An Academic Journal for Metaverse Creativity

Posted by Alpha Auer...

A few months ago I was contacted by Ravi Butalia, the publisher of Intellect Books and Journals located in the United Kingdom, with the irresistible offer of becoming the editor of a brand new journal, to make its debut in 2010, focused upon creativity in virtual worlds. The suggestion both for the content of this enterprise, as well as my name for the position of editor was made to Mr. Butalia by my much beloved and esteemed professor, tutor and mentor Roy Ascott, who really needs no further introduction in academic circles in the fields of the electronic arts as well as new media inquiry and vision.

Grave illness and subsequent bereavement related to my mother's passing away a few weeks ago, stopped me from focusing upon the development of this project but now I am fully back in the saddle and would like to proceed, prior to which I feel that a sounding out of ideas as well as getting a general feel for potential interest of involvement and collaboration amongst my peers in the metaverse is in order.

My personal approach in this venture has been delineated to Mr. Butalia as follows:

"This will be a refereed academic journal focusing on the examination of creativity in the metaverse, i.e., online social environments which differentiate themselves from online multi-user gaming communities in that they have no underlying social rules whatsoever that are game related: There are no scores to be gained, no levels to be attained. Thus, given this attribute of being intrinsically unstructured; ergo, being virtual environments where Residents undertake activities the purposes of which are defined by themselves entirely, it is hardly surprising that the pursuit of creative activity seems to have become one of the prevalent reasons for residency in a metaverse.

While creative activity in the metaverse certainly does include artistic activity, this definition should in no way be limited to artistic output alone but should encompass the output of the various disciplines of design, such as fashion and object design as well as virtual architecture that are currently all amply manifest in Second Life®, which still retains the position of being the most fully developed and functional of these environments to date. However, beyond art, design and architecture the creation of the very agent that enables the attainment of presence in a metaverse, i.e., the avatar should be considered as a primary source of investigation where creative activity in a metaverse is concerned.

Creativity in a metaverse manifests under unique conditions and parameters that are engendered by the virtual environment itself and is intrinsically related to these in its very act of realization. Thus metaverse creativity cannot be separated from the underlying metanomics (metaverse economy), the legal issues of ownership and copyright, the very geography and related atmospheric/lighting conditions, the underlying computational system but also cyberpsychology and cyberanthropology, the latter two becoming particularly important in the process of understanding the creation and subsequent role and interactions of the avatar with the social environment that it becomes a part of."

(Excerpt from Editor's Questionnaire submitted to Intellect Books and Journals on September 25th 2008, abbreviated version downloadable from here)

I have already compiled a substantial list of researchers and artists, all of whom I will be approaching individually within the next few weeks. However, I am certain that there are many individuals involved in such research activity out there, of whom I am not aware of and who would be a huge asset as contributors to this journal. Thus, it is in an effort to seek out such persons that I am now posting this here.

My first task will be the setting up of an advisory board, as well as establishing co-editors with whom I wish to share full responsibility as well as full credit in the enterprise. I am delighted to be able to say that my friend and colleague from the Planetary Collegium, Yacov Sharir (Cyboryac Jolles in Second Life), Professor of Digital and Performative Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, has already agreed to become one such. Beyond this, I will need to establish interest from individuals as reviewers and ultimately of course as contributors of academic/scientific articles.

Ravi Butalia has informed me that it is customary for the first issue of a new academic journal to be printed and distributed a few months ahead of its officially announced publication date and thus the proposed journal will need to be printed around September 2009. Which means that the call for papers will need to go out first thing in the new year, with a mid spring deadline in time for the reviewing and editing process to kick in at this time.

Finally, my personal academic credentials can be obtained by following this link here, and my artistic activity as well as some of my research data can be viewed on my Real Life website.

If you are interested in this venture please contact me at alphaauer@gmail.com, with all of your suggestions as well as your proposed degree of involvement. Comments on this post are, of course, also highly welcome...

Please allow me to introduce myself...

Yes! When Bettina asked me a month or so ago whether I would want to join her as co-blogger on the NPIRL blog, it took me less than a second to say yes! Yes, yes and yes!

As Bett has already mentioned I am indeed the builder of Syncretia, which some of you may already have visited, thanks to Bett's wonderful previous posts on the place. To those that haven't yet, please do come at some point or other ;-). So, I am first and foremost a designer/artist in Real Life and a dedicated, if not downright obsessive, builder in Second Life®.



Writing is something that I have stumbled onto in recent years: Reading an amazing book called the Telematic Embrace, written by a wonderful man, Roy Ascott, led me to study for a PhD at the Planetary Collegium. Although initially embarked upon with much trepidation, once involved, I found to my utter surprise that I actually rather enjoyed research and writing. It has certainly not become my primary mode of expression, I am very much what I have always been - a visual artist. However, it has certainly become a close second. I should probably also add here that my research and writing activity has very recently given me the opportunity of becoming the editor of an academic journal on Metaverse creativity, to be published by Intellect Journals, starting in the fall of 2009 - a feat of which I am quite proud of, I have to say.

And as for the the blogging: A somewhat bleak period in my Second Life last spring led me to start my own blog. And then this summer I created an alt, Xiamara Ugajin, who now has her own blog as well. These two blogs will continue their existence alongside this, the NPIRL blog - which quite needless to say will get my primary attention from now on, where all blogging activity is concerned. The Alpha blog is for personal thoughts and naughtiness (and yes! I am very naughty!), the Xia blog is for helpful tips (Xia is very well behaved!), particularly for apparel and the like.

The NPIRL blog is for my thoughts on Second Life creativity, a subject that also involves my PhD thesis, which is about art education in Second Life. I cannot help but feel very strongly that the metaverse is promising immense implications where the artistic fields are concerned - and this at a time when, in my humble opinion, things are rather seriously challenged in this department in Real Life. I have previously written on this on my own blog and will now take the liberty of adding in the link here , so that I do not need to make this post any longer than it absolutely has to be.

I delight in humor, in the unexpected, indeed the absurd, in that which is fundamentally un-didactic. I also delight in narrative, in the fairy tale, in the not possible in real life, the larger than life, the unimaginable. I cherish the unselfconscious, the playful, the spontaneous. And yes, also the naughty, the irreverent, the tongue-in-cheek... And many of these attributes seem to me to be absent from artistic activity to an alarming extent in Real Life today. Somewhere, something went wrong and we dried up. We became humorless, if not indeed downright preachy. And suddenly, here in Second Life, we seem to be gaining ground in the springing up of imaginative acts. In the creation of utterly absurd objects and situations. This I cherish. This is what makes Second Life creativity beyond valuable to me. This is to me what, at this particular moment in time, makes it quite essentially NPIRL!

And not only do we create objects, we take creativity up one notch altogether: We create new lives and alternative identities. The whole manifestation of avatars and their alts; the vastly complex, autopoietic interaction of the human being behind the keyboard with these emergent selves is what to me lies at the very heart of metaverse creativity. Thus, time permitting, I would like to delve into this subject on this blog as part of content creation which is Not Possible in Real Life, alongside the examination of object oriented artistic/design output, of course.

And now finally enough of the pretty words and onto some practicalities: As I mentioned above, I am a dedicated builder. What I should also mention here is that I have an avatar family who is every bit as dear to me as any Real Life family would be. Thus, my time in-world is divided fully between my building and my family, and then of course also the viewing of creative content generated by others. From this it will inevitably follow that I will be remiss in responding to Instant Messages, notifying me of events and things to see in-world. Not to put too fine a point on it - I will simply not be able to do so. Please do not think this to be insufferably rude: My Second Life has essentially been a very private one to date, and I have come to truly cherish the way in which it has evolved and would thus be extremely hesitant to enter into any kind of a venture that could upset a truly meaningful balance. I will thus be very grateful for emails, to be sent either to the sendtonpirl@gmail.com mailbox or directly to me at alphaauer@gmail.com. These I will try to respond to as fast as I can, within a matter of hours, a day at the very most.

And finally finally finally ... Yes! Bett! Thank you for having entrusted me with this. I feel truly privileged to have become a part of this formidable operation. And thank you above all for being my friend!