W magazine's Second Life : NPIRL and the Fashion Institute of Technology get a Second Chance

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I was beyond excitement when my copy of the April 2009 issue of W magazine arrived this week. The cover reads, "Second Life: Designers Revive Their Greatest Hits." Alas, the article is not about fashion in our Second Life®, but reissues of old classics - marvelous though they may be - in Real Life. Sigh. Mark my words... the day will come.

Not long ago, I was scheming with NPIRLer Max Newbold (aka Beth Harris in RL) on a mixed realities project in New York/Second Life that was to feature fashions that are Not Possible in Real Life. At the time, she was working at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, but the blueprint for our happy plan got tossed in the dust bin when Beth was snatched up as director of digital learning at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Talk about mixed blessings...

The good news is that a scholarly hero has stepped in to rescue the FIT/NPIRL project. Dr. Steven Zucker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, has rallied the troops and has informed me that it is still a "go!" Meanwhile, the real world fashion industry will just have to wait to learn about the hottest names in virtual fashion, and in particular about NPIRL fashion.

Eshi Otawara, creator of the most expensive dress in virtual worlds, just unveiled this new POPI outfit with a skirt that reminds me of rich, creamy icing and comes with a bonus: a finger jewel of a bee that is sticking its tongue out at you :P. The hat! Eshi Otawara couture is available here.






I haven't retouched these, other than to crop

Cutea Benelli and her shop Grim Bros, continue to issue surreal and/or humorous outfits for men and women and every possible mood (teleport directly from here).


Artemis


Lalala


Virulent

Alpha Auer has already blogged about Pandora Wrigglesworth's colossal "Rococo" hairstyle, but I still can't get over it. Literally. This all brings to mind that Texan expression... "the bigger the hair, the closer to God." Available at Pandora's fantastical Curio Obscura shop (teleport directly from here).


Rococo Fantastico

NPIRLer Max Newbold's smARThistory.org wins AVICOM's highest award

Our own Max Newbold (aka Dr. Beth Harris), together with Sez Zabelin (aka Dr. Steven Zucker), both from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) out of New York, have just become the recipients of a prestigious award for their website smARThistory.org, which has recently begun to feature information and machinima about art and education in Second Life®.

AVICOM, the committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), responsible for audiovisual, image, sound and new technologies, honored Smarthistory with their highest award (gold) in the web category of their annual competition.

smARThistory.org is a free multi-media web-book that began in 2005, designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional art history textbook. A redesign, launched on October 15, was funded by a generous grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. It allows users to browse more than one hundred audio and video conversations about works of art by time period, style, or artist, or by scrolling through an image browser created to look like an art history textbook.

Notably, both Harris and Zucker are regular Second Life users and have recently begun coverage on art and education topics in virtual worlds, including their own videos on the virtual Sistine Chapel. They believe that smARThistory is broadly applicable to the discipline of art history and is a first step toward understanding how art history can fit into the new collaborative culture created by web 2.0 technologies. They are looking for interested colleagues to expand the site's content and re-conceptualize the teaching of art history.

smARThistory users can contribute photographs to the site via a smarthistory Flickr group, and interested artists, art historians and critics should contact Harris and Zucker about contributing conversations.

The Perils of Mixed Realities events - as experienced by Hamlet Au

Last Thursday, and in the company of my friends and NPIRLers Pavig Lok and Flea Bussy, I teleported into a recreation of a penthouse in Manhattan. The event - a mixed realities party on the occasion of the Real Life and Second Life® book signing of Wagner James Au's (aka Hamlet Au) The Making of Second Life.



Hamlet was in New York city, in the company of Iris Ophelia, to speak at a Fashion Institute of Technology event. In fact, Iris gave the keynote address on the Institute's Technology Day. Go Iris! As an aside, there's a girl who's inventory I'd like to raid any old day of the week.

Since Hamlet was already in the Big Apple, the opportunity to throw a Real Life media bash in his honor was... um... low-hanging fruit, so his publisher - HarperCollins - did just that.


Falk Bergman, Hamlet Au, KallfuNahuel Matador, oh-dear-I-didn't-get-her-name- but-she-was-very-nice, and Flea Bussy

I've never attended a mixed realities event on the Real Life end, and I tend to get engrossed with the people around me - in any life - so I can well sympathize with Hamlet who was torn between attending to his guests in Manhattan, as well as the avatars who were present at the pixelated penthouse. I understand that there was a balcony that he kept heading for, during which time he would leave us avatars to our own devices, and his white-suited self would slip into "away."



Fortunately for him, Iris - who was also present in both worlds - would stand up and jiggle his mouse now and then to bring him back to life - but there was really nothing she could do short of operating his avatar - in the face of the onslaught of tricks that some of us (I'm not naming names) pulled on the poor man.


The lovely Iris Ophelia kept coming to Hamlet's rescue

Various lamp shades were placed on his head, a skirt wrapped around his waist, garbage bags rested at his feet, and cockroaches the size of Saint Bernard doggies visited him.



I stashed my photographic records of these horrors (lol) away, thinking they would never see the light of day, but then Kit Meredith blogged about it and, good sport that he is, Hamlet did, too.

It is a concern, isn't it? Those of us who inhabit virtual worlds must live two lives, and it gets even more complicated when we have to be present - and darling, witty and engaged - in two places at once.