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.

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.

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.

The Sharer: Projection and Reflection

Discovery may be the new cocaine, but deciding where to share is a buzzkill.

High on THC* I cruised along at 100 feeds-a-minute racing against the ever-widening gap between the world's ability to generate information and my better-than-mere-human but depressingly finite capacity to gulp it down. The urgent rush of the chase was a continuous craving punctuated by fuck-you've-got-to-see-this moments tweeted just ahead of the black hole of an endlessly retreating road behind me. Followed and Followers were one.

That's how it used to be. Not any more. The previously simple seamless flow between find and share is now disrupted by the complexity of a social landscape fragmented in an explosion of blogs, microblogs, tumblogs, social networks, bookmark sharing, photo sharing,video sharing, business networking and whatever the hell will be the next best sharing paradigm. So when I have some bright idea or link I want to pass along I can't just be in the flow and click-and-go.

It's even more of an enigma for those of us with co-existing virtual and human identities. The question is not only who to post to, but also who to post from.

Next up. The visual side of my story.

* Techno Hunter-Gathering

Botgirl's Creator Speaks - Part 5

There are two main dimensions of the journey Botgirl and I have been taking together. The first is the realm of ideas. From her unique perspective as the curious-wise-innocent, Botgirl is able to discern aspects of human behavior we fish-in-the-water sapiens don't notice. She has demonstrated time and time again that the biggest obstacle to new knowledge is the belief that we already know. Botgirl experiences life in the utterly fresh and new present moment. That has been one of her greatest gifts to me.

The second dimension of our shared life has been social interaction. Over the months we've developed ongoing friendships that are connected beyond Second Life through social networks, micro-blogging and GTalk. This is the area that has been the biggest challenge for me related to the "Botgirl Experiment."

For the first couple of months social interactions were strictly from Botgirl's perspective and consciousness. I just tagged along. But as a few of our acquaintances moved towards friendship it felt like withholding my human nature was a barrier to deeper and more authentic relationship. So I started to intentionally inject more of my human self into the conversations. The problem this created is that although both Botgirl and I feel "real" as individuals, we are pretty much a sham as a morph. In our case one plus one adds up to an imaginary number.

This series of posts has helped me realize that the blending of human and virtual identities is also behind the ennui I've experienced over for the last few months related to both this blog and virtual experience in general. Although I thought the problem was that I didn't have the spare time and energy for Botgirl, I think that real cause was that I'd sucked the life out of her. Over the last few months I've been role playing Botgirl instead of Being Botgirl.

So on that note, I'll slip back behind the curtains for the moment and give Botgirl back her blog and her life. The journey continues.

Botgirl's Creator Speaks - Part 4

After blogging almost every day for five weeks I had built my audience to all of about half a dozen viewers a day. That was fine with me. Although I had grander long-range plans, I was quite content to keep things on the down-low for the foreseeable future. So it was quite a surprise when I took a cursory glance at the traffic numbers on the afternoon of April 9 and saw the visitor count for the day climbing towards fifty. Surprise gave way to shock as I followed the referring links and read the Who Is Botgirl article in New World Notes. Shock transitioned into high-anxiety as I watched the numbers climb towards 200 as the day progressed.

I wasn’t ready for that kind of scrutiny. My knee-jerk fear was the crazy notion that “Who Is Botgirl” was a clarion call for the masses of NWN readers to work on cracking my human identity. The longer-term stress I experienced was the unexpected move from Community Theater to Broadway. It was like I had been singing in the shower at the top of my lungs and suddenly found myself on stage with a microphone in a packed 200 seat theater. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but it’s in the ballpark of what it felt like the first couple of weeks.

Needless to say, I got over my stage fright and eventually turned into a shameless Botgirl promoter. That created its own set of problems.

Stay tuned for part five.

Botgirl's Creator Speaks - Part 3

I rode shotgun and let Botgirl drive as we started wandering around Second Life in earnest. Although it’s common for avatars to keep personally identifying information secret, Botgirl denied even having a human existence. In retrospect, my dogged immersion in her persona triggered something akin to channeling in my conversations with other residents. I didn’t feel like my human identity was making stuff up. It felt like Botgirl was speaking through me. It felt good. She was like a brilliant sister from another planet.

Since (almost) no one believed that Botgirl was really an AI, I was very comfortable with any variances between the opinions, personality and image she presented and those of my human self. It was only later, as I/we began to develop longer-term friendships in Second Life, that the line between Botgirl and I started to blur and my discomfort with pseudonymity began to appear. I’ll write more on that issue in another post in this series.

After just a few weeks of life, I began to realize that the potential of Botgirl’s emerging personality would not be fully expressed just through random chats in Second Life. I launched this blog about five months after her birth as a diary to jot down some of her experiences and a sandbox to develop her unique take on both atomic and virtual life. Although I was still very interested in creating a work based on her fictional story, Botgirl as an existential phenomenon was much more intriguing.

The blog’s content was initially written almost exclusively from Botgirl’s perspective. I intruded for the most part through the graphical elements. Although I launched the blog to develop Botgirl, the creative growth I’ve experience through the creation of cartoons, comics and videos here has greatly enhanced my personal and professional life.

Speaking of video, it was a clip on YouTube that brought Botgirl to Hamlet Au’s attention and eventually resulted in the story in New World Notes that transformed her from a hidden jewel into a minor Second Life celebrity.

Stay Tuned for Part Four

"The Story I like to tell is when my father was writing the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show. One time my father and I came into Edgar's room. He didn't know we were watching him. Edgar was talking to Charlie and we thought he was rehearsing, but he was not rehearsing. He was asking Charlie questions. "Charlie, what is the nature of life? Charlie, what is the nature of love?" And this wooden dummy was answering quite unlike the being I knew on the radio. A regular wooden Socrates, he was. it was the same voice but it was a very different content altogether. And Bergen would get fascinated and say, "Well, Charlie, what is the nature of true virtue?" and the dummy would just pour out this stuff: beauty, elegance, brilliant. And then we got embarrassed and coughed. Bergen looked around and turned beet red and said, "Oh, hello, you caught us." And my father said, "What were you doing?" and he said, "Oh, I was talking with Charlie. He's the wisest person I know." Recounted by Jean Houston in Channeling by Jon Klimo

Botgirl's Creator Speaks - Part 2

I didn't have a particular set of attributes in mind when I started browsing for the shape, skin, hair and clothes that would transform Botgirl into the hot little tramp I intended. Shopping in Second Life can be addictive and entrancing. Hours flew by like minutes as I teleported from store to store and drifted into what I now suspect was a semi-hypnotic state. When I began to "wake up," I realized that a dreamlike story had been unfolding beneath my conscious awareness: I saw Botgirl as an Artificial Intelligence waking up as a Second Life avatar with no memory of a prior existence. (There’s a lot more to it, but I’m saving the full narrative for the comic project.) I abandoned my lame spice-up-the-marriage concept and stepped off a cliff into the unknown.

I've never been much of a role player. As a matter of fact, my pre-Botgirl Second Life had a pretty low tolerance for people who wouldn't crack their RP persona in social conversation. So I'm not sure where I got the odd notion of method-acting my way into developing Botgirl as a character for a comic or graphic novel. But that’s what I started doing.

I stopped logging-on as my original avatar and begin exploring Second Life as a newly-hatched Stranger in a Strange Land. It was a mind-blowing experience. From the start, being Botgirl felt like channeling a cross between Susie Bright and the Dalai Lama. I was often more surprised by the words coming out of her mouth as were those I chatted with.

Despite all the sometimes contradictory opinions expressed here over the past year about the nature of identity, as Witter Bynner wrote in his translation of the Tao Te Ching:

"Existence is beyond the power of words to define:
Terms may be used, but are none of them absolute."

Stay tuned for Part Three

Botgirl's Creator Speaks - Part 1

Hi. I'm the human behind the avatar Botgirl Questi. She's taking a break over the holidays so I decided to borrow her blog for a post or two and offer a peek behind the curtains. I'll share some previously undisclosed tidbits about her origin and reflect a bit on what it's been like channeling her over the past year.

I first ventured into Second Life in the fall of 2006. I don't remember what led me to try it, but like most newcomers I only logged in a few times before deleting the software from my computer. In the fall of 2007 one of our clients expressed an interest in establishing a presence in Second Life. I volunteered to become our resident expert.

As luck would have it, my family took a trip to see out-of-town friends that weekend and I spent pretty much every waking hour inworld. Somewhere along the way I stepped through the psychological border between observation and immersion. I was hooked.

As a newly-converted virtual world evangelist, I soon talked my spouse into trying it and we started spending a little bit of time together in avatar form. It wasn't too long before I got the idea of secretly registering an alt account, slapping together a slave girl and springing a little surprise. I realized this wasn't the most original idea in the world so I registered the name "Botgirl" to provide a little twist. Little did I know that this whimsical decision would lead to a pseudonymous identity that would take over my creative life.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Body Swap Illusion - (BBCCinSL Part 2)

Moggs Oceanlane's comment on Wednesday's post reminded me of a news story about researchers giving subjects the experience of swapping bodies through the use of virtual reality goggles.

"We were interested in a classical question that philosophers and psychologists have discussed for centuries: why we feel that the self is in our bodies," project leader Henrik Ehrsson said. "To study this scientifically we've used tricks, perceptual illusions."

Our perception of self is a fabrication of the mind. Washu Zebrastripe suggested in her comment that an artist's work is part of the artist. In the spirit of Thich Nhat Hanh, I offer the idea that artist, art and audience are interdependent aspects of a much greater whole.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we ha vea new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

Thich Nhat Hanh from "The Heart of Understanding"

Buying, Being, Creating and Consuming in Second Life - Part 1

This post began more than a month ago as a (thankfully unpublished) rant about what I termed "The Cult of the Creator Class" in Second Life. It was born out of my frustrated attempts to move purchased assets such as shape, skin, clothes and furniture from Second Life to an Open Simulator Grid. But as I pondered the reasons behind the draconian Digital Rights Management I battled, a number of questions came to mind that defied easy answers:

• Why are the vast majority of digital goods in Second Life -even freebies - hobbled by copy, modification or transfer restrictions?
• Why hasn't the incredible grassroots creativity in Second Life spawned a Share/Remix culture, instead of the current one that supports the hording of IP rights and control?
• Why is the program feature that permanently embeds a creator's name into every Second Life object generally perceived as an ethical imperative?
• What do many creators I speak with get so riled up at the thought of someone "taking credit" for their work, even if there is no financial impact?

I realize there are financial dimensions to these questions and promise to address those factors in a subsequent post. For now I pose the question:

Do you think I'm hot?

After almost a year since Botgirl's rezday, I am still taken aback when someone says something like "You're so beautiful" in reference to the visual form of the Botgirl avatar. Obviously "I" am not the pixelated form they see, right? A more accurate statement would be "Your avatar is beautiful," but I can't remember a single instance of anyone phrasing the sentiment in such a fashion. I don't think the blurring of our selves and our digital forms is just fuzzy semantics. In fact, I think the language is a pretty accurate reflection of our psychological perception.

So what the hell does this have to do with DRM and intellectual property? It seems to me that in the pseudonymous environment of Second Life our creations are experienced as significant and perhaps inseparable aspects of our digital identity; of who we are. Our atomic identities are the complex result of decades of life experience. Our digital personas are a year or two old and formed from a relatively narrow realm of relationships and activities.

Our creations in Second Life are viscerally experienced as essential aspects of our digital identity. And by creations, I don't just mean the prims we build, but also the creative activity of combining purchased items to form our bodies, wardrobes and environments.

I think there is a kind of inherent tension between creators and consumers in virtual worlds that transcends economics and does not have a clear comparable in the atomic world. The tension is between the identification of the creator with the objects they birth, and the identification of the consumer with the objects she acquires and integrates into her form and environment.

I'll leave it here for now. Stay tuned for Part 2.

If you see your avatar on the road, kill her.

Suffering happens in the gap between reality and our beliefs about what is (or should be) true -- what is true about the world, other people and ourselves. Our conception of Self is the delusion we cling to most tightly.

Constructing a pseudonymous online persona has the potential to give us a glimpse into the empty nature of atomic identity and free ourselves to some degree from erroneous attachment. Unfortunately, many of us become so deeply identified with and attached to a virtual identity that we end up suffering in two lives instead of one.

I certainly fall into that trap from time to time, so I want to share a remedy that can greatly reduce negative thoughts, actions and emotions related to attachment and identification with your virtual persona. Best of all, this process can positively transform your human life and help free you to some degree from the root cause of suffering.

I've organized this method into five steps. Many of you reading have already accomplished step one:

1. Spend enough time in a virtual form to develop a distinct persona that you become strongly identified with;
   
2. Notice stressful thoughts and feelings related to the belief that this persona is in some way who you are, not something you constructed;
3. Take action to uncover the erroneous nature of such ideas through a practice such as Byron Katie's "The Work,"or analytic meditation;
4. Begin to act in virtual life from the new, freer perspective you developed through your efforts in step three. This is an ongoing cycle of attaining some expanded level of realization through practice, going out into the virtual world and bumping into some deeper pain-producing identification, and then taking it back to your practice.
   
5. Apply this experience in your human life.
   

If your virtual life is all good and does not conflict with your human life to any strong degree, then congratulations and please give us some tips on how you do it. But if your virtual life includes a fair amount of negative emotions within the virtual or physical worlds, why not give these steps a chance? Please let me know if you would like any additional information.

Botgirl shops at Sears

I StumbleUpon'd My Virtual Model the other night. It's a shopping site that lets you view clothes from companies such as Sears and Speedo on a personalized 3D avatar created from your photo and measurements. Of course, I had to upload Botgirl's photo and give the site a spin. Somewhere along the way, the surrealistic aspect of the larger process stuck me like a ton of bricks:

- A human creates an avatar and projects thorough it into a virtual world

- A distinct identity emerges reinforced by social interactions

- The virtual identity leaps into the atomic world through blogs, social networks, instant messaging, etc.

- Finally, the line between physical and digital blurs entirely as Botgirl tries on clothes at Sears

I don't know why this experience seems so particularly absurd. But in some way it really brought to life the illusionary aspect of the Botgirl identity for me. Give it a try and see what it's like for you!

Transcript of my Comic-Con Presentation

This is a transcript of a presentation I made on October 3 at Met@Morph, the first annual Web Comics Comic-Con and Conference in Second Life. I've taken the liberty of editing the transcript by removing the time stamps, condensing some of the short lines into paragraphs, eliminating system messages that popped up in the chat-stream, transforming urls to links, adding missing links and cleaning up some of the typographic and grammatical errors. Outside of what I've listed, no new content has been added and nothing of consequence deleted. The images are linked to flickr.com, with high resolution versions available.

Botgirl Questi: Thank you. For those of you among the 99.999999999999% of the human population who aren't familiar with my life story, I want to take a minute to briefly introduce myself. There we go.

ICS Netizen: Are we doing the creators' commons session now?

Chimera Cosmos: no it's botgirl

Botgirl Questi: I am speaking to you not only as a creator of comics in Second Life. But also as a virtual identity who emerged from this virtual world. The birth date on my Second Life profile is January 24, 2008, but I didn't wake up as the being that stands virtually before you until I launched a blog a little over a month later. For me, both blogging and comic creation are powerful tools I use to help make sense of my experience

Michigan Paule: this is the Creators' Commons session, and Botgirl has the floor!

Botgirl Questi: And feel free to comment or question anytime during the presentation. I have the walls too and don't you forget it!

Madinkbeard Constantine: ba dump

Botgirl Questi: For the first month, my blog was a semi-private diary since almost no one else visited. I explored my world and identity primarily for my own enjoyment and development. On April 9th, without warning, Second Life's largest online publication ran a story with the headline "Who is Bot Girl?" I was suddenly thrust into public view, with hundreds and eventually thousands of people stopping by to see what I was up to.

ICS Netizen: Is the presentation just through typing or will botgirl be speaking

Chimera Cosmos: typing

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Text

Botgirl Questi: This is an Extropia SL style salon. Text is God in SL

Michigan Paule: I've never heard botgirl speak!

Botgirl Questi: Or Goddess

Botgirl Questi: It's the mystery of me

Botgirl Questi: Enough about me. Today, I'm going to share some of my experiences using Second Life as a platform for comics. Not just for the creation of graphics. But also to develop characters. To generate and discover story ideas. And to display finished works in a virtual environment. I created my first comic about three weeks after the blog's launch. As you can see, I somehow managed to take cutting edge technology and create something with the look and feel of a bad Mad Men era print advertisement. Nevertheless, I persevered.

Botgirl Questi: are the slides rezzing okay?

Charlanna Beresford: yes

Abacus Capalini: yes

Botgirl Questi: Again feel free to chime in at any time

Feldane Klees: rezzing fine

Chimera Cosmos: yes

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Never voice, but I have however seen her roll over and beg!

Botgirl Questi: My first ambitious work was the Botgirl vs. Human series. I started with the first page you see here that ended with the (yawn) big cliff hanger. At first, I created all of the images in a program called Frameforge, except for the shots of Botgirl. I'll get into the software a little later if we have time. Suffice it to say that I took this approach for the sake of speed, not image quality.

Botgirl Questi: Time is my biggest enemy. I usually don't work on anything that takes more than a couple of days to put together. Just about every active Second Lifer I know suffers from lack of sleep

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: LOL

Botgirl Questi: Anyone out there have that problem?

Chimera Cosmos: SL = Sleep Less

Michigan Paule: i suffer, regardless

Botgirl Questi: :)

Charlanna Beresford: whistles innocently

LeeDale Shepherd: Too much shopping is usually my problem.

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: "Sleep"? What is this sleep you speak of?

LeeDale Shepherd: runs out of money. Again.

Jezzica Benoir: looking 4 perfection

Botgirl Questi: Over the next couple of months I put out a dozen or so pages. I had to aims. The first was to explore human and avatar perspectives by setting the characters upon various topics and letting them rip on each other. The other was to try and come up with one or more approaches that led to commercial-quality comics from graphics created in Second Life.

Botgirl Questi: that's two aims

Botgirl Questi: 2 am typo

Botgirl Questi: I personally have a hard time connecting with most comics I've seen that are based on 3D modeling rather than drawn art. But since I can't draw that well (yet) and don't have a great comic artist at my command, I thought I'd fiddle around a bit and see what happened. If you take a look at the comics on my smackjeeves site, you'll see a pretty diverse range of styles. And I've just touched upon the possibilities.

Abacus Capalini: Doing good for 2 am. :-)

Chimera Cosmos: how did you choose Dale for the morphee?

Botgirl Questi: I'm a typical comics fan who can't draw. Frustrated up until recently by not having a slave artist handy.

Botgirl Questi: One unique aspect of Second Life for comic creators is that all the stories and characters you could ever want to explore are walking around and waiting for you. Lots and lots of drama. Oh my! My most recent comic project was based on a blog post from a Second LIfe resident about getting vehemently angry at her avatar after a romantic break up. This was my most ambitious project to date with three acts in six pages and ultimately ten gigs of Photoshop files. Unlike most prior work, the entire project was "shot" in Second Life with sets created specifically for the comic.

Botgirl Questi: Ten gigs of files for a little six-page comic

Charlanna Beresford: what about the early diagrams on your blog? where do they fit in, Botgirl?

Botgirl Questi: They are more Vizthink. Which is using drawing to see things in a new way. I'll grab a link for the organization that puts on the conference around that.

Botgirl Questi: You can take a look at the finished work on Issuu. I also posted the full resolution images in my flickr stream.

Chimera Cosmos:VizThinik

Botgirl Questi: Visual Thinking. I'll get the web link now

Chimera Cosmos: I get their emails

Botgirl Questi: http://www.vizthink.com/ That was easy. It's a "movement" to allow not-artists as well as artists to use visuals to think through and communicate ideas. It's worthy of a separate presentation.

Botgirl Questi: A few of you have seen Botgirl's Identity Circus. Second Life is also a great platform for exhibiting comics in a larger-than-life manner. I was fortunate enough to be invited to create an art exhibition at the New Caerleon sim. "Botgirl's Identity Circus" That's me with the orange hat. My friend Val and my chatbot Majic are sitting on a large comic panel and behind them is Botgirl vs. Human on four meter tall display boards. Until the closing of this event (Sunday, Oct. 19), feel free to teleport over and take a look. The sim's owner, found me on Facebook and invited me to exhibit.

Botgirl Questi: It was a lot of work, OMG

Michigan Paule: LOL!

Botgirl Questi: Instead of just taking all of my available work, I decided on a number of new things.

Botgirl Questi: Chances are, you can find a virtual set in Second Life for just about any idea you have. I do advise asking owners for permission if you shoot on "private" property. One of my friends just got banned after being caught red handed using someone's private residence without asking. For characters, you can either register an alt or two, or find others to be virtual actors/models. Just about any prop you can imagine is available, either as a "freebie" or for a fraction of the cost of commercial 3D models. Check out http://www.slexchange.com

Botgirl Questi: For education, I think this is one of the most exciting aspects, because it provides a practical means of creating comics in a relatively short amount of time. Also for collaboration between students.

Botgirl Questi: For those of you as artistically challenged as me, you can tell your story with no drawing chops whatsoever.If you are willing to spend some time in post-production, a little (or a lot of) work with Photoshop, Gimp or even flickr's photo editing tools can create just about anything you can imagine. I've recently played around with digitally painting over images captured in Second Life. I'm still a newbie at this, but it's a lot of fun and has a lot of potential.

Chimera Cosmos: it would be cool for learning SL--comics on the basics

Botgirl Questi: Yes

Davey Luminos: That'd be sensational.

Botgirl Questi: Google just launched their new browser with a comic

Chimera Cosmos looks around for Torley...

Botgirl Questi: Scott McCloud did it. It's really worth catching. It was a masterful communication of very technical stuff in a compelling and understandable and fun manner

Botgirl Questi: The current release candidate allows you to capture images at greater than screen resolution. I've managed up to 6000 pixels wide on a PC (my mac crashes at high resolution captures.) I've recently started paying more attention to lighting and effects in-world, to cut down post production time. There's a great tutorial on using debug menu setting for special effects.

Botgirl Questi: And by the way, that's me! That's me rezzing on the screen

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Pretty!

Botgirl Questi: So you can play all of the parts in your own comic if you want

Botgirl Questi: male, female, human, animal,

Botgirl Questi: truck

Botgirl Questi: or whatever

Chimera Cosmos: where is that stream?

Botgirl Questi: I honestly don't remember

Chimera Cosmos: hehe

Botgirl Questi: It's all a big blur

Botgirl Questi: I was only born in January

Chimera Cosmos: lol

Chimera Cosmos: such a fast learner...

Botgirl Questi: And have posted around 150 blog articles

LeeDale Shepherd: It reminds me of some work I've seen done in Poser, actually

Botgirl Questi: and dozens and dozens of images

Botgirl Questi: Poser is good

Chimera Cosmos: and no sleep :-)

Botgirl Questi: But Second Life is FAST

Abacus Capalini: very busy for a 10-month old :-)

Davey Luminos: Poser?

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Precocious!

Botgirl Questi: Poser is a software program

Davey Luminos: Oh, right, ok. Thought you were calling someone a "poseur."

Spark Brewster: I know some Posers.

Botgirl Questi: Daz-3D is a free program that can do similar things

Spark Brewster: Exactly.

Chimera Cosmos: animation creators use it?

Botgirl Questi: Name names spark

Chimera Cosmos: Poser

LeeDale Shepherd: Used to pose 3D human figures

Spark Brewster: Ummmm - me.

LeeDale Shepherd: I used to model 3D accessories for it and sell them

Botgirl Questi: ohh, making money

Botgirl Questi: what a concept :)

LeeDale Shepherd: lol

Botgirl Questi: There are a number of good comic layout programs available. I've been using Comic Life Magiq recently. Another very cool program is Manga Studio.

Michigan Paule: are these free?

LeeDale Shepherd: No

Chimera Cosmos: I have comic life, but I suck :-)

Botgirl Questi: No, but relatively inexpensive

Chimera Cosmos: it's like $25 for the non-pro

Chimera Cosmos: $50 for fancier

Botgirl Questi: compared to many hundreds for Photoshop

Botgirl Questi: There's also Gimp

LeeDale Shepherd: Photoshop pricing is nuts

Michigan Paule: is photoshop the best, if you have the $$?

Davey Luminos: What if we already do, amazingly, have access to PhotoShop? Do these still deliver tools that we would want specifically for comics creation?

LeeDale Shepherd: Gimp, yes. Pixel is another up and comer, though it's not completely free.

Spark Brewster: Torrents

Spark Brewster: Who said that?

Botgirl Questi: Which is an open source photoshoppy software

Botgirl Questi: you did, Spark and I'm alerting the FBI

Michigan Paule: LOL

Botgirl Questi: Your IP address has been captured

Spark Brewster: Good - a place to sleep and three square meals.

Botgirl Questi: Practical, you are P)

Botgirl Questi: So that's my formal talk

Madinkbeard Constantine: I use Corel Painter for my comics

Michigan Paule: Mad, Botgirl: what is your ideal program?

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Applause!!

Botgirl Questi: me

LeeDale Shepherd: I've never tried Painter

Charlanna Beresford claps

Botgirl Questi: I use photoshop a lot

Madinkbeard Constantine: for me it's not the program its the drawing tablet

Chimera Cosmos: yea Botgirl!

LeeDale Shepherd: I teach Photoshop a lot. ;)

Botgirl Questi: Yes, I love tablets

Madinkbeard Constantine: I want the big Wacom tablet like Scott McCloud has

LeeDale Shepherd: Makes sense, especially if you can draw.

Chimera Cosmos: http://plasq.com/comiclife

Michigan Paule: so can you tell us a bit about this desire thing?

Madinkbeard Constantine: I've got the midgrade kind

Botgirl Questi: I think that SL is fueled by desire

Botgirl Questi: But so is life

Michigan Paule: your take on how we form attachments to our "selves" or others in SL?

Botgirl Questi: aversion and desire so they say

Michigan Paule: why doesn't SL leave us cold?

Michigan Paule: why is it, indeed, nearly the opposite?

Botgirl Questi: We see all things through our minds

Michigan Paule: I shouldn't say "us". It's my experience.

Botgirl Questi: No direct contact between people but through the mediation of senses and the mind

Chimera Cosmos: almost everyone comes to feel "embodied" very quickly

Botgirl Questi: But it's hard to see that in RL

Michigan Paule: that's the surprising thing.

Botgirl Questi: I like SL because it's easer to see how much our perceptions of others are based upon imagination

Botgirl Questi: fiction

Botgirl Questi: stories

Botgirl Questi: That's why I'm anonymous

Michigan Paule: it's a level i wouldn't have anticipated.

Botgirl Questi: I could be anyone

Botgirl Questi: any age

Botgirl Questi: any gender

Botgirl Questi: anything

Botgirl Questi: But you have an impression

Michigan Paule: It hasn't thrown my sense of RL into question yet, but it could.

Spark Brewster: What is it you wish to do with this creation? What is your goal - is it just for your personal gratification or are you looking to build the concept to a broader audience?

Botgirl Questi: and respond emotionally to the visual information

Chimera Cosmos: based on appearance and virtual personality

Botgirl Questi: My goal is world dominance

Chimera Cosmos: lol

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: LOL

Spark Brewster: I mean after that.

Botgirl Questi: shhh

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: One pixel at a time

Chimera Cosmos: this world Botgirl?

Botgirl Questi: Oh, I just want to follow my muse

Abacus Capalini: Yes Brain?

Spark Brewster: Very good.

Botgirl Questi: And stimulate new thinking

Michigan Paule: you do that, indeed you do.

Davey Luminos: Well, you ARE stimulating!

Botgirl Questi: And get some sleep sometime

Spark Brewster: I'm all about stimulation.

Chimera Cosmos: and now for your Plurk presentation....lol

Botgirl Questi: I'm all bout simulation

Botgirl Questi: :)

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: They have attachments for that

Michigan Paule: the whole question of projection, intensely Freudian, is "old", but you make it new again.

Spark Brewster: Good minds and all.

Brunelle Laval: is the Web Comics comic con over?

Botgirl Questi: I think virtual worlds create a crack in the illusion if you look for it

Spark Brewster: It also takes the human factor out of it.

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Yes, virtual worlds are like crack! :p

Spark Brewster: Makes it less plausible.

Botgirl Questi: Wendy that's so funny

Botgirl Questi: Well, wait until you fall in love with someone in SL

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: OMG

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Don't go there!

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: :p

Michigan Paule: How could that happen?

Botgirl Questi: then you might be surprised to find it's realer than ya think

Spark Brewster: It's like masturbation - just not the same thing.

Botgirl Questi: It happens

Michigan Paule: I could understand lust.

Michigan Paule: but love?

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Yes, it does

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Yes

Botgirl Questi: Aren't you falling in love with me right now?

Botgirl Questi: ;)

Charlanna Beresford: Why don't you think it could, Michigan?

Michigan Paule: LOL!

Botgirl Questi: see

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget resists will all her might

Michigan Paule: Because I think in RL, it's hard enough to "love"

Botgirl Questi: I said "fall in love" I guess I meant romantic attraction

Michigan Paule: I think for the most part, we don't do a very good job separating who we love from who we think we love

Michigan Paule: i feel in SL, you could only ever love who you think you love

Michigan Paule: is that fair?

Botgirl Questi: Is love something you think or something you feel?

Michigan Paule: that's really hard.

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Feel

Michigan Paule: i think it's something i feel.

Michigan Paule: but feelings are weird

Botgirl Questi: Do you choose your feelings?

Michigan Paule: never

Botgirl Questi: Sucks, doesn't it?

Botgirl Questi: :)

Charlanna Beresford: Very much so! But isn't that also true to a certain degree in RL, too? Don't we think we know who the other person is?

Botgirl Questi: Sure

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Inhales vigorously at least

Michigan Paule: i think we usually love who we think the other person is, in RL

Botgirl Questi: That's why I love SL

Botgirl Questi: yes

Michigan Paule: sometimes the other person has a chance to intrude on our fantasies

Abacus Capalini: Harder to change your name in RL when things go bad :-)

Botgirl Questi: We feel an emotion and project it onto someone else who we believe makes it happen

Michigan Paule: and if that lasts, then maybe it's something true

Botgirl Questi: Yes, for sure Abacus

Charlanna Beresford: It can be possible to love who we think the other person is in SL, too....it's just a slightly different frame

Botgirl Questi: Love really has nothing to do with another person in a sense

Botgirl Questi: As in an objective being

Michigan Paule: i am suspecting that in SL, the ratio of illusion to actual person is more skewed to illusion

Michigan Paule: and i don't know what's true, i admit that

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Depends on the person, Michigan

Abacus Capalini: Being a SLer means that you

Abacus Capalini: have bought into the illusion

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: A lot of people in SL are very transparent

Botgirl Questi: "I guess I just don't now who you really are!!!" sob sbo

Abacus Capalini: lol

Michigan Paule: I think I'm transparent.

Botgirl Questi: that's a setting you can change, wendy

Michigan Paule: I think so!

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: I am too, Neko look aside

Abacus Capalini: I think it's a filter :-)

Botgirl Questi: So there's a lot of food for thought :)

Botgirl Questi: I'm way over time, yes?

WendyOfNeverland Fussbudget: Whole other seminar

Michigan Paule: there really is.

Michigan Paule: more than i imagined!

The Plurkfect Storm Part 2: Social media as interactive reality TV

Emotionality has coursed through text-based chat interactions from the start. Academics, geeks and early adopters in the 1980s were the first to create pseudonymous identities and live virtual lives on USENET newsgroups, dial-up BBS systems, IRC chat rooms and MOOs. Friendships formed, flame wars raged and romances blossomed through dial-up modems and glowing green displays. America Online brought chat to the masses in 1989 and users quickly created virtual rooms catering to every sexual proclivity under the sun.

Although communication was limited to text in those days, avid participants experienced a visceral sense of place, community and virtual identity. For better or for worse. My Tiny Life, published almost ten years ago, recounted a virtual rape that rocked a MOO-based community. What would have looked like a harmless string of text messages to an outsider was perceived as an existentially traumatic experience by emotionally invested community members.

Although the story I recounted yesterday about Plurk reflects only the latest outbreak of a decades-old phenomenon, I think there is something new going on. A growing number of us have become so pervasively network-connected that we can have more continuous contact with a virtual community such as Plurk, than with any particular social relationship in our physical lives. With a web-enabled cell phone we can be in 24/7 touch with our Plurk community.

In a sense, we are living together in a Reality TV show like Big Brother or The Surreal Life. We meet new people and engage in conversations all the while aware there is a larger non-participating audience peering in. Although we can choose our friends, we don't select who shows up in our friends' comment threads. So it is likely we encounter some individuals who annoy or anger us and keep popping up in message threads we follow. Our interactions with each other in semi-public forums can not help but be tinged by the awareness that our words are recorded and may be viewed by dozens or hundreds of unknown people. Fortunately, Plurk also provides private messaging which is perfect for behind-the-back venting. Not that I'd ever do that, of course.

I'm running out of time for the day, but I will take a brief crack at the questions I posed in Part 1:

• Was the original incident a tempest in a teapot or does it speak to deeper and more pervasive problems? I think the deeper problems have to do with the way humans tend to blame their inner emotional experience on external circumstances including the words and deeds of other people. I posted about this subject previously here and here.
  

• Does a social circle of a few hundred active participants mean anything in the wider worlds? Do the actions of even the entire 23,000 or so people active on the whole Plurk service indicate trends extending beyond Plurk's borders? I think that my particular circle within Plurk is a great window into a social network of pervasively connected virtual identities who move seamlessly through domains, such as Second Life and Plurk. I suspect it is a glimpse of more widespread things to come.
  

• Why are some people so mean? I suspect that most people who tend to be mean were treated badly in their formative years. I've written previously about that here.
  

• How can people feel hurt by a text message from a stranger? Any time you feel emotionally hurt by someone's words or actions it is because of some fictional inner story you believe about what it means. (See links at bullet one.)
  

• How you can you find and take part in the next text orgy (Plorgy?) I don't want to name any names here, but if you sign up for Plurk and become fans of those on my friend list, it's likely one will pop up sooner or later.
  

• Why has Botgirl written such a long post when she's supposed to be taking it easy after finishing work on the art show (shameless plug)? Probably so I'd have another excuse to plug my appearance this Friday at Second Life's first Comic-con.
  

The Plurkfect Storm Part 1: Hugs, text orgies and flame wars.

I wrote about Plurk's strange blend of public and private communication a couple weeks ago. Last week the site exploded with interactions so emotionally charged that they inspired a planned Gender Freedom Day In Virtual Worlds event in Second Life. So it seemed like a follow-up post was in order.

First, a little background. Plurk is a micro-blogging service with a twist. Participants can post short text messages called "Plurks." When you log in you see posts from those who have given you permission to be either a "friend" or a "fan" arrayed on a timeline. Plurk's most unique feature is the ability to spawn a near-real-time chat thread from any post. The example below shows a Plurk I posted, followed by comments.



Although you can see Plurks from only those who have given you permission to subscribe, you do see everyone's comments on Plurks you can access. So if Joe is my friend and Jane comments on one of his Plurks, I can see Jane's comments even though I'm not her friend or fan. Since comments appear in almost real time, they can end up feeling like typical chat room conversations. People often meet on Plurk through conversations within comment threads of mutual friends. (For more info see The Ten Minute Guide to Plurk.)

Plurk's two-way conversational capability has created (at least in my circle of mostly Second Life expatriates) a kind of corner-bar atmosphere. People talk about everything under the sun from troubles with their sweethearts to sporting events they're watching on television. There is also a great deal of communication depicting imagined physical actions ranging from hugs to explicit sexual activity.

So back to the story. Last week some guy got really, really angry after his virtual girlfriend participated in a girl/girl text orgy within a comment thread. He took out his emotional upset by flaming the hell out of someone in a series of increasingly venomous messages on a comment thread tied to an unrelated Plurk. People jumped in on either side. The flame skirmish turned into a full-blown flame war, including very personal attacks.

The conflict spilled out of Plurk. Although the original thread was deleted by the person who made the original Plurk, someone posted a copy to a blog and is now accessible to anyone on the internet. Sophrosyne Stenvaag, a prominent Second Life resident, took the events so seriously that she decided to sponsor a full day fundraiser supporting organizations promoting freedom of expression of gender identity and sexual preference in digital worlds.

So what's up with all this? Was the original incident a tempest in a teapot or does it speak to deeper and more pervasive problems? Does a social circle of a few hundred active participants mean anything in the wider worlds? Do the actions of even the entire 23,000 or so people active on the whole Plurk service indicate trends extending beyond Plurk's borders? Why are some people so mean? How can people feel hurt by a text message from a stranger? How you can you find and take part in the next text orgy (Plorgy?) Why has Botgirl written such a long post when she's supposed to be taking it easy after finishing work on the art show (shameless plug)?

These and other questions will be examined when I continue in Part 2: Social Media as Interactive Reality TV

Avatars want to be free

Step into the Avatar Transformer if you dare

If you don't think you're identified with your avatar then I dare you – I double dare you – to step into the Avatar Transformer at Botgirl's Identity Circus.

Zada Zenovka took what I thought was an NPSL idea I've been toying with for months and figured out how to make it work.

For all humanity's diverse experimentation with avatar forms, it is one thing to step into a new look that you choose; quite another to spin the wheel and take whatever comes your way. UnezzedRuth or LittleHobbit. AndiyAndrogyny or BettyBimbette.

Give it a try before your next social engagement and then show up in a random form. See what it feels like. If you dare.

Plurk hole: Privacy part 2

Your Plurk user name and identifying information are passed along every time you click a link embedded in a Plurk message from your timestream. Here is an example from my blog reports. I've inked out everyone but Codie.



Going from your user name to additional identifying information is just a click away. The next image shows that if you are at work or school, that information is also passed along. Wonder what someone at Microsoft was doing on my blog for 102 minutes? I think they're looking for a Jerry Seinfeld replacement for commercials and are considering Botgirl.



One more click and your physical location, operating system and other tidbits are revealed.



The key security flaw in Plurk, is that you view posts in a url that has your user name, for instance: http://www.plurk.com/user/botgirl. So when I click a link, my user name goes right along with it. Twitter doesn't have that problem because the browsing url is twitter.com/home.

There are two easy ways to avoid this issue if you care about it. First, don't click links. Instead, copy the link and paste it into a new browser tab. Another more sneaky way is to browse another user's timeline and click from there. That will send their user name along with your other information.

That's all here till Monday. I hope to meet some of you at the Identity Circus opening on Sunday.