New Video: CLICK: Immersive & Interactive Virtual Art

This machinima video showcases some of the prize-winning entries in the year-long University of Western Australia Imagine 3d Art & Design Contest held in Second Life. It focuses specifically on "clickable" art, that is interactive and immersive, to highlight a unique aspect of virtual art. I plan on using this in my classes as a quick way of introducing them to virtual art, so I put in a list of the formal elements of art: line, shape, value, form, color, space, and texture. In some of my classes, we'll go into a virtual world and have a workshop on how to build/basic scripting, but in some of my classes, machinima and slides have to suffice. I hope others might find this video useful, too.

To see the video in full size, go directly to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sf3Q2VAlKE

Virtual Subjectivity--Immersive Education MediaGrid Summit

10 Questions to Ask about Technology

Here is a post from my two course blogs this semester, for Approaches to Visual Culture & Digital Narrative: Theory and Practice. Both classes are now focusing on new media (Digital Narrative always has), and I worked up these questions more for the Art History class, to help us get our minds around how a new cultural form changes everything. Of course, as we've seen in our exploration of 20th century visual culture, this is nothing new, and as each medium was new, and then not, it was a lightning rod for cultural discourse. In order to understand the virtual art we'll be exploring and making next week, we have to dig into the opposition between "reality" and "artifice" that we've seen questioned all semester--in I Love Lucy even! (sly plug for my new book, available April 15 everywhere!) It is fascinating to think about SL in reading through these questions . . . and I'll be asking my students to do that in the coming weeks.

Here are Ten Questions (ok, there are more, because some questions are kind of nested) to ask about a new technology tool that help us think about it in its wider cultural context. I am working off of, as usual, Cultural Studies founder Stuart Hall's idea of the circuit of culture, in which production, consumption, regulation, representation, and identity are all mutually informing. When we combine this with the historical trajectory perspective I am always harping on--which puts any given cultural text (game, device, app, film, dvd menu, etc) in a lineage of antecedents, looks for its peak if it has had it yet, and then speculates wildly on what might come next--we will always have a lot to talk about when we talk about any new aspect of technology, beyond the thumbs up/thumbs down reaction from which we might start and then come back to at the end, perhaps more thoughtfully.

Ten questions to ask about a new technology:

1) What is its purpose?

2) What was its analog, if there was one? How does a mediated, digital, or networked version of the tool or technique change it?

3) Who uses it? How? When? Where? Why? Does the use change over time? Do different users use it differently?

4) How does a user learn how to use it?

5) Who makes it? Who profits? How?

6) How is it regulated?

7) How does it spread?

8) Does it create or fill a need?

9) What is the interface? Is it also an object? Or a practice? Both? (think cell phone)

10) How does the user change the technology as he or she uses it? (mods and hacks and appropriations) How does the technology change the user? How does it become part of a person's sense of self?

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.