New World Notes

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: HYPATIA CALLISTO

"Cliff Bath", taken by and featuring Hypatia Callisto, also features an expression and pose custom-made by the artist.  "[It's] a mix of a pair of default expressions-- 'bigsmile' and 'open mouth,'" she explains.

See all the Uncanny Valley Expo entries here; background on the Expo here.  Later this month, Clive Thompson will select the semi-finalists!

FINDING FALLINGWATER

Ms. Cellardoor, circa 2004

So last week a guy e-mailed me because he wanted to get in touch with a woman he knew from the East Coast; they'd gone to high school together, he was helping plan a class reunion, and he wanted to invite her.  He figured I knew her, because when he Googled her name, he came up with my blog.  And I do know her, more or less-- except the thing is, I'm only acquainted with her as a wood elf artisan who fell in love with a man who owned a talking brain.

YOUR TUBE, YOUR IMAGINATION

Moo Money's machinima on making machinima.  Moo's the evangelist for Alt-Zoom Studios, the invaluable non-profit resource/group for SL machinima creators; the Alt-Zoom camera, which she demonstrates here, is an excellent (and free) tool for taking smooth, Orson Welles-style tracking shots.

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: WILLOW ZANDER, 2ND ENTRY

"If I Didn't Laugh I'd Cry", Willow Zander's second submission to the Expo, was created with Siggy Romulus' Mood Hud.  (Willow also models.)

See all the Uncanny Valley Expo entries here; background on the Expo here.  Later this month, Clive Thompson will select the semi-finalists!

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: FORILLA LESABRE

Perhaps stretching the definition of "human" expression a tad, "Mischevious" is Forilla LeSabre's Expo entry.  Also acting as model, Ms. Labre employs the "kitty growl" from the "Anisa's Neko Expression" animator to achieve this effect.

See all the Uncanny Valley Expo entries here; background on the Expo here.  Later this month, Clive Thompson will select the semi-finalists!

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: ETAIN PEREGRINE

"Charissa Ecstasy", featuring Charissa Korvin, is Etain Peregrine's Expo submission, uses an animation from [d] devPose v1.3 Spanking Horse-Black combined with the Mouth HUD Animator ST.

See all the Uncanny Valley Expo entries here.  Clive Thompson will select the Expo's semi-finalists in late September.

KNOCK KNOCK WEBCAST

If all goes as planned, I'll be in Denmark when you read this, preparing to give a talk on NWN and Second Life in about 9 hours.  It's for the Knock Knock futurist conference sponsored by Denmark's Innovation Lab.  The entire event (including my talk) is set to be streamed on the Web-- go here for the webcast, and here for the itenerary.

NEW WORLD CONTRIBUTOR

I'm actively looking for freelance contributors to New World Notes, people with insights and stories on the cultural, social, political, and economic scene of Second Life.  Details here.

SEX AND THE SINGULARITY

Meeting Khannea at her office

When Ray Kurzweil began writing about an imminent post-human future when nanotechology and supercomputers would enable us to transcend flesh and mortality, I doubt he ever imagined how his thought would redound on someone who spent most of her time roleplaying a bisexual prostitute in an online world.  But there it is.

Khannea Suntzu contacted me a few months ago.  Her SL sex work as Khannea, a high-priced and highly-desired call girl, has been the subject of several outside media profiles of SL Residents, including one in the 1 Up gamer portal and another, of all places, in the esteemed Le Monde, so I assumed she had something like that in mind for me.  That turned out to be wrong.

"[L]et me get this straight," Khannea told me, "I am not interested in an interview.  I have done that by now, and I have said all there is to say, or what I would want to say. 

"What I do want is not as simple."

And she told me what that was.  And since she happened to be appearing onstage soon after she did, I met her at the club where she danced, and took some screenshots of her, while Rick James' "Superfreak" streamed across the stage.

GAME ON!

Last week I Skyped by "All Games Interactive", my favorite gamer podcast, to offer another round-up of the latest from NWN, including (among many other topics) Governor Warner's SL appearance, Samurai Island, Burning Life, and the Green Lanterns who guard both Camp Darfur and 9/11 memorials against griefers.  Always a lot of fun to palaver with Scot and Lawrence, who put on a smart and punchy show worth subscribing to.  We originally planned to do a podcast while touring SL live, but that'll have to wait my next appearance.

Get the podcast here.  Somewhat ribald in parts, so possibly not safe for work, unless you work in a chop shop.