Send Me Your Mixed Reality Profile Photos!
Here's what I hope is a fun challenge for everyone who reads New World Notes:
- Log into Second Life, and position the SL camera on your avatar.
- Sit next to the viewer display, and take a photo featuring you and your avatar side by side.
- Write a short description of where you are in the real world, and where your avatar is in Second Life. Include your avatar name for credit, and if you like, link to your web site or SL location.
- Send the photo and description to me, either as an attachment (less than one meg, please) or a link to Flickr/Koinup/etc, via hamlet@secondlife.com,or via private message to me on Twitter, or on Plurk.
- I'll publish a select number of my favorite photos on New World Notes every Monday.
What you're looking at above is me in my San Francisco living room, on the big red chair where I usually write New World Notes; yes, I'm in deep need of a haircut, and the photo is a touch blurry, and I'm sure my readers can do better with their own submissions. But hopefully it gives you an idea of what I have in mind.
Why am I doing this? Several reasons:
I'm continually impressed (and humbled) by the diverse range of NWN readers I meet in real life, people of every background from every location, and I'd love a way to offer everyone who visits this blog a glimpse of that. At the same time, I'm continually amazed by the breadth of talent, intelligence, and empathy Residents have, when I meet them as avatars, and I'm always curious to know a little bit about them on the other side of the screen. The book Alter Ego did a great job playing with a version of this conceit, and the Spontaneously Human Flickr series extended it even further into the SL community (at least in one direction.) I'd love to see more.
Other notes:
- Yes, Immersionists who'd rather not reveal their full atomic self can obscure their face, but please still make sure the photo reveals something about it!
- I'd prefer your real life location be a place where you log into SL at least sometimes, but I sure wouldn't reject a dramatic "logging into SL from an amazing place" photo.
- Sure, modest post-processing of the photo is fine.
- Give serious thought to whether you're ready to have your real life self publicly linked to your avatar. One a photo goes online, it's there forever.
I have no idea whether this challenge will generate five or five hundred responses, but I'm curious to see the results.
Other questions? Please post in Comments.
*sits back and waits for the extreme ironing shot* There's got to be someone out there who climbs mountains with an ironing board and logs into SL with their free hand as they iron, right?!
Posted by: moggs oceanlane | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 10:37 AM