New World Notes

Meet Emma Gilmour: RL Fashion Blogger, SL Fashion Creator

There's a girl named Tiffany who blogs about real fashion that's Offbeat & Inspired, and when she published this post of how she dressed last New Year's Eve, I asked her what this mega-stylish ensemble would look like in Second Life, if she could show me the translation. Because, you see, in Second Life, Tiffany is an avatar named Emma Gilmour (and sometimes Elie Spot), and Emma is the co-creator of a successful SL fashion brand named Mon Tissu that's a favorite of NWN readers. And so Emma/Tiffany did, and she and her avatar look like this:

"I actually only started a RL blog about 5 months ago," Tiffany told me, "so I haven't had the chance to take the real life styles I blog about to SL yet, but my RL style has always strongly influenced my SL style." Naturally I wanted to know more -- about how she discovered SL, how she became a SL designer, and much more still -- and she told me that too, read on, read on:

The Two Lives of Whiskey Monday, Second Life Artist

I wrote awhile ago about the wonderful work of a woman named Whiskey Monday, who creates visually arresting images in Second Life and credits her work by that excellent avatar name, and naturally, I had to know more. (Click here to teleport to her in-world gallery.) She first explored SL, she tells me, as an educational platform, and when several real life crises interceded, she came to explore it as a platform for her art:

"I discovered SL in late ’06 when I attended an in-world seminar for teachers," she tells me. "The experience, as a non-gamer type, was overwhelming and I had no intention of ever logging back in. Then I got the flu soon after and spent 2 weeks in bed with a laptop. I logged back in to SL on a whim. I’ve been here off and on since then."

But as I said, her becoming an SL-based artist seems to stem from a painful state of things at home:

Second Life Art Maven Bettina Tizzy Explains Why SL Artists Should Credit Works With Their Real Life Names

Bettina Tizzy in Cutea Benelli's Okeanos maritime gown

If Second Life ever had an essential art maven, it was Beverly "Bettina Tizzy" Millson, founder of the Not Possible IRL blog and the large SL group of the same name. With her amazing eye for talent and flair for promotion (she's a publicist in real life) Beverly has done more than anyone to bring the greatest works of SL art to a wider audience. When the New York Times magazine devoted a Sunday feature to SL art, for example, all or most of the works covered in it were by artists originally championed by her. So when she recently told me her strong advice to artists now working in SL, I took it as important advice indeed. Namely this: Second Life artists should credit their SL creations with their real life names.

"With artists, your name is everything," she explains to me. "A pseudonym isn't a bad deal in real life for them. But limiting your persona to a virtual name in a walled garden (especially one that isn't growing) that can only be shared via still photos or machinima... it's a trap."

Many or even most well-known SL artists, however, are only known by their avatar names -- names that are largely dependent on the fate of the for-profit corporation which owns Second Life. Here is what Bettina suggests that they do now:

Meet KK Jewell: Second Life Architecture Advocate, Real Life Helmut Newton Model

Kirsten Kiser posing for Helmut Newton; her avatar KK Jewell in SL

Often in Second Life, you'll meet someone who is roleplaying as a glamorous model, and sometimes, it turns they actually are that already. This is the case with KK Jewell (Kirsten Kiser IRL), a longtime SLer who I've known for years as leading promoter of Second Life as an architecture platform, via her site arcspace, which is one of the oldest and most visited websites for architecture. Kirsten once casually mentioned to me that she's also friends with artist David Hockney (which is why his iPhone paintings are in her SL house), so I shouldn't have been surprised when I visited Harper Beresford's great blog a few months ago, and discovered that she was also a model for legendary photographer Helmut Newton. (Link possibly NSFW, as much of Helmut Newton's decadently sexy photography often is.)

"Vogue called me to ask if they could photograph at our house," Kirsten breezily explained to me when I e-mailed her about the photos. "They photographed there and, since I was around, I started talking to Helmut. I was going to architecture school at that time so I was sitting at my drafting table all day." Soon enough, she wound up on the other side of Newton's camera. (She was already friends with Newtown and his wife, June.)

As for how she wound up in arcspace and Second Life, that had more to do with what she was doing at the drafting table:

William Gibson Wants to See a Mixed Reality Photo Blog - UPDATE: Gibson Tweets of This Post & His Original Tweet

William Gibson wants to see a mixed reality photo blog featuring people who look like their avatars, he recently Tweeted. So if you're looking for a head nod from the author of Neuromancer and All Tomorrow's Parties (among many other masterpiece novels), here's your chance. I'll help get you started, with this composite of ironically ironic hipsters Stella Semaphore and Laika Saintlouis:

Also see Mr. Shoji Kimura. In fact, I'd love to see such a blog too, so if you do create one, let me know. If it's really good, I'll Tweet it, too. I don't know Gibson personally but I'm pretty sure several folks who follow me on Twitter do, so hey, you never know. Get that pattern recognition going!

UPDATE, 9:55PM: Speaking of Gibson, he did visit Second Life before, but his avatar definitely didn't look like Gibson: "I wound up being this grotesquely overweight, bright blue smurf. In a tutu. Nobody thought that was cool."

UPDATE 2, 11:30PM: William Gibson just Tweeted about this New World Notes post mentioning an earlier William Gibson Tweet, noting the pic of Laika and Stella, calling them "The most naturalistic SL avatars I've ever seen." Then went on to explain the context of the original Tweet:

Real People of the Metaverse, 2010 Edition: Fashion Designers, Fire Dancers, and More

Here's one last look at some of the Second Life Residents profiled in New World Notes last year, people featured here because they're interesting, but as a nice side effect, utterly demolish the tired stereotypes of who participates in virtual worlds, and why. (Click to enlarge if you're so inclined.)

Clockwise from top left, they are:

• Ana Alves (Irah Anatine in SL), a Portuguese metaverse developer who managed Second Life projects for members of the European Union parliament and even traveled to Iraq to speak about SL to Iranian refugees in that country.
• Laika Saintlouis and Stella Semaphore, a Second Life fashion blogger and designer who are a real life couple and exude big city ironic hipster-tude in both worlds.
• Martina Karapetrić & Morana Saračević (Vitabela Dubrovna & Precious Restless in SL), real life twins and fashion designers who own a boutique in Zagreb, and sell virtual versions of their designs in SL.
• Kudzumai Kinomis, a new media student in Europe who joined Second Life to write a report on it, but stayed to, well, become a furry horse girl.
• Gillian Tunney (Delaney Whippet in SL), an artist and web developer who creates content in SL and dances with real fire.
• Aston Leisen, a new media professor living near Shanghai who created the acclaimed China sim in SL, uses Second Life as a teaching tool, but worries that his government may one day shut Chinese access to the metaverse. (Hence the anonymous photo.)

Remembering the Life of Delinda Dryssen in Both Worlds

Denise Williams and Delinda Dryssen, courtesy Paisley Beebe's tribute post

Last week's most significant news for New World Notes readers was also its most tragic: After a long bout with kidney failure, the woman behind beloved SL music promoter Delinda Dryssen died on Sunday, at the age of 32. In her last hours, she fell into a coma, but friends gathered at a concert space in Second Life, so they could communicate to her through a laptop that was propped next to her ICU bed. And in this way, they reached her: "You guys are still causing a distinct reaction singing and talking to her, according to her Doctor who is here with us again," reported Dan, the family friend who created an SL avatar in order to open a channel between both worlds. "We're seeing a tear in her eye again. I think she can hear you guys."

Singer and talk show host Paisley Beebe has a beautiful tribute to Delinda as she remembered her in Second Life, and on his blog, Dan has a moving tribute to Denise the woman he knew in the real world. But here as in many cases, it's a misnomer to speak of two worlds as if they were distinct. As Denise's cousin Tracey wrote in a Tweet:

Dee had pictures of about 30 or more of you from Second Life printed out and on a huge pegboard along with pictures of real life friends. I think you were all one and the same to her and I am starting to understand why.

More here, and over here.

Mixed Reality Profile: Kudzumai Kinomis, The Girl Who Became a Second Life Horse

I first met Kudzumai Kinomis, a Second Life furry horse avatar who’s an estate manager and DJ for an underground furry club in SL, on Facebook of all places. There I knew her as a strikingly attractive brunette studying for a degree in new media at a European university. In SL, however, as I later discovered and as you can see below, she lets her furry flag fly:

“I haven't always been a furry or a horse in SL,” Kudzumai tells me. “I started out as a normal human, but after a while I came in touch with a couple of people from the furry community. The transfer was made quite gradually, first by adding a couple of ears and a tail, and eventually by buying my first furry avatar.” Before becoming a horse, she was at various times a cat, wolf, fox, even a dragon. But after finding some avatar enhancements that suited her, she embraced her horse persona:

“What you see on the picture is a mix between Uchi Desmoulin's ringtail and Aventity's equine... I really grew into this skin and the species. I think a horse simply suits my character best and when I think of it, as a little girl, I always loved horses too.” She smiles at that, and then tells me what she wants to express, as an anthromorphic horse:

Mixed Reality Profile: Delaney Whippet, the Girl Who Played With Fire (and Textured Prims)

Recently I saw my friend Gillian dancing with a ring of fire in a New York park, and while that's all very impressive, I asked her if she could do the same thing with her avatar. Because you know what some people claim: Gorgeous lithe brunettes only juggle fire in the real world because they can't do it in Second Life.

However, that stereotype turned out to be wrong, because quick as you please, she whipped up her avatar, Delaney Whippet, like so:

As Delaney, Gillian's been a Second Life content creator for many years. She's been juggling fire for slightly longer, revamping her high school twirling skills after graduating from college and moving to New York, performing in burlesque and cabaret shows, and occasionally whirling the blazing baton from the rooftop of the place where she lived in Brooklyn, to entertain at parties. And while these skillsets may seem unrelated (tweaking prims on the one hand, twirling fire on the other), she insists they're very much on the same spectrum:

Look at These F*cking Mixed Reality Hipsters (Stella Semaphore and Laika Saintlouis)

Stella Semaphore and Laika Saintlouis, Mixed Reality Hipsters

So a couple years ago this cool arty English Lit/Cultural Studies grad named Laika from the UK (who writes for an excellent and totally ironic fashion blog) was hanging out at a cool place called Moondoggies, when he met this styling Fine Arts grad from Montreal named Stella. And afterward they totally hooked up and have been together since.

That's more or less how a lot of arty young hipsters connect, but in this case, the meeting place was Second Life (where Moondoggies resides), and the blog is Look at This F*cking Slipster, a great metaverse-flavored parody of the real world blog, which Laika Saintlouis co-writes. In SL, Stella Semaphore is the owner and creator of Cheap Makeup.

Laika originally joined Second Life before the media hype wave and after exploring, found a community where he could share and discover new music, occasionally DJ-ing at a club called The Velvet. As is true of all hipsters, he keeps an ironic distance from hipster-dom by mocking it, with the addition of doing it from within a virtual world. (Which is maybe doubly ironic, though in this case, the irony doesn’t seem to cancel out, but only get magnified.)

But is there a distinction between being a hipster in real life, versus dressing that way in Second Life?