For those of you who avidly follow the various developments, scandals and achievements in Second Life, the web publication the Second Life Insider has been one of your regular sources for news (alongside other news sources like New World Notes, the Metaverse Messenger, and Reuters.) So you were probably as surprised as I was to…
Why social dancing is like improv (thanks, Stephen Cobert!)
I have known from conversations with improvisers like Frankyboy and others that there was some implicit connection between improv and social dancing. But I never really got it until yesterday when I read, of all things, a 2006 commencement speech given by Stephen Cobert at Knox College: When I was starting out in Chicago, doing…
“IRL” documentary explores geeky, fetid underbelly of online communities
As the moderator for the past eight years of the swing dance online community at Yehoodi.com, I’m always interested in studies and explorations of other online community sites. Stephanie Tuszynski wrote and directed a new documentary that examines one particular online community surrounding the uber-geeky show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": "IRL (In Real Life)" is…
“Bloodspell” feature length machinima showing and discussion in London November 22
The London Metropolitan University is hosting a viewing of the feature length machinima movie "Bloodspell" followed by a discussion of some of the issues raised by machinima on November 22. The event description doesn’t go into what the specific discussion topics will be, but since "Bloodspell" is a Creative Commons licensed work, I’m sure intellectual…
Second Life as an unproven seedbed for real world innovation
Electrolux Innovation Awards The latest issue of the MIT Press journal Innovations has a couple of interesting articles about innovation and virtual worlds. I just finished reading Philip Evans excellent essay "A Silicon Silicon Valley? Virtual Innovation and Virtual Geography." He describes a number of the unique aspects of Second Life that make it a…
16 BILLION pixel image of “The Last Supper” viewable online
Ok, this is incredibly cool. The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities has partnered with the firm HAL9000 (wasn’t that the computer in "2001"?) to provide on the interwebs a ridiculously high resolution image of Da Vinci’s "Last Supper." For incredibly fragile and faded works of art like this, providing high-resolution images online is…
Charleston away those unsightly pounds with “20 Aerobic Dance Hits”
This gem of an graphic is from an early 1980s album entitled "20 Aerobic Dance Hits" put out by Parade Records. I found this two LP record set while perusing a thrift shop in the Adirondacks a couple of weeks ago and simply had to have it. The set contains a 20 page aerobic instruction…
Virtual/ Real World DJ Nexeus Fatale offers his turntable services for charity this season
The most excellent house and hip-hop DJ Nexeus Fatale has just announced that he will be offering his services to charitable events going on in Second Life this season: Although With the official holiday season about a month away I’ve decided this year I would like to start my own initiative called DJing for a…
“Synthetic Performances” re-enacts famous Performance Art pieces through avatars November 13
Those wacky artists Eva and Franco Mattes, aka "0100101110101101.ORG," who brought you "13 Most Beautiful Avatars" not long ago, are putting on a mixed-reality performance art piece on November 13. Entitled "Synthetic Performances," Eva and Franco will be reenacting live seminal works of performance art throughout history through their avatars, including a reenactment of Marina…
Merge your Facebook & Second Life social networks with “Second Life Link”
So you have a problem: You’ve got your real life friends on Facebook and virtual friends on Second Life. How do you keep track of who is doing what in both worlds? Fire Centaur (pictured here), a Second Life resident who resides in real world Korea, thought about this conundrum and wondered if it would…