MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side Takes Shape
Hm, I must have fallen out of favor with the folks at MTV, since I heard about this not from them but from one of the artists involved in the project. What is it? It’s nothing less than Virtual Lower East Side, or vLES, for short, which is basically the implementation of what was to be known as MTV’s Music World. Using Doppelganger’s technology, MTV has built out a more or less street-for-street replica of New York’s Lower East Side, complete with virtual versions of the area’s real clubs and restaurants. This is like the seedy sister world to Virtual Hills and Laguna Beach. Essentially, it’s a 3D virtual world with a MySpace for bands attached. If things are still on course, your band can get promoted from the Web-based social network into the virtual world, if you’re popular enough, with the distant possibility of actually getting into rotation on one of MTV’s channels if you do well enough there. (The site doesn’t say that, but that’s what I was told wehn I was working on the article linked above.) It’s just now in alpha, so you probably can’t get in yet, but the site shows some promising features, including a cool map highlighting the few establishments that have already been built out. But the $64 million question is, Can this gain any traction with young hipsters here and with those who aspire to hipsterdom elsewhwere but who can’t get to the Lower East Side they’ve always wanted to see?
Feeds
ok, I hate it when people do this but nostalgia compels me: 95 Rivington appears to not exist as it is. There should be an art gallery there. Also, next to it, to the west was a pile of rubble that used to be a synagogue but that is not there either. I kind of miss that place and wish they were there, at least in current form. Overall a neat first experience though.
ok, and i hate it when people do *this,* but… hasn’t the LES sort of jumped the shark in terms of hipsterness?
i pretty much hate myself for having written that, and yet i had to.
As you can see here, it’s still in its early phases of development, but I do think that once we get the proper backing, our new virtualization of Virtual Lower East Side will be able to rectify the art gallery, rubble, and hipsterness problems of vLES and LES. Our new VvLES will even contain a true virtualization of the Destroy TV installation in Low East Side’s Fuse Gallery, allowing any visitor the chance to virtually drive the vDTV avatar through a complete virtualization of Second Life (vSL) –including all mirrors back into VvLES– even as all DTV VV action is lifelogged straight to real Flickr!
As you can see here, it’s still in its early phases of development, but I do think that once we get the proper backing, our new virtualization of Virtual Lower East Side will be able to rectify the art gallery, rubble, and hipsterness problems of vLES and LES. Our new VvLES will even contain a true virtualization of the Destroy TV installation in Low East Side’s Fuse Gallery, allowing any visitor the chance to virtually drive the vDTV avatar through a complete virtualization of Second Life (vSL) –including all mirrors back into VvLES– even as all DTV VV action is lifelogged straight to real Flickr!
Early days, long way to go!
Had a look today at vLES. Not bad on first impressions, even tho no one was around apart from some [bots].
How do you handle scalability I wonder?
First in first served like a rl club scene?
Will do a detailed report soon on the Metaverse Music Blog @ http://www.sonicviz.com/blogs/
Dude! You realize that WELLO is totally taking over vLES. I’m surious. Welcome home. With such recent fake hits as “Everyone Wants A Soft Revolution” and “Theory Invades Intelligence” among many other quality fake albums, WELLO can finally get real.
Tiny Christian, Glitchy, Graham Roberts, Tim “Afro Power” Moenk, Baba, and Shadow Wallace, please log in and we can plan our fake strategy. This is going to be so much fun!
Mason, it is trippy to see this after the 10 days of avatar lifelogging at Lit. Speaking of which, Mark, don’t forget about your wife! She’ll be in vLES looking for you. ;)
Amy, there is no shark but shark itself.
If I did’t have to get up to panelize at the MIT virtual worlds conference tomorrow I’d be in there right now. Hopefully I can find a chance in the morning because I’m definitely talking about this!
Victory calls. CW and Pierce, let’s fire up wellohorld.com when I get back and start making generative music. We’ll have a real life following in the city before we know it. Thanks, MTV!
“Our new VvLES will even contain a true virtualization of the Destroy TV installation in Low East Side’s Fuse Gallery, allowing any visitor the chance to virtually drive the vDTV avatar through a complete virtualization of Second Life (vSL) –including all mirrors back into VvLES– even as all DTV VV action is lifelogged straight to real Flickr!”
I had to reboot my brain after reading that.