Cubist Scarborough and The Manual: Second Life edition

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I hope you have a little spare time, dear readers, because I am about to lead you down a rabbit hole, a veritable treasure-trove of ideas so rich and varied that I have not yet been able to unearth them all myself.

As personal blogs go, Ian Truelove’s (Cubist Scarborough in Second Life®) is almost buoyant with optimism and analysis of all the inherent possibilities and joys of virtual worlds, and that’s very good news, because he’s an educator and he’s teaching 100+ students at a time, often introducing them to Second Life for the first time. He is Principal Lecturer (Technology Enhanced Learning) at the Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design, in the Faculty of Arts & Society.


Cubist makes three-dimensional holograms of people's Real Life faces. Here is one of himself


Ian (Cubist in Second Life) is watching you everywhere on the Leeds Met sim

His blog reads like a private journal at times and is chock full of insights and deliberations he has with himself and has siphoned off onto the web in a way that we might all consider and possibly benefit from… simply one of the best uses of a blog I’ve run into in a very long time. Ian expounds on the dichotomy of dealing with people in public and private spaces, both in Real Life and in Second Life. He defines and deconstructs the virtual studio. It’s a fascinating stockpile of thoughtful documents pertaining to education, Second Life, OpenSim and a project between Oxford, Leeds Metropolitan and Kings College London called Open Habitat that took place earlier this year and set out to explore how Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) can be used in Higher Education.


Ian's sculptures make it possible for you to get inside his head

Ian also designed the accompanying Open Habitat magazine that serves as a repository for vast quantities of data that the universities collected working with art and design and philosophy students, including surveys, blogposts and chatlogs.

But what I simply cannot wait to share with you is a document called The Manual: Second Life edition, a collection of micro-projects created by lecturers from the School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University that Ian adapted for Second Life as part of the Open Habitat project. You’ll find different versions, including a cut-out one with instructions for folding it, a text version, and even an iPhone version here.


The Manual: Second Life edition, in Second Life

While Ian asks that we keep all 81 tasks together with the CC license text, he did allow me to share a few of them with you, just this once, to give you a taste:

# 5 Find some gesture animations and practice using them somewhere on your own. Work out a physical comedy routine and perform it to your friends.

# 6 Find a freebie stall on the mainland. Grab 12 small objects that have something in common. Arrange all of your objects into a sequence.

# 7 Build one or more of the following:
The beginning of the world
The end of the world
A self-portrait that includes your full body
Something that happened at breakfast
An image from a recent dream
Something that has yet to happen to you

# 8 Start a cult. Establish rituals. Create a meeting place. Meet.

If this isn’t a formula for discovery and enjoyment of one’s virtual life, I don’t know what is. I believe every single newbie in Second Life should be handed a copy.

You can visit the in-world version of this document and take the notecard form of it by teleporting directly from here.

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...

Hello OpenLife®?

I have been away from Second Life® for one week. My mother died and my sorrow as well as all the things that needed to be taken care of after her demise kept me in Real Life.

The support and the affection that I received throughout this week from my RL friends and relatives (and especially that of my students who came out in full force to be with their nasty old school marm) has made me wonder as to how wise of a thing it is from an emotional standpoint to be spending such extended periods of time in a second life, to which I am after all only connected to through this ephemeral thing called technology. One power outage, one satellite failure - and I am pretty much on my own here, aren't I?

The trouble with all of these good intentions of cutting down on my virtual life and giving my real life more of a priority is that at this point Second Life has become the place in which the very concept of creativity excites me in a way that I have not felt excited about creativity in a very long time indeed.

Real Life art and design had been leaving me thoroughly cold for quite some considerable time before I had even heard of Second Life: Real Life art I gave for the reasons here, and Real Life design for the deplorable symbol of status and income that it is. The remarkable thing that metanomics has brought about is a world in which neither the production nor the consumption of creative output is an indicator of financial resources. After all, the poorest of poor avatars can create the most stunning of outputs in a sandbox. And kitting yourself out through the acquisition of the creative output of others is not an indicator of your financial status but only of your ingenuity, your imagination and your resourcefulness. After all, in a world where the equivalent of a few real life dollars will buy you the fanciest of cars how can what your Rolex watch tells us about your wallet be of any possible consequence?

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that at this stage the Residents of Second Life are in the process of creating a social structure unique to the metaverse. But unlike the one in Real Life, what seems to me to be happening here is that (maybe even for the very first time in human history?) we may have the emergence of a true meritocracy. A meritocracy in which nothing but your imagination, your creativity and ultimately your hard work will determine your social status. Wow!

I returned to my second life this morning to find out that in the meantime all hell has broken loose. The Openspace pricing and policy changes announced earlier this week by Linden Labs are very hard to forgive indeed. Surely, Openspace abusers can be held under check through different means? How about charging such Residents based on the calculation of additional prim usage on an Openspace? And not only is this hard to forgive it is also hard to understand: Second Life is no longer a sole option. The competition is already here and it is hard core. Bett has already signed up at OpenLife®, I shall be doing so the very minute after I have posted this, especially now that I have read that OpenLife is also expected to have a working economy by the end of this year. And surely Linden Labs must be aware of the colossal resources that are spent at IBM for the development of a fully three dimensional world wide web which, as we are given to understand, will operate very much along the model of today's virtual worlds.

I am hoping that Second Life will revise this decision. Although it does not personally affect me, it bothers me: My island is an educational island and who is to say that tomorrow there will not be policy changes related to educational islands also? That what we have here today is only the thin end of a truly nasty wedge yet to come? But beyond that it bothers me since it tells me something about the governance of Second Life that makes me very uncomfortable indeed: Shortsightedness.

Dear M Linden - Please help content creators protect our Intellectual Property (and save LL a lot of time and trouble, too)

In an April 25, 2008 interview with Erica Naone in MIT's Technology Review, you agreed that content creation is "definitely the story of Second Life," and given your background in "user-centered design work," I believe you may be receptive to an idea that should be easy to implement and could save everyone a lot of, um... grief, and time.

The Not Possible in Real Life group hereby requests that Linden Lab add a Creative Commons tab in the object editor, as well as a Creative Commons option in the right click pie menu, so that everyone can see, with a simple right mouse click, what the rights are on an object.

While it would not be a panacea, offering this tool would help creators define how people can use their work, beyond the dictates of fair use, but without having to negotiate every single license. It would have no ill effect on the fair use of a work, and copyright law and any other applicable law, would still apply.

As AM Radio pointed out, the issue of copyright protection in Second Life®, "...is just getting goofy. The problems appear to stem from people's inability to comprehend intellectual property law and the fact that it is the responsibility of the infringer to seek and understand the copyright intentions of the creator. It is not the creator's burden to present a copyright declaration in all instances that the work is presented."

He added,"Giving creators the tools to make a copyright declaration in the object editor would relieve them of the burden of chasing down infringers, as well as give them a specific tool set to use in such circumstances. Violations would be clear, infringers would be outcast, and the community would self-police."


There are four conditions that you can choose to apply to a Creative Commons license:

Attribution: You can use the work but must give credit. This applies in all Creative Commons licenses.

Noncommercial: You can use the work only if you don't make any money from it.

No derivative works: You can use the work only without altering or transforming it beyond the provisions of fair use.

Share alike: You can transform a work as long as you make the resulting work available on the same terms as the original work.

You can use these terms in 6 different combinations.

"Creative Commons doesn't cover all situations, and often times there are violations which are unclear. I cannot copyright wheat as represented on a single cylinder any more than I could copyright the word "wheat." I could attempt a patent for such a thing though. I could, however, copyright a work which uses the idea, such as an entire field of cylinders, in much the same way I can use the word "wheat" in a copyrighted short story. So creators must be educated on the difference or people could chase one another for creating wooden box prims," shared AM.

Info for Residents
Copyright law protects any creative work whether the creator wants that protection or not. No one should use your work without a license, beyond fair use. The Creative Commons tool however, is especially useful if you want to share your work in some way. Would you mind if your work is photographed or filmed, for instance? Some creators object strongly to this, while others welcome the recognition and free promotion. Don't want your work to be shared? Not an issue. Under our proposed scenario, you just wouldn't select and use a Creative Commons license.


Want to learn more? The Creative Commons (CCA) - a non profit organization that "builds tools that help realize the full potential of the commons in the age of digital networks" - will hold its first Creative Commons Technology Summit at Google's offices in Mountain View, California on Wednesday, June 18th. Attendance is free, but space is limited, so register soon if you have an interest.

ZOMG - Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) is stepping down: Will creativity still rule the roost?

I've just learned from Tayzia Abattoir that Philip Rosedale - known to most of us in Second Life as Philip Linden - is stepping down as CEO to Linden Lab, the company he founded and has led since 2002.

According to Adam Reuters, who got the exclusive story, Linden Lab is actively recruiting for a new CEO. Philip will then become chairman of the Linden Lab board, replacing Mitch Kapor, who will remain on the board.

The biggest news here to Second Life users is that this will surely have an impact on the culture (or counter-culture) and the governance of our virtual world, especially when you consider that Philip abandoned the original concept for what Second Life should be - a combat game, or a simulated environment - after he attended the Real Life annual desert happening Burning Man - and determined that, like Burning Man, Second Life would be "a wonderland of creative projection" - (Quote lifted from "The Making of Second Life," by Wagner James Au).

The bottom line here... the virtual civilization that Philip Linden birthed and has nurtured to date, places creative people at the top of the hierarchy. Will this change, and if so, who (or what) will rise to the top of the food chain?

It's easy. No, it's magical. No, it's easy and magical - Plus, a Black Swan writing contest

When I was five years old, my dear and wondrous grandmother - who undoubtedly would have had an even worse case of NPIRL-itis than I do - took me to a "thousand and one nights" themed restaurant for dinner. We were greeted at the door by a sheik... the tallest man I have ever seen... and led to our table through a candlelit path by a veiled and supernatural beauty.

Later, to celebrate that I had eaten all the lamb on my plate, that same belly dancer branded the evening's experiences on my mind for all eternity when she ripped a gold coin off her belt... and gave it me!

For years, I begged to be taken back, and my grandmother's answer was always the same: "It will never be that perfect again, so why upset the memory of it?"

The restaurant was in a strip mall, the sheik was surely a local high school basket ball player, and the belly dancer, well, she was just sweet. That coin? I still have it today... the gold paint worn off by me and the five-year-old fingers of my envious friends who were sometimes allowed to hold it.

Years later and just one week ago, I visited the Black Swan sim to see the "Night Dreaming" stone girl for the first time. No one had told me what to expect. "Okay...sculpties," I thought, and touched her to learn more, thinking I'd soon be teleporting off. Suddenly she was transformed into a living, glowing nymph, and I was that five year old all over again, shivering and thrilling all by my lonesome.


These photos by ColeMarie Soleil

Her creator, Light Waves, assured me today that there was no magic to it at all. "The effect is very simple," he said and proceeded to explain the process in his gentle and breezy manner, in terms that even I - a half-baked script-hacking dilettante - could understand.

Well, I don't care if it was simple or complicated. Easy or hard, the effect was sorcery, in my opinion. It transported me to my magical place and I'm not coming down.

The point is - and no, I don't own stock in Linden Lab - Second Life is the most affordable and complete tool I know of to commit hardcore creativity. Every single one of us - whether we are paying members or not - has tools at our disposal to enchant, mesmerize, and even disturb our fellow residents through the use of a simple script or a texture overlay or... but we just have to ssstretch our imaginations... which is the most powerful exercise of all.

Which brings me back to the Black Swan sim. Everything about it is mysterious and unexplained... so the online speculative fiction and dark fantasy zine, The Future Fire, has invited Second Life residents to participate in a creative writing competition that must have a discernible link to the artwork at Black Swan. Go there (teleport directly), flex those brain muscles, and you might become the author of the best entry. The winner of the first prize will receive (USD) $500, and be published in The Future Fire as well as in Second Life by Black Swan, but hurry... the deadline is December 10, 2007.

As for me... I am still buoyant, and I'm headed back to visit the stone girl. Unlike strip malls in the eyes of a five year old, her magic still holds up, and is locked inside me forevermore.