New, trippiest and most IMMERSIVE way to see videos, EVAH!

Thank you, NPIRLer Crap Mariner, a funtastic videographer and podcaster himself, for turning us onto Thoth Jantzen's hyper-grooovy and totally novel way to watch videos in any life. This is, unquestionably, the most immersive video viewing that I have ever experienced, beating IMAX, HDTV, and every other screen technology by a long shot.

Granted, it is not for the weak-at-heart. You wouldn't want to watch a feature film, television, or anything that requires clear visuals this way. A bit like a roller coaster ride, a bit like an acid trip... it is outrageously cool.

I can imagine all kinds of music and videos being loaded for different purposes, even therapeutic ones. Watching it, I felt younger... or older, I'm not sure which. With some videos, the sides almost look 3-dimensional.

Given that Crap Mariner pointed us to this spectacular find, I looked for him immediately when it came to videotaping this to share it with you. He was not in-world. I teleported virtual florist, artist and videographer Vlad Bjornson in and he made quick work of it, preparing a version to show you right away. Thank you, Vlad!



Standing on one end of the chaotic, trippy video wrapped tube, and surrounded by excited people, I peppered poor Thoth - who's second rez day was in effect (10/22/2006) with questions...


He has chosen the persona of Thoth-Anubis, "expressed in SL as a wandering magician, student of everything, and a "serial connector"

Does this thing have a name yet, Thoth?

Thoth Jantzen: I haven't named it yet, but I am thinking to call it the Kaleidoscopium or some such... it's like being inside a kaleidoscope.

Is this like version 382 of your tweaking?

Thoth Jantzen: Oh, at least, Bettina... probably into the 500's.


Below Kaleidoscopium, Thoth's earlier work and experiments can be viewed in a space he calls Cosmique. The same video plays throughout

Will you be selling versions of this?

Thoth Jantzen: I just like to make things that I hope people enjoy, but I'm not sure. More likely 'no'... unless there's that much interest.

If you aren't present, is there a way that the visitor can load different videos?

Thoth Jantzen: Yes. There is a ZONE box near the end here on the floor. It lets people load YouTube urls in chat.

Thoth considers his video work a sideline in Second Life®.

Thoth Jantzen: I founded a group called Thothica SL a couple of years ago, but I don't run it any more. I handed the control over to some friends. I try to hook up people with other people who may be helpful or of interest to them. I think Second Life's biggest potential is in education and related things, getting people connected.

In Real Life, Thoth works in advanced parsing and linguistics.

Have your own kaleidoscopic and very psychedelic experience by teleporting directly from here.

Crap Mariner's marathon video session - Thirty one videos in one day as his Angel of Death visits Bryn Oh's steampunk alphabet

Those of us who inhabit Second Life® are fortunate to count humorist Crap Mariner in our midst. If you follow his activities as I do, you will enjoy an ongoing, hardly perfect, but always off-beat chronicle of his adventures and reviews of the people and places he encounters. He is also one of the most prolific machinimators on the grid... case in point, yesterday he produced 31 (THIRTY ONE!) videos centered around the 26 letters in the alphabet featured in Bryn Oh's Gashlycrumb Tinies (by Edward Gorey) exhibit at arcspace (teleport directly from here). One video for each of the letters, two introductions, an interlude, a finale, and a gimme take on one of Bryn's steampunk bugs. For the series, he elected to appear as a cigar-smoking Angel of Death who won't apologize to the Tinies for his second-hand smoke.

All of his videos open with "Another stupid video by Crap Mariner," and nearly always include his signature phrase, "that's disgusting."





Photograph of Crap Mariner by... Crap Mariner!

Eshi's Desperado

10PM Update: Dizzy Banjo just finished a video of this build, and I've also learned that the sim is not going to poof. Rather, Dirk Talamasca is letting Eshi build and build to her heart's content, and she plans to be updating it daily, for a while anyway.




Woke up this morning to an offline from Crap Mariner. Turns out that Eshi Otawara was up all night... (teleport directly from here). I understand that the sim will poof any moment.

Eshi, get some much deserved rest now! <3

Inside the mind of Crap Mariner: At the Garden

Crap Mariner cracks me up. As GoSpeed Racer said recently, "He is a true comic genius with a flare for the bizarre, the weird, and the obscure. Crap can tell a story with as little as one picture."

Crap has his own installation at the Garden of NPIRL Delights, but he has devoted more time to exploring the Garden and seeing what others had done there than anyone else I know. Here are just a few of the many, many videos that Crap has created. I suggest you pull up a chair, and take a tour through his stream for a glimpse into this man's head, and the Garden, too!

Seifert Surface's "The Sky is Falling"

Crap Mariner had this to say about it: "Oh my God, it's full of arrows... more arrows than an Indian convention!"

Fact is, "The Sky is Falling," by postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), has 1000 of those arrows and looms in the sky over the Garden of NPIRL Delights.



These photographs by NPIRL Flickrite Andromega, who's stream I regularly haunt

"The pattern is based in part on a process that turns up in nature a lot: 'growing' new objects around an axis at an angle of 2pi/Phi from the previous one, where Phi is the golden ratio," explains Seifert.