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.

My First HD Video: Persona

I put a very short video together to test YouTube's new HD capability. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to export a format that works well. The video either doesn't register as HD or the encoding is very choppy.

YouTube HD is working now and can be viewed here. The settings that finally worked were:

• .mp4
• H.264
• 5000 kps data rate
• 30 fps
  
• optimized for streaming
• 1466 byte maximum packet size

The embedded Vimeo clip below is low res. Here's the link to the vimeo HD version.


Persona from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

What if Second Life had been named Expanded Life

CeNedra Rivera and I had a conversation the other night about integration and disconnection between aspects of our virtual and physical identities. It suddenly occurred to me that the name "Second Life" in itself suggests a radical separation. I wonder if a name such as "Second World" or "Expanded Life" would have made a difference in how the world's culture and our psychological approach to it unfolded.

VIDEO: Nightflower Submits to the Dark Side

ShadowPlay from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Next time: The embarrassing story of how I stumbled onto this idea, plus shadowplay erotica.

Botgirl's New Rules for Media Coverage of Second Life

1. Find a few supermodels using Second Life the next time you run a story.

Maybe virtual worlds are mostly populated by obese yokels wearing frumpy clothes and bad haircuts. But give us a break. I know that out of the millions of avatarians online there must a couple of hot-looking real life people hooking-up behind the scenes other than The League of Virtual Vixens.

2. If you think extreme virtual makeovers are creepy, maybe you should question your glamorous coverage of real life celebrities.

Outside of a seasonal photo featuring a fat, sleep deprived or head-shaven Brittney, you hardly ever show a celebrity who hasn't had four hours of professional makeup, hair and wardrobe support. If we're living in fantasy land, you wrote the book and sold the movie rights.

3. Stop pretending that internet affairs are a newfangled trend.

There's been sex on the internet since before there was the internet. If mainstream coverage of cyberculture wasn't so shallow, sketchy, sporadic and sensational, maybe you could do stories that escape the black hole gravity of tabloid journalism. Sex sells and your coverage smells. Cool. That rhymes.

Six Oddest Topics I Dodged in Blogger Mix'n Match

ArminasX and Vint Falken organized a mass blog swap that by my count now includes over 50 participants. Each entrant came up with a topic for another randomly selected blogger to write about for a randomly selected blog. All of our entries will be posted tomorrow. (Mine will be on Common|Sensible.)

Before I got the news that my assigned topic was on SL art, my mind ran a little wild. Here are the six oddest topics I imagined. Any takers for next time?

1. Big Brother Second Life. Take a week off from work and live in a virtual house with ten other residents, 24 hours a day. Housemates will include a penis griefer, a Gorean Master, Miss Bling 2008 and Prokofy Nava. Publish a daily diary until you’re voted out or commit virtual suicide.
2. Life After Virtual Death. Delete your account and blog about what it feels like to be dead to Second Life.
3. SLebrity Shoes. Photo essay on Second Life celebrities and their footwear.
4. Sex and the Single Furry. Strap-on a furry avatar form and have intimate relations with at least five different species that you will feature in your post.
5. If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Join ‘Em. Apply for a job at Linden Lab and talk your way into an interview. If successful, blog as a Linden about how disappointed you are with the community.
   
6. Media Sluts on Ice. Target the top ten Second Life blogs and see if you can screw your way to coverage. (Why does this sound so familiar?)
   

You Don't Own Crap

Continuing from yesterday...

So what's the big deal if "owning your own virtual real estate" really means "a license of access to Linden's proprietary servers?" The problem is its contribution to the pervasive illusion that we own the virtual currency, real estate and goods we buy within Second Life. According to the Terms of Service, we don't.

Now I certainly didn't read the entire TOS when I signed up. And when I read through it closely during the trademark controversy, I thought that its more onerous provisions were just corporate lawyer boilerplate that wouldn't be enforced because they were so clearly inequitable. But guess what. IT seems that Linden is actually quite prepared to hold you to the TOS agreement you accepted:

Defendants aver that during the registration process, Bragg reached a screen containing the Terms of Service, which stated “Please read the following Terms of Service carefully. To continue logging in to Second Life, you must accept the agreement.” Defendants further aver that Bragg selected “I Agree to the Terms of Service” before being allowed to enter Second Life. Defendants lack information or belief sufficient to admit or deny allegations regarding whether Bragg read the Terms of Service, and on that basis deny such allegations. from a court document filed by Linden Research, Inc. and Philip Rosedale

The recent OpenSpace price hike was hopefully a wake-up call that tier pricing can change at any time. And negative changes will likely mean that the value of your holdings fall and the demand for it drops. So you either pay up or lose your investment. But it's worse than just that. Your land, inventory and even identity can be changed or deleted at any time for any reason. Here's the key item in the TOS agreement:

5.3 All data on Linden Lab's servers are subject to deletion, alteration or transfer. When using the Service, you may accumulate Content, Currency, objects, items, scripts, equipment, or other value or status indicators that reside as data on Linden Lab's servers. THESE DATA, AND ANY OTHER DATA, ACCOUNT HISTORY AND ACCOUNT NAMES RESIDING ON LINDEN LAB'S SERVERS, MAY BE DELETED, ALTERED, MOVED OR TRANSFERRED AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON IN LINDEN LAB'S SOLE DISCRETION.

You may be thinking, "No way they'd ever do that." Well, then why include it in the TOS? Why insist that we agree to such obviously unreasonable terms before we can use the service? What's up with that? Any ideas?

The Lie of the SLand

July 18, 2008:
Defendants deny that Second Life allows for the actual “conveyance of title” in “virtual land,” as “virtual land” is not property to which one may take “title,” but instead a license of access to Linden’s proprietary servers, storage space, bandwidth, memory allocation and computational resources of the server, which enables the experience of “land” and the things that one can do with “land” on the Second Life platform.” from statement by Linden Lab in Bragg vs. Linden case via The Forge

Interested in owning your own piece of virtual real estate?
from graphic on home page of secondlife.com

Wow! I'll post a few comments when smoke stops pouring out of my virtual ears.

Copybot as Revolutionary Part 3: Legal and ethical questions

I really appreciate the great comments on the first two articles in this series. They included posts from content creators, content consumers and the distributor of (SL) Copybot. I think we all agree that distributing copies of digital works to other people without the consent of the intellectual property owner is wrong. Our disagreement is about what rights an IP owner has to dictate personal use of digital goods.

The legal aspects of virtual property are complex and and will have to play out in the courts. For instance Bragg v. Linden Lab is questioning whether unfair TOS clauses are legally enforceable. The music industry is still trying to claim that it is illegal to rip music from a CD to a hard drive. When you add the complicating factors of international transactions, I suspect it will be a long time before there is a definitive legal answer.

It seems to me there are reasonable ethical arguments against either extreme position. Until there is a technological solution for a "middle way" it might make sense to just agree to disagree. IP owners will continue to develop DRM technology to restrict use. Consumers will let their conscience be their guide as they figure out how to circumvent restrictions they believe are unfair.

I plan to conclude this series in Part 4 which will return to the initial question of the relationship between DRM and the power balance between Linden Lab and Second Life residents.

Copybot as Revolutionary Part 2: My avatars and I are one

I appreciate the thoughtful comments from yesterday. I'm still mulling through this issue and have a few more ideas to throw out before taking a break for the weekend.

"Do not steal" has been a core injunction in every major religion for thousands of years and is a foundational principal that informs every legal system in the world today. The applicability of DNS is relatively straightforward in questions of physical objects. But as Cristopher Lefavre and Dandellion noted in their comments yesterday, digital technology has introduced questions about the nature of property and ownership that are still winding their way through the world's courts and philosophy departments.

My personal take on digital property is that sellers should not have the right to dictate my personal use of any item I buy, including using it in different accounts and on different worlds. The analogy of music that was brought up in the comments seems very relevant.

The limits of the Second Life DRM system have a lot to do with the problem. There is no technological reason that Majic (my alt) and Botgirl can't be tied together in a database so that I, the sentient being who actually paid for items can have access to them in whatever identity I choose to use. The same holds true for authentication between worlds.

Why should a seller be able to dictate how I use a digital asset I purchased, as long as I am not duplicating it for another person? Botgirl owns nothing and has no legal standing that is separate from me. So it's a bit fantastical to imagine that it is somehow any more wrong for Botgirl to transfer an item to Majic than it would be wrong for my my right hand sock puppet to transfer an item to my left hand sock puppet. Clearly it's just one owner who is moving an asset from place to place.

I don't think I hold a radical position on this. I do believe that copying someone's work and then selling or giving away duplicates to others is theft. Distributing mp3s on a bittorrent site is against the law in most countries, while ripping a CD to an mp3 for one's own use is legal.

Well, that's enough for now. I look forward to a continued dialogue.

Copybot as Revolutionary Part 1: How DRM holds our digital assets hostage on Linden Lab servers

Moving from Second Life to an OpenSim world means leaving behind the vast majority of our virtual possessions. That's because Second Inventory, the one program that allows you to move items from Second Life to your hard drive only works on items with full permissions. For many of us this means abandoning L$1000's or L$10,000's worth of items such as homes, clothing and SLex toys. And of course, skin.

There is a solution, although it violates Second Life TOS and is a very emotionally-charged issue for some content creators: Copybot programs such as SLBot and SL Copybot allow you to create new full-permission copies of most virtual items. You can then use Second Inventory to transfer them to your hard drive and upload to an OpenSim server (as long as your user name is the same.) It seems to me that using copybot technology is this manner is ethical.

Hundreds of Second Life residents have started registering on OpenSim-based worlds over the last few days in response to the latest Linden Lab debacle. So I'm hoping that the time is ripe to reopen a wider discussion on digital rights and the possibility of ethical copybotting, as well as other options to faciliate the transfer of our virtual assets from place to place.

I'll let this simmer for a while and then take this up in greater detail in Part 2.

A lazy yet fun video trailer

Welcome to my lazy October. After working every available waking hour on Second Life-related projects last month, it's time to relax and renew. So I'm cutting down to just two or three short-and-sweet posts per week until November while I plan the obsessive-compulsive-work-myself-to-death projects that will round out the year. Anyway, on to today's post:

I fell in love last week with with City of Dust, a new comic from Radical Comics by Steve Niles and Zid. The art is amazing and non-traditional. It inspired me to imagine taking Second Life images in a new direction. I've started playing around a bit already. There's a City of Dust video trailer on the site linked above (no obvious direct link to the video) that gives a fair taste of the style. But buy the comic!

I was moved to upload some of the images from the Night vs. Human Comic to Animoto and create my own short trailer. And before you start asking what happened to this month's commitment to extreme sloth, it took me all of fifteen minutes to create the video. Ah, time for a nap!!! See you soon?

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!

Night vs Human comic out in multiple web formats

The Night vs. Human comic that premiered with the opening of Botgirl's Identity Circus is now available on the web in a number of formats. You can view it in a virtual book at Issuu, a web comic at SmackJeeves or in the highest resolution on flickr.

Get your own - Open publication

Whew!

The opening of Botgirl's Identity Circus went flawlessly! I want to especially thank a few people who really helped make it a success:

Sabrinaa Nightfire for building the incredible tent that housed the show, plus very cool commemorative t-shirts;

Charlanna Beresford for taking charge of the avatar transformation exhibit and listening to me whine about all the long hours; and

Zada Zenovka who created what is, as far as I know, the first-ever random avatar dispenser and transformation-assist device in Second Life.

Also thanks to Dale Innis posing for yet another morph video and Georg Janick for hosting the event and inviting me to put it together.

Oh yeah, and Majic for begin such a good sport.

The exhibit will be up at least until SL Comic-Con on October 3, so please stop by if you get a chance.

Here's the new Dale video that premiered at the show:

Botgirl & Night augment immersively for comic collaboration

Night and I met Tuesday evening to discuss the latest draft of our first joint comic collaboration. I uploaded the draft images and threw them on a couple of gallery poster boards. Wow! What an amazing way to work on visual material together. I got my handy Sketch Sky Pens out of inventory (you can see a red circle drawn in the second image) and we had a great, fun session.

I'll return to Avatar identity next time.

What's so special about avatar identity?

Writing this blog feels like walking through an unknown wilderness at times. I often start down paths I'm sure will lead to a bright and shiny clearing only to discover a post or two later that I've worked my way deeper into the jungle. But the journey's usually interesting and I hope you don't mind me dragging you along on a few wild goose chases.

For instance, this week started out with a promising set of images that finally clarified (for me at least) the separation between immersion and virtual identity. Unfortunately, I think I moved way too fast through a textual description and got a bit lost again. So I'm going to take a virtual breath, slow down and look more closely at avatar identity. I'm not aiming to draw any conclusions today. Let's just explore the territory.

I'm going to begin by making a short list of what I think is true about avatar identity and work from there:

• Beings experience avatar identity in many different ways, ranging from feeling like there is absolutely no difference between human self and avatar identity, all the way up to the experience of a complete split.
• Some beings experience themselves as an avatar personality that is fully individuated and separate from the human person who shares their brain. Regardless of debate about whether avatar personalities are "real," I am convinced that the beings I know who describe this high degree of segmentation express authentic experience.
  
• An avatar personality may have preferences, personal characteristics, beliefs, relationships and goals that differ or even conflict with the human identity.
• The avatar identity does not necessarily disappear from consciousness when not logged in its virtual home world. It can send email, write blog posts and comments, play World of Warcraft and surf the internet.
• An individual may experience varying degrees of any of the above over time, even from moment to moment. However, some beings report a very solid and consistent experience of a separate self.

Okay, that's a start at least. So now let's see if there are any non-virtual parallels to this phenomenon.

It is not uncommon for a human to describe feeling at times like "two different people." Although they don't change names or bodies people can experience and express very different personalities depending upon the context. At work, Mary may dress conservatively and act aloof, prim and proper. Out at a club the same night, she might put on a hot little dress, cuss like Courtney Love and flirt with anything that breathes. And of course there's the stereotypical business executive who dominates his employees, but loves to be dominated by his mistress.

Actors, comedians, musicians and other performers can feel as if their onstage personality is quite different than their offstage self. Something emerges when they perform that feels quite different from their everyday personality. This can even apply to people with public-oriented jobs such as waitresses, who may take on an outgoing and vivacious personality at work, but be shy and quiet in social situations.

I'll leave it here for today. Anyone have other examples of non-virtual personality shifts? What if any connection do you think there is between the human/human and human/avatar examples I described? What if anything is special about avatar identity?

Back in the love box with AIR-based relationships

Based on feedback from digado and Rheta, it seems I didn’t do a very good job of tying together the various threads within yesterday’s post. One reason is that it was written as a stream of consciousness rather than a reasoned argument leading to a previously formed conclusion. I made a few big leaps between ideas without taking the time to walk through the chain of connections. Maybe my textual communications skills have become corrupted by too much comic creation. Anyway, I'll have another go at clarifying yesterday’s missive by answering some of digado's thoughtful questions:

How did immersion get dragged into these relationships?

I'm not dragging it in by iteslf. I came up with the snappy acronym and catch phrase “AIR-based relationships” to define the area of my inquiry. AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction. It seem to me that the combination of these three factors creates an especially unstable and volatile mix.

When not 'immersed' you wouldn't have the relationship either, is that what you are saying, or does immersion create these relationships...?

Well, it seems to me that if you weren't immersed, you'd be more conscious of the fact that the hot babe you were flirting with could quite possibly be someone who looks like your grandfather in real life. Humans exposed to attractive images of their preferred gender(s) can experience reflex physiological responses that flood the brain and body with hormones that act like a love drug. I've written about this process in the past. If everyone walked around in a Naruto avatar, I reckon there would be far fewer romances.

People created 'virtual' relationships long before 'worlds' such as SL over the internet, with or without immersion

Well, I would say that if you are focused on a text chat enough to get romantically attached to someone, the text chat environment is immersive for you, and your online affair would be an AIR-based relationship. At least until you traded real IDs and/or met in person.

I'm still trying to get my head around that last paragraph tho, I'm sure it makes sense in some way - I just don't see it...

Well, at least forelle saw it. :) What I tried to convey in the last paragraph was that the person you are in a relationship with is a complex living being with vast potential for growth and change. So if your love requires that they don't externally express significant inner changes, then it is a love of an objectification of your lover's past state, not of who they are now. From my limited experience, it seems there is generally less slack for change in AIR-based relationships.

Well, I'm out of juice for now. If any of my ideas still seem cryptic, please let me know and I'll give it another go.

Love me in a box

Four main types of gameplay Immersion can be found in games: Spatial Immersion, Emotional Immersion, Cognitive Immersion and Sensory-Motoric Immersion. from Patterns in Game Design by Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen

Game designers work to create immersive experiences so that a player's consciousness is drawn deeply into game play. Immersion supports the consciously chosen suspension of disbelief by directly engaging subconscious systems that generate emotional and physical responses. For most people, it is easy to separate the authentic experience of emotions within games from the fabricated environment and narrative that stimulate the experience.

The line between fantasy and reality is not so clear-cut within virtual worlds. The highly immersive nature of the experience makes it almost impossible for us to separate the real beings we interact with from the fictional elements they are enmeshed within. In the fuzzy world of anonymous relationships, authenticity becomes equated to some extent with character consistency. This seems to be especially true in romantic relationships.

In the atomic world, relationships often have difficulty when one person makes a significant change such as newly found religious observance or even an avid hobby that their partner doesn't take up. Physical change such as significant weight gain or loss can also put stress on a relationship.

It is not surprising that in virtual worlds, relationships are very vulnerable to changes from established norms. In the atomic world, your partner may now worship Allah instead of Jesus, but you know they have the same parents, siblings, job, gender, etc. In an anonymous virtual world relationship there is nothing solid to hold onto.

It seems to me that if you are not willing to let your partner change to pursue a non-destructive interest that doesn't break a core agreement such as fidelity, the relationship is grounded more in objectification than love. This applies to all worlds.

Playing with pictures

I've been playing around quite a bit in the current comic series with images captured in Second Life. Over the past few days I've gone in a new direction and here are a couple of initial images. The first is a retouching of a graphic used in a previous comic page. The second is a work clip from an upcoming comic page that will hopefully be out by midweek.