New World Notes

Speaking In Oz: Two Machinima-Based Second Life Talk Shows From Australia

I recently did two SL-based talk show appearances to chat up my book, both coincidentally hosted by Australian Residents.  I talk Resident frustrations with Lindens (and vice versa), a 3D pot plant carnival, and more with the lovely and talented Paisley Beebe of SLCN.TV's Tonight Live-- watch it here.  Shortly before that, the gregarious Angelico Babii had me on Metaverse-tv.com's Late Show, talking virtual political campaigns, the birth of the metaverse, and beyond. Watch that one here.  (By the way, the story I tell Angelico about the kidnapped monkey, the timorous terrorists, and Baccara Rhodes' summer cottage in the war zone is here.)  Both great hosts, asking smart questions, in quality productions worth a full watch; I'm fascinated by the devotion to creating a TV-like setting.  Interestingly enough, though the interviews were conducted in voice, neither host used the Second Life VOIP client, preferring Skype instead. (Lip animations were added in post-production.)

Alien Where: Moody Machinima From Sagitar Spengler

This lovely SL machinima by Sagittar Spengler starts like a traditional sci-fi movie, then gradually segues into a dreamy and melancholy paean to loneliness.  Excellent use of Foley sound effects and a track by Enigma, merged to gorgeously composed photography. 

I first spotted it, by the way, on the SL machinima Twitter feed recently launched by Geuis Dassin, a nice resource for finding the latest machinima. 

Harry Potter And The Professor of Cambridge: Henry Jenkins Talks Fan Culture In Second Life

Henry Jenkins as Dumbledore (mash-up from Henry's blog and holymeatballs.org)

I got your convergence culture-- right here.  This is the avatar of Professor Henry Jenkins, head of MIT's Comparative Studies department, and the man who literally wrote the book on the collision between old and new media.  He recently entered Teen Second Life as a guest of Global Kids, speaking about fan culture, specifically that based around the Harry Potter universe.  Here's a video of his insightful, wide-ranging talk.  At one point, he talks about J.K. Rowling's recent efforts to control her story and her characters, arguing that at a certain level, they should belong to her readers.  Appropriate to that topic, Henry's avatar was made up to resemble Professor Dumbledore, and his lecture was interspersed with Potter fan music, which he gamely danced to, along with teens made up to resemble other Potter characters (joined by a robot, and, of course, a Big Daddy from BioShock.)  It's not often that an intellectual of his caliber gets to see his ideas turned into such an immersive, tangible form-- or for that matter, do the twist with them.

Image mash-up credits: Henryjenkins.org and holymeatballs.org.

The Second Life Of Star Wars: In Fan-Made Mini-MMORPG, Metaverse Meets Lucas-verse

Game developers haven't catered very well to Star Wars fans who want to live in George Lucas' world.  While there's innumerable action and strategy titles based on the franchise, and the single-player RPG Knights of the Old Republic series is beloved, fans who joined Sony Online's Star Wars Galaxies hoping to roleplay together were soon disappointed.  Though lead designer Raph Koster originally envisioned a  complex society where players could live and work in the Star Wars milieu, Sony eventually revamped it as an action game-- provoking player mutiny.  (Among the disgruntled roleplayers, by the way, was the leader of a large Galaxies players association, who left for Second Life, re-dubbed herself Suzanne Soyinka, and founded a popular mini-MMO of her own: City of Lost Angels.)

Which brings us to this tightly edited trailer by Atticus Jetaime, introducing SWRP, the latest fan-made Star Wars roleplaying community in SL (there are many groups, past and present.) 

Cinemax Launches Molotov Alva Machinima Contest

On May 15th, the awesome Second Life documentary Molotov Alva and His Search For The Creator will premiere on Cinemax-- here's the broadcast schedule, listing it to air three times in May-- the most prominent airing of a machinima production ever.  The filmmaker, my pal Douglas Gayeton, just sent along the details to a machinima contest Cinemax is sponsoring as part of their promotion.  Over $3000 in prizes, and it looks like the entry can be made in any online world. Go here to check it out. 

Metaverse Blues Machinima

From Japan to Canada to what looks like a seedy joint in New Orleans, this is a great live music concert machinima from Osprey Therian, featuring Komuso Tokugawa on vocals and guitar, and Canuck Resident Hathead Rickenbacker on keys.  I love Osprey's tight tracking and panning shots, moving right into and through the action-- it captures the experiential feel of live music.  With the rich photography and what seems like an 8 foot skeleton voodoo king on stage, some shots look like they were actually shot in the Big Easy.  (As opposed to somewhere in the intercontinental metaverse stream.)

Ex-Lindens Dish: Cory Ondrejka And Me On Metanomics

The cartoon cat is an internationally renown technologist; the giant gorilla is a reputed professor from Cornell University.  This is video of my Monday appearance on the Metanomics show with fellow ex-Linden Cory Ondrejka, where Cornell's Beyer Sellers takes us through a variety of Second Life topics, from its very early origins (Cory tells a couple great stories I hadn't heard before), to where it is now, from the ongoing trademark controversy, to the recent reduction in land sales, to SL's power elite. As always, the audience was just as whimsically diverse, a living demonstration of what I call Bebop Reality.  So while we talked, my camera roved through the crowd, noting the babes, the angels, the attentive jaguar, and, of course, Veeyawn Spoonhammer, a robot campaigning for Obama. Click the thumbnails for a closer look, and thanks to all who showed up.

Watch it here.

Win L$20,000 In Koinup's Machinima Music Video Contest

The virtual world social network with a great community of enormously talented SL content creators is sponsoring a machinima music video contest-- deadline is April 29, with the winner claiming L$20,000 and a MachinimaCam to make even better movies.  Several top SL musicians have made their songs available for the entrants, two visually gifted judges, CodeBastard Redgrave and Tao Takashi, will deliberate, and I can't wait to see the results.  Go here for all the rules.

Update, 4/16:  With impeccable timing, Orange Island is hosting several days of machinima instructional classes, conversations, and viewings.  Schedule here.  (Mahalo, Yesterday Demain!)

Experiencing Chouchou: Idoru Popstars Open Immersive, Cinematic Music Isle

Photo by Hamlet, letterbox heads-up display by Chouchou

In earlier days, Chouchou performed their songs on a floating island covered in crystal trees and eternally falling snowflakes.  But the duo of Arabesque Choche and juliet Heberle wanted a still more impossible place to suit their music, and recently, relocated to a dream. 

Last week, that is to say, Chouchou opened their own island.  (Direct SLURL teleport at this link.)  Described by wide horizons, vast expanses of water, and half-submerged mysteries, this is where they will perform from now on. 

However, the experience isn't confined to the location. 

BioShock Rock: Keiko's Witty Spin On The Classic Videogame

This mixed reality music video features an excellent song from renowned Second Life musician Keiko Takamura that's a geek's mash-up delight: The machinima part of the video was created in Second Life, for one thing, but it's entirely referencing Bioshock, last year's acclaimed RPG/shooter hybrid.  On another level, it's sung from the point of view of BioShock's hero and his, well, complicated friendship with Atlas, the embattled rebel of Rapture city who guides him over the radio.  (You only catch all the song's references if you've finished the game before listening.)  At still another level, Keiko is actually singing about all the friends you're not sure you should trust.

That's intentional, as it turns out.  She wrote "Same Sad Tune" while watching her boyfriend play BioShock, Keiko tells me, while also thinking of "[a] guy who kept on offering to help me out at a time when I really needed it, but flaked out on me and disappeared off the face of the earth whenever I thought he was serious about keeping his word."  Her brilliant move is connecting these two totally unrelated elements, and it's testament to why Keiko Takamura's music has such a passionate following in Second Life.  Her success in the metaverse, she says, is also why she recently moved to San Francisco, to build her music career in both realities.

The Making Of *The Making of Second Life* Machinima

When I asked Lainy Voom to create a machinima promotion for my book, I had a hidden agenda: a chance to work with one of machinima's finest practitioners (as evidenced here and here), and an opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how she creates such extraordinary imagery.  One of my favorite shots from her promo is this one on the left, a quick upward panning shot.  Not because I like looking at my avatar, but for its smooth, subtle elegance.  Most filmmakers, I think, would have been satisfied with just a static shot, but not Lainy.  She brought me in-world to create it, and it took about an hour.  Here's why:

New World Tableau: Raul Crimson's Private Galaxy

Raul keeps a little solar system in his backyard, and it's where he goes to find his center and clear his head.  "I built that on my home in SL and is not open to the public," he explains. "I use it as a space to relax and meditate."  He did make this gorgeous machinima post card with an informal assist from David Bowie and a nod to Stanley Kubrick.  And while his particular star system is an exclusive one, you can buy one of your own: "The 'Solar System' itself is built by Gregory Engebretsen, he sells it (I found it in OnRez). The astronaut outfit is a freebie by Nicky Ree (you can find it at her store in Deco sim)."  To make the planets orbit, says Raul, "Gregory uses a rotation texture script in each planet, the planets and the sun are linked, so he uses an object rotation script for all together. Also he is using some particle effects for the sun and for a couple of comets."

See the full Tableau series here; submission guidelines after the break.

In The Club: Kromatic As Real World Nightclub Prototype

While nightclubs are numerous in Second Life, and many (like the sub-orbital Inspire) succeed as only-in-SL social spaces, I rarely come across clubs that might work in both realities.  Kromatic is one of those, as this cool video featuring DJ Ionic and a great, Boogie Nights-worthy crane shot attests.  With its clean layout, abstract wall art, and abundant semi-private spaces, were Kromatic constructed in Manhattan or Los Angeles tomorrow, it would attract lines around the block by next week. 

As it happens, the club seems to cater primarily to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Residents; on a brief visit, I met a girl from Barcelona named Ev Depres, tricked out in tattoos and an armband stuffed with dynamite, a fashion style that might best be described as Anarchist Waif.  The other patrons briefly said Hello, then continued chattering in text studded with tildas and other curlicue symbols.

Direct SLURL teleport to Kromatic at this link.

A Nebula For Torley: Dazzling Intergalactic Animation Effect

The Linden of watermelon hues has many fans, but this is probably the first time someone's named an interstellar cloud after him.  Scored to great ambient music also made by the Torlean's creator, this video is "really just a little conceptual test pulling together a few different things I've been doing recently," Aimee Trescothick tells me.  It fuses WindLight glow with texture animations, similar to fog effects she uses outside her gallery.

*The Making of Second Life* Officially Out In Stores-- Here's The Official Promo!

It began 15 months ago, with long bouts of writing, revisions, and still more revisions along the way, but I can finally say these words: My book, The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World, is now for sale in US stores and retail sites, the EU a week later, followed by Japan, Taiwan, and Brazil.  My profound thanks to Ethan Friedman and his stellar team at HarperCollins for making it real, and my agile agent David Fugate for getting it to their hands. 

To launch the metaverse part of the promotion, I'm proud to present this official machinima promo, generously created by machinima auteur Lainy Voom, with music by Torley, and voice narration by Tamara Russell.  The promo is several stories from the book, dramatically re-imagined through Lainy's singular vision.  In other words, they're unreal reenactments of virtual events that actually happened.  (Though KallfuNahuel Matador has a cameo appearance as himself.)  Here's the YouTube version.

Capturing Black Swan: Travelogue Machinima by Lainy Voom

Around the time she was completing her machinima masterpiece "The Dumb Man", Lainy Voom also shot this darkly beautiful travelogue devoted to Black Swan, a surreal and haunting island. (Direct SLURL at this link.) "I kept visiting the sim to study the sculptures and take pics," she tells me.  "I wasn't happy with the pics, I was unable to capture what I was experiencing."  She switched to video capture, "and it all seemed to fall into place."

The Mean Girls Guide to Soft Core Machinima

The link in this image and below is totally not safe viewing for work (unless you work at Vivid Entertainment, in which case, it's research), but it provokes a fascinating question that's never been satisfactorily answered: there's a lot of sexual content in Second Life (though considerably less than often assumed); there's definitely a lot of Second Life machinima out there on the Web.  So where's all the machinima porn? 

The Sound of One Avatar of Pronouncing Tibetan

Here's why I love Second Life: Because it contains a Resident named Wam7c Macchi.  And without fanfare, Wam7c Macchi has built an interactive teaching device.  Which helps you learn to speak another language.  Rather, to pronounce it.  Or to be even more precise, to pronounce Tibetan consonants.

Don't believe me?  Watch Mr. Macchi's video demo, or go in-world to try it out for yourself.  (Direct SLURL teleport to his booth at this link.)  You might even visit his real world website.

And here's the thing that keeps me up at nights: If one Resident in half a million has devoted so much time to such a wonderfully particular task, what are the other 499,999 doing?

Imagining "The Dumb Man": SL Machinima Auteur Lainy Voom's Latest Movie

When Lainy Voom first heard Sherwood Anderson's mysterious short story, "The Dumb Man", she says, "It stopped me in my tracks, made me absolutely still while I listened."  It was about death and desire, and it refused easy understanding.  "I like that it raises questions but the questions are never resolved." So the images it evoked lingered in her head for months, until she had her own answers to them.  The result is this machinima (high resolution version above, YouTube version below), easily among the very most ambitious and mesmerizing works of the form. 

There's a lot to say about "The Dumb Man" of Lainy Voom, but as with her first SL machinima, "Tale from Midnight City", which instantly established her as an auteur in the medium, it's probably better to watch first, then read on for more.

Georgia Tech Grad Adds Augmented Reality Feature to Second Life's Open Source Client

How about a first-person shooter that you can play in the real world, or a filmmaker's tool for displaying space ships and flying dragons out of thin air on a small budget?  That's just two immediate applications that spring to mind with Augemented Reality Second Life, a project from a grad student at Georgia Tech (known in SL as Tobey McElroy, supervised by his professor, known as Blair Potluck.)  As the name suggests, it's a technology that lets you export and merge SL video with real world video in such a way that the image appears in proper perspective, and proportion-- in other words, to make Second Life elements convincingly look like they're part of the real world.  This is achieved, Tobey tells me, with a "fiducial marker", a pattern printed on a sheet of paper that enables their program to properly match the SL feed to the RL video.  (See the YouTube video above, where a moving SL car seems to ride on the surface of a coffee table, or the image to the left.)

But that's only the first part of their Augmented Reality project, because they've also taken a headset display and mounted it with a video camera and a tracking sensor.  The sensor monitors the wearer's motion and position, while the display feeds Second Life video into the headset.

The Right Way to Innovate Second Life Machinima

This mysterious and gorgeously noir-ish video suddenly cropped up on my SL machinima feed, but the visuals were so unique and unlike anything I'd ever seen in the genre, at first I didn't believe it actually was created in Second Life.  But something about the gravelly voice coming out of the tracksuit goombata gave me a clue, because the last I heard it, it was from a guy selling SL nautical gear with the irresistible slogan, "It's just a f***ing boat."

The work of longtime Second Life machinima creator Trent Hedges, it turns out this clip from "The Right", a short still in development, was even featured at his presentation during the last SLCC.  "The scenes where all shot in SL, yes," Trent tells me. "Lots of greenscreen as the actors and the scenes were separated."  The trick was to take the raw SL-made footage and then in post-production, shape it into something more darkly textured, and tinged with hallucinogenic clarity.

Some Christmas Machinima

Ravishal Bentham created this evocative bagatelle of the metaverse in yuletide, perfectly scored by Garibaldi; I especially like how the long shots vividly convey the skating animations and local lighting, transforming mere 3D graphics into a true wintry idyll.

New World Tableau: olmia Tenk in Pera Vista

olmia took this seemingly mundane Christmas tableau in Pera Vista, but it comes with several twists.  Miss Tenk for example, is actually pictured here, but you need to squint to spot her-- she's the exotic plant next to the snowman.

"The Wollemi pine bulb avatars posing under a Xmas tree is interesting," she says, "because the Wollemi pine is being promoted as a good Xmas trees this time of the year."

But that's only the start, because she was in Pera Vista (working with the island's owner Mozy Pera) to shoot machinima that will ultimately go into a series of videos that will comprise her Master of Fine Art's thesis.   

"Currently filming the first machinima around the grid in SL but I anticipate all five machinima will make up a storyboard for the 'Olmia' script," she explains. 

Her script is here, an ambitious story that begins in the Jurassic era and ends in 1994.  She recently uploaded some absolutely gorgeous test footage from the first part, depicting olmia the plant fearlessly wandering a dinosaur's graveyard.  I can't wait to see the finished movie.

Credit for her avatar after the break-- along with details for submitting your own New World Tableau.

Gorgeous SL House Built to RL Specifications

I just came across this video presenting Bartlett House, a mansion created to real life specifications and featured in the UK Guardian last July.  "The concept was to test the Second Life platform to see how far it could be pushed in terms of supporting an architecture project on this scale," explains Lottie WeAreHere, staffer for a London creative digital agency which shares her surname, and offers it as a showcase.

"It was made using an in-depth brief and scope for what the build should contain, and took approximately two months to build out," she continues.  "What [did] we learn? HUGE amounts.  Mainly around specification to final delivery, just how far the tools in SL could be flexed (this was before the days of sculpties) and that the platform was viable for our commercial company."  Undeniably a work of crystalline beauty and realistic detail, is it also a successful simulation of a real world building with practical applications?  Judge for yourself-- direct SLURL teleport to Bartlett House at this link.

48 Hour Machinima Contest Coming to Second Life-- HBO Director to Help Judge

You might be able to produce a machinima in 48 hours from start to finish, but can the final product impress Molotov Alva, the man whose machinima was acquired by HBO as a series and made the venerable network's Animated Short Subject Oscar contestant?  Metaverse developer (and this blog's Second Life partner) Millions of Us is collaborating with the renowned 48 Hour Film Project to find out.  Molotov will be one of the judges, and the winning short will be shown next March at the Cinequest festival in San Jose-- a great launch pad for an indy filmmaker.

Shooting clock starts on January 11th.  More details at the Millions of Us blog, and the entry form is here.

La Reve Island: An Open Invitation to Dream Together

 
Amalthea Blanc surveys the SL arts scene for New World Notes

The Windlight-enabled Second Life viewer has opened the door to even more possibilities of artistic self-expression. One such example is the art installation by Lash Xevious at La Reve island-- direct SLURL teleport at this link. Here, you can immerse yourself in the mystical atmosphere of a dream filled with demure shapes, subtle lighting, and some charming glowing effects.

Watch the video above, and read on for some more insights into this adventure!

Windlight Dreaming

Shortly after the Lindens put Windlight on the Beta grid, there was a burst of Resident-made machinima showcasing the new lighting/environmental system-- at least 50 videos on YouTube alone.  So far my personal favorite is this one by aptly-named Japanese Resident Miyaoka Hitchcock; I say "apt", because watching it reminds me of a story from the early career of Alfred Hitchcock.  Originally a graphics artist, Hitchcock was once commissioned to design a newspaper ad for a lighting company.  Instead of featuring the actual product, however, he depicted the interior a well-lit church, to give you the sense of how the lighting made you feel.  Second Life's Hitchcock effectively does the same with Windlight here, though the video itself will probably remind you of another film great: if Miyazaki made machinima, it'd probably look something like this.

London, Reloaded: UK Spacial Analyst imports and rezzes city data in real time

The mirror world continues to take shape in Second Life.  Last week we saw it with Zora Spoonhammer's 3D globe with dynamic real world weather, this week it's this video, depicting data from the urban landscape of London being uploaded into SL, then taking on 3D form in a truly mesmerizing, Matrix-worthy way. 

Robbie Dingo, Unmasked: Avatars and Identity Crystallized Into Four Lovely Minutes

Last month, Robbie Dingo, SL machinima auteur (and "artist in residence" for Millions of Us, a sponsoring partner of New World Notes), put out an odd and unexplained request for numerous avatar screenshots.  Now we know why: for this sweet and mesmerizing machinima exploring avatar-based identity through the appearance of some 70 Residents.  Watching it reminds me of something Hunter Linden, one of the world's founding creators, told me about avatars for my book:

“I always liked the idea that if you saw somebody, and they were an eight foot Gundam robot, you knew that was a costume, and inside there was someone who looked just like you.” Instead, the Linden team consciously made it so that everyone who joined Second Life would have the same DNA, so to speak, no matter how strange and diverse each of them eventually became.

My perspective, at least.  Watch Dingo's video, than read on, for the creator's own perspective on its inspiration, on its development, and just as important, the full cast of players.

Gather 'Round the Wikitecture Tree: SL architects create true 3D wiki

Second Life is often described as "a 3D wiki", but until now, that's been more an analogy than technically correct.  As SL blogger Dedric Mauriac observes, building in SL doesn't readily come with all of a wiki's strongest features-- chief among them, the ability to collaboratively track, review, and edit changes.

Judging by this video, virtual/real world architects Keystone Bouchard and Theory Shaw of Wikitecture Studio have just filled this gap.  Their "Wikitecture Tree" saves the data of a building project into a leaf on the tree.  Collaborators can then review and critique each, and if they like, create a new version of it-- which then literally becomes, in turn, another leaf sprouting from the original design. To see any of these iterations, you just click on the leaf, and the design rezzes before your eyes. This is the process you see in the video, and in my opinion, it's one of the most potentially revolutionary uses of Second Life I've ever seen. 

With the Wikitecture Tree, Keystone tells me, "There are two platforms, a viewing platform and a building platform.

Dilbert Pwns: Famed cartoonist meets his creation, creation returns favor

In Kurt Vonnegut's classic Breakfast of Champions, the author wearies of tormenting the characters in his novel, and so in the end, lets them wander free of his clutches.  What you're looking at here follows the same theme, only more violent.  Last week I mentioned that Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams invited fans to assault his avatar in his SL book promotion appearance, and as it turns out, one of his fans actually came as Dilbert.  Leading to this perfect tableau (as Adams writes on his blog): "It was art imitating life, imitating art beating the crap out of something imitating me."

If you like, it's also a visual meditation on the autonomy of narrative detached from authorial intent, as expressed by a hard right to the 'nads.  (Appropriately accompanied by Dean Martin singing, "That's Amore!")

I put Scott in touch with Aimee Weber a few months ago, I should add, and she produced the event.  But when his publicist mentioned he'd like his avatar to get groin kicked, I thought he was kidding.

Machinima master Robbie Dingo becomes Millions' first artist-in-residence

This is another lovely machinima from Robbie Dingo, inaugurating a lovely program: New World Notes'  partner Millions of Us just named Robbie its first "Artist-in-Residence", sponsoring his amazing SL-based creativity.  Like his classic "Watch the World(s)", which recast a Von Gogh masterpiece into Second Life, Robbie's "Meteors" is also about imagination realized into substance.  The gorgeously ethereal music is from KFH Pooraka, a renowned singer in both SL and RL, and the talk of the last Second Life Community Convention-- her real life site here.  There's an inexhaustible pool of talented Second Life artists and innovators who deserve patronage, so I'm very proud that my SL partner is behind this program; I hope other real world companies launch related initiatives, too.  More info on Millions' program (including application details) at this link.

Tower of Babeli: A metaverse conceptual artist's beautifully enigmatic "Desert" machinima

Antonioni meets Dali meets machinima: a woman with an umbrella strides into the desert, and receives a parade of visitations, which are only comprehensible in the final frames (and then only somewhat.)  At 20-plus minutes,"Gaz of the Desert" is best viewed after hours, and after you've had a chance to turn off the lights and settle in.  Strange, languorously paced, and gorgeously dreamlike, it's the work of Gazira Babeli, a metaverse conceptual artist whose Second Life-based work has been featured in the great We Make Money Not Art blog and several European gallery shows.  "Gaz" plays like a steampunk version of Salvador Dali's "Temptation of Saint Anthony", with stovepipe hats and rocket launchers where the elongated elephants would be.

Discovered via Bettina Tizzy's Not Possible in Real Life blog, an already indispensable guide to quality content and artistic ambition in Second Life.

Construction Crew Wanted: Help China Tracy create RMB City art installation

In China, RMB is the abbreviation of "renminbi", literally, "people's money", and the name of the currency you use in that country.  In Second Life, "RMB City" is the new project of my friend China Tracy. (New York Times sketch of the real life artist behind the avatar here.)  Her "i.mirror" SL machinima was a hit at the prestigious Venice Biennale, and subsequently (as I later learned), was added to the gallery collection of a famed Italian fashion designer-- perhaps the most prominent example of an SL-based artwork succeeding in the real world.

She's built an early, "under construction" version of RMB City in Kula (