Tuesday, August 4th saw the opening of the latest art exhibition at The Living Room, the music and arts venue operated by Owl Dragonash and Daallee. This month, the venue features the work of Jewell Wirefly, who offers a series of images from her travels around Second Life.
Jewell says of her work, “I have been in SL now for almost 9 years and have been taking pictures for nearly 6 years, and I still enjoy it as much as the very first shot. My art is nearly always inspired by a song and sometimes a quote or a poem. However, the one thing they all have in common is that they express my emotions. I like to take a variety of pics, including a lot of fantasy ones, and not keep to any particular type or style. ”
The images displayed at The Living Room reflect this approach to her work; having mostly been captured out and about in Second Life, each with its own particular style and emotive content. However, while she has tended to mostly eschewed the use of studio shots for her work, she does admit to more recently to building her own sets to capture some of the images that come to mind, and this side of her work is reflected here as well.
While there is a narrative and emotional content in all the images, I found myself most strongly drawn to four in particular (seen at the top of this article). I’ve no idea if their relatively close placement was intentional, but individually and collectively, I found them to be very evocative in terms of mood, narrative and image.
All told, another welcome, and personal display from an SL artist which will remain open to visitors through until August 25th, 2015, when there will be a special party to mark the end of the exhibition featuring the music of Laralette Lane, starting at noon SLT.
August also brings with it another night of live music at The Living Room, with August 13th seeing Billy Thunders on stage at 17:00 SLT, followed by The Vinnie Show at 18:00 SLT.
Nick Ochoa and Ebbe Altberg talk Sansar, SL and virtual spaces (image courtesy of UploadVR)
On August 3rd, Upload VR posted a video chat to YouTube which features a cosy fireside chat between Nick Ochoa and Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, which examines Sansar and virtual environments – touching on Second Life in some places.
The 30-minute conversation is very relaxed and approachable; Ebbe is clearly at ease (possibly helped by the glass of red wine!) and Nick is a very competent host in his ability to keep a conversational flow going. The camera is a tad wobbly in places, suggesting whoever was holding it may have been enjoying a sip or six of the wine / beer (!), but not excessively so. A lot of ground is covered in the time, and while it may be frustrating that some items are passed on rather than followed-up, keep in mind that this is more a conversation than in-depth interview / QA, serving to offer a non-SL audience a flavour of what that Lab is up to.
In terms of Sansar, we do get to learn that times are running very slightly behind schedule, in that we’re still a “couple of weeks” away from the start of initial closed alpha testing under NDA, but everything else remains pretty much as stated: NDA Alpha ramp-up through 2015 into 2016 and a more public beta in 2016.
We do get to learn a little more about how the closed alpha will run: those invited to join will be able to install and application with hooks into Maya, the tool of choice for initial testing. They build their “scenes” (“experiences”) in Maya and push a button in the application to “publish” the results on Sansar and obtain links they can share with others involved in the testing. Given Ebbe’s previous comments about “optimising” content for delivery across Sansar, I wonder if this approach will be how things are handled when Sansar is broadened to encompass other external content creation tools.
Beyond this, we get more on the Sansar / WordPress.com analogy, which first came to the fore in an article published by Variety online. This whole aspect of Sansar is a fascinating point of speculation to me, in that it suggests the platform is conceptually analogous to the concept of a Platform as a Service (PaaS), something which I think stands to make Sansar potentially far more powerful and flexible than people perhaps credit. However, as this is only speculation on my part, I’ll leave that to one side for now – but promise I will explore it further in a future article.
Within the UploadVR discussion, Ebbe’s focus on the WordPress.com analogy is tightly focused on the aspect of “discoverability”. The idea that right now and with SL, people have to join the platform in order to discover the experience, whereas Sansar should be more like WordPress – where people discover the blogs and don’t necessarily care about the platform on which the blogs are run.
A clearly relaxed Ebbe gets into talking avatar dancing (image courtesy of UploadVR)
Sansar’s revenue model gets a little more clarification, with the “sales tax” aspect clearly being applied to the platform’s GDP as a whole – which is Second Life’s case is an estimated half billion US dollars a year. Previously, there had been some confusion as to precisely where the “sale tax” might fall, particularly following an article in Xconomy.com, so the further clarification is welcome.
A direct parallel is drawn to on-line retail sites where up to 30% might be charged in commission. However, I wouldn’t take this to mean that’s necessarily what the Lab is looking to charge; Ebbe is making comparisons, not stating policy.
A more meaningful question to ask here is to how rapidly can Sansar realistically grow in user numbers order for such a model to be able to push the platform into the black? Unless there is some immediate and large influx of users, it could take a while for the Sansar economy to really get rolling; so conceivably, and depending on the associated overheads in providing the platform, the Lab could be operating Sansar as something of a loss leader for a time after it is “launched” to the world at large.
From here, the conversation broadens out to discuss the virtual opportunities that already exist in Second Life, from content creation through activities to monetization for users, to an overview of the many different communities present in-world, all of which almost seamlessly blends into more of a general chat on the potential and perils of VR which in turn bounces across health, the work of Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford University, and more besides. This actually makes for the interview’s most entertaining 10 minutes, as Ochoa and Altberg, obviously at ease, forget the presence of the camera as they chat.
Overall, this is a comfortable and pleasing discussion – not revelatory or packed with news, but one which is nevertheless interesting and within its own personal richness – not the least is the rapport which is clearly present between Altberg and Ochoa.
In 2014, Paradise Lost: The story of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin was, for me, the performance art event of Second Life. conceived, produced and directed by the creative pairing of Harvey Crabsticks and Canary Beck and staged by the Basilique Performing Arts Company.
This was a production that I was privileged to see in development, including spending time with both Canary and Harvey in conversation about how the production developed from the experiences they gained producing Romeo + Juliet. When I later reviewed the production and referred to it as a masterpiece of performance art in SL, I did so without hyperbole.
In essence, Paradise Lost combined John Milton’s blank verse epic of the same name with the music of the Süssmayr completion of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor. And I’ll say again without any exaggeration at all, that those who did not manage to see the production on stage truly missed out on something extraordinary. HOWEVER – there’s now an opportunity to make up for things!
Iconic scene: Satan’s fall and arrival in hell – Paradise Lost by the Basilique Performing Arts Company, 2014
At 12:00 noon SLT on Saturday September 19th, 2015, registered guests will be able to watch the specially commissioned Paradise Lost: The Movie. Filmed and produced by Forren Ashford, and featuring the cast and original sets from the production, all directed by Canary Beck, the film captures the full 2-hour production for posterity on video.
To see the film, all you need to do is register your e-mail address to be a part of this very special event. The film will be shown via Canary’s own website, canarybeck.com, but only to those who have pre-registered.
L$20,000 Prize Pool Contest
To mark the film’s première and in association with Windlight Magazine, Canary has launched a special photography contest, with a total prize pool of L$20,000 plus special media service awards to the top entries worth an additional L$10,00.
Taken together, the prizes are:
1st Place Photo – L$ 5,000, a 2-page story in Windlight Magazine together with a double page ad; and 1 month’s exhibition space at the Windlight Gallery
2nd Place Photo – L$ 3,000, a Windlight blog article and one double page ad
3rd Place Photo – L$2,000, and one double page ad in Windlight Magazine
Additional awards 10x L$1000 for the best scene photos.
For full details on how to enter, together with guidelines, rules, judging and prize awards, please refer to the competition webpage.
All entries must be posted to the official Paradise Lost Flickr group. Note that for scene awards, entries will be selected each week, so entries should be uploaded before the sets change (as indicated in the competition page schedule). Weekly winners will be announced via canarybeck.com and via social media, and will be informed directly via Flickr messaging.
The grand prize winner will by announced on Saturday, October 24th via the same means.
Good luck to all who enter – and don’t forget to register to see the movie!
Th obligatory Sansar promo image 🙂 (please can we have some new ones?) – Linden Lab
Eric Johnson has a thought-provoking article over on re/code. In Welcome to the Metaverse, he ponders the lot of avatar-based virtual spaces, past and future, and how a number of companies – the Lab included – are betting that the “new era” of VR is going to be the means by which such spaces will become mainstream.
It’s an interesting piece, offering plenty of food for thought, starting with an opening statement by the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, on defining human life:
What humans do is create spaces. Some spaces are mobile, like a bus. San Francisco is a space that was created by its users. Whether you go into a pub, a bar, a classroom, a bowling alley, an office, a library … We create spaces and we have people come together in those spaces, and then we communicate and socialize within those spaces.
This is actually the first thing about the article that leaves me with a familiar feeling of feeling at odds with the prevailing view of all things metaverse, albeit for a slightly different reason. With due respect to Mr. Altberg, people didn’t come together as a result of building spaces. They built spaces as a result of coming together. However, as an opening gambit for a study of this thing we call the “metaverse”, it’ll do as an opener.
Eric Johnson, Associate editor, Gaming at Re/code (via LinkedIn)
From here, Mr. Johnson give us the pocket introduction to “the metaverse” via the obligatory (and rightful) nod to Neal Stephenson while simultaneously dispensing quickly with a look at the “past promise” of virtual spaces that didn’t in the end measure-up to the expectations.
This leads the way to a clever little nod to the book which has become this decade’s “Snowcrash” – in the form of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (which is actually a very good read) – as a means to introduce the main three companies he sees as currently vying for space in “the metaverse” – the Lab, High Fidelity and AltspaceVR.
Chances are the Sansar and High Fidelity are already well-known to people reading these pages, which AltspaceVR may have passed some unnoticed. As the article points out, they’ve been developing avatar-based VR for the last couple of years, focusing on shared spaces (watching a film with a friend who is halfway across the world for example), and scheduled events, including gaming weekends, etc.
AltspaceVR also has some ideas for business applications with their environments, which they are planning to offer on a pay-to-use basis. And while their avatars main have been viewed with disdain by some, there are a couple of points to bear in mind where the company is concerned.
The first is that as a result of watching some of AltspaceVR’s virtual interactions, Mark Zuckerberg caught the social VR bug, and Facebook went after Oculus VR, with the subsequent $2 billion acquisition (which was actually quite a modest punt when compared to the $19 billion the company had earlier spent on a proven technology in WhatsApp).
The second is that the company, which has been around about as long at Philip Rosedale’s High Fidelity, has almost raised a comparable amount in funding – around $15.7 million to date (SEC filings indicate High Fidelity has raised around $16.5 million), and both are working at solving many of the same technical issues – head and motion tracking, eye tracking, etc.,
Beyond this, others interested in making a pitch into the metaverse space, as Mr. Johnson mentions are IMVU, which has around 15% of it’s 130+ staff now working on trying to integrate VR into its existing spaces (a-la the Lab’s early effects with SL and the Rift), and a small New York based start-up, focusing on VR social games with around $300,000 in seeding money. called Surreal, the 4-person company is billing itself as “the first fully immersive virtual world”, which is focused entirely on using VR HMDs (Oculus, Gear VR and Cardboard).
Johnson attempts to split his examination of the metaverse into two views: the short-term and the long-term. In doing so, he inevitably points to the elephant in the room: Facebook. In this, he quotes Palmer Luckey, who gives a fair warning as to whether or not “the metaverse” is around the corner, and which stands as a cautionary warning, in more ways than one:
I think at this point the term ‘metaverse’ is a bit undefined. For any one company to say, ‘We are building the metaverse’ is pretty hyperbolic. Building all the pieces is going to be hard, and the way you imagine things in sci-fi doesn’t always translate over to the way things will be in the real world.
Palmer Luckey: prescient words on “the metaverse”?
He has a very valid point; and with today’s rapidly evolving pace of technology, it’s one worth keeping in mind; the technical issues people see today as only being surmountable through the use of avatars may not actually be technical issues a few years hence.
Interestingly, Johnson places this in the “short-term” view – although both Oculus VR and Facebook have always talked in terms of “the metaverse” still being around a decade away. For the longer term, Johnson looks in particular at High Fidelity’s work and also the Second Life revenue generation success (and, despite the naysayers out there SL is a commercial success, both for the Lab and its users, the latter of whom benefited with collective revenues of $60 million from the platform in 2014), before taking another look at AltspaceVR.
There is a lot to be digested in the piece, and it makes for a good read. However, for me, Palmer Luckey’s warning that how things don’t always match the real world tends to stand out a lot when a lot of the approach being then with avatar-based virtual spaces tend to smack of the “if you build it, they will use it” approach.
I don’t doubt for a minute that spaces will have a lot of applications among various vertical markets. It is no coincidence that the likes of Philip Rosedale and Ebbe Altberg talk much of the same language concerning them: education, training, healthcare, business; there is potential for avatar-based VR spaces in all of them. But I’m still not convinced that longer-term, such spaces are going to claim a much large market among causal consumers than is currently the case, for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the vast majority of people really haven’t seen the need to “climb in” to an avatar for their social interactions – and getting a shiny new headset (which Johnson quotes some rather interesting demographics about) isn’t actually going to change that. The second is connected to the headsets themselves.
High Fidelity and Linden Lab see the education sector as a major focus for their efforts – and neither is wrong. But are avatar-based virtual spaces really going to go consumer mass market?
Simply put, it would seem likely that this brave new world of VR could end-up delivering so many fantastic experiences and opportunities to the casual user, that the majority still won’t see the need to invest time and effort in creating a virtual alter-ego of the kind we desire (and we, as SL / OpenSim users are a niche), because so much else is being delivered to them pre-packaged and ready-to-go. Thus, as Palmer Luckey indicates, the chances are “the metaverse” could well arrive in our lives in a manner very different to that being envisaged by High Fidelity and Linden Lab, thus leaving their approach still very much niche-oriented.
Not that there is anything wrong with that either. As both Rosedale and the Lab can demonstrate, it’s done them rather nicely over the years. And it is fair to say that “niche” this time around a liable to be somewhat larger, simply because of the vertical market opportunities they’re looking at.
Even so, and as mentioned, there is this optimistic we “build / they come” aspect to the whole idea of avatar-based vertical spaces that it would be nice to see an article probing the pros and cons a little more. Perhaps that might be something for a follow-up from Mr. Johnson? In the meantime, Welcome to the Metaverse is a thought-provoking read, and for reasons I’ve not even scratched at here (such as the question of on-line abuse), as such, it’s not one to miss.
Now open at Max Butoh’s marvellous Dathúil gallery, beautifully curated by Lυcy (LucyDiam0nd), is the August exhibition. Lovegasm features the combined work of Mr and Mrs. S – otherwise known as Saka Infinity and Laura (LauraLar). It is one which continues to mark this venue as one of the more fascinating in Second Life for the range and depth of art displayed within its walls.
The easiest way to describe the exhibition is to quote from the opening of the introductory note which can be obtained at the gallery’s entrance:
What happens when two picture lovers meet? When art meets love, when love inspires each other, it drives them to Lovegasm.
The result is a series of his-and-her images reflecting the relationship between the two, and sometimes as it intersects with others. All of the images are caught as personal moments in time; many apparently without the aid of specific poses, thus increasing the intimacy apparent in each of them.
The tone and approach of the images can also be gained from the introductory notes, which inform us that she is “a surprise package in the kink department” with an eye for colour composition and angle, while he has “a quest to find the soul hidden behind each avatar”, his particular muse being Laura.
Thus it is that we have an exhibit which offers insight into the lives or the artists which is deeply personal, while also encompassing eroticism, sexuality and a touch of kink / D/s; yet all of them contain a richly intimate feel. However, there’s something else here as well, a very subtle play that further adds to the depth of involvement for the observer.
Unlike earlier exhibits at Dathúil, the images in Lovegasm are displayed from a series of overhead screens. These flip every three minutes (ish) between images by Mr. S and images by Mrs. S (who have each selected the works of the other for the exhibit), or which can be manually changed using the selector on the floor of the gallery next to the middle mezzanine floor pillar. More to the point, and in reference to the visitor’s sense of involvement: the screens seem to hint that one is perhaps watching scenes unfolding elsewhere; thus casting us into the role of voyeur on the intimate and the erotic, which adds an illicit frisson entirely in keeping with the overall theme.
Also on the mezzanine itself is the couple’s “kinky shed” – a prop often used in their photography, and which they invite other photographers to use – the theme for the shed will be changing weekly during the exhibition, which will be open through until the end of August.
Another simply superb exhibition for Dathúil, and one which – as with the entire series to date – should not be missed.
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: updates to version 3.8.2.303891 on August 3rd – formerly the Viewer-Managed Marketplace RC (download, release notes)
The viewer Managed Marketpklace RC updated to version 3.8.2.303891 on July 29th, however,the viewer was subsequently promoted to the de facto release viewer, as noted above
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 