Mixed Reality Art Show and Dueling Tag Clouds

I've recently accepted an invitation to participate in a mixed reality art exhibition. I'll be leading one of five teams creating 1/2 sim installations in Second Life that will be captured via machinima and still imagery for presentation in a number of RL galleries. My topic is "The Ambiguity of Identity." I'll provide more details here soon.

Here's the latest snippit from some of the research I've been doing on the expression of my own identities across social networks. These images were created in Wordle and reflect Delicious tags. The first is Botgirl's ; the second is Human's. It seems Human is a bit more well-rounded!

Having Genius vs. Being Genius

My experience of giving birth to a creative work typically includes long stretches of concerted effort punctuated by periods of both blissful rapture and excruciating despair. In the video below, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert shares some thought-provoking insights on how we might reframe our perception of the creative process to reduce its personally-destructive aspects.

Twitter Lemmings Fall Over Cliff of Dalai Lama Stories

The verdict is still out about whether the Twitter identity attributed to the office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama was created by an authorized entity. Although it's been reported that the account was closed by Twitter today because it was created by an impersonator, there is no official information from Twitter or H.H. Could be Chinese misinformation to thwart the 20,000+ followers. Or could be a total fake to start with.

I'm just going to sit on the edge of the cliff and wait to make any conclusions.

(An hour or so later)

Okay, looks like it was an impersonator. But it was a good idea. Maybe the real H.H. will sign up.

Plurk Goes Crazy for Fake Lindens Today Thanks to ArminasX Saiman

ArminasX Saiman started a micro-fad on Plurk today by changing his display name to Armi Linden. Chaos erupted as Second Life Plurkers began channeling fake Lindens and posting all kinds of ROLF messages.

A few were displeased and one notable person whose name I won't mention here dropped all of the participants from his timeline.

Here's a shot from my December post on creating a Botgirl Linden identity on OpenLife.

Original Concept Sketch For Botgirl vs. Human Comic

I recently found a number of misplaced sketches that were behind the Botgirl vs. Human Comic and some other projects. Here's the first:

I'm #2 in The Metaverse on the Twitter Elite List

Twitter Grader has some secret-sauce algorithm to create a list of Twitter Elite in each region. On a whim, I queried "The Metaverse" and I came in at #2. I don't know quite what to make of this, but it makes for a fast blog post.

BOTGIRL VS HUMAN: Twitter Follower's Word Clouds

Twittersheep creates word clouds based on your Twitter friends' profile text. As you can see, there's a definite difference between Botgirl and Human.

I've set up an open Avatar vs. Human Flickr group for people to post their own "avh" images. Feel free to add visualizations from social networks, results of psychological tests, or actual snapshopts of your human and avatar selves.

A Quick Survey of Gods on Twitter

I'm not sure what led me to check, but here are Twitter pages from some currently worshiped deities. According to Twitter, you can follow God, but you can't follow Jesus because he doesn't exist. Allah has protected his updates and Krishna is working with Wordpress. And Satan?

Why I'm Happy Nightflower Left Second Life

My good friend and comic collaborator Night(flower) decided to commit virtual seppuku last week and is gone, gone, gone. I am very proud of her for taking that step. Like many people I know, Night had kept her virtual life secret from her spouse (and Night had a BIG virtual life.) Having spent many hours discussing the topic with her over the past year, I take her decision to leave and "finally unite the two halves " of herself as a giant step of integrity. So I'm very happy for her.

Here's a page from the comic we co-created back in September that prophetically foreshadowed her current action.

Plurk adds Second Life as Country

Does this foreshadow an acquisition of Plurk by Second Life or just pandering to a large avatarian population. Or is there more as ArminasX writes? Time will tell.

Newest Addition to Social Sharing Etiquette Comic

Here are the latest three images plus a link at the bottom to the full in-progress e-book from issuu.com.

Get your own - Open publication

The Last Vid & Testament of Botgirl Questi

It's time to take a break from actively blogging and creating content as Botgirl Questi...at least for the foreseeable future. This video provides a glimpse into how I've been feeling trying to keep all of my atomic and virtual balls in the air. I will continue to post once in a while and also pop inworld from time to time.

Are We Ants or Are We Avatars?

Something about Twitter recently has made me feel like a minuscule and insignificant ant scurrying from data crumb to data crumb in the semi-aware hive-consciousness of social networking. Perhaps, like the ants who created the artifact discovered in this video, there is some greater whole that is being created. Maybe not. In any case, this glimpse under the surface is a very humbling look at the work of "mere" ants.

Social Sharing: Who Cares?

I'm going to pull a Dave Gray with this comic and post small sets of images that will eventually be part of a larger and more coherent work. This continues from the introduction posted a couple of days ago here.

NEW COMIC SERIES: Botgirl Questi's Guide To Social Sharing Etiquette (sneak preview)

Here's a preview of the first few pages of a comic series starting next week that will sum up my weeks of digital navel gazing on social sharing. Should be pretty fun and hopefully of some practical value.







Next Week: Issue 1 "Diagnosing Post-Dramatic Share Disorder"

Comic Cover: SLayers

Created on a Plurkish whim from Marvel's Create Your Own Superhero

Featuring from left to right:
Botgirl, (the diminutive) Jacek, Michele and Lanna

We interrupt this sharing thread for Ted Talks video of "Understanding Comics" author Scott McCloud

Sharing Flowchart

Here's an image that captures a portion of the flow of my shared items. A share can begin at any box.

The What, Who and Where of Sharing

Still VizThinking through the process of sharing. This image is related to the decision process of figuring out where to post.

The Sharer: Projection and Reflection