Seifert Surface breathes (real) life into virtual content

Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), a mathematician and also a bodacious creator of both virtual and real math-inspired art, is doing so many new and fun things that I had to get out of my blogging funk long enough to post this.

Three years ago, and over on his New World Notes blog, Hamlet Au did a great write-up on Seifert's recreation of Robert A. Heinlein's fictional "Crooked House" in Second Life, a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract. "--And He Built a Crooked House" is a scifi short story about a mathematically inclined architect who "has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs."

Now Seifert has shot two videos in-world so that even non-Second Life'rs can have a look and understand what it's like to walk inside it. It's 'the awesome,' don't you think?





And just in time for Christmas shopping, eight of Seifert's math-inspired investigations and sculptures have come to life, thanks to Shapeways' 3D printing. I'm buying as soon as I finish this blogpost.


Sphere Autoglyph


Torus Autoglyph

Prices range from $12.95 to $57.29.

Spun fantasy: The Metaverse Broadcasting Company

There's a new sim on the grid featuring lacy, gossamer-like buildings that almost defy description. The structures are somewhat Moorish, highly articulated, and futuristic, too, thanks to their aqua-tinted bubble windows. You will recognize the style if you were familiar with Planet Mongo which, by the way, is gone! The sim is still there, but it seems that new plans for it are in the works.



Lumiere Noir has made a virtual career of teaching others to create in Second Life® via his self-guided, self-paced, hands-on tutorials of the in-world building tools at his Ivory Tower of Prims, but he didn't stop there. His vehicles are fantastical and incredibly fun, and his Flash Gordon-inspired sim was one of my favorite creations on the grid.

Robustus Hax and Dousa Dragonash of the Metaverse Broadcasting Company (MBC) commissioned Lumiere to create this spun fantasy, which he accomplished with less than 6,000 prims. Look for the pinneapple! The saxophone! The turtle head! Look up through the inside of buildings, and down at them from above. Exquisite, precision detailing.



Lumiere is planning a suspension bridge between this sim and another that will have a conference center. He says he's never had more fun doing a build. Teleport directly from here.

See also:

• The best teacher you never knew you had
• The city that glows
• Greetings from Planet Mongo!
• Lumiere Noir's personal tour of Planet Mongo
• How to visit the Garden of NPIRL Delights
• A run-in with a rocket scooter

Buckminster Fuller would have approved

On Werner Kurosawa, geodesic domes, and Green Phosphor’s novel work in Second Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Years ago, a friend of mine who owned a large manufacturing centre sought to enclose the entire building complex within a geodesic dome, modelled after architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller’s lattice shell structures. His goal was not merely an aesthetic one, for it is said that such domes maximize efficiency in energy use for both heating and cooling, while being structurally strong. Fuller’s maxim: “Doing more with less.” That was my first introduction to the futurist, and I’ve admired many of his ideas ever since. As an irrelevant but nonetheless fascinating aside, virtual world residents who find their schedules unbearably stretched may take an interest in the fact that Fuller practiced Polyphasic sleeping for two years: only two hours a day via very short naps at regular intervals.


Fuller and Shoji Sadao’s U.S. Pavilion at the ’67 Expo in Montreal – Image courtesy of David Gomez Rosado


Fuller and Shoji Sadao dreamed of placing a climate-controlled geodesic dome over Manhattan – Photo courtesy of NeutralSurface

Buckminster Fuller’s domes were the first thing I thought of when I rezzed at Green Phosphor’s new facility in Second Life®, which is surrounded by an immense – even by SL standards – webbed rotating sphere. The effect is both elegant and highly dramatic.


If you click to enlarge, you will see that the spec at approximately the middle of this image is me, standing on a platform above the dome

Werner Kurosawa, the virtual architect

Created by Belgian architect Werner Kurosawa (aka Werner van Dermeersch), Green Phosphor is among the most handsome and livable virtual corporate campuses that I know of.



It was so not a surprise then when I visited Werner’s website and discovered various videos on Buckminster Fuller and links to the organization that bear the maverick’s name.

“Of course it is a tribute to him because he surpasses the ordinary, which every architect should do to have the right to use the title of architect. On the other hand, it was for my friend and client Tom Barman – lead singer of the Belgian group Deus - who used the “image” of Bucky as a reference to me when he wrote the song “The Architect” in their latest CD (look for the tape recorder on the bottom right).

In addition to his architectural work, Werner creates art installations, “from big to small.” From time to time he collaborates with his friend and composer Serge Verstockt on contemporary classical music and he also teaches Master classes in Art in Antwerp.

His Second Life name, of course, alludes to two of the greatest film directors of all time. He described a scene in Werner Herzog’s latest film, where an upside down image of a waterfall is seen in a drop of rain clinging to a leaf. He loves all films by Akira Kurosawa, but “Ikuru holds a special place in my heart.”

When Werner gets real, his predilections range from the university that Kasua Sejima built in Lausanne, the Lemoine house in Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas – there’s also a great video about it here, via Gizmodo - which he believes to have been a milestone at that time, and the pyramid of Cheops in Giza.

Given the environmental advantages to the Green Phosphor dome, I expected Werner to answer affirmatively when asked if he considered ecological issues when building virtually. I was mistaken. “I consider environmental issues in Real Life. We would have to stop using computers and the Internet if we were to consider environmental issues in Second Life,” he said.

Most of the people in his life - including his Real Life clients - think he’s wasting his time in Second Life, “but I believe there is a big future ahead for the 3D Internet.”

Certainly the Real Life company Green Phosphor thinks so. “We produce the leading tool for visualizing data within virtual worlds,” said Ben Lindquist, the company’s CEO. “While our tool works in Second Life, Sun's Wonderland, and soon in Forterra's OLIVE, we have only one headquarters - the virtual headquarters that Werner Kurosawa built for us in Second Life.”

In this video, Lindquist explains how the company is using patent-pending technology to implement a virtual laboratory that has the potential of reducing the time and cost spent on drug development by up to 50%.



“I met Ben Lindquist at Brooklyn is Watching. I saw him building his first Graphs there and found them intriguing. When Green Phosphor rented half of the sim and put a prefab house there, I proposed that I would make a unique workplace in exchange for knowledge and a steady place to experiment next to BiW,” explained Werner.





Lindquist seems pleased with the arrangement: “The space that Werner created for us makes me happy when I move around in it; its design is clean yet comfortable; curvy yet solid. He took into consideration how the water in Second Life interacts with surfaces; reflections play upon the virtual cement and the view out into the rest of the sim is always interesting, thanks to the phantom prim structure Werner created to rotate around the entire island.”





So successful, in my view, was Werner’s rendering of Green Phosphor’s look and brand in Second Life, that I asked him if he’d collaborated with the company’s advertising or PR agency to bring it about. “No, but Ben has a nice father, Mark Lindquist, a famous sculptor whom I sometimes meet in Second Life and we have a lot of fun!” replied Werner.


Werner Kurosawa

Still, the people in Werner’s Real Life have a hard time understanding what he finds so compelling about virtual worlds. “People aren’t used to navigating in 3D and run around like flatlanders. I have the same experience with my work in Real Life when the scale gets really big or something is out of the ordinary,” he mused.

And Werner has been known to work on a very grand scale.


In Second Life: Werner's Twisted Tetrahedron Tower - 3,500m high


In Real Life: Werner's Lightwall installation: 1,2 km across and 16km high. Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

“They have difficulty grasping what is going on and it takes a long time for them to really see it. They aren’t used to flying around or even disconnecting what they are seeing from their bodies, especially when their view gets out of the XY plane. They get disoriented,” he continued.




Z Apartments at Saturn - Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

Werner explained how, soon after he graduated, he created some installations with plans and models and televised video of those models. “While they couldn’t read the plans and most could not read the models, everyone accepted television as ”real” (which it wasn’t). Perspective drawings where read correctly even when they weren’t drawn right.”

He is primarily interested in perception and perspective: “You have to keep in mind that the view you see in Second Life is calculated as a projection on a 2D surface of a “3D” world based on the same perspective model that was once made 500 years ago with a steady horizon at 1.65m high seen with one static eye. And we know that it isn’t “reality” but until now our society and products are based on that. We have two eyes moving in a moving head on a moving body.”

Werner freely admits that he was disgusted with Second Life after one or two hours the day he rezzed back in January of 2007. Some of his students had recommended it saying that it would really be his thing. He explained: “It was ugly. It had a much lower resolution than the 3D game engines I had used a lot before to do performances. The first engine I hacked was Duke Nukem back in1993. You had to pay for everything, and most avatars didn’t make contact with each other and those who did weren’t interesting at all. I returned many months later and it was more the social community that kept me going and finally introduced it as a tool. I was using the Unreal Engine 3 at that time with a lot more possibilities for 3D rendering.”




Hyperbolic Space - Photos courtesy of Werner Kurosawa

“Then, by meeting some very interesting people from all over the globe, I found I had a reason to stay inside. People started to ask me to sell them things I had made, which was more trouble than it was worth, so I always give my creations away. To this day I haven’t spent a penny in SL. And when you are creative and curious, you can find enough tools to make things yourself or trade with others. I do try to script my own things. SL gave me the need to program, which is also a new evolution in architecture with all the generative architecture going on. I try to learn with a lot of trial and a lot of error, but I do a lot of copy and paste from existing pieces of code wandering on the net. I see it as a tool and my experience with programmers is that they can program but that doesn’t mean they have ideas on what to create.”

So what does Werner wish that he could do the most that he cannot? Turns out he’d like to fly in Real Life... just like he does in Second Life.

You can visit Green Phosphor by teleporting directly from here.

Strange and Fantastic Buildings (in Real Life)

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I can't recall ever just linking to another site as the centerpiece for a blogpost, but here you go. Totally worth a visit: 80 Strange and Fantastic Buildings Architecture. Hopefully this will inspire a few more unusual buildings in virtual worlds.

12:18 pm UPDATE: And here are 50 more unusual buildings!

The Impossible Made Possible - A Panel on the Future of Architecture

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Most Real Life architects who join Second Life® do so because they are seeking a new tool. In the beginning, there is much confusion as they acquaint themselves with the interface and become a part of one or more communities.

And then they begin to build recreations of Real Life buildings.

And then...

This Friday and on the occasion of Second Life's sixth birthday, hear the stories of seasoned Real Life architects who arrived in the metaverse to explore the possibilities and discovered that their path was not at all what they expected to be. Walk through a visual history of their trajectory, as they explain how one thing lead to another, culminating with them learning that the impossible is possible in virtual worlds. Cut short your own learning curve and advance your understanding of how virtual architecture can - and already is - richly benefiting Real Life architecture.


Event chair DB Bailey landed an important commercial contract thanks to his work in virtual worlds. Seen here in front of a building he created in Second Life for Stanford University

WHEN: Friday, June 26, 2009, 10am SLT - 90 minutes
WHERE: Cetus Gallery District, teleport directly from here

PANELISTS:

* DB Bailey (aka David Denton), Architect, urban planner and artist, event chair
* Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud), Architect, urban planner and artist
* Lou Tones, multi-media producer and founder of Green Islands
* Bettina Tizzy - Introduction from the founder of the Not Possible IRL group

DB Bailey is designing a Real Life project (for Cairo, Egypt) in Second Life. He will be giving a tour of the commercial building and discussing the meaningfulness of this venue for architectural design in the future.

DB Bailey and Keystone Bouchard have both gone full circle in Second Life, starting off in Second Life by recreating Real Life architecture as do most when first starting to build virtually. Then they both discovered the truest potential of this technology: to produce environments they would never have conceived in Real Life.


Multi-award winner and the creator of Reflexive Architecture, Keystone Bouchard has benefited Real Life with his virtual work in ways he never could have imagined

DB, Keystone and Lou Tones are all seeing the wall between the two worlds disappear as Second Life becomes more of a tool - but not how they originally expected it to be - in their Real Life work.

Lou has been observing for many years the evolution of the virtual world. He will discuss the ecological advantages of Second Life and the importance of Real Life buildings designed in Second Life.

Feel free to contact Bettina Tizzy should you have any questions. Please be punctual as the presentation will get underway at precisely 10am SLT/PDT.

Wherein I attempt to describe what I am looking for: NPIRL content guidelines

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

By the time each Thursday rolls around, I'm frantically trying to catch up with all the first-rate landmarks and notecards and emails I've received, rich with hot tips on new and undiscovered content and ideas that just might be worth sharing with the 2,600 members of my Second Life® groups Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL.

I send at least one in-world notice a week - usually late on Fridays - featuring some 3 to 20 items that I've culled from hundreds of these suggestions, and I'm often asked what my selection criteria is. In addition to intriguing building tips, info on other virtual worlds, and advocacy for the rights of content creators in Second Life, my main focus is on creations that are Not Possible in Real Life.

Are my selections opinionated, discriminating and highly subjective? Yes, they are. There are many other ways to discover information and calendar listings on the topics relevant to your particular interests in Second Life, so this is my personal attempt to provide you with a distillation of what I think is cool, trendsetting and even groundbreaking, always within the context of Not Possible IRL.

Am I an academic, schooled in the arts? I am not. Jay Newt of Brooklyn is Watching once called me a theme park mistress and I can subscribe to that. Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL are not art groups, and for that matter, this blog is not an art blog. They do feature and include art, but that is not all we are about.

That said, what follows is an attempt to describe virtual content that is Not Possible in Real Life or NPIRL. These guidelines were drafted with only prim and/or script-based content in mind, as I don’t believe – but I’d like for you to prove me wrong - that there is such a thing as NPIRL music. How that music is generated, however, can definitely be NPIRL (Komuso Tokugawa and Dizzy Banjo, I’m looking at you!).

Theatre and live performances often enable suspension of disbelief via real-time special effects and situations (think DanCoyote Antonelli’s ZeroG SkyDancers, CARP's Metropolis, Gazira’s Hammering the Void, and Grace McDunnough’s Musimmersion, for example).

Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) CONTENT (architecture, art, landscaping) is a generous combination of the following:

* Surreal, fantastical

* Indulges our sense of make-believe (can do strange, wonderful and surprising things; makes us laugh)

* Can fundamentally affect our behavior, perception and even our self-perception

* Physically impossible in Real Life, or could only be created at enormous/unrealistic expense (defies the laws of gravity and physics in general)

* Immersive

* It almost goes without saying that NPIRL creations in virtual worlds are three-dimensional. While photography and other 2D images may portray NPIRL content, they are difficult to render in-world and for this reason, I enjoy them best on the web. I am an avid user of both Flickr and Koinup, where so many of you post images taken in virtual worlds. I wish more machinimators would join the Not Possible IRL YouTube group, though their group management tools there are very poor.

NPIRL FASHION is garment-based and not a biological part of the avatar. In addition to clothing the avatar, it might do strange and wonderful things, or make us do strange and wonderful things. It can defy the laws of physics or expose the avatar’s body to extreme heat or cold or exploding particles or sharp things. It might include elements (such as clouds, or sunshine, or snakes, for instance) that could never be used in Real Life.

NPIRL AVATARS are fantastical, surreal, or funny, or surprising, but they all have one thing in common: They are definitely Not Possible in Real Life. They aren't human, or dogs, cats, horses, etc., unless they are exceptionally unusual (a unicorn, for example). While nekos, faeries and elves are NPIRL, their appendages must look integrated, credible and not like props.

I want to especially thank the members of my working group Not Possible IRL for their guidance and inspiration, and the extreme explorers and content creators of the vibrant Impossible IRL community who have sent in priceless tips and ideas. All this is possible because we've pooled our efforts and share an intense appreciation for the 3D platform. I adore you!

Floating buildings - In Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

My colleague Alpha Auer and I have this ongoing discussion regarding what, in virtual worlds, is actually Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL). One concession she makes is the concept of floating islands and buildings in metaversal skies.


soror Nishi's newest landscaping shop,"lifstean," as photographed by Lem Skall. Teleport directly from here

Still, I was surprised yesterday when Alpha mentioned that folks are already making "floating" buildings. It seems that a company in the Netherlands, Dutch Docklands, designs water-based solutions that make “land from water” by providing large scale "floating" constructions.



As far as I can tell, plans for the construction of a string of floating islands containing hotels, restaurants and a heliport off the shores of Dubai have been shelved due to the economic crisis. It seems that each island was to have been in the shape of a letter, with all of them spelling out a verse that reads in part, "Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey."

National Public Radio (NPR) did a great piece on the project in April, 2008, and here's another from DE51GN.

It could be argued that space stations, already in use, are in fact, floating buildings.


Boeing's International Space Station (ISS), slated for completion in 2010, will be about the size of an American football field

All the same, I'll wager that the only floating buildings most of us will ever experience in our lifetimes will be pixelated and very virtual.

Reach smeech... Second Life won't cut it with Nielsen yet, but it is POWERFUL in other ways

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I was Twittering just now, and up came a twitter from a favorite follow of mine, Chimera Cosmos (aka @LDinSTL_Chimera), that read: "Yes! RT @metaMeerkat: inSL: @cybergrrloh says if one does not talk Second Life® when talking socialmedia, one misses an opportunity for REACH."

While I didn't attend @cybergrrloh's presentation - and I'm sure she provided many compelling ideas - I don't think for a nanosecond that Second Life is a tool worthy of consideration for advertising and marketing, not even exponentially... yet. However, I do believe in the power of the platform. Let me give you an excellent and very recent example:

DB Bailey (aka David Denton, AIA, in Real Life) is an architect in both worlds. I've blogged about his very virtual, very Not Possible IRL buildings many times here.


DB Bailey in front of a building he created for Stanford University

Not long ago, DB teleported me to a shopping mall he had created in Second Life. Given that I focus primarily on quality content in virtual worlds that would Not be Possible in Real Life, this was unusual, but it turned out to be a worthwhile trip. It seems that DB had been working with a potential Egyptian client, and the two had gone back and forth for two years... but DB had not been able to secure that client's buy-in on the project. One day, out of frustration or a creative burst... who knows, DB logged into Second Life and recreated his proposed shopping mall down to the plants. "I'm surprised how fast I did it," he shared with me.


Photo courtesy of The Arch Network

What happened next will underscore the point I am trying to make. The virtual platform of Second Life - where user-created content is possible - is mostly untapped and extremely powerful: DB showed the virtual and three-dimensional shopping mall to his client, and within three days he was on his way to Egypt to work on the Real Life project. He's there now. You can read about it here.

My Twitter handle is: @Bettinatizzy

New answers and more questions regarding the upcoming virtual world Blue Mars

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I learned considerably more about Blue Mars last night, which is not named after the science fiction classic by Kim Stanley Robinson, despite the fact that its founder, Henk Rogers, is a big sci-fi fan.

...

By the time he left his secure job where he’d been managing business development for the division, nearly 28 million units of Microsoft’s X-Box 360 had sold worldwide in just over three years. The global economy was imploding, and still Jim Sink packed his belongings in rainy Redmond, WA and hopped on a flight to Honolulu where he would become vice president of business development for Avatar Reality, the company that has been developing Blue Mars since December of 2006.

There, he joined interactive game luminaries Henk Rogers (creator of Tetris, Blue Lava Wireless and founder of the Blue Planet Foundation, among other things), Kazuyui Hashimoto (formerly vice president of technology at Electronic Arts) and 21 others, all working at breakneck-speed towards the Beta launch this June of a new virtual world.



Until recently, not much has been known about Blue Mars except that it will be significantly different from both Second Life® and OpenSim in that it will be powered by the bleeding-edge game engine CryEngine 2 that boasts unparalleled and nearly photorealistic graphics, and that end-users will not be able to create content in-world.

Many Second Life die-hards consider this last point to be a deal-breaker since user creativity is at the very core of Second Life’s raison d'être.

More information became available last week regarding the free-to-play and free-to-download “massively multiplayer virtual world”:

* The world was built for Vista-based machines.

* The company is confident that many thousands of users will be able to simultaneously log into a single “city.” If a particular server gets so popular that it reaches its limit and performance begins to suffer, they can “shard” the server. (More on this later)

* Software Development Kits (SDK) are available for download to registered developers for free so that they could begin creating Blue Mars-compatible content offline. Both the development kit and the preview editor are WYSIWYG.

* Despite rumors to the contrary and in regards to performance, the company stated that most 3D cards on the market today will be able to run Blue Mars, and that even ATI 4850 cards that go for about $120 after rebates can “deliver a strong performance.”

* There is no geographic continuity between places in Blue Mars. Each place or city is a node in the Blue Mars network. Each place is usually around 2x2k. Places can link to one another but you can't fly across a contiguous space above a certain size. When you move from place to place, there is a loading screen.

* “Easy to program” artificial intelligence will be offered to developers who are interested in having conversational NPCs (non-player characters/bots). Avatar-Reality has created an AI gateway to allow third parties to link to their own AI servers. They hope to catalyze the development of game AI by “providing a platform for people to integrate their AIs in an affordable high fidelity real time online environment.”

* The Blue Mars Dollar (pegged to a fixed rate against the US dollar) is a single integrated currency system that “lets developers easily and securely charge for items and subscriptions.” End users can buy packs of currency through the Blue Mars client or through a web site. They can use a credit card, Paypal, or retail Paybycash cards to buy Blue Mars currency. There are no refunds on Blue Mars currency and end users can't cash out. However, if you are registered as a developer or vendor with Avatar Reality, you can charge Blue Mars dollars for goods and services and get paid in US dollars or your local equivalent currency through Paypal.

* Gambling will not be allowed.

...



I spoke at length with Jim Sink last night.

Your business model is that of providing a platform to developers so that they can turn around and create their own Cities, RP games, or sublease land to others. What about government? What are your Terms of Service? Will each developer rule his or her fiefdom? Will each developer be responsible for newbie education in that environment?

We’re still working out the ToS, but yes, developers will control and set content rules for their regions. There are two ways that developers can get started: they can manage their own City/game server in the Blue Mars network or they may choose to sub-lease land from an existing City developer, which could be a City block, for example. Avatar Reality charges a setup fee and monthly fees to keep your place online, but rather than set our fees based on land size, we charge based on concurrent user capacity (CCU.) It works like the minutes plan on a mobile phone. Our promotional pricing is available under NDA and our public pricing will be available later in the summer.



In August 2008, Avatar-Reality announced that Virtual Space Entertainment, Inc. (VSE), led by the much celebrated artist and concept designer Syd Mead for films such as Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron had become a third-party developer.

Will users have access to voice at launch?

No. We’re working on that and realize that it is important. When rolling out a complicated platform like this, we need to first make sure that it is stable and secure.

I understand that Blue Mars was built for Vista based machines. I’m working off of Windows XP. Will I be able to run it? And what about Mac users?

Yes, no problem for XP, but Cryengine doesn't run on OS X, so no support for Macs. Boot Camp works if you want to dual boot, and server-side rendering services like Online should help expand our market to netbooks and Macs.

What about integrating the web to your world, such as HTML access? Any unique offerings in that area as compared to Second Life?

We can’t render HTML pages natively, but there are multiple ways to work with the web. You can display Flash-based content and the data can go in both directions, so you can update a page out world with content that is going on in-world and vice-versa. When people want to draw from a database, in other virtual worlds it has to go through the hosting service. In Blue Mars, the client can connect directly to the data source and doesn’t have to go through our servers. For example, a movie that is screening in-world is not streamed by Blue Mars; that movie is pointed to an external server. Video will be handled using Scaleform, a flash compatible middleware package that we use for all our UI.

What about scripted objects? What language will you use? Can developers introduce their own scripts?

Yes. LUA-based scripting and our own Casual Games API to give developers a head start.

You say that Blue Mars will be scalable for thousands of simultaneous users per region, and that you have the option to shard a server if it gets too popular. Please describe, in lay terms, what “sharding the server” means?

If it got to the point where 10,000 simultaneous users got to be too much for that region - and we won’t know until we get there - we will probably want to mirror that region (make a duplicate of the region).

How easily will people be able to rejoin their friends if a region gets sharded? What if people are having sex or giving a presentation, teaching a class, or waiting for a purchased item to be delivered? Will they be separated from their friends? And while we are on the topic, will you allow sex in Blue Mars?

We haven’t decided yet on the sex question. As for sharding, it wouldn’t work like that. The developer could instance the entire server and call it “New Honolulu.” You would add that server to a list of several Honolulus. We would never split it and take half the users one way and half the other way. We will also integrate messaging tools so you can join your friends in the different shards of the single server.

We’ve heard about developers, RP gamers, and shoppers from you, but are you also targeting business?

Businesses tend to be excited about Blue Mars for a few reasons. A lot of people in real estate have all these terabytes that are stuck on their hard drives. Instead of creating a new way to build 3D assets, we’ve created import tools. Using a CAD program, they can bring those terabytes into Blue Mars with very little effort and then show off model homes and model communities in an interactive environment. As for advertisers, much depends on building a critical mass of active users.

How about educators?

We will be providing a safe and controlled environment with deep scripting and monitoring support that will give developers the ability to test and track actions and choices made in their region.



You tout robust security and content management. How will you protect developers? Content theft is a significant issue in Second Life and OpenSim.

Anyone who would say you never have to worry about content theft doesn’t know about history. What you do is build methods for the eventuality of dealing with it. Everything is encrypted in our world, and we’ve made it very difficult for people to reverse engineer the system. Say you create a new dress that you want to offer at your store. Every item, when it is uploaded into the system, gets a unique registration stamp and a time stamp. Even if someone just copied an item “visually,” the original creator can submit their code and comparing it against the time stamp, we can determine if it is in violation of the system.

Will there be an approval system for each piece of content before it can make it into the system?

No approval process.

What, in your view, is the special allure for Second Life content creators, assuming of course that they are already competent with the Blue Mars-compatible software and not just working with prims? Will they have to cozy up to the game developers to adhere to their planned environments? Let’s say you make a living creating furniture in Second Life. How might this translate to Blue Mars?

By the end of this week, there will be two editors that Blue Mars provides: A full-development environment that is completely free, though we are limiting the number of people we’re offering it to at this time. We are also releasing a streamlined sort of “sandbox” that would be ideal for a furniture creator. They can take the model that they created in 3ds Max or Maya, for instance, import it into the sandbox editor, and see exactly what it will look like in Blue Mars.

From the get out, the platform has been created with an ear to content creators and artists. “Why can’t we just continue to use the tools we normally use? I don’t want my stuff copied.” They want a reliable system to monetize their work and a universal payment system. Most digital content creators don’t work in prims. They didn’t want to create proprietary content with creation tools like prims or have to relearn how to create content.

After June, we will be providing templatized shops. Developers will sub-divide land and sublease it. Create a space, fill it with your furniture and offer things for sale. Most people will want to set up shops somewhere that is popular. We will probably be offering a limited number of sub-divided parcels to give to developers and operate a test “Demo” City in the beginning where we can roll out new features and offer a limited number of spaces in that city for people to experiment.

Will you have a web-based sales model like Second Life’s Xstreet?

Not at this time.

What about artists? How will they benefit from creating sculptures, for example?

If it is just a matter of a public space where they can share their work, they can lease the space from a City developer and put their content directly into that City. They deliver their data file to the City director and it will be up to the City developer to determine how frequently the content updates will take place, which will not be as frequent as they are in Second Life (real-time). Some might do it every day, while others might update every two weeks. Each city is condensed into a pack file that includes all the geometry and textures. The file they deliver comes in a single pack.

I realized then that we were thinking about two entirely different things. Jim talked about a coming Art Competition that will launch on April 20th. He spoke of fashion, furniture and other practical items that might be exhibited - in addition to paintings, sculpture and particles - with each participating artist receiving a 3m x 3m x 3m exhibition space in a shared virtual gallery to display their work. I described how the mixed-realities Brooklyn is Watching gallery/art-critique space in Second Life had begun with a small land parcel, thinking that all of the art would be rezzed directly on the ground, only to learn that the artists would ingeniously go underground or have their art pieces begin at ground-level and soar as far up as 3,500m in the sky. I told him about ZeroG SkyDancers and how the choreographed dancers wear cascading costumes that are many times larger in size than the avatars wearing them as they move about the sky. (More on art later).

Oh, you won’t be able to fly for the most part.

Won’t be able to fly!?

If a developer wants it, their avatars will be able to fly, but the standard locomotion is not flying. You can get into a vehicle and fly but the framework for people to locomote isn’t flying.

So each developer would have to introduce the animations and fiddle with the physics? What about teleporting?

Teleporting is a balancing act for us. Teleportation to any place at any time is a mistake for a developer. It reduces the potential for the social fabric of a place. You don’t want to make people walk everywhere though. If I want to get from point A to B there are several options beyond walking or running. If I need to move two kilometers away, it is silly to have to wait for a bus. If you have a home, you will be able get there. People will experiment with a lot of different methods.

What news have you for musicians?

People will be excited to use Blue Mars for music, a place for self-expression and community. You want to be able to create events that will draw a crowd and not have the appeal of the event be diminished by the crowd itself. The Blue Mars platform scales to support thousands of simultaneous users per region, so if you are spinning music or creating a place for people to congregate, this won’t be a concern.

Will real-time jams between musicians from all over the world be possible?

They will.

Any advantages for virtual architects?

CAD will be importable, but of course, the further you are away from 3ds Max and Maya, the more steps you will have to take. Keep in mind that you don’t need the plumbing geometry for a real-time rendering. The bottleneck isn’t the polyganol count, but the textures that are the problem. The rendering will be perfectly accurate.

I understand that you will have real-time analyses of player activity. How will marketers be able to use this excellent information?

Each City developer will set some policies. We’re not sure yet how the implementation will run out but we do know this: If it happens in world, it can be tracked and reported on in real time. How many people sat down in Toyota’s new car, for instance, along with any demographic information the users are willing to share.

That raises a number of questions regarding user privacy. Can we assume that you will protect each user’s personal information?

Yes.

Speaking of demographics, what about men playing as women, or folks who prefer not to be gender-specific? How will that play out?

It will be a matter of how they registered. We aren’t going to verify gender.

What about alts (alternative accounts)? Will you allow that?

We haven’t decided yet.

Will developers be able to limit what users can take from their City to another, or what can be introduced to their City?

You can limit what can be introduced. If you are Sony Pictures and creating a virtual Monaco and it is a black tie-only space, when a user gets there, the system can prompt that user to let them know that this is a black tie-only area and provide information about the only costumes that will be available in that region. You don’t want people running around in Speedos in your James Bond world.

...

UPDATE: Soon as you're done here, you might want to skedaddle over to Dusan Writer's blog where he has an interesting discussion going and his initial analysis on Blue Mars... plus he called me a Goddess! Well, he can't be right all the time. :)

Attitude adjustment with the help of a little steam

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I thought I'd take a moment out of our busy virtual lives to celebrate a couple of individuals who inspire us in Real Life with their steampunk approach to architecture and life even, and also to alert you to the existence of the Clockwork Quartet, a musical group in the UK that isn't really a quartet at all but rather a thirteen-piece band featuring an odd assortment of instruments, including a musical saw and a double kit composed of old typewriters, scrap metal, metronomes, clocks and other found objects.

The Clockwork Quartet is of particular interest to us since one of our own, NPIRLer and Second Life®r Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) is a member, performing on the 5-string banjo. For your information, it was Art who created the charming (and sadly copybotted) prim newbie that so many of you - including myself - have enjoyed placing in highly irregular situations.

~*~

Then there is dedicated Burner and steampunk creator, Tom Sepe, with his steam-powered Whirlygig Emoto, among many other things. Drop in to Second Life and say hi to us sometime, Tom. I've a few people I'd love to introduce you to, including some of your fellow Burners.



~*~

Lastly but hardly leastly, David Trautrimas, is a Canadian artist who disassembles old kitchen mixers, hole punchers, waffle irons, staplers, vacuum cleaners, coffee machines and other household objects, photographs the parts, and then puts them back together digitally, into what he calls “Habitat Machines.” Can you say "Brazil?"


Oil can residence, 2008


The Typewriter Factory, 2008




Sprinkler house, 2008


Electric razor cooperative, 2008

Many thanks to David Trautrimas who graciously allowed us to reproduce his photographs here.

The Patron Saints of Poetik and what they have wrought + Interview with Hern Worsley, it's creator

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

You may wish to listen to the music that is played at Poetik while you read this.

Oh, to be cherished by Nur Moo and JuJu Dollinger (aka Ju)! To be housed and given unfettered artistic freedoms by the new Medici of the Second Life® grid!

Nur is an esteemed fellow-Flickrite with a photo style somewhat reminiscent of Tamara de Lempicka that I am fond of, but I'm only just now realizing the degree to which she - together with Ju - has mutated into a bona fide patron of the arts. Months of assembling, fostering and cross-pollinating an electrifying cross-section of artists and musicians will finally come together full force tomorrow, Saturday, March 14 with a party that is expected to run 24 hours.


Event poster featuring the Patron Saints of Poetik

The duo began their curatorial work back in March, 2008 on the mixed-use sim Sintetika, even before they took ownership of it, but what they are best known for are their branded parties: Poetik. I've never been to one but as I understand it, they expose people to new ideas and environments, and then encourage them to be disruptive and create. Hmmm. Sounds like a good workplace tactic, doesn't it? In their case, it's about parties: art parties, concept sound and light reveries.

A few months ago, Nur (a graphic and fashion designer in Parma, Italy) and Ju (a French artist in Real Life) boosted the pace and snapped up a pair of sims because, "...using Second Life network possibilities to share Art, we are trying to create a different visual / sound experience that goes further than what is possible in Real Life." They'll get no arguments from me on that count.

"I was always surprised, from the beginning of my second virtual life, by how much people try to copy reality and don't try to be more creative," said Nur. "That's why I look for the most visionary people on the grid and (then) try to support them. (We try to make) Poetik this total experience; every month a different artist creates a different installation and every week there is a music event there."

"Different, but always experimental, is our project with the first sim [formes nocturnes]. We call this sim "our art playground," and invite the artists we like the most in the virtual world to play here with 15,000 prims... so it will be really an unique experience. Selavy Oh is the first artist to build at [formes nocturnes]," said Nur.


Selavy Oh's hallmark is the studied application of physics to prims

Nur added, "With time, the Poetik party has grown. We needed a new place, a whole new sim, and we decided to share this new 'work' with Hern Worsley, an open-minded artist and one of best builders in Second Life with whom we share a creative vision for what the metaverse should be like."

Speaking for myself and given my schedule, wild horses couldn't make me blog these days, but I'm not completely crazy. One teleport to the new Poetik Velvets sim where Hern Worsley has been ensconced and Kung Fu'ing prims for three months, and I was tossing my busy calendar aside.


Poetik love by Hern Worsley

You remember Hern, don't you? Owner of Avz and hairdresser of my dreams? Creator of the cyberpunk specs worn by that chimp that left me frothing with curiosity?


Hern Worsely at Poetik

Turns out that Hern is about way more - eons and tons more - than fantastic avatar adornments. To begin with, I'm a sucker for black and white striped ticking, and a whole sim ground textured with it strikes me as elegant and completely chic. Then consider the environment it is all situated in... Why, it's an endless aurora borealis!


This photo was taken using the Funky Funky Windlight setting, which Hern recommends at Poetik

Then... take a good look at this edifice on its own merit. It is, at once, industrial and organic.



The moment I saw it, I was reminded of a certain chair...


The Wassily Chair was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus

I had a chat with Hern to learn more.

There are some of us who are convinced that you are actually a master architect, here to let loose some creative juices.

Hern: It's just about nice lines and pleasing shapes that flow. I think stuff should just speak for itself really, and everyone can interpret it how they like. I've been doing Audio and Visual stuff in my own time in Real Life but it has never been my profession. It is now, though... apparently. I've learned everything in Second Life, to be honest. Without Second Life, I'm prolly not much use to anyone as far as creatively goes. ;) For me, it is a perfect medium to work in. I just hope it carries on and develops. I think it is possible... the next 5 years, once all the hype is over, and all the inflated expectations and misunderstandings, etc. Now that we're just coming out of that phase, I hope we'll move into a more steady growth phase where people who really "get it" are coming in and working.

How'd this come together?

Hern: Nur has been a good supporter of my store for a while now. She'd commission custom work from me a lot, so we've kinda developed a relationship via this around work. So yea, she just mentioned to me that she was looking to get a new SIM and would I build it? I knew I'd get freedom so I was pretty much up for it from the start.

What were her stated objectives?

Hern: She didnt really have 100% solid ideas. I had to talk with Nur the whole way to solidify what she wanted, etc. I'm not sure I'd do this without freedom, basically. She's a dreamer, really, but it's great. Wouldn't have it any other way. I see it as her showcasing the artists she likes. We both want to show that Second Life can be a lot more than just orgy rooms and shopping malls. Come try this... It's fun. Follow me, plz princess.

He then weaved his way (he uses an endearing kinda tipsy walking animation) over to one side of the building and invited me to sit on a sphere.


Sit on one of these for a bouncy ride to the ground level

Hern: For me, the time is always "now." I love what is new. I don't like looking back all the time. I'm excited by technology. We should be celebrating Second Life and virtual worlds and all the new possibilities they bring us, not building toy towns, and little versions of Real Life: cars, houses with kitchens...



Hern: I have this idea. How often do you zoom right out from a SIM, like to see it all? When I was doing this I thought people should be able to zoom out and then the surfaces of the SIM can have buttons and hold info, like a giant 3D website, basically. That would make it really elegant. If you go back to the scale of an avatar, all these surfaces are also really nice spaces for your avatar to be in... getting that connection in scales could be interesting.

By the way, to fully experience Poetik Velvets, you simply must, must, must disable camera constraints. Only in this way will you be able to free your camera and zoom way back to view the sim from above and all sides. This is something everyone in Second Life should learn how to do.


Thank you, Torley, for your smart and fun tutorials!

If there aren't too many people on the sim, please increase your draw distance so that items will render for you at greater distances.

Increase your Draw Distance
> Edit
> Preferences
> Graphics
> Check the "Custom" box if hasn't been already
> Use the slider to go to 512m (the higher, the laggier, but it's worth it unless you are in a laggy situation)
> Hit the OK button and close
IMPORTANT: Many people forget to set the Draw Distance lower after they've been maxing it out. I keep it at about 200m most times these days, and increase it when needed.

Music to work by is of critical importantance to Hern, and he shared the stream that he used throughout the three months of creation: http://205.188.215.225:8018/, which I thought was mighty generous of him, since most people keep their stream sources private like a great hand of cards.

Hern: It would be pretty selfish of me to keep them all to myself. This radio station was a huge influence on my work. They were in Second Life a while ago but not anymore. I may try to coax them back soon though. This station makes me more intelligent, lol. I don't really have words for what I make, but music does a great job of explaining things I think.


The Moo Gallery

Was there an "aha" moment?

Hern: Yea, the "aha" moment was about 5 evolutions ago, though, lol.


Hern created about 90% of the textures he used. He has just gotten started on Flickr. You can access his stream here.

How did you alter the water surfaces?

Hern: Mega prim, double layer. Secret recipe ;)

Are the shapes for this silvery wheat-like growth on the sim inspired by kitchen utensils a little bit? (Silly question, I know, but I cook so maybe not so silly). Musical chords?

Hern: I guess I see 'em as kinda receptors or circuitry, but then I see a lot of correlations with nature and technology anyway. Art nouveau and art deco styles definitely reflect that, too.

Hern lives in a British town but has big plans for the not-too-distant-future.

Hern: You know what I'm gonna do :) I'm taking a laptop and going off to Asia, and I'll be working in Second Life from all over the world soon, I hope, via wifi.

Ah, sounds like an adventure and good economy!

Hern: Yea, like my ideal... live in a treehouse and work in a virtual world. I think I can see a way to like travel and earn money from my work in Second Life, which means I don't have to ever stress about work or running out. I don't see it as a holiday, I see it as a lifestyle. I'm treating it like a mission. I'm gonna take a lot of tech with me. I've found a way to run a laptop with solar power.

Theft is an important hindrance. And in the world economy that we are entering now, it is a primary consideration.

Hern: To be honest, what I earn here in Second Life is more than most people earn in many countries in Asia, but I want to get away from the west and its values and priorities. You can't let fear rule you or you'll never do anything. I am of the belief that 90% of human beings are very nice people, and I expect I'll find out I'm right when I travel, too. But yea, I will be equipped up and as secure as I can be for my tech stuff.

Last question. What did you learn from making Poetik that you are taking with you to future creations?

Hern: A lot. Well, for one, I learned I can do it. Also, it has engaged me a lot more closely with the "art" scene in Second Life, something I'd not really been into a great deal before. My first attempt at here... I was very serious and planny, but it didn't work or help anything. Just killed it. I threw that away and just went for it, and it worked out anyway. You have to give yourself time to play, and if your lucky like me, (you'll) have a client who will let you do that. They are rare. Either there's total trust and good communication or it won't work. If it's a build for someone else, it's important if they have specific ideas that you get them out of them, or it will just cause probs later.

~*~

Unlike most builds that I admire, the strong vibrations I'm feeling at Poetik Velvets aren't just about prims and sculpts, or the people who created this place, but also the folks who will inhabit it, as you will appreciate in Lyric Lundquist's - my new obsession and a favorite machinimator's - vid.


poetik velvets from lyric_lundquist on Vimeo.

The parties are slated to start tomorrow at 8am SLT when the sim will be opened to the public and run for 24 hours. Hern will be DJ'ing, too.

8am SLT - Bibdui Babenco
10am SLT - Hern Worsley
12pm SLT - Luigy Balhaus
2pm SLT - Andy Seiling
4pm SLT - Radi Roffo
6pm SLT - Juju Dollinger
8pm SLT - Damon Dollinger
10pm SLT - Dane Koba
12am SLT - TBA
2am SLT - Mr Widget

Slurl effective March 14th at 8am SLT: Teleport here.

The sim will feature the works of Hotel Dare artists (curated by the founder of that concept, Gattina Dumpling), including soror Nishi and artoo Magneto, as well as Alpha Auer, four Yip, Pixel Price, and several others. I'll be telling you more about them over the course of the coming days.


Gattina Dumpling has been hush hush about which artists she will end up featuring at the new Hotel Dare location. We'll have to get it out of her