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The Sundance Channel is coming to the virtual world of Second Life in January, with a virtual premiere of 3pointD’s favorite movie of recent weeks, Four Eyed Monsters, according to a press release. “Sundance Channel’s SL screening room will be used to showcase films, documentaries, shorts and original series and to host unique interactive events with filmmakers and other independent thinkers,” according to the release. The Electric Sheep Company (who sponsor this blog) will be building out the Sundance presence in SL. Like their Aloft project, the Sundance build will also be accompanied by a blog, which will document the construction, provide information on SL itself, and give updates on upcoming events being held at the virtual screening room. All of which sounds very cool to me, especially the opportunity to see new films like Four Eyed Monsters in SL before they’re widely available elsewhere. And how long will it be before we start to see machinima at the Sundance Festival? See you in Park City.

As noted, I did a panel last night on lifelogging with Jerry Paffendorf and Susan and Arin of the film Four Eyed Monsters, which is playing for another week at Cinema Village in New York. I don’t know if anyone had a good idea of what they were going to talk about ahead of time, but the panel turned out to be a lot of fun for us, and seemed to be an interesting experience for the audience, who were happy to share their thoughts with us in turn.

One of the things we touched on was how one expresses identity online, through means like MySpace, YouTube, blogs or your behavior in an online world. One of the things that’s most interesting to me about the film is how Susan and Arin expressed their identities to each other in an offline context. Before they even met, they decided that they’d communicate simply through written notes rather than speaking. Though they speak freely to each other now, the film chronicles some interesting moments in their relationship: not just the moments when one or the other of them found the notes too much to bear, but just the way they unfolded themselves to each other through writing, a much slower process than through speaking, as we normally would. The written word, of course, carries a lot less information than the voice. Not only are there vocal inflections and mannerisms to read, but there’s an element of spontaneity that writing can’t capture. Susan and Arin forgo that channel, though, in favor of getting to know each other through the much narrower band of text. As Jerry pointed out, it’s almost as if their relationship took place in text chat. (more…)

Rivers Run Red sends word of the second annual Avalon Film Festival they’re holding this week in the virtual world of Second Life, in association with 4 Talent and The Guardian. Through December 11th, you can watch 80 different short films — including dramas, documentaries, animated films and machinima — in what sounds like a very cool »venue«, an enormous Zeppelin airship, floating high above Avalon Island. There’s even a cute little festival guide, in PDF format, that you can download. A number of Second Life films will be on display (check the guide for scheduling), as well as short documentaries with cool-sounding names like Subverting the City (shown here). If it gives us a peek into something called the Office of Subversive Architecture, I’m all for it.

Check out SecondCast, Episode #42, in which Johnny Ming roams the halls of the 2006 Machinima Festival of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. (I was there too, but would only sit still to be interviewed by Johnny about the New York City “Pay Walker’s Rent” Marathon.) There was some great machinima on display, and some interesting characters on the podcast, as always. Unfortunately, though we were all rooting for Pierce Portocarrero’s excellent Game Over to win one of the several awards for which it was nominated, Pierce will have to wait until next year. That’s understandble, though, in an environment in which a film about restroom etiquette wins the prize for best writing.

Two new episodes of SecondCast, Johnny Ming’s weekly podcast about the virtual world of Second Life, on which I’m a regular co-host, just hit the pipes. Episode 40 is one of our regular newscasts — though a particularly cogent and informative one, for a change. Episode 39, on the other hand, is a horse of an entirely different color, being our first full-length machinima podcast, in anticipation of the upcoming Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences annual machinima festival, being held this weekend. Johnny, Torrid, Lordfly, Cris, moo Money and I spend some time checking out recent Second Life machinima entries — in a style that may remind you of a certain television show that featured silhouetted avatars viewing other people’s movies. NOTE: Don’t forget to check out the machinima festival in Second Life this Thursday, when a preview of some SL work will be running. Read more at Rik Riel’s blog.

Second Life resident Nobody Fugazi flags a press release from interactive ad agency Centric announcing the opening of its headquarters in the virtual world, at »Maui (252, 40, 23)«. It sounds like Centric already has interesting projects going: “One project, for a major entertainment company, integrates themes and prizing from a popular science fiction television series with a network of devices built in-world. Another involves bringing the work of a popular sculptor into Second Life.” The company’s Second Life strategy is to keep the virtual world green, by buying “small land parcels typically used for display advertising, combin[ing] them into larger parcels, and replac[ing] the display ads with parks. The only indication that these parks are Centric properties is a small, discreet monument.” Eight Centric parks are already set up or being developed, including one at »Eson (164, 222, 78)«. It’s not much of a bulwhark against the surrounding 16m3 plots, but it’s something. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to seeing which sculptor and which sci-fi series is coming into Second Life.

The Shakespearean virtual world being built by Ted Castronova at Indiana University will run on the Multiverse platform, or so hears gamedev Raph Koster. Koster also links to a CNet story by Daniel Terdiman that sheds more light on MMO, which is to be known as Arden and is being built with the help of a grant from the Macarthur Foundation. Daniel’s interview with Ted goes into some detail about the characteristics of the massively multiplayer online game Ted envisions. Mystical bards, almost no healers, rare Shakespearean soliloquy drops, emergent governance entities — but no magical fireballs or storms. (Where’s our Prospero?) In any case, excellent stuff. It will be interesting to see what kind of research information Ted can wrest from his players (for that’s the plan).

SLBoutique’s FlipperPA Peregrine flags a Slashdot post about the fact that World of Warcraft will be featured in tonight’s season premiere of South Park, of all things. Check out the video clip. As Flip points out, this is probably the first mainstream appearance of machinima. Here’s Blizzard’s press release about the episode, which sees Cartman, Kyle, Kenny et al. charged with saving WoW itself from the depredations of “a renegade player.” A very interesting mashup of virtual worlds as well as entertainment media. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ron Howard reportedly has a television show in the works that features a massively multiplayer online game, and James Cameron is said to be making a film that will be shot partly within a virtual world. Look for 3pointD this fall at a theater near you.

Second Life resident Pierce Portocarrero, one of the virtual world’s most gifted creators of the in-world filmmaking art known as machinima, has been on hiatus of late. He returns this week with a new piece that’s even better than the ones I’ve seen before. Check out Game Over, which aired in-world as part of the latest monthly machinima festival run by Alt-Zoom Studios. Seemingly a parable of love in the age of self-replicating objects (or something like that), the short film features some truly creative character models, an excellently ambiguous plot and ending, and acting that’s conveyed very well through animations and completely without dialogue. It’s a really excellent piece, including in its camerawork and editing. All we need now is for credit rolls to come to machinima, so we’d know if it was Pierce doing all the work or whether there are other people who deserve some kudos as well. Whatever the case, it’s nice stuff, and we look forward to more.

Wayne Ashley, who helped curate a set of recent workshops and symposia known as Breaking the Game, sends along a link to what looks like an interesting collection of recorded conversations, interviews and guided tours from those sessions, which were devoted to things like the intersection of the real and virtual where 3D design is concerned, “virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience,” and ways to “open up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where virtual technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and dynamic ways.” I’ve dipped into a few of the recordings here and there and they do promise a rich trove of thought to mine. Jerry, of course, seems to have weaseled his way onto the roster, as ever, but there are also a number of less ubiquitous thinkers you may not have encountered before, whose thoughts are just as well worth watching. Enjoy.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, fresh from the 3D printer and ready for his close-up, it’s the Walker Spaight avatar we’ve all been waiting for! While I haven’t yet seen him in person, Walker was produced by the Fabjectory 3D printing service of Second Life resident Hal9k Andalso (aka Mike Buckbee). I’m eager to see what Walker is like in real life, having occupied him virtually for almost two years now. (Is this a 3D model of Walker, or of me?) I love the idea of a 3D printing service for avatars, especially in full color; seems a sure thing to take off among SL residents, who are already obsessed with their in-world appearance. You can see a full-length pic of Walker after the jump. Both images are stolen from the Fabjectory set on Flickr. (more…)

With the 2006 Burning Man Project marking its first steps into 3pointD territory via Google Earth, Second Life’s annual homage to the event is already well established and has enjoyed an exceptional amount of coverage this year thanks to GavinLeigh Wake’s Burninglife.com. And yet while the glowing embers of the festival fade to black perhaps we might take one last opportunity to work the bellows. The theme this year was ‘The Future: Hope and Fear’. At the time of the event it wasn’t going to be ‘the future’ until the event was over, so it seems appropriate to discuss it now-er, yeah. A few builders may have also mistook the theme to read ‘Ambivalence: Ban Lines and Plywood’, however that’s not to say the festival was devoid of compelling experiences. Far from it.

At its best Burning Life, like any time-certain event in Second Life, is intensified by its ephemerality and the knowledge that hundreds of person hours of avatar effort will at some point implode to inventory or scatter throughout the grid. What sets it apart is its subject matter, where residents have the potential to be not merely amused but also confronted by deeper and more personal visions on the part of the creators. For a brief time the playa is a condenser, saturated with inspiration and perspiration, where boundaries are drawn on the endless asymmetric expanse of the mind, creating a momentary compound from which to contemplate the world and our place within it.

These qualities were exemplified, even amplified, in funhaus Stilman. (more…)

After chatting with Hal9k Andalso of the Fabjectory 3D printing service, we met up in Second Life and Hal snapped some shots of my avatar to prep for a 3D printing session. What this really means is that I stood on a pose stand while he ripped OpenGL and texture data out of the Second Life client using OGLE (Eyebeam’s OpenGL Extractor). Hal sent along some cool shots of the avatar model outside SL, in some 3D modeling software that’s being used to clearn stuff up before the actual printing commences. (Click the image above for a larger version on Flickr.) “This is a bit of an experiment of us as we’ve never even attempted Prim hair before (and might never again),” Hal9k writes. “Your sunglasses were an unfortunate casualty as well as I couldn’t get something that looked ok for them.” No worries, I’ll just keep wee Walker out of the light.

A few of us from the Brooklyn metaverse crowd went to see Four-Eyed Monsters last night, a very interesting feature film about a young New York couple who end up documenting their every move via videotape and handwritten notes, only because they’ve decided not to actually speak to each other. While the film is not a documentary, it was made by the couple who it’s about, and their real lives and dramatized lives do begin to converge toward the end of the film. While it’s a movie about relationships (you know, the kind where two people “slowly start to meld into one beast that has 2 mouths, 4 eyes and 8 limbs and takes up 2 seats on the subway!!!”), it’s in greater measure a movie about the act of recording itself, and what it means at a moment in history when you can store, play back and share as much of your life as you like, with as many people as are willing to pay attention. In this case, Susan and Arin have created a virtual version of their real life together, and it’s interesting to ask what the differences between the two may be, if any — especially in light of similar trends in things like lifelogging, and in the fictionalization of a life like lonelygirl15’s. And if you stay with this long-winded post all the way to the end, you get to think about how this kind of logging of our lives might help enhance them in some future 3pointD world. (more…)

The excellently named Fabjectory is the latest service offering to produce a physical model of an object that exists only in the virtual world of Second Life. For $75 and up, you can get a 3D model of your avatar, complete with detailed color textures applied. The project comes from one Michael Buckbee (aka SL’s Hal9k Andalso), who also runs Second411, a third-party search site for Second Life. I’m guessing the Fabjectory will produce better results than the other 3D milling service that was offered to SL residents, only because that one more or less withdrew its offer in the end for artistic reasons. I’m not sure of the exact 3D printing technology being used here (an email is out to Michael), but the site says the models “are built from a plaster material that is built up in layers to form the right shape.” Tao Takashi has a good roundup of the situation on his blog, and Amazon’s Jeff Barr has more. Order today.

Wow, look at all those cars. Even better, watch this 3-minute video of them. [Via Jim Rossignol.] You’ll be surprised: seeing 1,000 non-colliding cars stream around a road course in the excellent racing game Trackmania Sunrise actually gives a look at something like an organized system tending toward chaos, or at least toward entropy. Beginning as a well ordered fan of hoods, roofs and airfoils (watch for this moment at the start of the race, just after the title card reading, “1K Project II”), the cars end up in a chaotic mess by the end, stuck into a pond at all angles. It’s a beautiful mess, though, and shows how even a single-player game can become something more than the sum of its software, in the right hands. (more…)

But a few visions of Ground Zero in Google Earth.

Back in March of this year Google lit up the blogosphere (including here at 3pointD.com and over at OGLE Earth) with the purchase of @Last Software, makers of the SketchUp 3D modeler. Their strategy was to utilize SketchUp as a free and easy means to expand the base 3D content available in the Google Earth viewer, create a website called the 3D Warehouse as a storage area for user submitted models, and provide a 3D Warehouse Network Link to glue all of the parts together.

Six months later, Phil Collinson’s World Trade Center (Under Attack) is one of the top ten most popular models in the 3D Warehouse. In fact, the 3D Warehouse Network Link presents Google Earth users the option to view no less than 43 additional structures for the WTC site, ranging from the original twin towers, the new Freedom Tower, several amateur design proposals, an over-sized aerosol can, the twin towers under attack by a giant cow…well, you get the idea. (more…)

Second Life resident Tao Takashi Rik Riel recently stumbled on a very cool build in the virtual world, a re-creation of ships and other gear from the short-lived but disproportionately excellent television series Firefly, which was created by Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. (The TV show was created by Joss Whedon, not the SL build.) You can visit a huge replica of Serenity (the ship after which the movie of the series was named) in Burnet (128, 144, 46) [<–SL link]. The ship is so big (I’m floating just at the trailing edge of the blue panels in the pic above) that there’s plenty of room inside for various locations to have been re-created in striking, shiny detail. If you loved this show, it’s definitely worth a visit. Even if you didn’t, it’s a great build. And if you’ve never seen Firefly or Serenity, get thee to a video store. Now.

Giff Constable of the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) has posted a really perceptive critique of the challenges of mounting a play in the virtual world of Second Life. “Putting on a play using Second Life is a bit like trying to crack a walnut with a refrigerator,” Giff says. I’m not going to try to disentagle the simile, but I love the image. Giff points out the limitations of humanoid avatars and text chat for conveying the kinds of emotions that plays need to get across, and ponders a more Second Life-like possibility:

What else can heighten emotional content so the audience engages more fully? How about the actor forms themselves? Instead of using the humanoid, mesh-based frames most people wear in Second Life, how about using less-realistic, prim-based characters where emotions and expressions can be exaggerated in an almost bunraku style? I also think it would be useful to hearken back to silent movies where everything was done with motion and music/soundtrack.

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Live theatre has been a bit of a dead issue in the virtual world of Second Life until now. Occasional projects come and go, but nothing of any scale seems to get off the ground — perhaps because of the difficulty of operating avatars and “listening” to a performance in chat. Reuben Steiger’s virtual world services company Millions of Us is determined to see it done, however, and is holding an evening of live theatre tonight in the Millions of Us sim. Rather than produce its own plays, though, Millions has issued a challenge to SL residents — complete with cash prizes — to create plays they can perform live at the New Globe Theatre this evening.

The performances will begin at 6pm SL time, though there’s apparently been only one full scale entrant so far. “From the Shadows” was written by SL resident Enjah Mysterio, and features a cast including Eilen McTeague, Lucipher Baphomet, Selador Cellardoor and Ida Keen. The performance will be directed by Osprey Thereian, who also designed the sets. [UPDATE: Reuben has posted a video of a portion of the production on YouTube, complete with voice added in. Check it out.] (more…)

The colorfully redesigned we make money not art links to an interesting experiment that was conducted recently at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in San Jose. SIMVeillance brings passers-by on the plaza in front of the San Jose Museum of Art, where the festival was held, into the 3D virtual environment of The Sims 2 video game. (more…)

Graphic novelist Warren Ellis (author of, among many, many others, the very cool Fell, for those who haven’t seen it before, which is illustrated by the outstanding Ben Templesmith and pictured above) has finally knuckled under to temptation and set up shop in the virtual world of Second Life. “After six or seven months of just peering at it occasionally (and finding out where the good music is streamed into SL), I’ve decided to make a little side project out of moving around SL and looking for the seeds of the future, if any, in it,” he writes over at his blog. Drop in over at Rogal (174, 120, 124) [<–SL link] and convince him to write an SL-centric book. We can’t wait.

Virtual snail race, or mere hallucination?

A week or two ago, I found myself describing the greater metaversapolitan area to a friend who had never heard of things like Second Life or There.com, virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online games, and who had only passing knowledge of apps like Google Earth and the concept of mirror worlds. I told her about the little business boomlet the sector seems to be experiencing these days, and the potential such places and applications hold for not only increasing our knowledge of the real world and the ways we connect there, but for making possible new modes of being and richer ways of interacting. A great place to get your fantasy on, and you can pull down six figures there, to boot, or so the marketing goes. Regardless, I said, it was exciting to be a part of it, to see this new thing unfold before my eyes, to be reporting on it from the front lines, so to speak, and to ride along and see just where it might go — even if it’s headed for a fiery crash, as some would argue, or a more mundane sputtering thud.

Her reaction was interesting: “It sounds like you’re living through the 1960s of technology,” quoth she. This strikes me as pretty spot on. (more…)

3pointD has jury duty today (grrr…) but readers may want to dial over to the Second Life Herald in my absence to read the profile of SL resident Chance Takashi I posted there last night. Chance was the high bidder in an auction to benefit the American Cancer Society as part of the Second Life Relay for Life held recently in the virtual world. Chance’s bid of L$11,525 — just under US$40 — earns her a glowing profile in the Herald. Fortunately, it’s one that’s well deserved.

Read more at the Herald, and check into Chance’s SL Musings as well. It was actually a pleasure to meet Chance, and I got to have fun with the profile in good Herald fashion, while at the same time exploring some interesting aspects of identity in virtual worlds: While any number of people are one sex in the real world and another in the virtual, Chance, it seems, switches freely back and forth between male and female avatars, further clouding the issue. She’s caused so much consternation among those she regularly meets on the Grid that there’s a bet on about it, so Chance wouldn’t reveal her actual sex. It was interesting to see this gender-switching among (possible) gender-switching with Chance, and get to hear her thoughts on the issue. Plus she’s charming in general, and a great builder of steampunk gadgetry. And (for a gender-disconnected avatar) cute!

Sony is introducing a new GPS device that will let you easily add geolocative information to digital photo files and browse your snaps via a Google Maps app using Sony’s Picture Motion Browser. According to a press release, the two-ounce GPS-CS1 GPS device ($150 when it goes on sale on SonyStyle.com in September) is about three and a half inches long and simply clips onto your belt loop or keychain and records your location over time, as near as I can figure. You then import the GPS information, and some Sony image-tracking software matches locations to photos based on timestamps.

Once synchronized, your photos can become virtual push pins on an online map by activating the Picture Motion Browser software bundled with the latest Sony cameras and camcorders released after July. You can easily add new photos and coordinates to the mapping web site, courtesy of Google Maps, and showcase years of globe-trotting.

Neat. Would love to hear more about this, if anyone has any links.

During my brief stay at the University of California at Berkeley, one of my favorite classes was an introduction to the history of science. (Favorite in theory; I’m not sure how many sessions I actually showed up for.) Since then, I’ve always enjoyed reading science and technology histories, stuff like What the Dormouse Said, for instance (which made it even cooler to get to talk with Doug Engelbart). Now there’s a new history of GIS (geographical information science) out from the publishing arm of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., a private-sector GIS research firm. The book is called Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS, and tells of a convergence of cartographers, artists and computer scientists at Harvard in the 1960s that eventually led to GIS as the science we know today. Sounds like good reading. And it comes in a nice multimedia package, as well. More information from ESRI. [Via press release, quoted below.] (more…)

Why put a pin in the map when you can just put a pin in the place itself. From the AP:

You know how some people mark a spot on a map with a push pin? That’s the idea behind a proposed sculpture in Davenport, Iowa. Officials want to mark the spot where two bike trails coverage with a 25-foot-tall push pin. But not everyone wants a giant push pin along the Mississippi River. Kelli Grubbs, a member of the city’s Levee Improvement Commission, calls it hideous. Mayor Ed Windborn wants the commission to give it serious consideration. He calls it a fun design.

Go, Ed! [Via All Points Blog.]

The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences is once again holding its annual Machinima Festival and Machinima Awards (known as “the Mackies”), on November 4-5 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. In recent years the festival has had a bit of trouble finding a home, so it’s great to know that the recent rise in interest in films made within 3D online worlds has given machinima enough cachet to once again land at the very cool Museum of the Moving Image. “Throughout each day, attendees will be able to view Machinima works, interact with Machinima demos, as well as speak with the artists themselves,” according to the announcment. The Academy will begin accepting entries on July 24th, so get in your favorite game and start shooting. And check out what’s probably the best collection of Machinima on the Web at the Academy’s sister site, Machinima.com. [Via Clickable Culture.]

Second Life resident Quirky McArdle, who in real life is executive producer of The Infinite Mind, a popular public radio show on health and science, sends along news that the show will soon open a virtual headquarters and broadcast facility in Second Life, where its episodes will be broadcast, including live guest appearances. Launching August 3, a series of live tapings are scheduled to be broadcast in-world, hosted by John Hockenberry, including a visit from Suzanne Vega, who will be the first major recording artist to perform live in SL avatar form, according to the press release; an interview with novelist Kurt Vonnegut (who is notoriously interview-shy); and a chat with cool futurist Howard Rheingold. The interviews will be broadcast nationally starting August 9 in a two-part series on virtual communities. (more…)

Henrik Linden at the Second Life Creativity blog has an interesting call out for former residents of Second Life, for his project studying creativity in Linden Lab’s virtual world.

To help me see a fuller picture I would really like to get in contact with former residents. It is no big secret that a substantial number of people come to Second Life and after spending relatively time there; they leave and often never return. If this sounds like you or you know someone that did this then I would love to hear from you. See About for some contact info or leave a comment.

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No sooner did the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) re-launch SLBoutique, the shopping site for items created in the virtual world of Second Life, than they find themselves stumbling over the kind of intellectual property issues that crop up in SL every day. Apparently, an SL resident had listed a virtual reproduction of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali painting Landscape With Butterflies on the site. But when the Salvador Dali Museum got wind of this, they sent a letter to the Sheep, asking them to remove the IP-rights violating reproduction from the site — which the Sheep, quite properly, promptly did. Dali’s rights-holders have been notoriously tight about this kind of thing, as I recall (though I can’t find the link at the moment), as have the rights-holders of Joan Miro’s work. What the episode indicates, though, is that SL, the Sheep and SLBoutique are getting a higher profile, and that the many other IP violations in SL may soon come in for similar treatment. (more…)

The San Jose Museum of Art will put a private island from the virtual world of Second Life on display in August, and submissions for artworks to fill the virtual space are currently being sought. The display will coincide with the ZeroOne festival of “art on the edge” and the 13th annual International Symposium of Electronic Arts, being held August 7-13 in San Jose. (more…)