Metaversatility :: Blog

On February 17th, 2007, we will be putting together a SecondLife meetup in Austin. Keep watching this space for more information on exact time and location.

We will be flying in Frogg Marlowe, one of SecondLife’s favorite musicians who has been featured on MTV, quoted in the Rolling Stone, and most recently played a large opening set for the NBC Rockefeller event in SL. On top of all that, he’s one of my personal favorites and we’re very excited that he can join us for this event. Playing alongside Frogg will be another favorite SL musician, known in SL as Melvin Took, in RL as Peter Greenstone. It’s going to be one for the books, I hope you can make it.
Any thoughts you may have are most welcomed. We’ve created a group called “SLTX Meetups”, feel free to join to give your input and to get updates faster than they can hit the blogosphere.

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Welcome to my first blog entry (cheer wildly now). Readers with the fortitude to digest my casual, meandering, 7^th-grade English writing style will be treated to a veritable cornucopia of semi-meaningful information about me, the company, and things I find curious in Second Life.

A bit about me for background: 42 years old, married 22 of those, 3 frighteningly smart kids (boy 16/girl 13/boy 13), former owner/president of several companies, retired IT Director for an international transportation company. I was programming and repairing computers when the IBM-PC used cassette tapes and CP/M on the Kaypro was new - yeah, that’s old. I’m not ready to quit working just yet but am hampered by some inconvenient recurring medical conditions.

I have always enjoyed computer-enabled socialization, from the first BBS systems that used 300/1200 baud modems on your phone line to the whole email – IM - forum – blog - MMO opportunities that exist today.

My first experiences with technology-enabled socialization goes back to my childhood when I got my first set of walkie-talkies (from the Sears Wish Book, I think – Santa brought them, I didn’t ask questions). Historians will recall the rectangular, often black/silver plastic case (with one speaker which doubled as a microphone), plastic side button to push when you wanted to talk, silver telescoping antenna (that always got bent), and 9-volt battery (which kept falling out because the little plastic door that held it in kept popping off).

I conned everyone I could to take one radio and talk to me as I would go on adventures in my backyard tree house (it was no fun to talk to yourself!). I recall how totally amazed and shocked I was when one day, someone else’s voice came through it that wasn’t a member of my family. It was a truck driver using a CB radio, passing though talking to someone else about ‘Smokey’ and began every sentence with “… that’s a big 10-4.”

I was suddenly, magically connected to something bigger than my backyard.

I could listen and maybe, if they were close enough and on channel 14, participate in the conversation. I quickly found out that you didn’t use your real name, but made up a name called a handle. My uncle Bob was a milk truck driver at the time, and his handle was ‘Rascal’, named for his pet dog. So, I followed suit and “Lil’ Sparky” was born as I took to the air at the ripe old age of 10.

Soon after upgrading to a CB radio with way more power and 23 channels, I formed a local circle of friends who lived nearby. Wonderwoman, Skyking, Astrodog, Duckhunter, Greyhound Chaser all became my virtual friends. We talked to each other daily but ever felt inclined to see each other, even though we knew that we must live less than 5 miles away (you could tell based on the strength of signal). No, the magic was in the use of the technology that provided us a seemingly anonymous way to freely share experiences, thoughts, ideas, hopes and dreams.

As the CB radio craze took hold of the American public, the airwaves were soon crowded with newcomers who didn’t know the ten-code, or signed in and out wrong, or were just plain rude and interrupting. Eventually, users with illegally overpowered transmitters in places hundreds of miles away swamped any reasonable communication on nearly every channel, rendering just about every attempt at conversation into a very unpleasant, noisy production of squeals and distortion. The governing body, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) didn’t have the manpower to make much of an impact to control it, and the everyday citizen could only frown, try later, turn it off and walk away. As a result of all these changes, our group didn’t chat as much, and our virtual community eventually drifted apart.

Upon reflection, it’s interesting that my CB experiences seem to mirror my experiences in Second Life. The virtual friendships behind a screen name, the online communities… the “external threats (such as griefers and spammers) who interrupt our way of life while residents and the powers that be struggle to control and protect what we think is right and good… and the friends we make and who all eventually seem to drift away.

Although the art community and gaming circles aren’t always traditionally linked, their capacity to augment each other is clear. This is, of course, excluding the utterly essential art-direction and design in any game production process. I speak here of the more traditional art world. An artist need not even be tech-savvy or have anything to do with digital art to be considered a ‘new media’ artist. Creators are utilizing the vast potential of the internet to grant their work exposure, and video games are still a marginalized medium in that context. The union of the gaming world and art world holds potential for an increasingly globalized exposure and dissemination of forms and content. Many artists attempt to embrace the ever-growing body-without-organs, while still attempting to realize a fundamentally enjoyable gaming experience.

In the effort to preserve the integrity of each form, game and art should remain linked but distinct, for they each offer equally great rewards. Scott McCloud writes (illustrates), regarding the co-opting of text and image, that they are akin to dance partners, that “when both partners try to lead, the competition can subvert the overall goals” (McCloud, 2000). A successful hybridization of art and game reaches the same equilibrium, lest the two muddle each other, resulting in neither an effective art space, nor an enjoyable gameplay experience. Fortunately, an exuberant community of gamers and artists contribute willingly to see these projects turn into living, vibrant experiences. The digital landscape is wrought with creators, manipulators, authors of entire sagas and worlds. The line between producer and consumer ushering itself out the back door of the room at this point. The nature of the beast dictates that production never stops (just ask D&G). The audience, equipped with tools for modification and revision, are given the chance to revisit and re-appropriate content, making it their own. And revisit they will continue to do. Communicative, collaborative propensities come part and parcel with the interactive networks sharing nodes of virtual communities.

Then Now…

The story until now has been the family road trip, as McLuhan would’ve envisioned it. Designers with some predilection for the rearview mirror have chauffeured the gaming community, tempered wheel in hand. Fatigue sets in, however. Embracing the necessity for assistance, the driver bequeaths the wheel, allowing the passengers a go. The new medium is a collaborative medium, patriarchal in some senses, peer-based in others. In either case, as tools become more refined, a truly dynamic system has come to fruition, becoming more intuitive and alive every day, as the virtual population grows.

John Cage once treated a series of compositions writing that he wished to escape the ‘tempered system’ of intonation and scale. This is an approach that resonates with Andre Breton and the surrealists. McLuhan, as well, exhibited the same brand of progressive thought. He punned ‘now all the world’s a sage.’ Never before has this been so apparent than in the virtual world, the manifested global village. The same capacity for creation is now opening up to a new realm of creators. The ease of access and fluidity of production are demonstrable features. A highly proficient and creative base of visionaries revisionaries have found a new incentive to engage with art in a new medium. The incentive is global access that denies corporeal borders, and the engagement is reflexive and alive.