To celebrate Pride Month, create virtual world images that express your LGBT pride -- then in the image description, tell us what your activity in the virtual world means to your real life as an LGBT person. Tag Cajsa on Flickr and add the hashtag #Virtualpride. Our favorite images -- and stories -- will be featured in Cajsa's regular column.
Images from any virtual world open enough to enable LGBT expression encouraged. To help spark your creative juices, here's some favorite images/stories of ours!
In this new video from Strasz (previously featured here), the VRChat sociologist deep dives into the obsession with staring at one's avatar in virtual mirrors. (It's such a popular VRChat pastime, we devoted two posts and an original comic to it.) Heavily citing French postmodernist theory ("Foucault* would have a field day in VRChat"), Strasz argues that VRChat users aren't simply being narcissistic:
"I think ultimately a lot of behaviors in VR (like standing in front of a mirror) are misunderstood," as he puts it to me. "People tend to see them in a negative light, or see them as anti-social, when in reality they serve a powerful purpose. The mirror in VR isn't just a thing that lets you see yourself -- it's one that lets you calibrate your body, and get a sense of how you fit into the virtual space."
Well this is the most expressive I've ever seen my avatar or for that many any other avatar in the virtual world (don't hurt me, don't hurt me):
This thanks to Wombo.AI, a new smartphone app that's designed to convert a RL selfie photo into a lip-syncing popstar via some pretty impressive deep fake machine learning algorithms. But my first thought when seeing it, of course, was: What will it do to my avatar? (And frankly I might not recommend using this on photos of real life people, for security reasons.)
After fiddling around with it last night and getting some bizarre results, this video above is my best version so far.
Tips to getting your own avatar properly Wombo-fied? So far, I'd suggest these:
Want to turn a Second Life avatar pic into the "photo" of their real life analog? Watch this Artbreeder tutorial from Ugleh Ulrik, the SL creatorwho first startedthe whole buzz around using the AI-driven platform to transform avatars.
"I do a lot of experimenting with new AI tech," Ulrik tells me, "and once I saw Artbreeder my first thought went to Pixar characters but then after that I realized making Second Life avatars more real was a possibility and I tried it out on a few close friends and it worked well."
Here's his key tips to keep in mind when using Artbreeder on an avatar:
My post last week on Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image, generated a mini-burst of excitement among many in the SL community, who started experimenting with the process to turn pictures of their avatars into "real" people. And the results are pretty mesmerizing! Above is one by Devin Vaughn, whose avatar looks in real life, I guess, like the clone of Ronan Farrow blended with Anderson Cooper?
The dapper AF avatar on your left belongs to TheVirtualGent on Reddit; the "photo" on your right is what he might look like in real life -- a process made possible via Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image along user-selected parameters.
This particular "photo" was created by a Redditor called Ugleh, who gave me the basic how-to of how they made it:
What you're watching above is a video from social media influencer Taryn Southern, except not quite: It's a "clone" of Ms. Southern, created via an AI platform called HourOne.
"We take a small sample of video footage (ideally captured in a studio, as we did with Taryn), and use our proprietary AI algorithms and generative adversarial networks, to generate an exact digital replica of that person," explains Natalie Monbiot, Head of Business at HourOne. "We can then program the digital twin by way of text or voice inputs, to generate new content delivered in an entirely lifelike way. Uniquely, we don’t do any stitching with our characters – they are fully generated, in the cloud, to deliver with flexible and natural facial expressions -- and since the videos don’t need to be ‘handled’ the potential to scale is enormous."
Monbiot estimates it's possible to save 95% of production costs on future videos, using clones this -- since after all, once Taryn's clone is created, a real life studio, camera crew, make-up, lighting, etc. are no longer required. To be sure, there's a certain dead-eye loss of humanity in the transition from biological Taryn to digital Taryn, as you may notice from the video. But Monbiot says HourOne's AI clones will become more lifelike and expressive in future iterations:
"Today we specialize in face-to-camera video with nuanced and natural facial expression and head motion," as she puts it. "You will certainly see bigger ranges of movement and emotion in the coming months."
From the point of view of well-known online personalities like Taryn Southern, not to mention major pop stars, film celebrities, and beyond, this opens up the possibility of their AI clones continuing to perform, endorse products, make press appearances, and beyond, even while their organic selves are sleeping, or on vacation.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Tiago’s “Ma part d’ombre” was inspired by “My Dark Place” a stunning memoir by James Ellroy, an American author who invents language anew while he writes. I wonder how the magic of his language translates. I think this picture beautifully captures the multiple layers of meaning in the book’s title as well as the complexity of the book -- apparently using layers of after-effects to give the avatar added realism.
