i-Anya

I am almost sufficiently recovered to blog about the continued events I have been involved in over the special 12 day NMC Symposium on The Impact of Digital Media.

Slatenight hosted a four hour series of events which, despite a few technical hitches, went really well. I am so pleased with how it all turned out!!

I started off the events by speaking about The Avatar as Communication. You can listen to the podcast version here.

Following my talk was a special kind of fashion show, where people were invited to showcase their unique identities and discuss their decisions and reasons behind constructing the avatar that they did. The podcast of this event is here.

Following this, Christy Dena spoke about Imaging Space, podcast here.

We had a panel discussion with some live musicians in SL who spoke about the SL live music scene. Ironically, there were some technical hitches with the audio so the podcast is brief but here.

Then we were entertained by the musicians with some live music from each in turn:

Mel Cheeky

Cybster DJ

and you can hear the music they played on the podcast here.

Next up was the incredible Dell Wilberg, who’s talk was entitled Future Perfect: Towards a Better Second Life. Using knowledge of trends in technology over the past several decades, Dell offered us an insight into what we might expect in our immediate future.

Very exciting indeed! Podcast here.

Finally we heard from Danielle Mirliss and Heidi Trotta who spoke about their work with Undergraduate students in Second Life: Engaging the Disengaged. It was fascinating to hear their experiences and to compare their thoughts with my own experiences with post-grads. The podcast is here.

And finally, at 4am, I gave a few brief closing remarks (podcast here).

In my closing remarks I mentioned that Christy was being interviewed in just a few hours time by the ABC media in Australia about Second Life, and here is the podcast for that (go Christy!!!).

The NMC blogging and recording of the four hour event was fantastic and my thanks go to Larry Pixel and CDB Barkley for inviting us to be a part of this very significant symposium. it was an honour and a thrill to be invited.

85 more photographs here, thanks also to Gary Hazlitt and NMC for many of the photographs in this set.

Slatenight 1.2 is available now - in Second Life at any Slatenight kiosk, and at the website slatenight.com

Articles this issue include the following:

Deus Ex Machina: “God From The Machine” (this one is the most popular by far, discussing the nexus between science fiction and technology, projecting into the future etc)

Hope, Fear and the Future: Burning Life 2006 (related to an in world event that mirrors an offline event called the Burning Man

Kids go Global in Second Life Part 1 (about the teen grid)

The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part one
The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part two (two fantastic articles about remediation by Christy Dena)

Avatars, Power and the Ethics of Freedom in Second Life (this one is mine!)

August Take5 Festival Worth the Wait! (about the machinima festival last month)

Crimson Falls Asylum & Village (about role-playing in SL)

All the (Virtual) Worlds a Stage
(and another article by me about a theatre performance in SL - images featured on the cover above)

and there’s lots more about art, identity, relationships in SL, musical events, SL lifestyles and more! Phew… and issue 3 is shaping up nicely, with some fabulous articles covering the arts, education, culture, and life in Second Life.

This is Suzanne Vega in Second Life - unfortunately she performed when I was fast asleep but luckily Hamlet from New World Notes filmed her:

Another amazing machinima from Robbie Dingo - this is a demonstration of how Robbie made a guitar for Suzanne Vega, which he describes here. It’s educational, its musical, its clever, yet it makes building objects in SL seem so simple! And here I am, excited because I made a two prim table…

Anyway, I hope to be up and about when Suzanne Vega performs!!

Here’s a quick video of me playing the flute in Second Life. I’m playing one of the pre-uploaded songs, “Summertime”. But I’ve also been transcribing my own flute music slowly into files that can be read and converted into audio. It’s really quite clever. One of my favourite pieces of music to play is Debussy’s “Syrinx” and I am half way through transcribing and rearranging it to suit right now. Getting the changes in tempo and dynamics is tricky but it can be done thanks to the amazing design of the flute by a Second Life resident named Robbie Dingo.

More than any other online community I’ve studied, I’m having the most fun with this one. It has so many more creative and artistic possibilities, and I’m a great fan of animation. But I also loooove my avatar - crazy but true - I think because she has automatic poses and responses not controlled completely by me it feels like she’s a little real doll. The blurring of calling her “me” and “she” is strange too - because she has a life of her own I see her as more seperate from me yet she is more like me than any other avatar I’ve had (not in looks but in some intangible way I can’t quite articulate) - fascinating

Oh do you like the pink hair today? I couldn’t resist buying a set of different shades of my favourite hairstyle. Yes I know - another $5 spent on dressing myself up. I am addicted to shopping. I’ve been trying to think of a way to make money in SL itself to support my fashion addiction. I went to Barbie’s night club and they were hiring “exotic” dancers for $100s of dollars an hour plus any tips from viewers but despite Anya’s secret urge to try pole-dancing in skimpy outfits I decided not to allow it *laugh*. Something a bit more respectable is the song writing competition I am going to enter. The prize is $10,000 (Linden dollars) which equates to about $50 (Australian). If I win that it would keep me in shoes and clothes and hair and jewellery etc… for a while *laugh*. Incredibly, there are a number of Second Life fashion blogs, magazines, and online boutiques which are hilarious fun. Check out these: Linden Lifestyles, Second Life Boutique, and Second Style Fashionista. My absolute favourite designer (who must be at least $10 richer because of my trade) is Nonna Hedges. In fact, you may recognise some of these items of clothing from my previous posts:

Avatars are a bustling economy - big business But don’t you just love the authentic fashion genre in the images and composition of Nonna Hedges’ ads? It’s brilliant and she is genuinely talented!

And speaking of blogs and e-zines related to Second Life, there are thousands of them! I really like the video blog of Dagny Hemingway because she has some great videos of events (for example when Lawrence Lessig visited she filmed the event). Her blog is called The Faux Press in Second Life. There’s moves afoot for an e-zine called “Avatar Magazine” and people are getting paid to write about avatars! I think I should volunteer

I am having way too much fun on Second Life! Here are some screenshots of my latest adventures:

I found a piano which I could play but only with pre-existing melodies - nevertheless it kep me amused

I went exploring underwater and was shown this spectacular reef -the animation of sea life is just incredible!

I found a sim based on New Zealand and it was full of fascinating information that I am actually taking notes about because in just a few weeks time I will actually be there for real

I went sailing with Stone - he kindly showed me his yacht and steered us all around several islands! We used skype as well to talk with each other as we were exploring - it was pretty fun and also a little new to be talking to the real person via voice chat when sailing around the world with them in a virtual world. Isn’t this shot cute? The avatars come with poses and you can buy extras to animate them in different ways. The poses when set to “on” will automatically adapt to whether you’re walking, sitting, flying and so on, and will respond to other people, just like this. Ahhhh

And did you notice the gorgeous corset I am wearing in that previous shot? Here’s a back view. I have written about adolescent girls and the body culture of avatars before but here I am totally immersed in the culture myself - I can’t tell you how long I have spent hunting down the perfect outfits and building my wardrobe *grin*

but the piece de resistance for me is the discovery of this flute - and not only does it come pre-packaged with a few melodies but it also comes with a composer and keyboard so that I can play my own music!!! I have started transcribing some of my own real music into technical jargon - into a file that can read by the flute - and its very very exciting!! It also took me an entire hour to move the flute to the precise correct spot for playing to match my avatar shape - it was extremely complicated I must say..with 6 different co-ordinates to plot and manipulate to get it at the right angle. I am assured it will get easier but for now I am still new to all the technical stuff so its taking a while.

Straight from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival comes this amusing clip of a comedian rocking up the Australian National Anthem - brilliantly! *grin*

My nieces were given the Playsation game “Singstar” for Christmas. Fortunately my sister also bought the Singstar 80s version, so when I visited her we sat and sang 80s songs together and I was mortified to discover that I am not as tunefully delightful as I always imagined I was :/

The game is heaps of fun though - you can sing solo, in duet mode, or in competition mode. You sing into microphones karaoke style and a display on the screen shows how close you are to singing in tune, scoring you along the way and issuing comments after each line such as “cool” or “bad” … you get points and an overall rating from “tone deaf” to “rising popstar” - here’s a screenshot:

It’s hilarious to sing/play yourself, but I have to say that when you’re not having your turn, it gets painful to listen to others playing it for too long *grin* (sorry Laura and friend).

My favourite song to sing was 99 red Balloons but I had no idea that this 80s song was a political comment until I actually read the lyrics on the screen one line at a time and tried to sing it! I’ve never been one for pop songs - give me jazz any day - but I do have a new appreciation for them after trying to sing them! :>

Important moment in Australian pop culture tonight - the third Australian Idol was announced: Kate DeAraugo. (Story here).

I went to Melbourne to see my brother Matthew perform in the orchestra for the Melbourne Opera Company’s performance of Don Giovanni. It was verrrrrrry funny and the music was super-fantastic-fabulous, ESPECIALLY the horn section! I managed to take some photos before the curtain went up and then at the end during the bows.

And because I couldn’t get any closer than that, I made Matt pose later on in the hotel room: