvious flaws (IE the fact that a social software platform with an upper limit of 40 avatars in one space, 30 groups and no real messaging system is inherently broken).

Instead the company will be focusing their efforts on their absolute weakest area: user experience and client development. Time and time again Linden has shown a complete disregard for basic principles of design and cheerfully rejected the overwhelming evidence that their efforts are utter failures. Viewer 2.0 has some astounding features from a content creator perspective but is such a usability disaster that there is some conjecture it is actually driving users away (resulting in missed revenue targets and the current round of layoffs).

The most popular viewer on Second Life remains overwhelmingly the community generated Emerald.

Given the emphasis on community, it makes perfect sense that community generated tools are the most well designed! What Linden OUGHT to do is focus 100% of their efforts on building the absolute best possible infrastructure in support of open source viewer projects. A clean API, a stable scalable server infrastructure. Support of extensions, content import and export, backup and content archiving. Open the platform as wide as possible.

Instead what we will see an increasing focus on poorly executed side projects that are no longer really wanted (such as the promised web-based viewer). This has already been done, several times over, and better than Linden will ever manage. What, beyond complete ignorance of the marketplace, would ever drive anyone to invest in re-inventing the wheel?

Linden is in enormous financial trouble and is clearly desperate. In times like these you rely on your immune system (your community) to see you through. You rely on your developers and you pour your energy into core strengths. If instead you spend what little resources you have left on a shallow makeover while killing off your support system? You die.

Linden will not likely survive its current leadership, who seem intent on driving this boat as hard and fast as possible into the side of an iceberg, provided they can collect on the insurance.

I do have slightly more faith that the community of astoundingly creative individuals will do what internet communities do incredibly well: split apart, reform, regroup, route around damage, find each other in the back rooms and corners and form a group, make art, talk, cause a ruckus. The spirit and the community is alive and well, even if the new landlords can't see it.

Good luck Lab: you're going to need it. To the rest of us: party on, remember WE built this city, and in the end we'll rebuild it somewhere else.

'cause that's how we roll.

-T

Dérive Does Dallas: Fair Park Edition

2010-03-20T19:39:00.007-04:00

This trip report is prepared in the spirit of dérive and Obscura Day. For those of you who prefer a more traditional approach to the location, I recommend this guide.

Also, Fair Park makes a lovely place for a picnic.

I was reminded most recently on good authority that plants are, in fact, zombies. Ancient, slow moving zombies which are easily outrun (well, most of the time). As we are nominally predators whose senses are tuned towards detecting and battling fellow dominant carnivores, this is easy to forget, and so I am indebted to the near-ancients for encoding in the grounds of Dallas
Fair Park a guide to surviving a possible plant-ocalypse.

Like many sacred spaces and urban ruins alike, the fairgrounds are layered literally and conceptually, with new construction, altered symbols and gnomons whose original klatur has been lost to time, weather and reuse.

It is telling, therefore, that the most potent reminder of the site's original purpose was put in place nearly a century after the groundbreaking. While the grounds were originally established in 1886, they took their present shape in 1936 and it is the 1986 work of Patricia Johanson that contains a most obvious message.

And so we will begin here and work backwards through the symbols.

Johanson's tentacular spectacular embraces the manmade pond (referred to, tellingly, as a lagoon), wrapping both sides in a frozen embrace of bloodred concrete whose visual vocabulary more directly invokes the coming of the tentacled one than any I've ever seen before (Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn). Add to this the title of the piece Pteris Multifida, a biological reference to "Spider Fern" which most actively populates disturbed areas. Ominous in tone in any language, multifida translates as "divided many times" reminding us that the biomass of all the plants on earth exceeds the biomass of humans by at least an order of magnitude!

In 2010, these forms provide a pleasurable diversion for school children on holiday, but whomever does witness this spectacle without a shiver of does not comprehend the true purpose!

For those with eyes to see and a mind to comprehend, these many segmented arms of concrete
provide only the most obvious symbol.

There are many more.

Leading off of gate four (四 of course = 不利) is an enormous reflecting pool painted in two shades of Egyptian blue. Besides the obvious reference to Sobek/Anpu, the top of the pool is flanked by hyper-stylized male and female figures which were originally clad in pure silver.

Colloidal silver is an excellent antiseptic with the unfortunate side effect of turning (returning?) individuals blue. This is perhaps a secondary reading of the pool, whose color and purpose is to wash our minds limpid so we can better understand the murals which flank the approach:

Once across a massive parking lot at the top of the reflecting pool, we arrive at the Texas Hall of State. The upper lintels of the building are inscribed with the names of folk heros of the republic, nearly all of whom evoke a last stand of an outnumbered but proud people (Texas is, after all, the Lone Star State in exactly the same sense that our solar system is lone-star.)

The eastern approach to this building is flanked by two cornerstones inscribed FORTUNE and ADVENTURE. In addition, a small Cthulu-as-Agave shrine warns us of the danger of Tequila Dentata.

This is not the only reference to Mesoamerican cosmology. Coatlicue, the devouring mother, makes her appearance among the workers and soldiers of the world, reminding us the proper definition of apocalypse is not destruction but rebirth. Our technologies will consume and invert the order, but the march is relentless!

The foundation of the portico is inscribed regularly with the international symbol for Civil Defense, reminding us that our best hope
is found at home.

On the exterior doors of the building are recurring reminders that we are not alone in this defense if we are capable of bringing together our animal and technological sensibilities. After all, isn't the great plan encoded already in the nature of things?

Located not far from this building are the headquarters of a mysterious organization whose golden eagle embraces both sky and ground with shining wings of glory:

Novus Order Seclorum of course brings to mind the Bilderberg Group, so it's fitting that the courtyard of this structure is where our journey ends, with a final symbolic reminder of hope for the coming battle. Here stands a statue bestowed on us by the people of Berlin, as a reminder that all the mammals will fight together against the vegitiginous onslaught. But will it be enough? Even if we manage to acknowledge a common bond, the question remains: is nature red in tooth and claw, purple in radiation and wavicle, or green in leaf and tentacle? Time has turned the bear verdigris, and may yet do the same to us.

- Dallas Texas, Mar 20, 2010

It's the end of the world as we I know it, and I feel fine.

2009-11-04T15:33:00.004-05:00

So this week seems like an end, and surprisingly I'm okay with it. Not a big dramatic END or an apocalyptic explosion, just a quiet transition point that means very little to anyone not paying close attention, and means perhaps everything in retrospect. Or nothing... I need to admit up front it's entirely possible that it's all in my head - virtual worlds are incredibly good at amplifying solipsism.

But here we are, about six years into this experiment in a 3d virtual world that was not explicitly a game. Linden Lab has a new bunch of folks at the top, including several from Adobe with a focus on customer experience. Both Cory and Phillip have Left The Building. The company is obviously shifted hard towards the business end of things and if you're interested in the bottom line, that's probably a good thing.

On the independent content creator front, the stench of lawsuits is in the air, Bettina has just closed up the NPIRL blog presence. Linden this week very publicly launched their deep-scan DMCA takedown tools, and a number of content creators are leaving or already left some time ago (some loudly, most simply walked off into the sunset). I've never been fond of the major "content creation conglomerates" who tended to underpay and overwork, but these too are gone from the grid.

It's hard in some ways to make the case that this is all bad exactly. It's more like Growing Up, and so I won't rage against the dying of the light, but I will sit wistfully and sip my coffee, and watch the sun come up on the night after what was a really great party, where some weird shit went down, but nobody actually died.

(Incidentally, my virtual alter ego takes this less lightly and will not go gentle into this good night. Instead he stays up all night shouting Ginsberg and writing protest slogans in sharpie across the back of my laptop. He's been reading over my shoulder too much, mostly Wired Shut and probably also this paper I am going to be presenting in about a week at Kings College in London. No worries, his voice will get tired soon anyway, and he's got the attention span of a goldfish.)

Second Life was childish and selfish and ridiculous and silly, and yes more than occasionally pornographic, violent and ugly. It was a big giant horrible beautiful mess - like all of the brains of all of it's users suddenly exploded into a seething mass of Id. In retrospect, because of this it's astounding that it has survived at all. Truly astounding that major corporations, including the one I work for, ever set foot there. Amazing that we're still there.

Linden knows this, and so the great cleanup began. It's the natural way of things in the real world anyway, where the agenda more often than not is set by those with cash in hand, but of course as truly insipid as the name is, the "Second" part of the name "Second Life" always held out promise of a break from this reality. It's difficult to watch the first time a child runs into a sharp corner, the first time someone gets dumped, the first time they realize that the world is not really their friend.

I can't really leave you on such a sad note, so even though I'm writing what amounts to a eulogy, here's a ray of hope: There are still a lot of people on the grid making beautiful things. There are new people signing up every day, and some of them might have stronger ideas that I do about how to make things wonderful again. Better still, there are people in the world who understand that there are reasons to make and share your vision that aren't so relentlessly commerce driven. My avatar might be a nutcase, but he's not wrong - Creative Commons and the open source movement both provide a reasonable grown-up framework that proves the Bazaar AND the Cathedral can coexist, even if at times it seems we've leaned a bit too far towards one side of the sacred or profane.

Concretely, I hold out a secret hope that there are people at Linden who understand the difference between creating something for the common good and creating a business. Ideally, Linden would break the infrastructure portion of it's company off into a nonprofit entity like the Mozilla foundation, who would work on open source software to run the original vision of the "3D web." This would hardly cut into the bottom line - Linden itself could become the primary content holder for all existing content, continue to run Mainland and provide hosting and support service for corporations that want to run ~~Nebraska~~ Second Life Enterprise or their own islands. Perhaps they would chose to spinoff Zindra or the Teen Grid into their own companies, independent entities all sharing a common infrastructure and yes, even permissions system. It could happen.

For now even as you shave off your mowhawks and put away your noserings, remember to hold on tight to your friends and never let go of your sense of wonder. Interesting things are always interesting.

Goodnight.

-T

Story Time with Uncle Madtone!: Opening 10/17 6pSLT

2009-10-17T13:17:00.003-04:00

[Visit Story Time with Uncle Madtone! - IBM2]
OPENING SATURDAY 9/17 @ 6p SLT/9p EST

From day one I have wanted to host a full-sim Madcow build. I'm even more pleased to host an epic Madcow Cosmos / Lorin Tone mashup! With voice actors!

When I asked for a bio, the team sent me this: "Madcow Cosmos has no formal training in any 3d rendering software or other artistic skills aside from the culinary, but enjoys working with art of almost any nature at an amateur level." In this build he's working with Lorin Tone: "a maker of noises of all kinds and a Sound/Music Designer with twisted brain."

While I'm happy to agree with the twisted brain and the obvious enjoyment bit, amateur couldn't be further from the truth - MadTone's universe rivals the best 3d and cartoon environments I've seen, with a style so unique you couldn't copy it if you tried.

Perhaps more important is the absolute sheer joy that Madcow and Lorin bring to the grid. A tonic for whatever ails you, this is amazingly rendered pure fun with a brilliant sense of humor. Plan on spending at least an hour to really explore.

Text courtesy of Uncle Madtone:

Story Time with Uncle Madtone is three builds. Each build is based on a narrative that started off during the building process and was polished up later as things took their final shape. More so than just presenting 3 stories the build is intended as a backdrop and a source for you to create your own stories with the sets you see here. Form your own story, take snap shots to illustrate it with, be your own story teller, and use your own imagination. The best stories are the ones you create yourself and expand upon till they take on a life of their own. That said we hope you enjoy the ones we’ve prepared for you to get your creative juices flowing.

You are encouraged to take all the pictures you like, interact with the pieces in a way that pleases you, not just how they are originally presented, and enjoy them as irreverently as you like. We’ve included a number of ways to interact with the pieces, including audio retellings of the stories, text, tons of sounds, ways to make your own music with them, lots of little things to pickup, and devices for making your own avatars that you may fit in with one of the stories. As such hovering over everything and clicking on anything you can will add to your excitement. The largest pieces are in the sky and you might need to turn up your camera distance and not be afraid to look around on the way up or you could easily miss some of it. The three books here at the beginning represent the three stories being told and the paths through them will lead you to the appropriate areas. We sincerely hope you enjoy your visit as much as we enjoyed preparing it for you.

Notes:
Teleporters are available for some of the main areas but, we encourage you to walk and fly when exploring here, otherwise you'll likely miss a lot of stuff!

The story readers sometimes hiccup, this has to do with some technicalities of the SL sound system so if it gets a bit skippy don't fret.

Flight feathers will be very helpful on the largest build, but cruely we didn't provide one till you reach the highest point.

Major Contributors Include:
Madcow Comsos-building
Lorin Tone-Sound/Music design, voice acting
Judi Newall-Pictures, editing, and voice acting.
Lauren Weyland-Voice acting.
1angelcares Writer-Voice acting.
Tezcatlipoca Bisiani-Scripting on the goblin maker.

Second Considered Harmful to Artists of any Life

2009-10-16T11:43:00.005-04:00

I will continue to enjoy and support art making in Second Life. I intend to keep the IBM Exhibition Space running as long as I can, and I look forward to all of the amazing things NPIRL crew and others are going to produce in the years to come. I'm not going anywhere. In fact, I hope to have some exciting news to share soon. At the same time, some of you know that I am involved in two worlds as an artist, RL and virtual.

I have always maintained that connecting the two is necessary, not because SL artwork needs the blessings of the art world (it doesn't), but because it's young. Virtual work deserves a spot at the table, but it also needs to pay its dues and find its place in the world. To insist (as some do) that it can live completely on its own is foolish. To pursue this end won't mean a dramatic fiery death, but the worst possible fate for any kind of expression: it will be ignored until it fades into obscurity.

Desiring to connect the two is an act of love, a desire to honor the work. Here's my heart on my sleeve: I am one of the exceedingly few people who actually believe that some (not all, but some) of the virtual artwork being created in Second Life is art. Not virtual art, not technology art, not digital art, not pixel art, just art.

The virtual community’s loss of Eshi Otawara focused this for me. To be honest, once I understood the human behind the character was not hurt, my reaction was indifference. I do sincerely like Eshi’s work, and I will miss her on the grid, but "virtual suicides" are nothing new, and drama is what online communities were built for. Then I read Irena’s statement and it focused my own thoughts.

For the record I don’t wish to attribute my words to hers – I am not particularly close to Eshi RL or SL, and I would never want to imply that I am, but as a fellow artist trying to make sense of this universe her statement helped me to understand something that has been bothering me like a loose tooth:

While I do believe that virtual artworks are "real art," I've come to the rather upsetting conclusion that I cannot possibly recommend Second Life as a place for new artists to work in. Perhaps dabble in, but I certainly cannot recommend that they put any amount of effort into making this their home. It's incredibly unsafe.

The reasons for this are manifold, but for me center around the fact that SL is a proprietary, closed, privately held platform that seems to be on a trajectory away from openness and sharing and towards closed trading. I've written about this a few times before, but it had always been my hope that the opposite would be true - that Linden would embrace the notion of "3d web" (operative word being "web" which, last time I checked, was doing great with no central server, DRM or artificial currency whatsoever). Things can of course change incredibly fast, but at this moment the moment the future looks grim for integration with reality, there are too many stakeholders that want the opposite.

The fact that a market exists and is more powerful than art is not itself a problem. It has always been the case with art making communities of the last 200 years or so, which have a tendency to live in a relationship of mutualism (commonly mistaken by non artists for parasitism, and by some artists as commensalism). But in the real world, a worst case scenario for artists might be that their space is bulldozed to make a train station. Yes their work disrupted, but even in the absolute worst of times, artists have historically found a way to reorganize elsewhere. This is because no matter how bad things get, no one has yet managed to destroy the known universe, and most artwork is actually portable.

This is not so with Second Life. All of the content is created in, stored and protected by a private entity NOT bound by any of the laws of reality. So if you live in a loft and paint, and the landlord decides to turn the building into condos - that sucks, but you have options. In the case of SL, if you invest your life in making virtual artworks and someone decides to flip a switch, it will all be gone, forever, with no recourse whatsoever. You will lose all of your work, but also your contact list, all discussions, every note and record of every sketch you’ve ever made. Artwork in Second Life exists at the largess of a single private corporation, and so work created there is something like the mural that Rivera painted at Rockefeller Center. But at least in New York you may view the absence, observe the space where the mural is not. It is part of public record.

For this reason alone, while I continue to love virtual work, I cannot recommend that a new artist begin in Second Life any more than I would recommend that a brand new musician begin their career with a fully binding agreement with a record label who also gets to own their instruments. It’s way too dangerous a place to focus creative efforts.

My sincere hope is that something magical will happen and we will find a true 3D web. I want to be there when 3D hits its stride the way the web hit in the mind 1990s, the days when designers made incredible sites just for the hell of it (and some, like hell.com, tried to make it private and were openly mocked for the pretense). For all its obnoxious self referential crosslinking, web art understood inherently that it needed to be open, shared, discussed to be relevant. The web does suffer from some of the same problem (archiving, for example) but at least it was integrated from the start in a larger context. Few designers could pretend the web didn’t exist the way artists can ignore virtual worlds right now, largely because the intent was integration. Virtual worlds of course are deliberately NOT integrated. This is fine for game playing (and fine for a second or third life) but it is notable that it is sheer force of will that keeps virtual art isolated from reality. In the end, I conclude it’s far too dangerous a place to focus the artmaking efforts of a single human being.

There are strategies to counter this (AM and Bryn do it well), but they come mostly from an understanding and self confidence that isn't built in by default. For now I remain puzzled and slightly discouraged with no obvious solution in sight.

Stay safe all.

Why Sex Toys will bring about the End of Second Life

2009-10-13T23:21:00.014-04:00

Linden has done an admirable job at the recent drawing of the curtain around adult content. So no, sorry, if you were hoping for a rant against the fornicating masses: The presence of artificial orifaces will bring down neither the wrath of God nor the Enterprise (whichever one you are most scared of or who has the most money, take your pick).

But virtual vibrators haven't left the spotlight yet. The sex toys of the apocalypse are with us still, and form the basis for various lawsuits. which, to my abject horror, apparently pleases a number of content creators who seem to think that encouraging more DRM through the absurdity of the DMCA will have a cumulatively positive effect on the community. In fact I'm pretty darn sure it's a the end of the world.

In case you forgot, the DMCA is an act which makes the bypassing of Digital Rights Management technology a criminal offense. Criminal. Felonious. Not like jaywalking or copying your brother's homework, this is more like kidnapping, or child porn, or drug trafficking. Even if you find this laughable (and almost everyone with an iPod does) companies are never amused at being accused of criminal negligence.

If I were running any company in this scenario, I'd think very carefully about making the DRM in my product more secure. After all, it's trivially easy to circumvent right now, and if I'm criminally liable, I had better cover that base at least. In fact, if I WIN the lawsuit I might do the same, just to make sure it doesn't happen again.

So I posit the net effect of these lawsuits will likely be an even more severe lockdown of content than we have now. Technology based DRM is of course fundamentally impossible to enforce, but it doesn't matter, since now the encryption is strong, tracking is good, and suing the crap out of customers becomes a routine business expense. I don't really believe anyone is truly happy with this scenario, least of all the platform providers who must now essentially foot the bill for a private police force to track down content violations, but the lawyers are smiling and the masses get their pound of flesh.

If SL were a distribution mechanism for content (like itunes) I would write this off as an expensive nuisance, but since most SL content is created in-world, I'm taking it rather seriously, which brings me to...

...THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO THAT KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT:

By the grace of some entity, Linden will be with us for many years to come. But imagine an alternate future where things aren't so rosy. One thing leads to another, and the company goes bankrupt.

First order of business is to sell off all of the corporate assets to pay back the creditors. And what a great asset - Millions of dollars in virtual content! But here's a twist: The Terms of Service for Linden state that the intellectual property but not the bits on disk, belong to the residents who create them. Intellectual property is an abstract noun. So yes you own (drumroll please) your thoughts about the thing that Linden now has locked in their dead servers.

Terms of Service grants Linden a license to your content, which means that they can reuse it. What is not clear is if this transfers in the event of a bankruptcy proceeding. In fact, I'd suggest that the recipient would NOT have millions of dollars of valuable assets, but instead millions of dollars in potential liability, owned by millions of individuals with the DMCA and god on their side. Add to this the fact that (thanks to those earlier lawsuits) you happened to have encrypted everything in a way that requires a functioning grid to sort out. That grid isn't running anymore. In fact the servers have been unplugged, and the developer that wrote the code is off at his new job and not looking back.

The only course of action I can imagine playing out here is an incredibly sad one: to avoid potential liability problems, in the event of a bankruptcy, all resident assets are simply destroyed like poker chips from a defunct casino. It's violent but it's fair, in line with DMCA. Nobody gets sued. No harm, no foul. Just a game folks, nothing to see here. Go register a WoW account.

Now if you DO sell virtual sex toys (or shoes, or tshirts, or chickens) you probably don't care all that much. It's not that I'm bashing these things (I'm really not, they're kind of fun), I'm just pointing out the obvious: not one of the SL commodity items work particularly well in the absence of Second Life itself. Seriously, think about it: without an avatar, where are you going to wear that AO?

Here's where we take a deep breath and I ask half of you to take a leap of faith. The other half will walk away in disgust, but I suspect they left the room at "sex toy" so we're in pretty good shape...

ready?

Some of us believe that some of the content in Second Life is on par with content created in real life. Some of us think this content amounts to cultural artifacts, belonging to a culture which is unique in the history of humankind: a virtual culture.

There are art projects which, some of us believe, constitute a record of this unique online culture.These artifacts exist nowhere else but SecondLife, which to many of the residents is a place, not a file server in California.

But to the eyes of the DMCA the entire universe is a legal liability held by a private corporation on hard drives in server racks somewhere in the American Southwest. Thus the "fair" resolution in the above scenario is tantamount to burning to the ground the only repository of the only record of a unique online culture. Like Marianetti and the Futurists, we might choose to embrace this and welcome the kindly incenderists. The rest of us will probably sit around a Cafe in Blue Mars, drinking aquavit and smoking our pension in smuggled cigars, remembering the amazing builds of our youth which were destroyed in the great sex-toy crash of 2015.

State of Formation: Exhibit by Selavy Oh

2009-09-14T17:00:00.001-04:00

[Visit State of Formation - IBM3]
OPENING WEDNESDAY 9/16 @ 2p SLT/5p EST

There are artists who present their work in virtual worlds, artists who work with the tools of virtual worlds, and then there are those exceedingly rare artists who inhabit the tools themselves. True manipulators of the Matrix, these artists work with the underpinnings of the system, using the rawest of digital materials to deliver their vision. Selavy Oh is such an artist and, if nothing else, State of Formation has set the bar in terms of the results we should expect from the toolset that Linden has provided us. In Selavy’s hands the OpenGL alpha rendering bug becomes a tool, camera controls literally alter your perception of space and moving your avatar across the surface of the ground is an act of participation that would make Robert Smithson jealous.

In general I am biased against abstract and excessively formal art in the digital realm, if for no other reason that it is exceedingly easy to produce (computers are good at math) and often substitutes phenomena for strong concept. Perhaps because of this, I am all the more pleased when I encounter works that avoid this trap. Selavy’s work is formal, and occasionally abstract, but fortified with a strong conceptual backbone, a sense of humor and deft touch often missing from similar looking works. If you are one who tends to dismiss the style of hand, please let this show change your mind.

Despite these brave words, I’m always hesitant to put a weight on weightless things. The experience of State of Formation is pure delight and not nearly as clumsy as this writeup. Come visit, and click on everything! Do not merely cam around - this is not a work that can be experienced without participation. Take photos, but realize that no machinima or static image will ever quite capture the sense of leaving your own trace as you walk across the water, or the strange sudden shift of 3D to 2D when you sit in the chairs (each is different, incidentally).

State of Formation by Selavy Oh is on display at the IBM Exhibition Space, IBM 3, Secondlife, from Wednesday September 16th until November 1st, 2009

[Visit State of Formation - IBM3]

Spiral Walcher: A Machine's Dream

2009-09-14T16:53:00.005-04:00

[Visit A Machine's Dream - IBM2]

A fun and spectacularly detailed collaborative build organized by Spiral Walcher, including the talent of Quite Oh, Andrek Lowell, Jopsy Pendragon, Sleeves Rhode, Deson Bowenford, Darlingmonster Ember, Tormented Twilight, Janet Rossini and Jenrose Meredith. Explore an elaborate sim-sized version of Spiral's top hat - it explains a lot!

Reflections on SLCC - Part II

2009-08-28T15:01:00.012-04:00

Once, over a bottle of Jim Beam, I berated Philip Rosedale on the failings of the SL DRM. In between politely ignoring me, Philip talked about how amazing LL office culture was, and it took me a while to realize that here he really meant it. After all, what other company can you name whose employees voluntarily (delightedly?) change their last names to match that of the corporation? If there is criticism of “Linden” in the below, know that I’m speaking directly to those running the company (whether they’re listening or not), and certainly not the day to day “Lindens” we see running the show. For those folks I have only love and unicorns, and occasional snacks.

When I wrote this post for the NPIRL blog I wanted to highlight the only reason I spend any time in Second Life at all, and that is the people. I meant it all, but also told only part of the story. Notably I left out the details of my disappointment in the keynotes (and I don’t mean the awful canned phone-in by Ray Kurzweil, I mean the Linden talks) and exactly why towards the end of my NPIRL post I advocated for community “lifeboating” in the form of OpenSim and content moving tools.

Linden Labs is a remarkable company in that their main product, sold to us in spades is: Us. Linden itself makes no content beyond that which is minimally necessary. They provide little to no content creation support beyond the basic tech support. With the notable addition of sculpies roughly two years ago, the build tools remain largely unchanged as they were in the early 2000s, when I alpha tested Linden World. Linden does very little to actively support builder requests, and in some cases has come down quite hard on the best user hacks, before delivering a viable alternative. Linden itself runs no classes on content creation and they sponsor almost none of the larger or long term art projects in SL. In fact, they issued a defacto revocation of support for many of these when they deprecated the void sim pricing structure.

Of course there are temporary, large scale events such as SLB and BurningLife, but with due respect, these have more to do with the event itself and the attendant press attention than long term support for a content creation community. In this sense these are exactly like a corporate sponsored version of their Burning Man model: perhaps wonderful, but by design transient, temporary, and not meant for dialog. You go to Burning Man to be there for the event - the rest of the time it's an empty desert.

As for build support, there are of course community volunteers. Many of these are incredible folks who deserve an enormous amount of thanks, but quick: Name one other corporation that can convince users to provide free support to other users. There are also no doubt a few Linden staff working on improving the build experience, but with so many half-implemented features (how hard would it be to allow in-world windlight settings, seriously?), these projects very obviously do not take priority.

Almost everything about Second Life that is truly worth seeing, keeping and having, Linden gets for free.

I know of no other virtual world that has been able to stay solvent with this business model. Other large scale 3d virtual worlds (World of Warcraft is currently the most visible of these), sell you content and support that they produce at great expense. When their user base flags, they release an expansion pack. Other long-standing community-built virtual worlds (text based virtual worlds come to mind, some of which have been running for nearly 30 years) avoid this problem entirely by not seeking to make any kind of money. Many are hosted under desks at universities and dorm rooms, or in someone’s garage-turned-ISP. This isn't a viable business model either, but the administrators know it.

It doesn’t trouble me in the least that Linden Lab wants to make money. They can, they should, they ought to. In fact, I would feel better about the whole arrangement if Linden ceased talk of community and instead issued clear edicts about corporate strategy and infrastructure. In this sense I found Michael Kingdon and Tom Hale's keynotes at SLCC refreshing and honest. Both talks made it clear that Linden isn’t stupid – they understand the Newbie Pipe and have a plan in place to keep it flowing. They understand also that commodity users are a cash cow. They get that commerce around content in real dollars (XStreet + PayPal) are incredible sources of revenue. These are valid business strategies, but all of them are predicated on the assumption that there will be a community there when the renovations are complete.

So here, finally, is my frustration: In the face of an audience composed of individuals dedicated enough to spend vacation time and several hundred dollars to be there, why did Linden seem surprised that the audience was nonplussed at the "new" walled-garden approach to social networking unveiled on secondlife.com? Tom in particular: Why so indignant that we called you out on announcing exactly half of an API – the part that will get content IN to Second Life, but nothing that will get it out? Import mesh is terrific, where is export? Making a phone call to users who tend to prefer the multitasking ability of text chat is (maybe) a cool trick, but when can a business meeting in SL call out to a remote participant?

What I hope is that someone at Linden understands that their greatest asset is the community of individuals who have voluntarily created some of the most beautiful and compelling virtual objects of the last few years. These individuals continue to toil away and to make enormous strides towards validating virtual creations as works of art, even as Rezzable, Electric Sheep, Princeton and others leave the grid. Furthermore, the most interesting of these individuals exist in the real world as well, not merely as avatars, and much of the content they create is worthy of existing outside of the virtual walls.

It seems that Linden has embraced a protectionist approach to content out of fear that, given a choice, users will leave. If all the content were produced as commodity, they might have a point, but the best content (even that for sale) is produced with a love, or at least a clear understanding, of the context in which it will be used. Today's best content creators understand their audience because they are members of the community, and this is why community is the only asset Linden truly has. Individuals will put up with almost any shortcoming in order to be with the people they care about.

In my mind, the worst part of the scenario Linden has created is that if all of the best content creators were to leave Second Life tomorrow, absolutely nothing dramatic would happen. There exists now millions of human-years worth of work on the grid, and it's not going anywhere. It's also true that well paid, high-profile creators are rare beasts. Most of us fail often, hard, and at great expense. We occasionally produce something amazing, but only after hours of toil. We’re damn expensive. We complain a lot. In the beginning it might seem a boon to be rid of us, and the downhill slide to mediocrity will be slow and quiet.

Despite our eccentricities and loud insistence on improvements, we make the world worth being a part of. We are the difference between plywood cubes and monographs on virtual architecture. In the long run, we make the neighborhood liveable. And unlike Real Life, where artists form the forefront of urban renewal and are eventually and inevitably pushed out in favor of luxury condos, in SL, you have the option of keeping us indefinitely for a fraction of the price.

So Linden, while you’re planning on much needed remodeling and infrastructure upgrades (for which we are all grateful, even when we’re whining), don’t forget to actively reach out to the residents providing you with hours and hours of free labor - those who collectively constitute your best asset. Consider it Percent For Art or at least those complimentary signs that we can hang on the scaffolding so people know our small counter-culture store is still open even though the street is torn up. Because while they certainly pay the rent, nobody travels across the country just to visit Walmart, and nobody visits Second Life to hang out with the executives from the CIO's office, no matter how much they paid for that site license.

Reflections on SLCC 2009

2009-08-25T23:00:00.009-04:00

SLCC is the Second Life Community Convetion, more information here.

This post was originally published here and is duplicated on my blog as an archive with closed comments. Comments are welcome on the original post though!

When Bettina asked me to write about my experience at SLCC I thought perhaps I'd write about the keynotes (in general very disappointing), the incredible tour of the Exploratorium courtesy of Patio Plasma (amazing, thank you!), the delicious NPIRL Dim Sum (all the food was PIRL, but honestly with Dim Sum that's just fine). In the end I think what I want to focus on here is us, and what we can do as a group to further the cause of shared 3D virtual worlds as a place for creative exploration, because much like everything else in Second Life, no one else is going to make it happen.

If there was one thing that my visit to SLCC last week brought home for me it is the conviction that Second Life is not, and never has been, about the technology. It is not, and never has been, about Linden Lab, nor any other company or organization. Everything good about this universe comes from the people in it, in all their messy chaotic glory.

I'm not suggesting that we ought to give up trying to influence our infrastructure, but whenever I used to speak about Second Life to people less familiar with it, I found myself in an uncomfortable position as apologist. Why was the server so slow? Why was the interface so difficult to use? What about those flying penises? No doubt you have fielded dozens of these questions yourselves, and to be fair to Linden, things are much better than they were, But I for one have always found these questions incredibly frustrating. They're not the right questions! Instead ask me this: Why would an otherwise sane and healthy adult professional work a full work week and then spend hundreds of hours logged into a virtual world? Why, exactly, do we care so damn much?

In it's specifics, the answer is as varied as each of us, but in general it all ends in relationships, and community, and the sheer joy of building a world with people of like mind. So these days, when people ask why I spend an inordinate amount of time in this odd artificial universe I have an answer, and if you read nothing else in this post, read this: it’s you (or most of you, anyway). It’s the community that includes many of the Linden staff, and also independent scholars and musicians, professors, painters, physicists who run hands-on museums, ad executives, business professionals, students, mathematicians who explain hyperbolic space with aplomb, magicians who perform even when their hands get stuck in car doors, writers, IT directors, teenagers, illustration students willing to share their avatar making secrets, weekend goths, vampires, old, young, straight, queer, able bodied and not, sushi experts, world record holding skydivers – even the griefers who rent party busses and cover corporate headquarters in chalk slogans.

This is so true that even a week later I’m still thrilled by it. To be sure there is the happy conference bubble (short time frame, beer and free food make many things possible), but even accounting for that, the last thing Eshi Otwawara said to me, standing outside of Lori's Diner before heading out for the day, rang true: It's about the sense of touch: "We can be anything we want in Second Life. Friends, even lovers, but in-world we can't hug." Unexpectedly for me, this became the proof I never knew I needed, confirming what I’ve known only with my eyes and my brain for the last few years: SL is real. You can touch it.

Second Life is now in the downward slope of the Gartner Hype Cycle, and rather than being upset about this, I think we should rejoice: it took the dot com bubble bursting for the real value to emerge, and now that the novelty has worn off, those of us who are left standing can get down to the business of showing the world what really matters. Unfortunately this also means that we should see less direct support for our work, because Second Life in general, and our corner in particular, is so small from a business perspective that it amounts (in the words of Clay Shirky) to a rounding error. Moreover, our job as creative content creators is to push the boundaries of the universe, and the goal of any profitable company is to trend towards commodity users. It's not that we're at cross purposes exactly, but we certainly serve a different set of ideals.

Again, I don't think this is cause for despair, but it does mean that we need to become ever more self reliant, and the onus on outreach is on us. If you are part of a professional community and you believe in virtual worlds, focus your attention on bringing your community to us - we can only be strengthened by connecting to the real world. You don't need to tell the world how amazing SL is, instead tell us the amazing things your RL communities are doing with SL. Inspire us. If you are an artist, work on connecting your in-world practice to those on the outside. Share your world, don't leave it locked inside a server somewhere. Go and get the audience, don't expect them to just show up.

If you want something to happen technically, focus on supporting the open source communities that are trying to make it happen. Support the development of unofficial viewers. Think carefully about the need for Second Life alternatives, content portability and free reliable backups, not because you want to boycott Linden in a fit of pique, but because you care about this community and realize how fragile it is to hang on the future of a single corporation. Start truly respecting your work, because it really shouldn't be surprising (as I learned at SLCC) that someone like Ina Centaur pays her actors union wages. She said it herself: they are a professional theater company, why wouldn't I?

Above all continue to push the boundaries of the universe in surprising and exciting ways because that's really the reason we're all here. And when someone asks you why you spend so much time online, or inquires as to the business value of virtual worlds, answer them loud and clear: It's all about the people, and the community, and what we continue to build together.

Cash for Art?

2009-07-13T16:14:00.005-04:00

NOTE: It should go without saying (but in case it doesn't): Everything on this website/blog is absolutely and completely my opinion, and NOT THAT OF IBM. I do not speak for the company, and in no way should my thoughts be construed as policy or indicating policy. Are we cool? Cool...

---------------------------------

After the opening of the Bryn Oh Exhibition I was contacted by couple of different people who wanted to know how much money IBM paid artists for their exhibitions. I tweeted this:

"Several have asked about how much IBM pays artists to exhibit in SL. I'm not upset by Q, but extremely curious: do others purchase exhibits?"

Thanks to Bettina Tizzy who took the bait - In short:

"It is not uncommon for an organization to pay their vw artists-in-residence a small stipend. Symbolic, really; appreciated."

"We are all feeling our way around in the dark re: VWs/art. I just know that a very little bit of "extra" goes a very long way"

At which point I conceded an excellent point, but the response spinning in my head required a bit more than 140 characters:

WHY NOT?
Bettina suggests that an honorarium is both customary and proper, and in theory I'm inclined to agree. A little extra DOES go a long way (for the record, I will often give an artist some expense money, especially if a piece is heavy on new textures and/or sounds, but only because Linden charges for these things, and then it's out of my pocket).

That having been said, for art in SL I usually draw on my experience as an exhibiting artist in the real world. That has come in three flavors: 1. Exhibitions which offer space and promotion, but no cash. 2. Exhibitions for which I have received an honorarium (usually $1,000 or travel money, rarely ever up front, and in some cases promised and not given) 3. Commissions, which are budgeted and competitive. You can live on commissioned work, if you can score enough of them. The only person I know who does this literally does it as a living, and for those of you with romantic notions, it's hard. Really really hard, with all the paperwork and junk that goes with running a small business.

So while your mileage may vary, in my experience money is scarce, but when an organization can afford it they offer something substantial. It's an honor code of sorts - it's a bit insulting to offer someone $50 for a weeks worth of work, but the notion of trade implies that we're in this insane experiment together, and that while I can't pay you cash for your time, we're bartering something of equal value, which is to say: space!

So that brings us to today. In the case of IBM Exhibition Space, there simply is no operating budget. None. IBM provides the space, I volunteer time to make it work. Until now I never thought of this as a problem, and I wouldn't now, except there is one more thing...

WORK FOR HIRE
...to make things slightly more complicated I've made most of my living in life as a designer for hire. There is a particular view of SL that it is a 3D engine, and all the work done on it equates to the same thing as the work done by commercial 3D artists. Such individuals are paid, often well, for their work. Among the graphic design community (with which I am most familiar) there is a code of conduct written down by the AIGA that states (among other things) that designers ought not to take work on spec - that work ought to be valued - that you shouldn't drag down the industry by giving away our daily bread.

I draw a distinction between work done as an art piece and work done for commercial purposes, but I'm very concerned about this. In Second Life, what I've often observed is rampant exploitation of talented builders who have little professional experience, and almost no knowledge of the value of their skills. These folks essentially work for less than minimum wage for organizations that turn around and sell the work. That these organizations may or may not make money is irrelevant - the entire structure ensures devaluation of 3D content.

SO WHAT?
In Second Life there is no art market. There is an active commodities trading system, with plenty of aggregate cash changing hands, but outliers notwithstanding there is little to suggest that this is anything like a healthy economy. It's really a play economy, with the vast majority of individuals making their living in their first lives. (Which is why, before it was banned, people were perfectly content to sit on a prim "earning" two cents an hour.)

First life doesn't adequately support the arts, and there is little to suggest that Second's play economy could do any better, but sim space is the one bit of SL that remains most closely tied to real value. Sims cost real money. Space grants equate to real money. This became even more significant when Linden removed the void sim option (and will perhaps become less significant if enough people embrace Open Sim).

As a curator, I treat SL artists the way I've been treated as a "real life" artist, and as I would treat them if they were artists exhibiting in a "real life" gallery. I trade with the most significant virtual possession I have: space and time. I'm confident that these two things (and real world currency) are worth far more than Linden Dollars. Of course I'm also more than a little curious to hear how the rest of SL does it, and curious to know what others, most especially the artists, think of this grand experiment.

IBM Exhibition Space: July 10th: Bryn Oh's The Rabbicorn

2009-07-06T13:33:00.005-04:00

THE RABBICORN by BRYN OH

presented by IBM EXHIBITION SPACE (IBM 3, Secondlife)
Curated by Andrew Sempere (Tezcatlipoca Bisiani)
OPENING: 6pm SLT (9pm EST) JULY 10th, 2009
SLURL: IBM 3/56/50/23
IBM SPACE:Gallery Information

Bryn Oh's new build The Rabbicorn tells the melancholy origin story of the title character, an original robotic being in the Bryn Oh universe. The Rabbicorn exists in a world of poetic narrative, subtle ambient sound and beautiful visual artistry, part Gorey, part Poe, part Velveteen Rabbit, but with an original take that is uniquely contemporary, and uniquely Bryn.

Bryn Oh's work is organized around the concept of Immersiva, an art style whose main goal is to draw your attention away from real life in order to fully immerse you into that of the virtual experience. Bryn does this by creating paintings you can enter and explore; Not merely landscape, but narratives within narratives literally waiting to be discovered. Bryn's works are developed using traditional composition and colour theory adjusted to fit a non linear 3D environment. For more about Immersiva and Bryn's work:

NPIRL: Attaining Presence 4jetpacks4 and Bryn Oh

Second Thoughts: Immersiva

Bryn on Immersiva

Bryn Oh and the Destruction of Heaven

Secondlife, Twitter, and the Importance of API

2009-07-02T00:42:00.004-04:00

This post was inspired by a meme making the rounds: "Is Twitter the new Second Life?" As in: Is Twitter as overhyped and lacking in value as Second Life was? It's not a surprise that this comparison upsets people - after all no one wants to read the premature obituary of their favorite system. And, to be fair, the comparison is a bit moronic: It is perhaps like asking if milk is the new lederhosen. Despite the absurdity, I couldn't help but use it to sort through a number of thoughts I've had about why Second Life is failing so badly to deliver on the promises of the "3D Web."

For those of you wondering about my motivations, consider this post tough love. I have and continue to enjoy Second Life, especially as a democratic platform for art making. It's the best option we have right now. I've also met a fair number of Linden employees (from managers to customer service staff) in person and I can tell that every one of them love their company and believe in the mission. These are great and smart people - but as a designer who researches social software for a living, I feel uniquely positioned to say that from where I sit, SL is failing badly in it's appeal to business. While a year ago my coworkers were often excited and curious to hear a remote meeting might include a foray into virtual worlds. These days I just as often hear how grateful they are to "ditch the damn thing" when we opt not to use it. Linden is a very young and agile company, but if we imagine it will still be relevant in 5-10 years, it's time think bigger than taking potshots at improving the search box or changing the color of the GUI. It's time to talk Design.

If you are reading this as an average Second Life resident, in particular one who has no interest in business use of virtual worlds, this discussion is academic. Second Life is and remains an excellent platform for individual social interaction, and will probably remain so for a while to come.

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As it is now Second Life will never be capable of delivering on the promises of the "3D web," nor will it ever approach the significance of a social networking platform like Twitter. To understand why we need to begin with the fact that SL has no content API, and nearly nonexistent support for external media. In addition, Second Life requires you (in gamelike fashion) to make artificial translations between real life and the virtual. While this is incredibly empowering for the individiual, it is death for business use. More importantly, neither of these conditions are an oversight, both are deliberate design decisions borrowed from the realm of MMPORGs.

Why is an API important, and why should a non-programmer care? We don't need to understand the technical bits. We don't even need to know what the API looks like, or what it can do, we just need to understand what an API does conceptually: it allows for integration. Integration is the major difference between open platforms with APIs (let's say Twitter and Flickr) and "Walled Gardens" (let's say Secondlife or Facebook). The open platform model assumes that you will make their service a part of your life. The walled garden approach assumes you will give a portion of your life to their service. Systems like Twitter or Flickr function as PART of your life. Systems like Secondlife or Facebook assume they ARE your life, or at least a unique chunk of it.

For a system like Second Life this actually makes perfect sense: Why would a service offering you a second chance at life want to integrate in any way with your first? If you are a student of virtual worlds in the gaming sense, the answer is incredibly obvious: you wouldn't! Integration breaks the illusion of immersion. Integration breaks Flow, it ruins the experience. It is not an accident that most computer games occupy all of your computer's screen real estate and most of its computational resources. This is by design - the world ought to become the whole of the experience. In this sense, real world integration is unwanted and unwelcome and it is, unfortunately, exactly what business world requires.

Most of the criticism I hear from would-be business users of Second really falls out along these lines - Second Life has poor support for real world integration. It does not support real world identities or reputation systems, it does not have a real marketplace (using a real currency), it does not allow transparency. Second Life is "heavy" and does not allow you to use your computer for much else. It is, in short, inherently about replacing the real with infinite possibility, at the cost of blocking out everything else. All of these things are true, and are by design. As a place for personal exploration this distance from reality can be valuable and deeply rewarding, but as a place to conduct business, it's a train wreck.

Returning to the notion of an API, consider the way that users interact with Twitter with the way users interact with Second Life. Twitter has no sense of place - it offers no "there" to go to. While you might visit the homepage, you are just as likely to be using a cellphone, a PDA or one of a dozen client applications on almost as many hardware devices. In fact, the 140 character limit built into Twitter comes from the limit placed on SMS messages. In other words, from day one, Twitter assumed it would be part of your existing life and infrastructure. The API makes this possible.

In contrast, Second Life offers virtually no way in which the external world can interact with the virtual. Even the "lightweight" SLIM chat client is proprietary and incompatible with every other instant messaging client. So while Twitter encourages users to bond by sharing the notion that they are distributed, Second Life encourages users to bond by forcing them to be located in the same virtual space, even when they would rather not be.

There are advantages to both approaches of course, but if the question is "what makes for a good platform for business use" it should be immediately obvious that the answer is that which is open, reaching people where they actually are, with the tools they're already using.

One final bit of criticism ought to be leveled at the death grip the Second Life universe holds on user created content. While it is true that the terms of service allow users to "keep their intellectual property," Linden does not provide any way to make this possible. In short, there is no API for content transfer, nor does the TOS adequately cover content transfer (other than promising swift expulsion for "violations"). For an amateur user (and by amateur I do not mean "unskilled," I mean "not done for a living") who keeps their universe contained in-world, this poses little problem, but for for a professional 3D content creator, this takes the proposition of working for a living in Second Life completely off the table, except where a company is willing to hire someone on salary.

Put another way: There are a class of professionals who generate incredible 3D content (for other virutal worlds, film industry, title design). These folks cannot apply their talents to Second Life without being forced into learning a new toolset which falls short of the one they are used to. Once they do, their work is locked into a proprietary environment. Thus, very few established professional content creators engage with the Second Life community. This does NOT mean that the quality of homegrown Second Life creations is lesser, it just means that the Second Life community is isolated from the existing professional community of practice. Seems like a bad idea? It is.

While there are ways to move content around, they are fraught with legal and technical difficulties and effectively render the environment hostile to professional engagement. (If the World Wide Web required web designers to make sure they had the "transfer" box ticked on every bit of javascript they wrote, there would never have been a dot com boom!*) This leaves the bulk of Second Life to the amateur content creators . It's absolutely true that this creates an incredible democratizing opportunity for participation, but it does nothing to encourage engagement with the business or art worlds, which (like it or not) still exist in "meatspace." Amateur content creation is a wonderful thing, but it was never Geocities that made the web a successful platform for business.

If Linden does nothing, Secondlife will remain what it is, and for almost all of the current users, this is more than enough. If, however, the company has any thought towards delivering on the "hype" of the 3D web for the Enterprise, serious steps must be taken to abandon what currently amounts to an isolationist strategy. This process can begin with a concerted effort to produce an API.

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* It is a persistent myth that the presence of tools such as copybot "destroy creativity" and "ruin the marketplace." As a former creative for hire, I can assure you that you can make both decent money and a solid reputation as a designer of websites. This is true despite the fact that nearly every computer on the face of the earth has the web equivalent of "copybot" pre-installed, in the form of a web browser that allows view source. Why then didn't the web fail spectacularly? The web didn't grow into the force it is today in spite of the fact that it lacked copy/mod/trans permissions, it grew BECAUSE it lacked such permissions. It did not grow because it insisted on being the one and only place to go for content, it grew because it was predicated on the assumption that content should be distributed widely.

IBM Exhibiton Space

2009-06-06T18:16:00.003-04:00

Recently the IBM VUC (Virtual Universe Community) held a field trip to the new IBM Exhibition space in Second Life. I realized then that although I posted an announcement of the space, I'd never formally explained where the space came from, or what it was for. Here’s an attempt to catch up…

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The IBM Exhibition space represents the culmination of a dream which I’ve had for a while – a land grant by a forward thinking organization for the purpose of presenting high quality virtual works. First things first: the space would never have happened without the support of Craig Becker (aka Jessica Qin). As Jess says, nothing ever happens at IBM without a team, and so there are others as well – thank you all for being the part of IBM that understands the power of user created content.

I have background in both the fine arts and technology - I went to School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an undergrad and then to MIT for grad school. I haven't been at IBM that long (I was a professional hire in 2007), but I’m a Research Designer in the Collaborative User Experience Group, also called the Center for Social Software. We make and study social software.

Since well before I joined IBM I've been a practicing artist - I make and build interactive things, largely in physical space. A couple of years ago while I was preparing a syllabus for a class I was going to teach, I decided to check out Second Life. I’d been a beta tester for Linden World and wondered what had changed over the five years or so since I’d last been on the grid. The short version of the story is that I landed (somewhat coincidentally) at the IBM 6 sandbox. Until that day I’d been relatively unimpressed with what I saw, but that evening I was hooked, and have been ever since. To be sure, since that day I’ve discovered many wonderful places on the grid where quality work exists, but for me the IBM6 sandbox was and remains one of the most unique public studios I’ve enjoyed being a part of, in real or virtual space.

A couple of years after that first visit to the sandbox, I found myself actually working for IBM Research, occasionally on Second Life projects. One of these brought me in close contact with Jessica Qin, coincidentally around the time when Linden Lab decided to change their pricing structure for so-called “void sims.” This move effectively killed a number of exhibition spaces on the grid. There are many reasons why the arts (in Second Life and first life) do not constitute a viable business model. It never surprises me when art spaces close for financial reasons, but I found this pendulum swing disturbing. After all, without user created content, Second Life is literally a wasteland.

In a sense, then, this project began with a selfish motivation - I was trying to figure out how to make sure there were still places in Second Life that I would want to come visit. Many organizations and spaces were quietly (and not so quietly) leaving the grid, but IBM maintained a sizeable investment in virtual land, and I thought perhaps we could help.

Without content worth seeing there is no reason for virtual worlds to exist. Much work (including some of my own) continues on business cases for Virtual Worlds, largely around the application of the technology to business processes. While this is fine and good, in the real world corporations have long acknowledged that image matters (think everything from websites to corporate headquarters to dress codes). Far from trivial, these things telegraph an enormous amount of information about what a business values. In virtual worlds, the infrastructure is, well... virtual. Everything is visual. Everything is symbolic, and so the quality of content matters, perhaps even more than it does in the physical world.

Quality content matters, and it turns out I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps most importantly, Jessica didn't think I was completely insane. It took a few months to get things arranged, but here we are now, with nearly two sims of space. Turns out I can’t fix the grid, but I can promise that in my corner, for the time being, there will be work worth visiting. Please come and check us out: SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%202/165/17/22

Announcing the IBM Exhibition Space: Inaugural work by Glyph Graves

2009-05-20T11:19:00.017-04:00

Since 2006, IBM has maintained a presence in Second Life which includes the venerable IBM 6 sandbox, a home and training ground for some of the grids most talented builders, both IBMers and non IBMers. Through the operation of the sandbox, IBM has tacitly recognized that community building and social content creation is a key part of the value of virtual worlds. Most recently, through the thought leadership of Jessica Qin (Craig Becker, CIO Office of Strategic Initiatives), IBM has taken this a step further by opening the two-sim IBM Exhibition Space, located on IBM2 and IBM3 in Second Life.

The IBM Exhibition space is currently curated by Tezcatlipoca Bisiani (Andrew Sempere, Research Designer at IBM's Center for Social Software), and will showcase immersive installations of virtual art and architecture as examples of the cutting edge of what is possible in 3d virtual worlds.

The inaugural exhibition for the IBM Exhibition Space is Strangers Also Dance by Glyph Graves. Glyph is a Australian based artist whose interactive works incorporate sound, elaborate visuals and narrative. This piece in particular provides a journey through an alternative universe inhabited by jellyfish-like creatures made of sound and light. Incorporating interactive scripts, including cellular automata, the creatures and plants will react to your presence, incorporating you into their behavior. Come visit an exhibition where the denizens are as curious about you as you are about them!

OPENING:
Saturday May ~~22nd~~ 23rd, 6pm SLT (9pm EST)
>> Link to the Exhibition Space
>> Flickr Pool

Exhibition this Weekend: Maker Revolution

2009-04-21T17:09:00.007-04:00

If you are in Boston and want to see two of my physical installations in the same place (Sod Off! and Bowl of Oceans: Meditations on Burst Philosophy) this weekend is your chance.

As part of Boston Cyberarts 2009 and Willoughby and Baltic, Mary Murray has curated a show called Maker Revolution which will run concurrently with talks, workshops and performances. The event will be held this weekend, hosted at the Microsoft NERD (New England Research and Development) facility.

Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26th. The event schedule and directions are here, and both pieces will be up for the duration of the weekend.

Why Shirky Missed the Point

2009-04-16T09:58:00.003-04:00

There is a well known comedy routine about flying. The punchline is that air travelers complain about legroom, bad meals and lost bags when what they should be focusing on is the fact that they're... FLYING.

Clay Shirky and others bemoaning #twitterfail-fail are those passengers. Perhaps they are embarrassed by their own public pitchforking, but the point is: Democracy works!

What happened on Twitter was *exactly* right, for all of the reasons Mary Hodder (linked by Shirky) points out. A problem occurred in February and was ignored when a few people pointed it out. This weekend a lot more people pointed it out, and the company fixed the problem. Deliberate? Probably not. Moral issue? Maybe, but that's not the point! Look guys... a multinational company jumped to fix a problem because a whole lot of people (who were not necessarily shareholders) were talking about it. THAT is an awesome awesome thing.

When I attended the Obama Inauguration I was part of the doomed purple ticket crowd. I was lucky and managed to get in the gates, but out of curiosity I followed the Facebook group which resulted. In the end, the Senate Sergeant at Arms joined Facebook to apologize. This event astounded me, and went relatively unremarked (and certainly there was something of more significance going on) but think about it: a member of Congress saw fit to answer to a group of people who came together via Facebook. Facebook! for f@#$ sake!

This is not about Facebook, or Twitter, but it is about the democratization power of social networks. I believe this force to effect change will become increasingly important the more we globalize and slide out along the tail. As we lose our traditional information filters, we lose our collectivity, and if something as simple as a hashtag can counteract that, I'm all for it.

If the admonishment is that we ought to take that responsibility seriously, then I wholeheartedly agree. If we want to take it a step further and realize we ought to teach rhetoric and media literacy, I agree even more. But please don't ignore the true significance of this sea change.

Holy shit man, we're flying!

Tentacles Wrap-Up

2009-04-13T16:09:00.003-04:00

So once in Arizona, the sensors did not work.

To the wise-ass on site who asked me if we tested our setup: Yes. But clearly not enough. The batting in some of the tentacles was too thick, making the sensors require a death grip before triggering. Also, the thicker foam had a poor recovery rate. The most problematic of all was MaxMSP which crashed and broke in odd bug-like ways. I'm still not sure why, but these problems meant a (technically) poor showing for the first part of the first day, until we re-wrote the software and rebuilt the sensors.

I sincerely apologize if any of you were there in the AM on day 1 and were disappointed, but the back half of the first day and the second day went great. The experience was far more stressful than any of us wanted it to be, but I don't think I'm lying in calling the show a success with a rocky start.

Rules:

1. Every tech art piece should look good with the power off.

2. Remember in the end it's really about the audience experience.

3. Unit testing alone is insufficient, no matter how good you are.

PS I didn't have a link handy last time, but here's a pointer to David Stoke's squish sensors :) Despite the issues, it's still a great idea. Try different kinds of foam, some work better than others.

Bryn Oh: Condos in Heaven

2009-04-13T15:41:00.001-04:00

Bryn has completed video documentation of her work on the UKy Sim. Still up for a week or so:

Blues Garden Press Shot

2009-04-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Collaboration with Mary Lucking and Pete Goldlust. Appearing in Glendale, AZ April 4+5. Photo credit: Mary Lucking:

Tentacular Spectacular

2009-03-31T00:36:00.004-04:00

Nearly all of my free time this month has been consumed by the construction of a tentacular spectacular, to be unveiled at the Glendale Jazz and Blues Festival on the 4th and 5th of April.

I don't think people always believe me when I say I'm doing something with eyeballs and tentacles, so here's a spy-shot of the piece, leaked on the internets for you (taken by Mary in tentacle central AZ):

For the record the formal aspects of this piece are being handled completely by Mary and Pete. I don't mind this a bit - they are beautiful (the tentacles AND Mary and Pete) and I can' t wait to have it all working together.

Because some of you care about the tech guts and I've told you about the project, some changes... I initially wanted to use Rabbit 5600 micros because they have wifi. The idea was to set up an adhoc 802.11 network and have these guys spit out OSC. Rabbits are difficult to use though, mostly because they're not seriously interested in the hobbyist market - Everything needs to be ordered (slow), is surface mount, and if you want the socket to plug stuff into you have to have a board custom made, or buy an entire devkit just for the motherboard. I understand why, and if I were them I would probably do the same, but not enough time to deal with them for this project.

Besides, who wants to learn yet ANOTHER dialect of code. Why do you people all insist on proprietary languages? You don't even do them well - every micro controller language and IDE I've ever seen is a piece of crap. Hint: The purpose of high level languages is not to add syntactic sugar, it's to buffer the programmer from needing to work with assembly level code OR CONCEPTS. It's abstraction! Amazing stuff...

Done whining: enter the glorious Ford Escort of Microcontrollers: The Arduino. No I don't like their IDE either, but it turns out that a software package called JunXion supports OSC and the Arduino as input. Not so easy.. the JunXion support for OSC is functional but odd. A few emails back and forth with the guys there (who, for the record, are very nice and responsive) and I figured out how to get it to output the OSC I wanted. That's when I hooked up the Arduino and crashed. Immediately. Load*CRASH*, not so much as a core dump. I think JunXion is an awesome piece of software and seems well developed in some areas, but if you want to use it with the Arduino and want to alter the Arduino code you may want to wait a bit. OSC veterans will also think it strange, but usable (Hint: output values are auto-scaled to midi range, but the display doesn't indicate this. Modify the scaler in the prefs menu to ensure you send out what you think you're sending).

Because there are lots of tentacles, I needed far more than the 6 analog inputs the arduino offers. I got the idea to use CD4051s from this project. They work great. You get a bit of resistance (.5ohm) across the multiplexers, but since it's more or less constant and since I only really care about gross values (not measuring the growth of cells here), it works great. Downside = lots of soldering, here's the bottom of the board not quite half finished:

And thus back to JunXion... this necessitated some tricks in the Arduino code to make it think it has 64 analog inputs. Nothing too fancy, but enough to cause serious stability problems. Feeling a bit crunched for time, I opted to just roll my own.

I hate Java, mostly because whenever I hit a wall and plug stuff into google I end up with one of two answers from the message boards: 1. That's impossible, you're stupid. 2. Oh it's easy. The first step out of 2000 is to sacrifice a dead cow with purple spots on the exact ground where Babbage once trod. Take the resulting elixir and copy and paste these four hundred lines of code into your main class, then download this library my brother in law wrote, email him for the FTP password to the sourcecode or look it up on my bittorrent based gopher server, connect this lib to version 3.44 of the co-frangulator. This will compile if you're running version 4.29929324.bb3 of the dev environment, but probably not with 4.29929324.bc3 using.... yeah you get the point.

Slamming my head repeatedly against a brick wall produced this:

It works.

Incidentally in my travels I did find an amazing little OSX utility called "Jar Bundler" if you happen to be working on Mac and care about distributing your aps. This utility (free with Xcode) packages up your jar, all the libraries, sticks an icon on the thing AND converts your menu to mac-style menus. It's pretty awesome. Alleviates the need for ten line instruction sheets about sacrificing cows to get your ap to run.

So now we have 64 analog inputs that connect to a computer via USB and send OSC signals out into the aether.

Sensor footnote:
We needed a whole bunch of "tentacle squishing" sensors. There's lots of not-great ways to do this, but looking at this instructable reminded me of a trick I learned from one of my students in class (thanks David Stokes!). Namely that you can use ESD foam as a kind of variable resistor. This works best when you make a metal fabric/foam/fabric sandwich, so I needed to track down some metal fabric. Unfortunately the only way to get this stuff is to order it from companies that sell vitamin supplements and advertise things on their hold music like "ask your representative how you can become alkalized!" The main problem here is that these companies tend not to actually *stock* the stuff, which means a couple of weeks lead time. I did, however, find a company that sells rolls of metallic tape, and they DO stock it. Overnight shipping is expensive, but if you dig deep enough it's really true you can order anything on the internet. Even tentacle sensor bits.

Foo East Presentation

2009-03-28T14:21:00.001-04:00

By request, the presentation from my talk on making and curating art in secondlife:
http://prezi.com/16584/

Dale Chihuly and The Nature of Glass

2009-03-05T23:52:00.001-05:00

This recent trip to Phoenix was largely a working trip, planning for our newest project, a temporary public art installation for the 26th Annual Gibson Glendale Jazz & Blues Festival in Glendale, AZ (Please come if you're in the area). This one is a collaboration with the fabulous Mary Lucking and the equally fabulous Pete Goldlust. I'm excited about the three of us working together on something. The piece is in the works and I can't say much, other than it will be: 1. blue, 2. make sounds, 3. have tentacles of a sort.

Back to the point of this post: Largely a working trip, but on the way to the airport for my flight home, we made a detour to the Desert Botanical Garden to see Dale Chihuly's latest show, The Nature of Glass.

I should say that until now I have not been a Chihuly fan. It's true that his skills are unrivaled, but I think I just got bored after seeing the ten millionth multicolored "vessel". Mary pointed out that I probably also got burned out by the ten million Chihuly imitators, but whatever the case, one thing was made clear this weekend: I have never seen his work 1. Outside and 2. At night. And these things make all the difference.

In the desert, next to plants, the shapes make sense. Lit at night, the colors are extraordinary, and the experience in a desert setting made both the art and the natural surroundings more beautiful. It's rare for a contemporary artist to celebrate landscape with joyful colors and not a whiff of irony. Rarer still for me to enjoy it, and I really truly did.

If you can, go see it, but make sure you go at night (or at least dusk). And hats off, Mr. Chihuly, I'm now a fan ;)

PS The real thanks go to Mary for suggesting the side trip.

The Lost Wages of Sin

2009-02-17T17:40:00.000-05:00

The Lost Wages of Sin

In art as in life, there are many things that ought to work and just don't. Far more rare is that category of things that SHOULDN'T work and somehow DO. The films of Ed Wood, roadside attractions, Las Vegas, most of the web (certainly all of YouTube), every meme ever foisted on the unsuspecting masses.

Decrying these things as the death of intelligent discourse is akin to shaking your fist at an oncoming train (you're really convincing only yourself, and to the rest of us it's painfully, embarrassingly obvious that You Don't Get It). Nevertheless, we can admit that we ought to know better, right? Twinkies are not lady fingers, Velveeta isn't brie and while High Life may be the Champagne of Beers, it's no Moët.

Combining all of these elements and more together in an interactive 3d landscape should be an utter disaster, but Pixels Sideways' new installation is a truly amazing mashup of exploitation film clips, horror and alien abduction iconography alongside SecondLife's own brand of addictive lowbrow entertainment: a scripted peepshow and a danceball, with a soundtrack to match. This beautiful trainwreck is everything that shouldn't work: in jokes, niche markets, disposable plots, bad sound effects, tentacles, alien death rays, killer animals, sex for money (sort of). We have acid colors, hallucinogens, scripted movements, in short a celebration of everything synthetic, made doubly ironical by placement in a synthetic universe. (My first reaction before walking around: The only thing more perverted than going to a peepshow is alt-camming into a peepshow). This build could easily have fallen flat as a joke, or weighed heavy and pretentious as a five ton critique on our gluttonous all consuming culture, but instead it rides a perfect celebratory wave right down the middle - neither critique, nor joke, but somehow both, and truly fun to experience.

While touring the exhibition Pixels mentioned that growing up she had a lot of creative friends who would put on badly dubbed movies (like the Mushroom People, featured next to the dumpster with it's own crop of specially glowing fungi), turn down the volume and make up their own soundtracks. It's easy to imagine the shear silly joy in this, and to me helped explain why I enjoyed this build so much. This work speaks to the essence of SecondLife: A big broken mess of code, textures, sounds, ideas, hopes and desires in embarrassingly raw form. Secondlife shouldn't work, but every once in while, in spite of itself (and underneath the sex beds, behind the dumpster, past the killer rabbits) my wonderful creative friends turn off the soundtrack, make up their own and it approaches the sublime.

THE LOST WAGES OF SIN - An environmental assemblage installation capturing a moment in time when love, lust and the unknown collide. A homage to B movie sexploitation & sci-fi films of the 50's, 60's & 70's by Pixels Sideways - Runs Feb 15-22, 2009.
SLURL: Caerleon Isle 211,67,25

Bryn Oh and the Destruction of Heaven

2009-01-28T15:41:00.004-05:00

Note: I am the University of Kentucky's first Virtual Curator in Residence. As such I will be curating four shows over the next six months or so.

The following is the announcement for the second show, opening this Saturday Jan 31, 2009 at 6SLT/9EST. For more information, check my site.

Condos In Heaven by Bryn Oh

An Astrobot with fame
Sent the probes away
Now the newspapers proclaim
"We found Heaven today!"

Hadraniel stood at the gates to Heaven
Raining death for six days
Upon all until day seven
When we brought out the heat rays

I watched it unfold on the Internet
Beautiful Cassiel with golden hair
He was captured and sold as a pet
To a wealthy Billionaire

The war is done the condo's rise
What resources are here to consume?
Sariel appears with tears in his eyes
At the window to my bedroom

Bryn Oh's works are artifacts from an alternate future, an apocalyptic universe where desperate mothers upload their dying children into cyborg bodies only to be beset by righteous mobs, children's rhymes warn against impending robot attack and tiny gear-driven insects engage in the ancient and universal struggle to survive. Superficially the story ought to be familiar to anyone who has so much as glanced at a work of speculative fiction, a cautionary tale in a dystopian setting. But Bryn and her work are never what they seem. The surface is worth seeing, but a closer look rewards the curious and the patient.

Formally these works are elegant and flowing; Bryn's faceless metal bodies often hold more energy than the avatars of her audience. But while the surface is lovely to see and the subject matter might skirt the edges of the obvious (An immersive virtual world provides a space to explore the post human dichotomy? Who would have thought?) there is more than meets the eye. These works are almost all presented as cyphers, vessels with secret compartments containing clues with evocations which open more secret doors.

Bryn's works are infinitely more intriguing for this layering. Spend a moment exploring and you will find hidden buttons that play sounds, poems that include clues which lead you on a hunt for more clues, works hidden within works. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that Bryn herself is a cypher - an avatar for a storyteller, but also an individual who exists online not as an artist, but as a refugee from a universe where mothers really do sacrifice their children to technology, and angels are dismembered for their parts. In this universe, we embrace the synthetic in the most beautiful sadness, not for play or pleasure, but as a last act of survival in a brutal world of gears and rust. In this hertzian space our saviors come in digital form (if they come at all) and mourning is the same as standby mode. Cold comfort is the best we can expect, and for all this we encounter moments of tender humanity that are oddly comforting. In this sense Bryn is not a storyteller so much as a tour guide, a documentarian of her own raw autobiography, from a place where the robots are real.

Tezcatlipoca Bisiani - Cambridge MA, January 2009.

A Supposedly Fun Thing that I Can Never Do Again (Even if I wanted to): Part II

2009-01-23T01:35:00.001-05:00

Note: this is a continuation of this post.

Also I mentioned I wanted to do this in reverse chronology so that the bad stuff (ball, mostly) was covered first... done! Now we can talk about the part that was actually fun.

Fruitless but triumphant we enter the Capitol lawn. Cell service is nonexistant, sortof... full bars but broken service, and internet (edge and 3G) is just gone. My theory (based mostly on the green trucks bristeling with antennas) is that security forces actually blocked cell service, but deliberate or just 5 million trying to twitter, it didn't work. So I didn't get to tell you in real time about the event. Which was fine, because I got to listen, and really, it was too cold to type.

Technically we had line of sight, but the sun was shining in our eyes and the stage was pretty far away. Also, there were trees in front of the jumbotrons. Mostly what we could see was this:

But if you zoom in the photos, you can see that it really did happen!:

So you probably saw it on TV? In terms of the ceremony you heard what we did, and saw a good deal more.

On the lawn the audio was remarkably good, kudos to whoever positioned the speakers. One of the most interesting things was the delay - I assume due to the speed of sound and the enormousness of the crowd! The effect was that we would hear what was said, and then the crowd reaction, and then it would "echo," for almost a full minute, down the mall. I always used to think that the pauses in major speeches were for oratory effect. It may be that in some cases they are, but here the pauses also served to let the "echo" stop before moving on. Since on the ground you can't really see how big the crowd is, this was the one moment when I really got a sense of the physical magnitude of the event. Man it was HUGE:

The true significance of the whole thing only really hit me between the eyes right after Biden's swearing in though. Anindita turned around and just said "Cheney's Gone" and I nearly lost it.

During Obama's actual swearing-in, the microphone or the speakers malfunctioned - we could barely hear that bit, and then not at all, and then the cannons went off. It was a bit anti-climactic (and the explosions a little frightening after the silence). The crowd abruptly looked left to try and figure out what was going on:

Once everyone understood it was the salute, the cheering began... resounding down the mall and back.

Other things you might not have heard on TV... Bush was booed repeatedly. Frankly, while I share the sentiment, I thought it was bad form. Even so, I really couldn't help laughing and joining in when the crowd started in with "Sha na na na, na na na na, hey heeey, good bye!" It was just too good, and honestly heartfelt. You had your chance jerkface, now it's time to let the rest of us show you how it's done!

Far more eloquent than my summation was Obama's speech - what a wonderful piece of work. The speech did a terrific job of saying, in the nicest way possible: "Thanks. Now don't let the door hit your ass on the way out." I can't do it justice really, but it was just so right-on. Anindita read through the transcript later and quoted the one line we both missed, that science would be restored to its proper place. Cheers to that. I also particularly enjoyed the statement around restoring America's position as a member of a global community. I'm still reeling a bit - it's hard to imagine that the mess of the last 8 years is over. We have so very far to go, but we're moving forward now! There is no charge for this awesomeness.

THE AFTERMATH
If you've made it this far, through both posts, you know the ball was the major let-down. The next day I was still upset, but Anindita drew on Obama's speech ("We should be known for what we build, not what we destroy") and offered a solution: because we missed the ball, we should host our own black tie event, in our "ballroom" at home, just for fun. Let me know if you're around, no date yet, but you're all invited :)

And finally a confession: I always thought Obama was just too good to be true. In 2004 I was absolutely convinced that Bush was going to be routed. The fact that he won put me in a deep funk for a week, and I emerged convinced that as a card carrying liberal in one of the bluest states, I was simply living in a bubble, in a country that shared my ideals the way most people share my taste for cream cheese and olive sandwiches.

Although in my heart I really wanted Obama to win, whenever I heard him speak all I could thing was that there was NO WAY IN HELL the rest of the country would vote for such a rational guy, let alone a guy who also happened to be relatively young and black. I was even more conivinced when the Republicans made such a bid for the anti-intellectual camp and McCain brought on Sarah "Real American" Palin.

Can I tell you now how happy I am to have been proven wrong about that? Ecstatic in fact. For the first time in my entire life I feel like the highest office of our country is on a track equal to the ideals of its founding. Such that I can say with complete lack of irony: I don't think I've ever been so proud to be an American. Things are still a mess, but there's hope.

Opta ardua pennis astra sequi!

-A

Wedding Interlude

2009-01-22T20:04:00.002-05:00

So my coverage of the inauguration accidentally eclipsed the real event of last weekend: my brother Christian and his beautiful wife Celeste's wedding in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.

Congratulations guys! You looked terrific, the party was incredible and we should do this every weekend, okay?

A Supposedly Fun Thing that I Can Never Do Again (Even if I wanted to)

2009-01-21T23:45:00.003-05:00

As cranky as my last few twitter posts have been, let me explain that the experience of being in DC was actually really neat, and we did get to actually BE there, which is more than most people could say.

The complete mess the PIC made of the ball and the purple gate debacle was really infuriating, because NONE OF IT HAD TO HAPPEN. I know what most of you are thinking: that I'm a whiny bitch for complaining when I GOT TO BE THERE, but the whole experience of navigating DC in the cold on foot during this particular inauguration was emotionally and physically and mentally exhausting, especially since we crammed it in after a wedding, two hour drive, two flights and a sato rescue. It was like running a marathon or (insert demanding task here) that is rewarding but intense.

In the scheme of things, the mess with the ball was truly not important, but imagine running said marathon, and then after it's all done, some jerk comes over and sucker punches you in the balls right when you're about to take a bite of your celebratory meal. In the end this doesn't really eclipse the magnitude of the whole marathon thing, except that getting hit in the balls hurts. A lot. And you just ran a marathon, so you're already tired and achy. And...

Okay so half of you don't even have balls. I give up. Let's just say it was really-really-not-fun. But here's what happened (reverse chronology so we end on a high note):

THE BALL
This was actually complicated. The very short version is that we had tickets to the Mid-Atlantic ball, but ended up getting Youth Ball tickets instead. This was supposed to be more fun anyway, with lots of youth-ish performers and MTV and blah blah... except that the PIC and Hilton (or both) royally screwed up or got greedy or both. The ballroom holds 900, they sold SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED TICKETS. So basically after all the insanity and almost not getting my tux, and then trying to hem it at the last second, and sort of succeeding, and then getting there (which took forever because they were randomly closing Metro stops), and then walking for ages and waiting outside in crazy cold in thin black-tie wear for hours and hours and getting yelled at by rent-a-cops for not crossing the street properly, we finally got to stare at the back of a completely non communicative security guard's head and listen to the party going on. Downstairs. Without us. Obama came, then went. WE COULD HEAR IT.

Not Obama.

Can I emphasize that we spent HOURS, skipped meals and froze only to be stopped dead inches from the goal? And they wouldn't even say what was going on? All this made me really really sad. More emosad than Pete Wentz even, who was apparently downstairs. But I wouldn't know, because right, we didn't get in. Oh and the food sucked: buckets of dried out pasta and mystery meat. Ten bucks for a plastic cup with a room temperature shot of Jim Beam in the bottom. They didn't even have champagne, even for five dollars, although for that price you could get a cup of water. So yeah, we ended the weekend in the lobby of a crappy hotel with a mall cop and a crowd of upset 20 somethings.

Honestly the most heartbreaking part was this was really their celebration, and they got screwed. I'm angry, but to the kid behind us who quit school to spend a year on the campaign? The other guy next to us who flew in from Montana? The girl who quit her job to be a community organizer? They're the ones who said "it's okay I missed the swearing in and I don't care if I get to see Kanye, I just want to see Obama." A hard earned lesson that when it mattered no one actually gave a fuck about them. That was hard to watch.

Utterly Random Interlude: Some guy that the person next to me thought was Frank Gorshin walked by in a tuxedo covered in question marks while we were being blocked from the party. I didn't know who Frank Gorshin was until now (and he died in 2005, incidentally), but this guy was eating a plate of mystery meat, which given the question marks all over his tux I rather appreciated. At the time, however, I'd just been metaphorically ball-kicked, so my sense of humor was not intact enough for a photo. Still, in retrospect this was amusing.

To make this whole experience weirder, at one point in the evening we actually had, in hand, tickets to a THIRD ball (the Midwestern) courtesy of a random dude in a tophat who must have thought we looked young and ticketless. We politely declined. Damn. Shit. Woulda-coulda-shoulda... Agggh... okay, so before that? There was...

THE SWEARING IN
Okay this part was actually fun and interesting. I'm going to mostly skip the purple line mess because they've already issued an apology, except to say that we did actually make it after waiting 3.5 hours. We were very lucky and a little aggressive and we got through, but in all seriousness? This was a pretty scary scene.

Feinstein called for an investigation, but it's damn simple: they never opened the purple gates. One cop told us (against a backdrop of a dozen other cops who had their back to the fence ignoring the crowd) that they hadn't bothered because they didn't think they had enough police to open the gate. Instead, they funneled EVERYONE through one gate. The also opened that one at 9:15! The crowd had been gathering for hours before then.

It didn't help that the police were actually taunting the crowd as in:

Woman: Sir, sir! We've been waiting for three hours!

Policeman: And you'll continue to wait for three more hours, because *I* specifically do not want to help *you*.

-and-

Policewoman with bullhorn addressing crowd of quarter million: Stop shoving right now or I'll close this line! Go slow or I will stop it! I will!

(and actually, she did. It really didn't help.)

The crowd was shoving, the fences weren't moving. I was honestly contemplating exactly how to throw Anindita over the security fence before we got crushed. In our group, I was last in, but not before a smaller barrier did come over, and a cop got slammed against the fence, and another braced her feet against the wall and leaned full against the barrier to stop people from getting even more hurt. If this had been a Walmart rather than an inauguration I am completely convinced people would have died.

But being in a crowd wasn't entirely bad - I helped lead a few chants that got featured in some of the news coverage. A bit of my angry yelling even got the attention of an intelligent undercover guy who realized the gate people were letting the wrong people in (and he did something about it, though too late for the tunnel folks).

And then there was a woman who climbed a tree to plead our case with the police. She was having trouble getting up, but the crowd politely encouraged her with shouts of "YES YOU CAN!!" She didn't make it up the tree but did find a garbage can or something a bit later.

And the guy in front of us had a box of redhots that he thoughtfully shared. So there were snacks.

In the end we didn't die ignominiously squashed against the riot fencing. We made it.

Security searched me and took away my banana and an orange because you know, fruit is a national security risk.

And then

we were in!

(to be continued)

My Uncle Ferris

2008-12-15T10:06:00.003-05:00

So my uncle works with a consultant who is also a friend, who decided they should play hooky and go see a Redwings game during work.

No problem, except when this turned up in the sports section:

Life is A Bowl of... Unnecessarily Complicated Breakfast Cereal

2008-12-14T13:05:00.004-05:00

Yet another SL group show, opening this afternoon in about an hour (2EST Sun 12/14). This time it's a group of 30 who were given a bowl and asked to complete the phrase "Life is a Bowl Of..." in 100 prims or less. Come see the epic battle of squid and whale among the wreckage of cheerie-os. Want more? Poid posted a better explanation here.

PS Gratuitous Marisol photo taken by Anindita and has absolutely nothing to do with the show.

PPS the drawing is by Timothy Albee

PPPS The dog is by Puerto Rico and her own trickster self.

Meet me at the Secret Headquarters on Nov 29

2008-11-20T13:35:00.001-05:00

Nov 29 I will be at Harvard for the (Free! Public!)

INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY TWO: THE SECRET HEADQUARTERS EDITION

I have no idea how silly this is going to be. Very I hope. Please come.

Beneath the Tree That Died

2008-11-16T15:26:00.002-05:00

The first installation (AM Radio's Beneath the Tree That Died) at the University of Kentucky SL Island went very well this weekend - high attendance and a growing flickr group of snapshots. It will be up until Jan 1, at which point we'll put a new piece by Bryn Oh. Please come by and see it while you can - feedback most welcome!

AM Radio and The Fox of the Mind

2008-11-13T02:20:00.007-05:00

Note: I am the University of Kentucky's first Virtual Curator in Residence. As such I will be curating four shows over the next six months or so. The following represents
the first curatorial statement for the first show, opening this Saturday at 6SLT/9EST in Secondlife. For more information, check my site.

In Jill Bossert's book Children's Book Illustration, artist Charles Santore discusses his method while illustrating a fable about a fox. Although Santore maintains a file of reference materials, he writes that it is "important to establish the 'fox of the mind' before using reference."

This statement stands alone in the whole book, neither repeated nor belabored, but I remember being struck when I first read it: artists are trained to see, to get the details right - careful observation is a way of undoing our natural tendency to abstract into symbols. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain in focusing on getting things right. But since reading that particular comment, I have come to understand better the art of illustration - the space of the mind between the acquired skill of photorealistic reproduction and the mental model of place.

To first encounter an AM Radio installation is to be instantly struck by an exquisite attention to detail. The spaces reward careful and repeated observation: the shine on a knob, the knurl of a handle. Everything is there, and little is left to chance; the artist crafts the blades of grass, the floorboards, the hubcaps, but also the sky, the sun, the weather. Lighting plays an important role in AM's work and serves not only as a hallmark of good technical practice, but also as a defining characteristic. The type of lighting effects that AM produces far exceeds the inherent capabilities of the SecondLife software. AM's universes are painstakingly hand crafted, and in particular this attention to light and shadow speaks to his training and background as a painter, drawing easy comparisons to traditional landscape work.

Perhaps because of the detail, AM's works are often labeled “realism” and left at that. But like the fox of the mind (more fox than a real fox), AM's places are more real than real. The spaces evince a kind of hyperrealism that comes from the fact that we aren't looking at a photograph, but rather at a carefully crafted version of a scene in the artists' mind. And like that of the hyperrealists, AM's work provides a necessary and welcome break from the acid colors, abstraction, and random "interaction" that define so many works in SL. At the same time, it would be a mistake to treat this work as reactionary (it isn't). While AM's visual language strongly evokes painting in a romantic style (Wheatfield resembles little as much as Andrew Wyeth's Christina World), it would also be a mistake to peg the work as a mere diorama of a mythical America.

AM's works are as beautiful and detailed as paintings, but they are nothing like static images. The artist often continues to work on a piece long after it is "finished," re-juxtaposing elements of previous works, subtly altering details, changing the weather, all in a way which unfolds as a story over time. Repetition of objects serves (as in any mythology) to underscore the important. Over time symbols emerge as markers for other stories real and imagined. A train evokes a sense of time, a lost telegram a fragment of history, a table the promise of a scene that was (or might be). Taken collectively, the body of AM's work becomes as much performance as anything else.

While Wyeth ruthlessly edits out the human and the mechanical in favor of romantic naturalism, AM includes them to great effect - machines, telephone poles, roads, gas stations, radio dishes, all play as much a part of the vocabulary as do fields of wheat, trees and pristine snow.

While a painting might invite us to peer through a window at a space, AM's work invites us to literally move into the landscape, to participate in creating a collective mythology by telling (and living) our own story. As a result, we might easily include the vast number of photographs, machinimas and personal experiences that SL residents have had inside of AM's work as a part of the work itself. Wyeth creates actual images of spaces which exist only in the mind. AM creates an actual space using images borrowed from the mind.

It is also worth pointing out that as a series of artworks, there is no real life analog to AM's work in terms of sheer scale. The Roden Crater project, or Judd's Marfa come close, but AM routinely creates installations which encompass acres of virtual space, including full control over the weather, time of day and the season. In scale and scope, these works are impossible to compose in any space other than the virtual. Beautiful images for sure, but in the context of a shared online environment they become installations, evocative backdrops, symbols of place and ultimately, part of the mythos of the virtual universe itself.

Tezcatlipoca Bisiani - Cambridge MA, November 2008 (63F degrees and falling).

Very Very Proud

2008-11-05T00:58:00.001-05:00

I am always glad to be an American, but sometimes I am more proud than others. Tonight I am very very proud. McCain's speech was gracious, Obama's was historic. There is much to do, but tonight I sleep well with love and true hope for the future. G'night all!

PLEASE VOTE!!!

2008-11-03T17:13:00.001-05:00

In the immortal words of Trent Reznor:

"[Tomorrow]... we will elect the next President of the United States. The result will have great consequences for the nation.

This election offers a choice is between two men with dramatically different visions of the future. We have strong feelings about this choice. But we feel even more strongly that all Americans, regardless of political preference, have a stake in the outcome and should vote in this critical election.

This is likely to be a close election. Your vote matters. Please use it and make a difference.

The Creatures Return! (And you missed it...)

2008-11-03T14:22:00.001-05:00

This Halloween the Charles River Museum of Science and Industry hosted the Willoughby and Baltic Halloween show. The show featured a number of works, including a return visit from the Primordial Chicken Soup creatures, originally seen in Brattle Square, and a repurposing of Sod Off (sans sod) into a creature named Fluffy.

It's over now, but you can read the short blurb on Wicked Local, who also get the credit for the above shot.

Random Dog!

2008-10-31T11:43:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I made a very quick 24hr trip to NYC for Vanessa's wedding. I didn't tell any of my NYC friends I was coming (sorry guys) because the trip was so short, but the Internets Know All!

Sunday morning before I left I walked down to Washington Square Park near my brother's apartment with Celeste, Christian, Mom and their dog Marley. It turned out that there was a dog costume parade/contest/party we weren't expecting. I only had my phone, but of course I took some pictures. Which I sent to flickr, where Ranjit (who was actually THERE and I missed him) spotted them.

And then I heard from NYMag, and now I'm world famous. Well not really. But it's a good story?

PS Ranjit's photos are much better than mine. He had an actual camera with him and everything. Check them out!

PPS By far my favorite was the adorably hideous pug dressed as Marie Antoinette complete with dress and wig.

15 Minutes of Seth

2008-10-29T14:35:00.001-04:00

My brother Seth gets his fifteen minutes with a profile on the Marlboro college website.

Of course this is nothing compared to his amazing weekly radio show. Give it a listen.

Mon Amur

2008-10-27T10:43:00.001-04:00

My friend and art cohort, Mary Lucking, has ~~just opened~~
(opened Oct 16, I'm sloooow) her piece Amur Serenade, in Scottsdale Arizona. For the record I had no hand in the project, but it is so very beautiful in the pictures you need to go see it and tell me what it's like. More information can be found on this site and also here.

Amur Serenade is an interactive artwork by Mary Lucking that creates a playful connection between visitors to the Scottsdale waterfront and the Arizona Canal. Inspired by real fish (White Amur, a type of sterile carp) that SRP uses to clean the Valley's canals, computer-generated fish appear to swim below the bridge, projected onto the surface of the water. Another projector creates a slow procession of giant fish forms that seem to float out of the water and up the side of buildings along the canal, swimming toward the sky. A glass sign on the bridge invites people to sing to the fish. As people talk, sing, and whistle, the fish respond to their voices-turning colors on different notes, and wiggling more energetically as the music continues.

Amur Serenade draws on two parallel lines of exploration in Mary's work: To help people to form a meaningful connection with their physical environment, and to create situations for experimentation, cooperation, and play, both with the artwork and with each other. In the past few years, the Valley has begun to change the way it views the canals-- from an ugly utility that was hidden and ignored, to the existing framework for a system of useful and beautiful pedestrian spaces. This artwork was designed in this same spirit: to help people see the canal in a new and different way. Using the murky canal water as the projection screen (who knows what lives down there?) Amur Serenade invents a population of color-changing fish that live in the canal, and come up at night to dance. Visitors the canal are invited to participate in the fantasy, first by peering down into the water at the circling fish, and then by singing to them. Turning the tables on the usual art-audience situation, the visitors become the performers and the fish become the audience, wriggling in response to the voices.

Stop Making Sense and Dream

2008-10-27T00:29:00.002-04:00

Another SecondLife exhibition... come see my piece I Dream of Ika in the Deep Blue Sea (The Sushi Split the Difference). Running as part of a group show from last week (sorry I'm behind on my blog posts) until SUN - NOV 2.

Two places to go:

1. Introduction and 2d work

2. Actual 3d Installation

Do you like donuts?

2008-10-18T13:04:00.001-04:00

Right now, this is exactly where my brain is.

Rave Rabbit has Many Fathers

2008-10-08T12:56:00.001-04:00

The scientists that discovered and isolated GFP (the protein that makes jellyfish glow) have received a Nobel prize! Why do we care? Because without their work, the glowstick bunny would never have been born.

Globe gives us some lovein'...

2008-10-06T12:00:00.001-04:00

The Boston Globe ran an article on Willoughby and Baltic. If you happen to have a paper copy, it has some lovely nerdy photos in full color.

Facebook Releases Data (On Purpose)

2008-10-02T14:32:00.001-04:00

The following announcement comes from Harvard Cyber Law and was recently mailed to me by a colleague, along with the two links included below:

In collaboration with Harvard sociology graduate students Kevin Lewis
and Marco Gonzalez, and with UCLA professor Andreas Wimmer and Harvard
professor Nicholas Christakis, Berkman Fellow Jason Kaufman has made
available a first wave of Facebook.com data through the Dataverse
Network Project.

The dataset comprises machine-readable files of virtually all the
information posted on approximately 1,700 FB profiles by an entire
cohort of students at an anonymous, northeastern American university.
Profiles were sampled at one-year intervals, beginning in 2006. This
first wave covers first-year profiles, and three additional waves of
data will be added over time, one for each year of the cohort's
college career.

Though friendships outside the cohort are not part of the data, this
snapshot of an entire class over its four years in college, including
supplementary information about where students lived on campus, makes
it possible to pose diverse questions about the relationships between
social networks, online and offline.

So histrionics ensue.

Now, deep breath... do you care? Why? Really?

Several interesting discussions are already cropping up. As much as I hate to say it, I'm of the opinion that we'll likely see division along a generational line here. According to danah, younger users of FB and social networking sites have a "default public, private when necessary" view of things. In part this is because the data is relatively content-free "hi/hi/lol/poke/lol" If this is true it might also make things extremely interesting on the analysis side... perhaps this data does NOT contain what people think it contains, if it's "just" performative. On the other hand, there was a conversation I had with an intern who hails from the former East Germany. He's a data analysis and visualization expert and summarized his reticence at using facebook with the following comment: "if only they knew the kind of data I can get out of that..."

Theoretical Computer Science is Everything... errr... Everywhere!

2008-10-02T11:00:00.001-04:00

Last week I had the surprisingly pleasant experience of attending the launch of the new Microsoft research lab in Cambridge. Say what you want about the progenitors of the BSOD, but they at least know how to put together an interesting group of people for an afternoon. Besides catching up with some friends, it was nice to meet some new folks. Here is Andy Oram's take on the event. Thankfully he didn't quote me bashing wikipedia.

It's hard to read the internals from a public (or semi-public) event, but if they are serious about half of what has been said, MS research will be something to watch. If they let the researchers guide the company, MS might even survive the next round of punctuated equilibrium extinctions to hit the tech industry. We'll see.

Either way, I particularly enjoyed this talk by Erik Demaine, and the folks at MS have posted the videos for all to see. The principle of Computational Equivalence is not extremely new, but who cares - Erik is engaging and funny and I enjoy his take on things. At its heart he was expressing a bit of what we were trying to convey in my Computational Art course. Computational ideas (computation, not computers) have deeply and significantly impacted the way we view and solve problems in a way that is nothing short of astounding. Erik's survey is a good place to start as any to begin to see these connections. What I would love to see more of are artists working with computation. With all due respect to the art involved in making aesthetic things with computers and mathematics (attractive spiral forms and fractals, for example) this is NOT what I mean. Such works are beautiful to look at and deeply engaging on a technical level, but they are not deeply engaging on an emotional or aesthetic level.

PS
The kitty is out of the bag, danah is now a MS researcher. She also gave a talk. I realized that this is actually the first time I've seen her speak. I enjoyed it and now appreciate my face book more, and feel like less of a dork for logging an embarrassing number of hours on BBS' and MUs when I was a kid. I was

Sneak Preview

2008-10-01T20:29:00.001-04:00

A few photos of the space here. Extra special thanks to Meredith and WAaron, who have both been working more than full time this week, crazy hours.. they both rock. See you all thurs (or fri)!

It's heeeeeeere....

2008-10-01T20:26:00.001-04:00

The Willoughby and Baltic hack space, opening tomorrow!

The day I was mistaken for a bot...

2008-09-29T16:59:00.002-04:00

[12:55] Natasha : Hi
[12:56] You: Hi Natasha
[12:56] Natasha : What are you?
[12:56] You: I've been asking myself that question for many years
[12:56] You: No idea.
[12:56] Natasha : are you a creation, or a person?
[12:56] Natasha : are you an AI?
[12:57] Natasha : or a person... that is.
[12:57] You: Maybe both?
[12:57] Natasha : hmmm
[12:57] Natasha : that's pretty vague
[12:57] You: What makes you think that's vague?
[12:57] Natasha : Is there a flesh and blood person typing responses to my chat?
[12:58] You: I wouldn't know
[12:58] Natasha : that sound's like an AI response, not a human response
[12:58] You: What makes you think that sound's like an AI response, not a human response?
[12:58] Natasha : all your responses are the same
[12:58] Natasha : or very similar
[12:58] Natasha : like they are from a database of possible responses
[12:59] You: I know something about databases
[12:59] Natasha : what do you know about databases
[12:59] Natasha : you are pretty cool
[13:00] Natasha : cool looking, cool talking
[13:00] Natasha : for a machine
[13:00] You: A Computer Database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data.
[13:00] Natasha : but, damn, you're boring!
[13:00] Natasha : what do you think of me?
[13:00] You: What do you think I should think about you?
[13:01] Natasha : I have no opinion
[13:01] You: Me either.
[13:01] Natasha : LOL

The Space Launches Oct 1st!

2008-08-27T18:33:00.004-04:00

So it happened. We've got the space. Now is the time to assemble an army! Please consider joining the good fight - it's a hacker/artist/maker space. Three spaces actually: a full shop, a small workshop, and a teaching/computer lab space in a yet to be renovated apartment. Open as close to 24/7 as possible.

The best part about this, if you're into this type of thing, is that everything is being decided as we speak, and the group is very serious about being community driven. If you come to a meeting you will be able to speak, you will be heard, your ideas have a strong possibility of being integrated into the end product (with an equally strong possibility that you will be drafted to implement them).

If you've been around the Boston scene for very long you might get how different this is from pretty much everything else. If you haven't, come anyway.

For a brief overview check out this post and then when you've decided you want to join the fun, go sign up.

Catalog for Artistic Mediums Available (again)!

2008-08-27T10:53:00.001-04:00

Finally! The catalog for Artistic Mediums Pontiac is (again) available via LuLu. This time it prints properly, and I know this because I actually ordered a copy first, before I posted this. Sorry about the lag, and damn they're slow...

The Herding of the Were-Cats

2008-08-07T10:25:00.001-04:00

Working with artists is like herding cats. Except these cats talk, a lot. Sometimes, occasionally, in the midst of the mewing, comes a beautiful shiny product of pure anarchy, and more likely all that comes are empty beer bottles, crushed cartons of American Spirits and a general sense of... je neh says: qwah.

Haven't posted in a while because I'm spinning a lot of plates, but here's some news, some good, some meow.

- New hacker space in Boston area is brewing... Union square, lots of machine tools, maybe artists? Maybe makers? Maybe both? Maybe beer? Maybe loss of fingers? Public meeting tonight at Willoughby and Baltic, 7p if you're interested.

- Memory Container: we ran into some funding difficulties, timing difficulties and poor Mary had a bicycle accident. The Conflux organizers are a good group and seemed to accept our suggestion to postpone until next year. I'm bummed, but for the best.

- LA: It's Complicated.

- LuLu Catalog: Okay what moron decided that the preview tool (the only thing they allow you to use to see how the product will turn out) should use a different numbering scheme than the printing process?? Technically this is my fault, but honestly? It's shitty, lazy interface design. I find this out six copies and $150 later. The catalog will be back as soon as I manage to shuffle the pages.

Thank you, adoring public, for reading... since you made it this far, here's an important public service announcement:
Is your dog a werewolf?

RFL SL 2008

2008-07-23T12:28:00.002-04:00

The American Cancer Society runs an annual event called the Relay For Life, which is a fundraising race to raise money and awareness for Cancer research. There is a Second Life equivalent - builders donate their time and construct a virtual racecourse that spans 45 sims. SL residents who are cancer caregivers or survivors "run" the course in much the same way as the real relay - for donations which are made in Linden Dollars. If you're not familiar with SL this might sound goofy but it's a serious effort and at last count raised over $200,000 actual US Dollars.

This year I participated in a build which included a number of talented people. As "Team Wonka" we constructed one of the 45 sims in a Roald Dahl theme, with a giant Chocolate Factory, glass elevator, GIant Peach and a forest of strange trees and mushrooms. Amazing creatures from Madcow Cosmos and Bryn Oh's poignent sculptures and I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of folks... My main contribution was the giant purple factory.

More photos at my SL flickr feed, and some early blog coverage.

Things I Love This Week

2008-07-18T15:23:00.001-04:00

A few things I really like from this last week...

1. Anubis Nightlight! OMG How is it that I never knew about this??

2. Yellow Sticky Notes is a really lovely, poignant animation from Japanese Canadian animator Jeff Chiba Stearns. I love it. Thanks Patti!

3. The Boat Lullabies I think this made it's way to BoingBoing at some point, but it's really neat: a found box of photos that document 50 years of a woman's life. Reminds me of Laporte, Indiana but focused on one person.

4. Ping.FM makes this social networking scatter mess a tiny bit better. It should support retraction and have better logging. And also it should support more targeted posting (IE permissions on each site). But they get a million yummy cookies for getting what they did right. Super simple interface. Works on iphone. Doesn't "sign" posts. Superfast. Great job guys. Incidentally, as of this posting, the betacode is "thispingsforyou." Note that those of you on LJ and Twitter will start getting my posts courtesy of ping. If you're NOT on LJ or Twitter, I still prefer my blog and Pownce pleeze :)

Catalog for Artistic Mediums Available!

2008-07-16T11:32:00.002-04:00

Finally! The catalog for Artistic Mediums Pontiac is available via LuLu. I'm waiting to see who is the first to tell me I spelled "pareidolia" wrong.

Medium Sized La La Land?

2008-07-02T12:22:00.003-04:00

More details as things get fleshed out, but looks like we have a solid lead to move Artistic Mediums to LA. I've never shown in LA, this should be fun.

Greater NY Memory Container...

2008-07-02T12:11:00.001-04:00

...will be making an appearance at Conflux 2008! Whoo hoo.

Greater NY Memory Container

2008-06-18T14:13:00.004-04:00

...During the early days of subway travel, it was believed that prolonged journeys under the earth caused memory loss. As a public service, most underground train companies provided a means of recording important thoughts and ideas, so that the traveller could retrieve them upon return...

Mary and I have put together a proposal for a new piece, a variation on an idea that Mary had of time delayed video, and an audio piece I've been kicking around occasionally called "...walls could talk."

I really like this particular instantiation, once again proving that working together on something makes it better. I'm inclined to build it even if we don't get the commission.

Marisol is Famous (sort of)

2008-06-18T14:10:00.003-04:00

Marisol featured on Daily Puppy! :)

Naturally, my first question whenever I meet anyone from So. America ...

2008-05-16T19:00:00.000-04:00

Found under our house:
----------
Postmarked Somerville MA 4PM Dec 16, 1956
Postmarked Washington D.C. ??m Mar 8, 196?
RETURNED TO SENDER
Address and return illegible.

Dear Hay:

A friend of yours and his wife are at Dea__ness Now - Dr. and Mrs. Gangan. He told me you had been ill and I was so sorry to hear this. I do hope you are fully recovered and well. Do take it easy!

I was so delighted to find someone who actually knew you. Naturally, my first question whenever I meet anyone from So. America is always "Do you know Dr. Hayer" and while everyone answers "I've heard of him" or "a friend of a friend knows him", Dr Gangen was the first one to say "_____ him personally!" So I got some first hand information!

I understand you have a fine son and I'm so happy for you. I know you must be very content. Sometime when you have a spare minute drop me a note and tell me about yourself + your family. You know I'm always interested. My best to you and your family for the Next Year ________

Best wishes,

Nan M_____

Falling for Science (My essay in a new book)

2008-05-16T18:20:00.000-04:00

About a million years ago (5), Sherry Turkle asked me to contribute an essay to a book she was working on called Evocative Objects. That book wasn't published (or maybe it was, but I wasn't in it). Instead, a new book has just come out - Falling For Science: Objects in Mind which contains my essay about the Holga camera.

I haven't actually seen the book yet, and I'm not sure you'll think my essay is worth the price of admission, but I'm sure something in there will be interesting! Besides, Howard Gardner called it sparkling, and you know what that means.

I've taken up Gardening

2008-05-16T13:19:00.007-04:00

Most of you know I've been working with The SecondLife for about a year now. As goofy as it is (and yes, it is goofy), SL has a small but decent art community. Reminds me a bit of the early day of the web... loads and loads of porn, crappy "designers" and geocities pages, and a core group of interesting people pushing the limits in interesting ways.

I thought it was about time for a show... most recently I've completed a project for The Garden of NPIRL Delights sponsored by Rezzable Productions and the Not Possible IRL group, this is a four sim, two month collaborative extravaganza based very loosely on the Hieronymus Bosch painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. There are about a 100 content creators. It opened to the public today.

My piece is called "Laberinto de Mictlan" and is a working labyrinth based loosely on mesoamerican mythology, mostly the Aztec notion of Mictlan. Mictlan is the ninth circle of the underworld, your first stop after you die, where you will wander for four years, seeking the center of the labyrinth with the help of your dog-guide Xolotl. Vistors should seek the center - no flying (that's cheating). If you're lucky or skillful, you'll escape with your life, and a prize.

This show is mammoth and a bit daunting to navigate, but you have some pretty good options:

1. Visit the welcome area. From here you can walk (not recommended) or pick up a HUD which will take you to the different areas with a simple click. Miki Gymnast designed it to keep track of where you've been so that you don't repeat yourself, and it will synchronize the random stops so you can travel in groups and not get separated.

2. Take a guided tour by ship, built by The Ivory Tower's own Lumiere Noir and scripted by the talented Darek Deluca.

3. Of course, you can ignore the rest of the garden and go see my stuff directly ;)

Have fun!! I will be around on and off this weekend, happy to chat about the project or my Labyrinth if you want. If you take any photos I would love to see them.

Night Hawks

2008-05-08T18:52:00.003-04:00

Back in Cambridge, landed about an hour ago, and about 30 minutes until class. There's a lot to post (including a trip report and more about the dog we adopted!), but one bit of fun news first.

A while ago I built a copy of Hoppers Night Hawks painting in Secondlife, where it currently lives (courtesy of Ina Centaur). While I was in PR, Hamlet Au of New World Notes took notice and emailed me - now posted as a blog entry with interview.

Puerto Rican Street Dogs

2008-05-05T00:31:00.005-04:00

Currently Anindita and I are in Puerto Rico with our friends Anne and Andy. The trip is half vacation and half volunteer mission - we're putting in some hours helping out Save a Sato, and a couple of other local organizations whose focus is on rescuing Puerto Rican street dogs.

From experience these dogs are sweet tempered, wicked smart, adorable creatures. There are also hundreds of them - a major problem, as local adoption is near zero, and spay and neuter ethic is far from widely accepted. Like many such problems, it's complicated, but we're here to see what we can do in the next week to lend a hand. For her part, our friend Anne is in for the long haul - trying to organize a more structured volunteer system to get badly needed help where it's most useful here on the ground.

Today we spent a hot, dirty, terrific day with a wonderful woman named Yolanda who runs a private shelter literally out of her house (she temporarily lives with her parents while she uses her house and surrounding yard to rescue, clean, kennel train and socialize dogs for adoption). 30 dogs make a big mess and a lot of noise, but they are all in good health or recovering from their difficult former lives as strays. We began the day with a bottle feeding of 10 day old puppies, then cleaned cages, rebuilt some shelters and helped with general upkeep. Anindita also got a new job as a dog groomer. I'm not sure she enjoyed it, but the dogs did (mostly.) Afterwards Yolanda's mother served us a delicious homemade meal of rice and beans and beef and potato stew.

Tomorrow we visit Save a Sato, and on Wednesday we'll be making a trip to the infamous Dead Dog Beach, a notorious dumping ground for unwanted dogs. I do wonder if it's helpful to encourage the abandon-ers by picking up the strays, but the local government doesn't bother, and try bottle feeding a 10 day old puppy and tell me it isn't worth a try.

Incidentally if you're reading this in New England, you can adopt your own Sato at the Northeast Animal shelter in Salem, MA.

Pontiac Wrap-Up

2008-05-04T23:57:00.004-04:00

Quick link: Flickr Pool of the show. Got any? Post them!

...

Hello all... long time no post, sorry, I've been busy (isn't that what they all say?) I'm writing this from the lobby of the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where we are here for a week to vacation and spend some volunteer time rescuing Satos, but more on that later. What I really wanted to do was bring everyone up to date on the Artistic Mediums show and tear down.

The opening went well, we had 150-200 people throughout the night. Jesse put on a fantastic DJ set, and we were even interviewed on camera for the Detroit Motor City blog (they put in a plug for us, but I never saw the interview - someone send me a link if you find it?) We made many new friends, especially on the return trip, where Mary and I enjoyed an evening at Hooters (seriously - and should the waitress that raises Alpacas see this? I looked it up, they do sound really cute...) Thanks to Vagner we had some delicious flan and met more cool people, and thanks to Andrew we got to experience art in a yurt and had an excellent tour of Detroit, most especially the Heidelberg Project (where many photos were taken).

After Mary left for the desert, I got one last tour of Detroit courtesy of my Uncle, who is an urban planner. It was a truly awesome tour, and I'm looking forward to another one, when we both have more time. Most notable was the Guardian building and the amazing Pewabic tile mosaics.

So the show was a success - we are currently in talks to see if we can pull it back together in another city - also working on a catalog. Stay tuned for more on both!

Greetings from Bucolic Pontiac

2008-04-05T01:27:00.001-04:00

Installation nearly complete... show nearly up... opening tmro... tired but good :)

En Route...

2008-04-02T15:26:00.004-04:00

See you in detroit!

Bowl of Oceans

2008-03-22T17:24:00.004-04:00

Latest work in progress...