Giving new (hawt!) meaning to virtual dancing

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

When fine jeweler Random Calliope wrote to say that he was onto something really novel that would transform the way couples dance in Second Life®, I hardly knew what to expect. Standard procedure has required that each partner hop on a set of pose balls (traditionally pink for her and blue for him). More often than not, each set has enabled them to dance one kind of dance, such as salsa, tango, or the waltz. Some time ago, people began packing several dance animations into one gizmo that when touched, offered a HUD from which couples could choose between salsa, tango or the waltz, for example. Typically, the avatars begin to dance while their typists become engrossed in conversation, with an occasional glance at the whirling dancers.

Random was right. Through avid collection and study, his friend Ashen Coalcliff has organized the best couples dances in Second Life in a new way that enables us to communicate with our partner through dance, while we are dancing. I'd call it "active" virtual dancing. The gist of it is in the naming of the dances, or rather the mood and tempo of the dances.



In the accompanying notecard, Ashen explains it this way:

The first part of the name refers to the tempo (speed of the rhythm) which is expressed as:

S - Slow
MS - Medium Slow
M - Medium
MF - Medium Fast
F - Fast

In order to discover the tempo of the song you are listening to, just start tapping your toe. Most songs are Medium tempo. Once you have a feel for what "medium" means all the other tempo speeds reveal themselves. Simple enough.

The second part is choosing the mood of the song, or what you want to communicate to your partner. Is it a sexy song or a fun, fun song? Or is it a fun song and you just want to be sexy? You can choose that, too. As long as you choose your tempo correctly you will choose right.



Dance is interpretation. There is no wrong way. But finally you have control of the dances and you will never again have to remember the name of a dance or accidentally grind up against that new dance partner you want to impress.

Most of the best ideas are the simplest ones, aren't they? I shared Ashen's SyncDancer with machinimator and Second Life veteran Osprey Therian and wondered out loud if others would find it as innovative as I did and if there was a way to demonstrate it via machinima. To my delight, Osprey's reply was "yes," and "yes." Then Straylight/Botanical creator of the wonderful trees Kriss Lehmann agreed to be my dance partner, we donned outfits by his Real and Second Life partner Shai Delacroix (Casa del Shai) and this is what happened...


Many, many thanks to Elizabeth Tinsley who represented Ashen and the SyncDancer during the production, helping out in numerous ways

I think that's some of Osprey's best work, don't you?

I've never met Ashen but we exchanged emails.

To what do you attribute your fascination with virtual dancing and how many animations do you have?!

Ashen: My friend Random Calliope is the first dance collector I ever knew. He had all the couples dances dating back to when Second Life started. They were not good at all by today's standards but at that time they were fascinating. Singles dances actually moved my avatar so I became hooked on them, but I didn't know back then what quality was. When Sine Wave brought motion capture (mocap) dances to SL, I was giddy just like everybody else. I already had hundreds of the "other" dances and had become frustrated at some vendors' dishonest duplication of them.

I have 987 singles mocap dances, and another 300 or so that aren't, and they are often duplicates from various vendors that they sell by other names. They are mostly free uploads that someone has turned into a business and the quality is nowhere near motion capture. There has been a kind of renaissance in motion capture dance this last year. When Henmations came along, they set the bar higher than Sine Wave had. Then Studio 4D came behind them and pushed it even higher.

I don't know how many couple's dances I have. I have all the motion capture and Bits & Bobs ones. I include Bits & Bobs in there because they are of similar quality to motion capture, although Craig Altman masterfully puts them together frame by frame in Poser.

Who made most of the dance animations now available in your SyncDancer?

Ashen: It is a toss-up between 3FX and Henmations. They are different styles, but together they have set the standard to beat in motion capture couples dances.

Empowering a couple with the ability to communicate their moods with each other through dance is certainly an innovation in SL.

Ashen: I think this is what everyone wants to do on the dance floor anyway. Dance is communication like any other art.

Will it be available in a chimera or something that one of the dancers might wear?

Ashen: That has been a dream of mine for a long time. There just is no dance HUD in SL that can handle what I have all the information for. I am told that it would be a significant challenge even for the best known scripters, and I am not even a novice scripter. All I've done with the SyncDancer Couple's Dance configuration is apply what I know about SL dance to the popular Intan Eksotics product.

What's next for Ashen Coalcliff and the SyncDancer?

Ashen: I really want to see the day when everything I know about singles dancing will be at everybody's fingertips. I want people to experience that next level that dancing gives us and feel the music with SL.

~*~

The SyncDancer is pricey, to say the least, but if you like to dance with a partner in Second Life, I can't imagine being without it. There are four versions: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and the Light Fantastic.

Ashen: I couldn't bring myself to put dances in these dance balls that did not meet the highest of standards. There are only 58 dances in all of SL that meet the high standards I demand. The Platinum SyncDancer Ball contains all 58 of those.

The average couple's dance in SL costs L$500, and with 58 dances, plus the dance ball, plus the singles dances that play when you're waiting for your partner to join you, just one of these Platinum balls is a commitment in Linden Dollars (L$39,900). That said, it was important to create something that anyone can own, not just the biggest clubs. So the Bronze version (L$9,900) with 15 dances was created, giving the owners something that will match any song, but without the intensity of the more expensive and expansive collections.

You can try out the SyncDancer and order your own copy by teleporting directly from here. Each SyncDancer is handmade as the dances need to be purchased on your behalf or, alternatively, your own dances can be loaded and customized.

Second Front's theatre of the absurd: Loosin' it

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Works by Second Front aren't to everyone's taste, and they don't care. Since 2006, the members of this maverick performance group have been challenging our notions of virtual narrative and embodiment via "theatres of the absurd."

Losin' it was performed at RMIT Creative Media in Second Life® by Fau Ferdinand and Lizsolo Mathilde, with sound by Zeb Vindaloo. Machinima by Osprey Therian.

Caged and suspended, Fau and Lizsolo are looking for something most people take for granted.


Shadow Draft client by Kirstenlee Cinquetti

Click through to blip.tv for a smoother performance if this one is choppy for you.

Templum ex Obscurum - a machinima by Osprey Therian

Like many of us, filmmaker, artist and thespian Osprey Therian... hasn't been getting enough sleep. And how does she occupy (some of) her sleepless hours? I'll give you a hint: she has 122 pieces of machinima posted on Youtube, including some of my faves, such as her film of Komuso Tokugawa's and MoShang Zhao's incredible SynaesthAsia show, and clips of the traveling, long-running and often NPIRL variety show, The Show Must Go On.

What better place to meet her insomnia head-on than at Baron Grayson's creation, the dark and dreamy Templum ex Obscurum?



This beautiful piece could not have come at a better time, as we are in the last few days of the Templum ex Obscurum NPIRL photographic challenge, which ends this Sunday.

Real Life inspires - Actually, I've seen this on the grid, haven't you?

Filmmaker, artist and thespian Osprey Therian forwarded this link to me, and I just had to share. It seems that Liverpool has been in the throes of its European Capital of Culture celebrations, and a new commission from La Machine, a giant mechanical spider nicknamed "La Princesse," flipped everyone out.

AngryBeth Shortbread opens PLAY: A Collection of Sound Sketches, and talks about Twinity

AngryBeth Shortbread (aka Annabeth Robinson; rez: 7-26-2005) breaks ground with such ease that I'm not even sure if she is aware of how signifcant her work is. Certainly everyone I know in Second Life who works with sounds and physics greatly admires her. Now, this Leeds, UK-based multi-media artist and lecturer has just opened PLAY: A Collection of Sound Sketches 2006-2008, with some installations we've seen before and new ones, too. The show will be open to all throughout the month of April, and was presented at the People : Place : Prescence conference and exhibition on April 2nd at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, England. You may visit it in Second Life by teleporting directly from here.

According to Beth, who likes to encourage social play and experimentation, "Though most of these works could be recreated in other software, it is the social aspect of the virtual world that makes me stick to working in Second Life or similar. Seeing groups of online people experiment and collaborate on producing music with my pieces is more rewarding than a more solo experience on a flash based website or similar. And I still get goosebumps when I watch a group of international avatars all playing together telepresently, yet seemingly all together in one place and presence."

Here's a vid of one of her newest "toys," that is labeled PUSH at the installation:


In this video by Osprey Therian, you can see a good demo of an older piece by Beth dating back to 2006 that I find very entertaining, called the Synthy-Go-Round, an experiment in mixing two synthygorounds remixable tunes that is part of this month's show, and labeled TOUCH. Basically, you can orchestrate your own mix by adding or subtracting different tracks/instruments, available to you in each cube.



There are a few NPIRLers that are actively exploring virtual worlds other than Second Life, and Beth is definitely one of them. "I've been doing a little peek at Twinity, but it's in very early Beta. I'll return when they've added an ability to upload content - not just textures - but it looks promising," said Beth. When I asked what kind of content she was hoping for, she indicated that she's looking to them to make sound files, 3d builds and eventually scripting uploadable. "At the moment, its textures and webpages on a prim. The webpages on a prim do rock, though," she added.

I asked if it was stable at present, to which she replied, "Nope - you've got to have a patience of a saint."

While I haven't tried Twinity yet, I am fascinated by the ability to work with mirror effects there. Here's yet another video that Beth created, working only with the items made available to users inside Twinity.

New Real Life - Second Life physical interface

Last night, musician and technologist Komuso Tokugawa attended a Second Life-related event at the bar BarTube in Tokyo. While there, he met with several people who are collaborating on a Havok 4 sim owned by Softbank (the company that acquired failing Vodafone and turned it around), to work with prototypes and try out new ideas.

According to Komuso, Tori Teatime and a couple of other people from the Softbank-sponsored sim have developed a mechanism that allows for an interesting new physical interface between Real Life and Second Life.

One person would stand there in the bar tilting a 3-axis accelerometer that was hooked up to a modified client to send control data via chat.



Now here's where it gets interesting... the accelerometer had a built in tilt sensor, and as he tilted it, so did a box full of avatars - some of them quite large - that was being held by a robot in-world.



You can visit that robot in Second Life (teleport directly from here), but somebody in Real Life needs to be tilting that accelerometer to make it all happen. Now that the Second Life client is opensource, we can expect more of these exciting developments. More pics and info on Komuso's blog.

Komuso, by the way, is the musician and particle master who - together with MoShang Zhao - gave us the real time-Internet/SL music jam SynaesthAsia, undoubtedly one of the best events I've ever attended in Second Life. Here's a great video of it by multi-talented Osprey Therian.

Playing with tornadoes... courtesy of Tryptofaa Sands

I've been delinquent in my research and blogging because I've been having too much fun. It's all Avi Arrow's fault for owning a tornado, all Jurin Juran's fault for tp'ing me to see it, and especially Tryptofaa Sands' fault for making this too-entertaining toy. I got so carried away, literally, that all my photographs were a disaster, but fortunately can share this video with you by Dimitrio Lewis instead. Forget the first part... you get a better idea of the drama a bit later in the vid. Osprey Therian, creator of some of my favorite Machinima, has captured a few of our antics on her camera and I hope to at least point you to her vid soon.



You can purchase your own 40-meter sculpted Tornado HUD V2.0 on SLEX or drop by Tornado Island (teleport directly from here) and pick one up there.