3pointD.com

3pointD is still trying to find time to get Glitchy Links into the main thread here instead of just letting them sit on the sidebar, but in the meantime we’ve gone ahead and recruited our first proper contributor! Second Life resident Chip Poutine is the author of the Virtual Suburbia blog, where he covers “the product and practice of architecture in the online world of Second Life.” And covers it well, I might add. Chip’s insights into SL builds and builders have been fascinating me for some time now, and his tone seems well suited to the more analytical moments of 3pointD.com.

From his 3pointD profile:

Chip’s professional and research interests examine architecture as sited within a current cultural milieu where the distinctions between the real and the simulated have collapsed. Such examinations lend themselves to a model of practice for architects constructing works that do not exist in the physical world, but rather the one we have come to accept as the virtual, a visceral abstraction born of digital technologies. As tectonic responses to their site conditions, such “unbuilt” works will be held up alongside their physical ancestors and engage them in dialogue as points along the same continuum, namely the phenomenological experience of dwelling in a post-human age. In this spirit, Chip has also humbly ventured forth as a builder in Second Life through his virtual atelier, the Prion Design Group.

Chip’s Real Life avatar is a graduate of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Calgary and has been engaged in building projects, media-generated environments and collaborative technologies for over seven years. He teaches 3D modeling, CAD, and architectural design to Graduate Students of Architecture as a Sessional Instructor.

His hobbies still include yelling at the television.

I’m very much looking forward to getting Chip’s architectural reviews on the blog, but he’ll also be covering 3pointD material outside of Second Life and apart from architecture itself, from time to time. Look for upcoming posts on virtual cell phones and on the first-person shooter architectural scene. And, hopefully, on some of the things Chip has been yelling at his TV.