Rethinking Virtual Commodification--Machinima in JVWR

The new Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is out and it is a special issue on Virtual Economies, Virtual Goods and Service Delivery in Virtual Worlds. I have a machinima piece in it, "Rethinking Virtual Commodification, or The Virtual Kitchen Sink."

The link to the machinima [used to be on the front page of the JVWR but that link no longer works now that there is a new issue. Here it is on youtube.]

The link to the pdf with the text of the narration AND then some Notes with some more writing about each of the four virtual commodities I focus on in the piece, Alexith and Shirah Destiny's plants, Maya Paris's burlesque items, Filthy Fluno's actual and virtual paintings, and Rayzer Haggwood's guitar animations is HERE.

This piece picks up some of the ideas I explored in an earlier JVWR piece from 2008. It is also the machinima I was working on when I deleted my SL office/house!!

SL Viewer 2: Media on a Prim!!

Here is some machinima video I shot of my first attempt with putting web media content on a cube in Second Life with the new viewer. One on face, I am playing a broadcast I streamed on UStream from my iPhone, and on the other I have Twitter. I think this is amazing. I haven't really experimented with Flash on a prim yet, but that is next.

You may notice that yes, L1 is still in the non-house. I like it. Soon (I think), the piece I was filming when I accidentally deleted my SL office/house, which is about commodification and place and, um, houses in virtual worlds, will be published in The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, and I will post that link when I have it. Maybe it is a comment on that work, but I have not really felt the need to put a house back around all my virtual stuff and the new sculptures I am working on there. It's all still in a moon. :) See machinima of house deletion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRI5JCGhafU

Falling for the MMIF Global Machinima Festival

The Falling Woman Story is one of the movies in the 2010 MMIF Machinima Festival, starting Feb 20!!

MMIF 2010

MaMachinima International Festival
Saturday Feb. 20^th , 2010
MMIF sims (SL™) + PLANETART, Wibautstraat 150 Amsterdam (NL)

‘MMIF 2010′ is the second edition of an annual film festival in 3D cyberspace with a screening in physical space (‘RL’). A seven hour movie marathon with a two hour afterparty. MMIF 2010 can also be followed on the web via live stream broadcasts.

The MMIF is a celebration of ‘Machinima’: a new cinematic art form, created with virtual worlds and video games. On 3D Internet platforms like Second Life®, any kind of movie sets can be build for very low costs. The MMIF aims to bring machinima to a wider audience, online – and offline. Machinima artists from all over the world are present in real time at the virtual MMIF Theatre. They present over 50 short films and have talks with other machinimatographers and an international audience.

Audience in Amsterdam can follow the MMIF event projected live on a big screen at the PLANETART Medialab Artspace. They can bring their own laptop computers to interact with the show on the big screen. Free wireless Internet and electricity is provided. No entrance fee at PLANETART, however tickets are required - reservations must be made via email. Details at http://MMIF.org

The MMIF is a volunteer-run non-profit collaboration of MaMachinima withPLANETART , Volkskrantgebouw, Meta.Live.Nu, Pop Art Lab, VMax, AviewTV,Ystreams.TV, Metaworld Broadcasting, MetaMeets, Gallery Fermate, Museum Of The Bohemian, and many volunteers. MMIF 2010 is financed by donations and gifts. Virtual land sponsored by Linden Lab®. The MMIF was initiated by the Dutch film maker Chantal Harvey.

MMIF 2010 info, promo video, full programme, live streams, contact and latest updates and changes at http://MMIF.org

MMIF 2010 ARTISTS:
Gala Charron – Ogogoro - Lainy Voom – Draxtor Despres – Bryn Oh - Rohan Fermi – Toxic Menges – Tara Yeats – Phaylen Fairchild – Pooky Amsterdam & Russell (Rosco) Boyd – Poid Mahovlich – CodeWarrior Carling – Evie Fairchild – Graham Miami – Kronos Kirkorian – Osprey Therian – Chaffro Schoonmaker - SaveMe Oh - Dulci Parx – Chatnoir Studios – Paisley Beebe – Rysan Fall – Sol Bartz (phil Rice) – Rocksea Renegade – Cisko Vandeverre – Nitwacket (Pyewacket Bellman) – Chantal Harvey – Lowe Runo – Pia Klaar – Al Peretz – Halden Beaumont – Kolor Fall – Binary Quandry – spyVspy Aeon – Animatechnica – Miles Eleventhauer – Lizsolo Mathilde – Delgado Cinquetti – L1aura Loire – Iono Allen – Pyewacket Kazyanenko – Fort Knight – Luca Lisci – Larkworthy Antfarm – Beans Canning - Gtoon Jun – Tutsy Navarathna – Hadji Ling – Colemarie Soleil – Xineohp Guisse – Lorin Tone – Ian Friar – Suzy Yue – Claus Uriza / Emily Hifeng – Meta Lord, and others.

MMIF 2010 TIMES:
Saturday 20^th of February
19:00 CET (= SL 10 am PST) – DOORS OPEN
20:00 CET (= SL 11 am PST) – Opening ceremony + Machinima film screenings
03:00 CET (= SL 6 pm PST) – THE END + After party online in SL

PHYSICAL LOCATION:
PLANETART Medialab Artspace
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam (NL)

VIRTUAL LOCATION:
MMIF 1, 2, 3, 4
Second Life®

Teleport links via http://MMIF.org

If You Are in SL, Go See this Sim: Lemondrop's Forest

I've seen a lot of amazing builds in SL, and had a lot of fun, but getting a tour from Lemondrop Serendipity, a fairy even more delightful than her name, of the imaginative, super-fantastical sim she and Photon Pink (also a name indicative of good things!) have built at Lemondrop's Forest was one of the most fun experiences at the most amazing places. (slurl) Lemondrop is one to run, not walk, and trying to keep up was a blast. The huge tree at the center of the sim has wonderful leaves, and the colors and phosphorescence if your settings are at Midnight are glorious.

Where the action is: DIGITAL NARRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICE

I will try not to neglect this blog, but I am pretty excited about my new course, Digital Narrative Theory and Practice, and will be posting on the blog for that a lot this semester. For the past 4 years, I have been teaching a course in the Film Scoring Department at Berklee that I designed for the film composing students, to help them better understand the movies that they will be scoring and be better able to communicate with the directors with whom they will be working. Now, with the explosion in audio for video games, reported on by the Boston Globe (with a great picture of my student Nazer who is President of the Video Game Music Club!) and picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education, I've created a new class, Digital Narrative, to explore gaming and other forms of new media in their wider contexts, to provide the students who are working in this new field with a stronger background in storytelling and to start to think about what the people who make the games, DVDs, and immersive environments they will write music for are thinking about. In the Fall, we'll start having minors in the Liberal Arts, and Visual Culture and New Media Studies will be one of them, and I am completely thrilled to be developing this area at Berklee.

The Second Life component of Digital Narrative is something we are going to evolve together as a class. It is an easy platform for us to use as a group, to try out some gaming, computer-mediated communication, ideas about immersion and interactivity, synthetic camera, virtual subjectivity, etc. We can of course also use it to make machinima or for screen shots for comics for the the projects. We want to do some gaming together as a class, so I am trying to figure out the best ways of doing that, without only doing what I already know. Should all be very interesting, and I invite you to see what we are up to on the class blog, and later, if all goes well, to check out the wiki we are going to make. I'll be using the blog to post things for students, and also projecting it in class as lecture/discussion resource.

Berklee Mixed Reality Panel on Music in SL

Here are some snapshots from the mixed reality event last Monday at Berklee College of Music. You can see the live video feed of Pathfinder and me in the actual room behind the inworld panel. Thanks to Joyce Bettencourt/Rhiannon Chatnoir for running the mixed reality tech and for the use of the Vesuvius sim. Note the twitter garden showing tweets with the hash tag #BTOT10, which is a good example of how something on the web is flat and textual, but can be 3-d and more interactive in a virtual world.

L1 Had a Busy Week at Berklee Last Week!

Last week, on Monday at Berklee College of Music, I was really thrilled to bring together an amazing panel of Second Life musicians inworld while Pathfinder Linden and I held down the fort in the physical venue at Berklee's annual faculty development conference, BTOT (Berklee Teachers on Teaching).

Then on Wednesday night, I was just trying to show the new students what L1 looked like while I was welcoming them on behalf of the faculty at the Spring Entering Student Convocation, but you know her, she is not one to keep quiet . . . .