New World Notes

3 Spectacular Second Life Locations to Visit, Beautifully Shot by Pink Rayne

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Pink Rayne’s “Fading” is a haunting picture of standing stones taken at Haraiki Bay [to teleport, click here]. I love the sky, the light breaking through the clouds to illuminate the stones and a lone bull. It seems as though it has just rained, with the blur radiating from the center as though we can see clearly now, the rain has gone. 

For a vibrant cityscape, click here:

Monday Memory: How Suzanne Vega Singing in Second Life in 2006 Helped Shaped the Virtual World's Culture

When Caroline Mimbs Nyce of The Atlantic asked how much Taylor Swift is like the Metaverse, the question seemed pretty bizarre at first -- but then got us talking about Suzanne Vega performing in Second Life, the first platinum-selling artist to do so in any metaverse platform. While's Vega's appearance did help inspire a rush of other real world brands appearing in SL, it also helped shape Second Life's culture going forward, cultivating it as a virtual world popular with women and indy creators. I have to think if another, very different artist had performed in 2006, Second Life would have evolved in another direction. 

Relatedly, Taylor Swift's massively massive fanbase (229 million followers on Instagram alone) has many tens of millions of gamers/metaverse users. Which is why I said:

Top 6 Posts Last Week Including: What Taylor Swift Gets That Most Metaverse Devs Miss, Plus a Post-Mortem on Decentraland

• Linden Lab Payment Spinoff Tilia Gets Strategic Investment From Finance Giant J.P. Morgan
• WATCH: VRChat Not Only Has Avatars With Legs -- The Community Has Full-Body, Group Workout Sessions Founded In 2020 During The Pandemic As A Gym Alternative
• Today's SL Flickr Pick: Micah Volmaire's Arresting Images Of Virtual Landscapes
• What Went Wrong With Decentraland? Expert Game Analyst On The Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platform With High Ideals, Few Users
• WATCH: Pianist & Video Artist Hypnotically Improvise Together In Real Time In The Metaverse
• The Atlantic Asks Me How Much Taylor Swift Is Like The Metaverse -- Spoiler: More Than You Might Think!

The Atlantic Asks Me How Much Taylor Swift is Like the Metaverse -- Spoiler: More Than You Might Think!

Above: SL Cosplay Taylor Tribute by Kylie Quinn

"Weirdly, Taylor Swift Is Extremely Close to Creating a True Metaverse" is a totally random interview with Caroline Mimbs Nyce of The Atlantic I just did, and it starts with a left field premise that winds up with some fairly interesting ways of thinking about the topic. Some favorite excerpts:

Nyce: How important is VR in this? Is that “and”—as in “VR and other devices”—really operative there?

Au: No, no, no. That’s another thing that drives me crazy: the assumption that it has to be in VR. In the book, Stephenson even mentions that it’s mostly just the wealthy who use VR headsets, and regular folks just use a regular computer.

Metaverse platforms exist. The biggest one is Roblox, followed by Fortnite. To be a true Metaverse with a capital M, you would need, like, 15 million people or more in the same virtual world at the same time. And we’re not there yet. We’re close.

This is something that's not discussed much, but think it's worth keeping in mind: In Neal Stephenson's original vision of the Metaverse, the Metaverse has an average concurrency twice the population of New York -- i.e. about 15 million people. We're close to that now. (Stephenson himself was surprised when I pointed that out.)

Then I get to compare Taylor Swift's progress on the Metaverse against what Mark Zuckerberg is doing:

Fashion Friday: Dramatic Virtual Décor Ideas from Bits and Pieces of SL

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Bits and Pieces of SL is an excellent decor blog by Alexa Maravilla. I am obsessed by this gorgeous post Smile You’re on Camera. The docks are from DRD for The Liaison Collaborative that opened on the 18th. It looks like a great place to party and needs thirty some people drinking, playing pool, dancing, and maybe a local cover band. It looks like a lake resort with the canoes, so they probably sell worms, minnows, and burgers and fries. 

• DRD – Lake Dock – Dock @ TLC Event It closes November 10th. 
• DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Blue
• DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Natural w/oars
• DRD – Lake Dock – Canoe – Green
• DRD – Lake Dock – Lamp
• DRD – Lake Dock – Locker
• DRD – Lake Dock – Shelf

For an elegant and striking set piece, click here:

WATCH: Pianist & Video Artist Hypnotically Improvise Together in Real Time in The Metaverse

I just had the most fascinating if totally left field press interview about music in the Metaverse. Which makes this as good a time as any to share this video, depicting one of the more innovative and ambitious metaverse-based music performances I've seen in awhile: Tia Rungray (IRL Japanese musician Takayuki Noami) performing hypnotically ambient live piano in Second Life. And with an added hook: As he plays, his collaborator Hebeerryke Caravan projects video images into the virtual world space which accompany the music... in real time.

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Perfectly Delightful Pics by Mara Telling

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Mara Telling is hilarious. If we ever met, I am sure we would be friends because I love people with a sly sense of humor who aren’t afraid to share how ridiculously funny the world is in their eyes. “Gravity” is a perfect example of that. There she is, just sitting in a rowboat, as one does. That it’s drying on sawhorses, well, that’s unusual. She often provides a SLURL for her pictures. [Teleport to Grauland, click here.]

For more of her gentle and quirky humor, click here:

What Went Wrong With Decentraland? Expert Game Analyst on The Blockchain-Based Metaverse Platform With High Ideals, Few Users

You might have seen recent claims that Decentraland, the metaverse platform which raised USD $25 million in Ethereum sales of virtual land to fund its development, only has active users in the dozens. That’s not quite true, game industry analyst and designer Lars Doucet tells me, citing his recent report for research firm Naavik -- as of yesterday, for instance, Decentraland has about 7000 daily active users. 

Which is still not very much! (And tracks with my own data from last Summer.) 

“Everybody who is still playing is basically just playing poker,” Lars tells me. “This seems to be a kind of recurring trend in dead-end crypto projects -- like people turn the [project’s] Discord into a meetup place for poker games. Kind of an eerie rhyme with left-behind American cities where drugs come in and anyone who is left is strung out at a slot machine parlor or liquor store.”

You can see that in this Decentraland metrics tracker, with “ICE Poker” as the most visited location by far. It’s quite a fall from boom times (by which I mean last year) when huge firms like J.P. Morgan were touting their official “headquarters” in Decentraland. 

And there’s some tragedy, too -- I’ve been following the platform since 2017, when the founders raised $25 million in Ethereum to fund it, and tried to keep true to its original, democratic-seeming vision.

“Decentraland is one of the few crypto metaverse/virtual real estate games to take its commitment to decentralization seriously,” as Lars tells me. “Like they seem to actually drink their own kool aid rather than using it as a cynical layer of paper thin marketing material like the other ones. To wit; their infrastructure is actually pretty decentralized!”

Then again, that’s also been one of Decentraland’s challenges.

Here’s why, according to a recent conversation I had with Lars, compressed for length  -- with his own advice on how Decentraland might revive itself:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Micah Volmaire's Arresting Images of Virtual Landscapes

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Micah Volmaire’s “Timeless - Part I” brought my browsing to a dead stop. Both Monet and Van Gogh painted iconic pictures of haystacks. Micah’s screenshot from Walsh County evokes the feeling of a Monet with its beautiful light. [To teleport click here.] I love the way the furrows lead our eyes into the distance toward the faint and indistinct building in the distance. I love the depth of focus contrasting the sharpness of the bird, most of the haystack, and the furrowed field and the soft focus of the wheat in the foreground and the distant farms. 

For more, click here:

WATCH: VRChat Not Only Has Avatars With Legs -- The Community Has Full-Body, Group Workout Sessions! UPDATE: It Was Founded in 2020 During the Pandemic as a Gym Alternative

my litmus test for "is your VR metaverse app even remotely as good as vrchat" is "are furries holding actual exercise classes in it" pic.twitter.com/Pd2mFPbr0k

— Aura🥨🥨🥨 (@MOOMANiBE) October 11, 2022

Update, 10/19: VR Fitness & Biking founder Aigey just sent me background on the founding of his workout group in VRChat during the pandemic peak and continues thriving by giving people an alternate to RL gyms:

[W]e started right as isolation started due to COVID-19 specifically, our group was founded initially because I used to go to the local gym but couldn't anymore but still wanted a gym-like experience but no one was allowed to go to the gym due to social distancing restrictions at the time here in Kentucky.

Our official start up... began officially in October of 2020 and have been running strong ever since. First because no one had access to gyms but then people found the idea to be fantastic due to the accessibility and freedom to 'be as you want to be' in a workout class from the safety of your own home as well as freedom from judgement that comes with going to an actual gym location, which has helped increase the popularity without us really advertising our groups existence. All of our growth so far has come without us advertising the group at all.

Original post below: