New World Notes

High Noon Sunday, I'm Smooching For Life

Giving the kissing booth a trial run with Shawna-- for a direct SLURL teleport, click the pic or this link

Tomorrow at 12pm SLT I'm manning the kissing booth of the Relay Wizards Halfway There Fair, part of the group's effort to raise funds for the American Cancer Society's Second Life Relay For Life.  Since it's for a good cause, I'll swoop and smooch all comers-- women, men, robots, penguins, penguins on robots, Picasso paintings, vampires and furries of indeterminate gender, whatever you can throw at me.  If you got lips and some L$ to donate, pay up, step up, and beso me mucho.  (Actually, I won't even discriminate against the lipless.)  Thanks to HALEY Salomon, Shawna Montgomery and friends for making this possible.

3 SL Bloggers, 3 SL Sites: Dinosaur Museum, Seven Wonders, And A .hack-Inspired World

- Garth Goode's found a dinosaur/steampunk museum with a nifty mixed-reality effect.
- Torley Linden visits The World, a spectacular island based on the cult RPG .hack.
- Estella Therian selects seven more Second Life wonders, including Doomed Ship, at right.  (Her previous seven are here.)

Can A Female Avatar Be Too Thin?

"Thinspo" and "Pro-Ana" are terms associated with a deeply disturbing Internet-based subculture that promotes anorexia as a lifestyle.  (For "thin positive" and "pro-anorexic", respectively.) The mortal danger involved cannot be understated, for as Janelle Brown noted in a landmark Salon article on the phenomenon, the disorder kills 10 percent of its victims (almost all girls and young women), and condemns a third of them to suffer lifelong ailments.  Which is why a new screenshot-sharing group called "Thinspo!", which is restricted to images of thin avatars, has caused so much strife among Second Life's fashionista community.

"I heard about it early last week," reports Tenshi Vielle of Shopping Cart Disco, "because a good friend of mine is recovering from a bought of eating disorder and the invitation [to join the group] rather disturbed her."

For several reasons, I won't link to the Flickr group in question; for one, its particulars aren't as relevant as the reaction to its existence.  It's provoked a storm of heartfelt outrage among Second Life's massive fashionista community, as evidenced by this SLUniverse forum thread, and the extended reader comments on Tenshi's post.  "I have nothing against people with thin avatars (my own is thin)," Stephanie Misfit writes there, "but the promotion of skeletal avatars as a pro-ana message is appalling and socially irresponsible." 

This may all seem strange, seen from one angle, because these are not photos of real models, but virtual world avatars, on a platform where alter egos can be anything, from cyborgs to birds to works of art.  No one's raised as much objection over the promotion of death commando avatars, so why so much concern over the size of women depicted in 3D graphics?

At least two reasons, I think:

Flying Steampunk Hat Follows Your SL Camera Position

Among the more unique and subtly powerful features of Second Life is the ability to detach your point of view from your avatar.  This lets you move the camera position of what you're seeing on your monitor dozens of meters away from where your avatar is actually standing.  I can't think of another virtual world that allows this, even though Residents take it for granted that the avatar standing next to them could actually be looking at, say, the third floor store display in the building behind them, at the fish swimming ten feet down in a nearby cove-- or for that matter, up their skirt.  If you're uncomfortable with that omniscience-- or if you just want another cool gadget-- steampunk inventrix Pandora Wrigglesworth has a propeller-driven hat camera that she's scripted to fly around follow your camera position. Crap Mariner has the details, with Craptastic video demo.

The Moral Quandary of Alicia Chenaux

Say you become friends with a Second Life couple who are a husband and wife couple in real life, and they're in SL with the sole purpose of separately hooking up with other Residents, and further say they are both constant users of voice chat, so you can not only hear them constantly chatting up prospects, but also hear their real life kids running around unattended in the background. Say they're also renting an SL apartment from you, and even though they haven't done anything explicitly ban-worthy, the woman's behavior in particular was chasing people away.  At that point, Ms. Chenaux wonders aloud, "Is it enough to say 'To hell with you' and ban her from our home?... Is it time to remove her from my friends list and put her on mute?" I have no idea, myself, though I do know multi-dimensional, mixed-reality ethical questions like this are bound to keep coming up.  Maybe you can offer Alicia some advice in her post.  Image credit: Alicia.

Getting Sick: Anime Meets Second Life Machinima (Updated)

Produced last year before the WindLight-era, the mysterious "Sick" machinima series revolves around a sim of the same name, and the elite redhead commando protecting it from mutating tentacle monsters and affiliated villains.  Originally released with a Japanese-only soundtrack, I recently noticed Part 1 and Part 2 have been subtitled in English, and you don't want to miss them.  (Part 3, alas, remains un-subtitled.)  The muddy quality of the photography is more than compensated by the foley effects, voice acting, and bravura editing, which keeps the narrative focused and the two-fisted action appropriately kickass.  (I also like the filtering overlays which convert the visuals to look like video footage and data feeds, a great way of adding realism to the virtual.)  Cap that off with a rocking Japan-o-metal theme song, and you're watching one of the best Second Life machinima made so far.  (Expanded archive here.) 

As for Sick itself, you can visit the site's website here, and teleport to the city (just as impressive as the machimina) by clicking this SLURL teleport link, or the screenshot to the right.  None of which answers my main question: what the hell is Sick, who created it, and what will it become?  I attempted to contact the owners when it launched, but as I recall, the language barrier was too high for clarity.  Japanese-fluent readers, if you can help me, I'd be grateful!

Update, 7:30pm:  Just chatted with Sick's owner, mk Curtiz, who helped with some details, though they somehow perplex me even more.  Read after the break.

Lanna's List for May 29 - June 4: "The Bacchae" Live, "Antz" Director in Mixed Reality, Philip Linden Speaks, and more...

Charlanna Beresford’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events…

The Bacchae, Euripides’ classic play has been re-imagined for Second Life by Phorkyad Acropolis; the SL  version of the The Bacchae builds on the conflict between rationalism and religious instinct and promises to be an engaging performance complete with dancing, cross-dressing and god-like powers. There will be a number of performances over the coming week: Saturday, May 31 at 3 PM; Sunday, June 1 at 3 PM; Wednesday, June 4 at 5 PM; and Saturday, June 7 at 3 PM.  A preview of the production is available on youtube. In Cookie (click here to teleport).

Also this week: Feathers Boa Discusses Interactive Art, Build-a-Robot Competition information, and a Summit with Philip Linden.  All that and more after the jump...

Ophelia's Must Have: Kick Up Your Hair With Kanzashi

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing showcase of all things stylish in SL

Ever since I started writing about fashion in Second Life some two years ago, my articles have always had a larger theme-- seasonal lines, workplace wear, what have you. As a result, there are a lot of items I never got to share with my readers, because they haven’t quite fit. A perfect example of this are kanzashi, a kind of Japanese hair ornament that I’m absolutely wild about. I’ve bought nearly every single one I’ve come across in SL, but I so rarely get to talk about them!

The majority of kanzashi are made up of flowers, but there’s a lot of room for artistic detail with wire and other elements. On the left is an example of a more traditional kanzashi, the Sakura Blossom Hana Kanzashi, made for a limited edition kimono set, by Hatsune Yoshikawa of Flower & Willow. It’s not my favorite of her hair accessories, but I appreciate her detailing. What I really want to sing about is the Kanzashi W by neko Harrop of Fukuneko, pictured on the right. It blends in a little more with casual clothing, and still makes a dynamic statement.  I'm pictured here wearing my kanzashi with a Duchess Top in blush by Nephilaine Protagonist of PixelDolls; I also wear one with a Tidori Coat by Risey Arai of Sey.  Hair ornaments in general are a little under appreciated in SL, so I sincerely hope to see all my fellow fashionistas trying out some cute kanzashi this summer!

Iris Ophelia has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

New World Tableau: Reflection In The Quiet

An Ivy League university is playing host to a sad and desolate cabin surrounded by mystery and wind, so I couldn't resist creating this Tableau.  Created by AM Radio (the man who helped us die like Marat, then took us to The Faraway) with terraforming by Poid Mahovlich, "The Quiet" is a glorious study of decay done up in golden sunlight.  Not strictly interactive-- maybe there's a way to ring the cabin's many brass bells, but I couldn't figure out how-- it's still an ideal locale for creating a Tableau of your own.  Hotspur O'Toole, for example, captured one in video.  Visit The Quiet in Princeton West-- direct SLURL teleport at this link.

Got a Tableau of your own?  Submission guidelines after the break. For inspiration, see the full New World Tableau series here.

The Long Hot Summer Of Iris Ophelia

Iris' long-awaited Summer Fashion feature has proven more daunting than originally planned, but never fear, the opulently illustrated spread from New World Notes' style correspondent and occasional Fashion Institute of Technology speaker should be hitting next week.  I've seen some of her pics from it, and they're jaw dropping-- here's a glimpse from the coming spread.  Meantime, I'm happy to say she'll contributing shorter posts on Second Life fashion to NWN on a more regular basis, in between her generally epic fashionista posts.  (Think of them-- and these-- as Ophelia appetizers.)