Tech -- Culture -- Humour
Just a quick heads-up that Beautiful Kate as of today is available locally (PAL version) on DVD.
For those in the United States, the film is also showing this coming weekend at the Palm Spring International Film Festival. Hopefully that will lead to some wider screenings throughout the US.
The past couple of years have seen virtual worlds start to get on government agendas worldwide. From a policy perspective, agenda-setting is a widely researched area and it’s very pertinent to virtual environments. To that extent, I’ve written a discussion paper that analyses the challenges to date in ensuring virtual worlds do end up as a policy priority for governments.
It’s an expanded version of a piece written in recent months as part of my MBA studies – it has not been published elsewhere and nor will it be.
Who’s the paper for?
If you’re someone interested in the policy aspects of virtual worlds, you may find this paper useful. If you’re an experienced policy analyst you’re going to find the paper very broad, but otherwise it’s a good overview of the challenges and progress to date.
Sample
The introduction to the paper is replicated immediately below to give you a taste of the language and approach:
Virtual worlds have grown in popularity to an extent that they pose a range of policy challenges at both an organisational and governmental level. This discussion will examine the inherent challenges in agenda-setting for those attempting to establish governance structures in virtual worlds, and the growing interrelationship between events in the virtual and real worlds and the related policy conundrums they pose. The work by Kingdon (1984) will be used as the framework for describing the interplay between political factors, policy formulation and any previous approaches to problem resolution. Examples of current policy debates in regards to virtual worlds will be explored within that framework, to illustrate the level of government involvement with this policy arena to date and why there has been a relative lack of response from government in the Australian context.
What does it cost?
The cost of this discussion paper is up to you. When you click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button below, it will show the suggested cost of $9.95 (Australian), all of which goes to our charity of choice, Kiva. If you cannot afford that price, you can manually adjust the cost to whatever amount you want, including zero – we’ll let your conscience determine that 😉
Feedback
Please don’t hesitate to provide any feedback on the paper. By their nature, policy debates are far from black and white affairs and this one is no different. I’d also like to thank Ren Reynolds for responding to a query on the analytical framework prior to writing the paper.
Click below to purchase the paper:
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Or – here’s the direct link for the download service we use.
Having completed our review of our 2009 predictions, we’re back for another round for the coming year.
1. OpenSim will continue or even improve on its growth trajectory – the momentum will continue, although a handful of larger grids are likely to have the lion’s share of that growth, with all the challenges that go along with it.
2. Australia will have its first government funded virtual environment – a proposal is already underway to see this come to fruition. Education will be the focus, but the foresight of the proposal’s facilitators is likely to ensure it involves business, education and government in a collaborative partnership.
3. Closures – it’s not a desirable prediction to make, but unfortunately it’s also a fairly safe one. There’ll be company and/or platform failures. Some may be bought out, but like Metaplace in the past week, there’s going to be some outright shuttering of some environments. I have some specific ones in mind but don’t have the data to support naming them specifically as being on a ‘death watch’.
4. Intellectual property disputes – The Eros vs Linden Lab action is likely to be resolved during 2010 and it will generate a large precedent in regards to virtual goods. Linden Lab will probably defend the action successfully, but the playing field will still have changed considerably.
5. Integration – Whether it be Second Life or Habbo Hotel, the level of integration between virtual environments and social media services will increase. Whether it’s a Facebook Connect sign-in or the ability to Tweet from Second Life, that functionality will move from the plugin / add-on phase to core architecture more commonly.
6. ABC in Second Life – I don’t have any inside knowledge on this, and I really hope I’m proved wrong, but I can’t see the ABC continuing to fund its Second Life presence beyond 2010. For the past year, the majority of the activity on ABC Island has come from its tight-knit community, with support from ABC staff. With the burgeoning ABC Online continuing to grow, there’s always the risk that the Second Life component will be squeezed out. Please, prove us wrong on this one.
7. The mandatory ISP filter – If the legislation passes during 2010, there remains a real possibility of adult content in Second Life and elsewhere falling foul of the filter. There were some gob-smackingly naive acceptances of Linden Lab’s claim they’d heard nothing about being affected by the filter and therefore were not concerned. There’s a chance everything will be fine but given the blacklist isn’t defined, nothing is certain at this stage. Our prediction: Australia-specific verification mechanisms will need to be put in place for Second Life and other environments where content creation occurs.
8. Taxation of virtual goods – 2010 will see the United States further formalise taxation arrangements in regard to virtual goods. I doubt the Australian Tax Office will make any substantive rulings in the coming twelve months.
9. Gaming worlds – 2010 is going to see the largest MMO launch since World of Warcraft: Star Wars The Old Republic. It won’t eclipse the incumbent but it will become the solid number 2 player in the short-term, with all bets off in the longer term. The second half of 2010 also sees the launch of the next World of Warcraft expansion, called Cataclysm. Head-to-head clashes in the MMO industry don’t get much bigger, and it’ll make for some fascinating times.
10. Social games – this year saw social games like Farmville take off in a big way. There’ll be some significant fatigue from users with these platforms, but there’ll also be further innovation to make them more engaging and with easier integration of virtual goods without the spam-like accompaniments that plague people’s Twitter or Facebook timelines. Overall: continuation of exponential growth, albeit not at the same level it has been the past six months.
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Again, over to you. What’s in your crystal ball for the coming year?
Other sites with some interesting 2010 predictions:
Eddi Haskell
Daniel Voyager
Adam Frisby
Living on a Prim (some damn funny ones here!)
All Virtual (focused on virtual events)
Second Sins (NSFW)
Tateru Nino
Adric Antfarm
Twelve months ago we published our ten predictions for 2009. Below is the report card on them.
2009: how accurate was our crystal ball?
Prediction 1: OpenSim grids will bleed Second Life users – this may seem a very obvious prediction given the growth of OpenSim grids, but what I mean here is that the exodus will be obvious. It won’t be a migration that will affect Second Life’s viability (other issues may achieve that), but there will be a solid, committed population of OpenSim users choosing those grids over Second Life’s one. Put another way, new users will see OpenSim grids as an equal option to signing up to Second Life.
Pass – the growth in adoption of OpenSim has certainly grown and at the expense of Second Life. People aren’t abandoning Second Life for OpenSim en masse but there’s plenty of content creators and educators dividing their time between the two environments. Here’s one small example of that switch.
Prediction 2: Virtual worlds will appear as normal daily life in TV / Movies – To date, most appearances of virtual worlds in TV and film are either documentaries or as a central part of an action / geek film. US comedy The Office and CSI have both featured Second Life but essentially in a sensationalistic way. 2009 will see more insertions of virtual worlds into daily life scenes in shows. A disclosure here: I’m particularly confident on this one as I’ve had the pleasure of helping out on a film project that features a virtual world in a day-to-day context. More on that in the first few months of next year.
Pass – We were up front that this was an easy prediction due to our then under-wraps involvement with Beautiful Kate.
Prediction 3: There will be a net increase in Australian business in virtual worlds – Second Life won’t see any significant growth in Australian businesses entering Second Life and there may actually be a decrease. The gains will come in worlds like Twinity, customised worlds created on platforms like VastPark and possibly even some entry into enterprise worlds offered by entities like IBM and Forterra. Any increase will be driven by the increasing awareness of virtual worlds as a cost-effective business collaboration tool.
Fail – The withdrawal by Telstra from Second Life significantly reduces the level of overt Australian business presences on that platform. That said, the level of interest in virtual worlds has grown, albeit only slightly. The gains have come around collaboration and meetings. Most of the growth in interest hasn’t translated to dollars invested, but that’s on its way. Aside from Second Life, no specific platform is gaining significant traction locally from a business viewpoint.
Prediction 4: Virtual worlds will remain a political no-go zone – Australian political parties have had zero presence to date and it’s extremely unlikely to change in 2009. Any planning being done by the major parties for the 2010 Federal Election is unlikely to extend beyond services like YouTube and Twitter. Things may stretch to sites like Barack Obama’s Change site, but forget anything 3D.
Pass – As predicted, there’s no momentum politically with virtual worlds in Australia. Why? You’ll find out in coming weeks when we release our virtual worlds policy paper.
Prediction 5: Metaplace will be a game-changer – Metaplace’s simple, web-based interface combined with some impressive content creation tools will ensure a launch with impact and significant growth. There’ll be some obvious poaching of users from services like Habbo Hotel but also from content-creation havens like Second Life.
Fail – We couldn’t have got this one more wrong given Metaplace has announced its closure. Closures are expected in a competitive environment but this one was a real surprise.
Prediction 6: Virtual sex will lead to legislation – Linden Lab’s gambling, ageplay and banking clamp-downs were an early start to the reality of increased regulation and governments worldwide are increasingly scrutinising virtual world activities. Sexual exploits (aside from ageplay) have remained unregulated. For better or worse, this won’t remain.
Fail – no significant legislation has eventuated, although the proposed Australian internet filter will likely cover ageplay-related content, but that legislation hasn’t passed as yet.
Prediction 7: Australian Universities will fall further behind in incorporating virtual world training tools – Australia has some leading lights as far as virtual world and education go, something highlighted by AVWW 2008. In the wider university sector, US and UK universities are integrating virtual world training simulations in a range of areas including health and engineering. Australian universities on the whole haven’t begun thinking about this in a widespread way, even with the talented educators putting the case locally. 2009 will see the gap widen further as key universities overseas start to demonstrate significant education outcomes.
Pass – Australia has continued to lag, although the cohort of innovative educators involved with virtual environments has continued to grow and some impressive outcomes demonstrated (one example here). The lag to date comes from governing and funding bodies rather than at the grass roots level. That said it appears to be ending with some excellent, Australia-wide proposals in the works in regards to virtual worlds and tertiary education.
Prediction 8: Second Life will remain a frustrating experience – the announcement of standalone servers may prove this prediction wrong, but 2009 is unlikely to show an enormous improvement in the Second Life user experience. The user interface will certainly improve and the stability of the platform may improve exponentially. The ongoing frustration will be the same issue that’s plagued Second Life to date: regular, crushing lag. This is one prediction I’d particularly like to be proven wrong on. A sub-prediction here too: the Teen grid will continue to decline and may even close altogether.
Pass – Teen Second Life is likely to be merged into the main grid, there is somewhat of a decline in user concurrency in Second Life and although some user interface improvements have occurred, the main improvements are yet to be seen. Things are still looking very positive for Second Life overall, but the evergreen usability challenges remain.
Prediction 9: Growth, growth, growth – every metric and market research report points toward ongoing growth in the number of people spending time in virtual worlds. The new entrants will assist this growth but the incumbents will also grow. Habbo Hotel will most likely retain is dominance in raw numbers but children’s worlds like Barbie Girls, Hello Kitty Online and Club Penguin will provide an enormous userbase as well. Add to that the promising growth of Sony’s Home and you can see this is a safe prediction, but worthy of a mention.
Pass – As we said at the time, it was a no-brainer. In June 2009 the estimated number of virtual worlds users was around 186 million by one forecaster and it’s certainly grown since then.
Prediction 10: Virtual Goods will boom – the interest from business in virtual goods as a money-maker has accelerated significantly in the past six months in particular, and 2009 will see that continue. Second Life has been a leader in that aspect, followed closely by children’s worlds and gaming worlds. Goods will get more sophisticated, with much more real-world marketing efforts behind them. 2009 may also see some virtual goods out-rank popular real-life items in terms of sales and revenue.
Pass – driven by social games on platforms like Facebook, there’s been an explosive growth in the use of virtual currencies to purchase in-game goods. One industry study found that virtual currencies were the most traded virtual goods during 2009.
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Seven out of ten correct isn’t too shabby, although there were some fairly easy wins amongst them. Our 2010 predictions will be published in the coming week. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on how 2009 played out compared to how you thought it would?
So, here I am, watching the Alter Ego documentary on SBS. Indeed, it is still running at the time I am writing this. I’m not really quite sure what I expected. Not the usual sense of regretful chagrin that I’d expect at a documentary on Second Life, because Writer/Director Shelley Matulick is basically a good sort.
Nevertheless, the emotion that most comes to the surface right now is one of frustration.
“Real worldâ€, “virtual worldâ€, “realâ€, “fakeâ€, “virtual†terms and prefixes are thrown around with little consistency, and make me wince or cringe.
It’s not really anyone’s fault, exactly. The users presented on the program lack the vocabulary to clearly express their experience. They obviously have a firm emotional and instinctual grasp of it, but not the conceptual vocabulary to clearly explain it to others.
For the part of the viewer, the average non-virtual-environment-user, well, without enough first-hand experience or a few doctorates in philosophy it’s really hard to absorb the concepts. Until we take our lives online in a decisive sort of way, we don’t really give much thought to core issues like identity or the fundamental nature of humanity – issues that remain relatively intractable after thousands of years of thought by the best minds that our species has to offer.
With such vast conceptual gulfs, how do you convey the obvious?
Good luck trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t have the common experience of a different perspective. Remember in Sesame Street, they had a number of animations that explained communication? One figure with a series of coloured shapes in their head, and as they spoke, the other person wound up with similar coloured shapes in their own head.
What we lack is a vocabulary to express the colours and the shapes. I tell you that there’s no difference between virtual identity and non-virtual identity.
In interviews with the BBC, I was often asked “What is the difference between virtual identity and real identity?â€
The obvious and correct answer is that there isn’t any difference. If that doesn’t make sense, then it’s because you’ve misunderstood the nature of identity itself, rather than the nature of virtual identity.
It’s simple, it’s obvious, and if it doesn’t convey the proper concepts to you, then as a message it’s wrong, even if it’s the truth.
This is why the parable (παÏαβολή) was originally developed – sometimes a fictitious story can convey more truth than the factual one. If simpler truths cannot be grasped, metaphors, analogies and parables need to be employed. Rectitude is not only in possessing the truth, but in effectively sharing it.
Virtual environments, somewhat paradoxically, tell us more about the nature of our ordinary mundane world and selves than actually living it, because in order to grasp the nature of something very large or very close, you need perspective.
If you’re paying attention, a year of using a virtual environment will teach you more about humanity, identity and gender than 30 years of actually experiencing those things first-hand. If you’re not paying attention, though, it may teach you nothing at all.
It’s coming up to a year since Alter Ego was being completed, and finally SBS have committed to a screening date. It’s showing next Monday, 14th December at 11.25pm. More on the screening time later, but first:
The Mini-Review
I had the opportunity to watch Alter Ego a few months back. Directed by Shelley Matulick, this documentary takes a very close look at Second Life from the perspective of four people. Three of them are Australian, the other from the United States. All have very different stories but their commonality is the role Second Life has played in bringing them closer to other people. I think there’ll be some very different reactions to the portrayal of the subjects. It’s fair to say each have had significant challenges in their lives, with Second Life being a central activity for each.
There are a few aspects of the story that could easily be used by virtual worlds detractors who speak in terms of “get a real life” – that would totally miss the point as what this documentary shows in a stark way is the mixed bag of opportunities and challenges virtual environments present. Overall, Alter Ego is an engaging, well-made documentary that firmly illustrates the role virtual worlds are playing in modern life. Veteran Second Life residents will find areas to criticise – it’s far from a full picture painted, but like any powerful documentary it’s the power of individual stories that can make the difference and Alter Ego certainly achieves that.
Although SBS deserve some kudos for screening Alter Ego, I can’t for the life of me understand why it was relegated to late night just before Christmas. This is a quality Australian documentary that has appeal well beyond those who are involved with Second Life – surely a repeat of Inspector Rex could have made way for a documentary?
Wolfie’s perspective
Over the past three years I’ve gotten to know one of the documentary subjects, Wolfie Rankin. One of the first things I did after watching Alter Ego was to contact Wolfie and ask for his thoughts on the documentary experience, which you can read below:
I had no idea what I was in for, I thought a crew would come around and Shelley would interview me a bit and that’d be it, but it took a lot longer than I realised. Shelley would drop in now and then just to record me on voice, using a digital recorder… and then later she bought the crew. I think they were here about eight or more times, gathering bits and pieces.
The interesting thing for the technically minded was that no tapes were used, everything either went to hard drive or flash card, The High Definition camera which was used had two large flash cards in which it recorded about 20 minutes of footage which was then dumped to a laptop with a 1TB hard drive hanging off of it.
My house was an absolute mess, well I live alone, so if my house gets a bit messy, it doesn’t matter. So I cleaned up like mad and threw any excess stuff into the spare room and closed the door. What I didn’t realise was they’d bring a truck load of stuff, lighting and cables which had to go somewhere and ended up in the spare room too.
I hadn’t cleaned my bedroom or the bathroom either, so guess where they wanted to film, good grief. Oh yes, and the garden, which had been horribly neglected.
I used to be a keen gardener, but my parents were living with me then so we all had our own jobs to do, but now I live alone I find I have very little time for everything, and as everyone knows, I spend a long time each day on the computer. I’m thankful for Katie, my dog, who insists on about three daily walks or I wouldn’t get out quite as often.
My advice to anyone who might find themselves doing a doco, clean clean clean, inside and out. Although the funny thing was that all the scenes showing my house were mostly cut out. Marko, who was in the kitchen, cooking… in his rat suit, as you can see on Youtube. I watched the tape back and saw a kitchen which hadn’t been that clean for years. I have been trying to maintain that ever since.
Marko really wishes he could do a sort of kids cooking show, and I think it’d be great to see him do this, though how he manages to do anything much in that suit, I don’t know.
In another scene which didn’t make it (you can view it on YouTube here), Marko and I went to the local deli. I loved that, it was a really funny experience. Marko got into his rat suit “Rattus”, and then we all walked out into the street, Marko as Rattus, Shelley, Bart (The sound guy), Zach (our Cameraman) and myself… and got into Shelley’s not so roomy car, with Marko in the front passenger seat. If he’d been driving, that would have looked even funnier. Shelley drove, and us three guys were cramped up in the back with all the equipment. We got to the deli about five minutes later and all piled out, then Marko and I went to the deli and went through a routine where we’d buy cheese (of course) and other items which we’d take home and eat while talking about furries and so on later that night. Marko would point at various cheeses and I’d buy them, he asked me to get blue vein, and the strange thing was he didn’t actually like it, I asked him why he wanted it, and he said Rattus wanted it, not him. How do you respond to that logic?
Marko thought Bart looked cute, but he doesn’t want anyone to know so you’d better leave this bit out. 😉 There’s a nice scene in the deli of Rattus being stroked by Bart, but then Shelley hugged him and I was walking around the shops holding Rattus’ hand. I remember something about a woman gently telling Rattus to behave and be a good boy, and Rattus nodding. There was something really warm about that, a shame we didn’t get that on tape, it was beautiful.
Rattus also went into the Bakers Delight a few doors down from the deli, and hugged all the girls who were working there, it’s interesting to see the effect of a fursuit on people, many don’t look, they feel shy or embarrassed, but others love it, and I’m talking about grown people, kids are generally really keen on the idea, but the adults who have this wonderful positive response to it, it’s a lovely thing to see.
Last year I had no heater, and we were filming during winter. The house was frozen, and the doors were usually wide open because the crew kept coming in and going out a lot. So I was usually in a beanie and coat, and shelley whipped my beanie off before each scene which explains the wayward hair 🙂
Shelley picked Katie and I up to film a scene in the forest, she lives up near where Puffing Billy is and drove all the way to Footscray to pick us up. We got to her home, and what amazed me was her driveway is almost vertical, the steepest driveway I’ve ever seen… anyway, Katie and I went to this place in the forest which Shelley thought looked like a European pine forest. Well we were planning the shot when Katie stuck her nose into the dead pine needles and pulled out this hideous lump of meaty something. I know that baits are used up there so I feared the worst, even if it wasn’t a “proper” bait, it could have been left by one of those nuts who hate dogs and want to poison them, so we raced to the vet with Katie, and she was looked at and was fine, but she’d scared all of us. Jamie who composed the music for the doco was driving and we were almost hit by another car on the way, and Shelleys little boy was hot and upset. So we didn’t end up with any film at all that day which was a real shame.
The forest scene was difficult, I don’t have the fastest connection, and that sim lagged like mad. I couldn’t walk anywhere, and Shelley had to TP me to her most of the time. It’s a wonder she got the footage that she did. The video of me howling was added to the scene digitally later on.
It was suggested that we talk about sex, which I think was appropriate, but I suggested that if we must show genitalia that we show the furry stuff, because there have been other docos where human ones were mentioned, so perhaps we should try this to be different. But the funny thing was that because we had to compress things down and have one thing lead neatly into another, the film kind of gave the impression that I hang out at furry penis vendors, hoping to meet newbies and take them to strange parties in the forest, which was supposedly my Rezday.
It was a bit of a shame that I couldn’t show the kind of rezday I would normally have, a party with friends at the Kookaburra pub, with friends like Kath and Ryu, Simon, Gumby, Vermus, Quadrapop and Lowell, of course… and the performers we usually have, like Komuso and Jaggpro, but it was thought that the forest would be more visually pleasing, which it is.
We wanted a lot more people in the shots but those who we were after were usually offline when Shelley was filming, which we found really frustrating.
I didn’t like the last scene in the doco, I think what I said should have been edited better than that, and I told Shelley. I don’t know if the version which goes to air will still be the same, but I hope they can change it. While trying to explain how I felt, I found myself flip-flopping with ideas which sounded really weird and confusing, but the visuals on that final scene are really beautiful. so just absorb the music and visuals and mentally filter my voice out, please!
What I did was just kind of waffle on about ideas that popped into my head, knowing they’d be edited later, or hoping may have been a better word. I don’t think I do a good job explaining myself when there’s a mic or camera in front of me, I feel that if I can sit and write, then I am more likely to get the idea across much better… but I gave it a go.
I thought they did a really good job on the Second Life visuals, they were almost as good as what we saw in the CSI episode earlier in the year.
One of my favourite scenes in the doco is the one where Alf was laying down with his keyboard on his lap and his LCD screen hanging from an angle, He’d drilled a hole in it and tied a bit of string through it, unbelievable!
Marko is my very dear friend, who I met online around 1996 I think, and we’ve been the best of friends ever since. And he’s been here for me whenever anything bad happened, he’d come to see me, and I’m very very grateful for that, we’re soulmates, I’m sure. We met on a group he’d set up called Ozfurry, which is still around but Marko has gone onto other things.
Marko would like to do a serious doco on the furry culture, and I think he’d be the perfect one for it. He knows a lot about the scene, the people and has travelled to the US a number of times to see friends and visit furcons.
Shelley, our director, is this wonderful, very good looking, intelligent woman, who aims to produce more docos in future, under her own steam. She’s studying more about film production at Swinbourne uni at the moment. She told me that she doesn’t want to be in front of the camera, she mostly wants the people in her films to tell their own story, which I think is fine, but I’m trying to pursuade her to go out the front and be in the film too, I think she’d so a fine job of it.
The latest round of winners in the University of Western Australia’s 3D Art and Design Challenge have been announced. The momentum of this competition continues to grow, with a huge number of entries and the addition of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to the final judging panel.
All the details on the November winner from Jayjay Zifanwe:
Glyph Graves & Silene Christen take the NOVEMBER Awards by Storm
A sublime submission called ‘Tendrils‘ by the jewel in the crown of Australia, Glyph Graves took out top spot for the IMAGINE Challenge for the november round of the UWA 3D Art & Design Competiton. Not to be outdone, some incredible work by Silene Christen of the Balears Islands in Spain saw her winning the top non-scripted IMAGINE entry for ‘Jackob’s Stairs’ as well as the FLAGSHIP Challenge, where the challenge is to build and Art Gallery that could perhaps be built. With this, Silene became the first person to win the major prizes in both the IMAGINE & FLAGSHIP categories.
A total of 58 entries were submitted for the IMAGINE challenge for November and 7 entries to the FLAGSHIP challenge of the University of Western Australia’s 3D Art & Design Competiton. Co-hosts Jayjay Zifanwe and quadrapop Lane were astounded by the rise in entries month to month and the also how the entries coming in were spread across the globe, with artists and builders taking from Canada, the USA, the UK, Scotland, England, Spain, France, Brazil, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Tunisia, Germany and Australia.
With the year long competition growing from strength to strength, it was announced during the award ceremony that the judging panel for the Grand Prize which already included Second Life personalities from the art, architecture & journalism world, including Frolic Mills, Will Dreadlow, Sasun Steinback, Lowell Cremorne and White Lebed was boosted by the CEO of Linden Labs, M Linden joining the panel!
An artist book prize was also awarded for the month of November. This was won by Oldoak Merlin for his work Offenes Buch (Open Book). Book prize panel chair, Juanita Deharo commenting on the piece said ‘The words and print won’t stay on the page but float and swirl, sometimes forming words, sometimes not. The work asks us to consider the nature of words, story and text, while staying within the known bounds of ‘bookness’. The dedication to Ramon Llull gives us an indication of the creator’s intent. It is a very well concieved and aesthetically pleasing work that operates on a number of levels, and is well deserving of the prize.
Commenting on his win, Glyph said ‘There was a lot of high quality work in this month so I wasnt expecting anything. My piece, Tendrils is a portrait of a person … both closed and open to the world showing a different facet of themselves depending on who and how many are around them. Theres an undocumented feture that I’m not sure many saw .. the sphere will change colour depending on how many people are inside it. Oh and of course it sends out tendrils .. of sound and colour’
Stunned by the double award, Silene said, ‘I’m happy, and surprised. Suprised for several reasons. Jackob’s Stairs is..very conceptual very ..in my style..and I didn’t think it would be ‘in vogue’ in SL at the moment. So I was really suprised. The FLAGSHIP prize… well, this is an honour. To see people dancing and walking and looking at the things in it makes me feel … extremly happy. I made things for people, and is very great for a builder to see poeple using them::)))’
A number of other awards were also preented including the People’s Choice Award taken by Dusty Canning’s ‘Letting off Steam’. Other winners included Miso Susanowa, Jedda Zenovka, Sledge Roffo, RAG Randt, Sabrina Nightfire, Nyx Breen and Ichiko Miles who took 2nd prize in both the Imagine Challenge and the SArtist Book prize (full list below).
The competition is now receiving entries for the month of December. Location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/UWA/64/132/250
WINNERS FOR THE NOVEMBER ROUND
IMAGINE CHALLENGE – 3D Art
1st Prize: Tendrils by Glyph Graves ($L5,000 + Custom T-Shirt)
2nd Prize: Consolation of Philosophy of Ichiko Miles ($L1,250)
Best Non-Scripted Entry: Jackobs Stairs by Silene Christen ($L1,250 + Custom T-Shirt)
Honourable Mention (Simple Beauty): Budding by Sledge Roffo ($L500)
Honourable Mention (A Short History of Everything): Offenes Buch / Open Book by Oldoak Merlin ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Immersion): Sweet Sid & the Singing Sidlets by Jedda Zenovka ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Behind the Veil): Primary Emotions by RAG Randt ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Atmosphere): Turbulence by Sabrinaa Nightfire ($L500)
FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE
1st Prize : Art Galery by Silene Christen ($L5,000)
2nd Prize: FUTURELab by Nyx Breen ($L1,250)
ARTIST BOOK PRIZE
1st Prize : Offenes Buch / Open Book by Oldoak Merlin ($L2,000)
2nd Prize: Consolation of Philosophy of Ichiko Miles ($L500)
THE EXCALIBUR AWARD (for new / returning artists)
Miso Susanowa: 1000 prims in perpetuity at Excalibur Aquitaine compliments of Phillip Vought
PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Letting off Steam by Dusty Canning ($L500)
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With thanks to iono allen (via the UWA blog), here’s a machinima of a number of the November works:
The University of Western Australia 3D Art & Design Challenge from iono_allen on Vimeo.
I’ve been following the progress of Emotiv for a couple of years now, for two reasons. The first is a parochial one – the founders started out in Australia and have created some real waves with their work. The second is more obvious: computer-brain interfaces are an obvious evolution for virtual environments and Emotiv’s product is one of the first ones available for consumers at a reasonable price.
Emotiv CEO, Nam Do, is in Sydney for the XMediaLab Global Media Cultures so I took the opportunity to nab him for a few quick questions on the EPOC headset about to be released:
Lowell: For the newly initiated, how would you describe Emotiv’s mission as a company?
Nam: Since the beginning, man-machine interaction has always been in conscious form. We have always consciously direct machine to perform different tasks for us. However, interaction between human are much more complex, we take in not only conscious communication but also read each other’s expression and feel other’s emotions. Our mission is to create a new form of interface that take man-machine interaction a lot closer to that of human to human. We have created a neuro-technology that allow computer to not only read our conscious thoughts but also understands our non-conscious expressions and emotions. It’s a headset called Emotiv EPOC that reads your brainwave and allows you to control application with your mind.
Lowell: How have pre-orders of the EPOC been going?
Nam: Pre-orders are great, we have a very strong and growing fan base that has been followed and supported us for a long time. The orders are coming in very strong and with only 2 weeks, we almost fill up our limited release for Christmas. And I’m talking only about US market and direct order from our website. It does feel good!
Lowell: Can you confirm which applications / games / worlds are actively working to support Emotiv products?
Nam: We have a few applications/games that we bundle with the headset as well as we are going through testing our 3rd party’s applications to include in the box at launch. Users will also have access to a website where our developers around the world uploading their applications, much like the iPhone store.
Lowell: Are you able to outline the Emotiv product map over the coming year?
Nam: Making the product better and more and more applications ALL THE TIME.
Lowell: Are you meeting much skepticism on the efficacy of the EPOC?
Nam: Surprisingly no. We expected a lot more skepticism for our 1st release as this is a totally new technology. You have to remember that although it has a lot of potential, it’s like the computer in the 70s, you can’t expect broadband internet and photo realistic graphics yet. We have released our SDK headset a few months ago and the feedback is actually really good, people are amazed at what the headset can do.
Lowell: Do you have data on the ‘accuracy’ of the EPOC i.e. are there any objective measurements on the proportion of the time that emotions are translated effectively versus not effectively?
Nam: We have 3 different suites of detections call Expressiv, Affectiv and Cognitiv. The latency is ranging from 10ms for Expressiv to about 150ms for Cognitiv. Accuracy is also depends on how many cognitiv actions you are trying to do at a time, if it’s 2, then the accuracy is super high, it gets less accurate when you try to add more actions in too quick before you mastered the 1st 2. This is has a lot to do with the ability of making your different thoughts distinctive enough as well so you can see different people with different mental abilities which make it really interesting.
Lowell: Has there been interest from the developer community in the SDK, and if so, can you give some examples of new ways the Emotiv IP is being explored?
Nam: There is huge interest from the development community, we now have over 6,000 developers worldwide from giant multi-national corporations to independent developers. We expect to see a lot of interesting applications over the next few months. Lots of developers are submitting their applications to bundle with the consumer headset.
Lowell: The Emotiv forums seem to have some significant dissent around the pricing of the developer SDK and its highly proprietary structure. Is Emotiv reviewing its pricing at all, or do you have a response to claims that the cost is inhibiting widespread developer takeup?
Nam: Yes, we have a few people disapointed with the pricing of full RAW EEG data at the begining when it was $25,000. We since then restruture the cost to allow developers that interested in raw EEG data to get access to what they want (not neccessary full 16 channels) at a much lower cost (starting at $2,500). You have to remember that anything with 1/2 the resolution of our heaset out there is priced at around minimum $50K. Since then, we have seen a huge pick up in the number of people buying raw EEG data version of the SDK. So the answer it yes, we have reviewed and changed the pricing and it is now very attractive to developers.
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We’ll be reviewing the EPOC in the near future, in the meantime if you want to see the EPOC in action, check out the YouTube channel or this snippet from The New Inventors earlier this year:
Over to you: what are your thoughts on the EPOC? Does it appeal to you as an interface?
Game Connect Asia Pacific 2009 is convened by the Game Developers Association of Australia.
On the 6th December there is a workshop session on games for health, supported by HISA. Registrations are through http://www.gameconnectap.com/register.html (Forum pass, Sunday only).
This event is a key part of the strategy to create momentum in games for health in Australia, so if that’s an area of interest for you, this is a must-attend event.
As mentioned yesterday, Telstra have announced their withdrawal from Second Life, and there’s been no shortage of discussion on it around the blogosphere.
We’ve had some passionate comments and a couple of emails from residents quite upset at the decision.
I took the opportunity to put some questions to Telstra’s media spokesman, Craig Middleton, to get some further clarity on future plans and what will happen to the content that’s been successful for their presence:
Lowell: After more than two years of operation, what are the key lessons Telstra has learnt from the experience?
Craig: From our venture into Second Life we learnt a great deal in a variety of areas, including online community anagement and how to foster event-based traffic – experiences in relation to the in world support team and management of frequent in world events .
Lowell: It’s arguable that Telstra has been one of the more successful examples of a business building a community, through regular activities, dedicated staff support and a large presence. Was the costs of delivering that service too much for the returns it provided?
Craig: We don’t discuss the commercial aspects of our business, however we were very happy with the popularity of the islands and the interaction they allowed us in-world.
Lowell: In regards to cost – how does Telstra plan to report to shareholders on any substantive outcomes from the Second Life foray? BigPond’s involvement on the face of it has been a success, so how will those successes be captured?
Craig: BigPond’s activities and investment in Second Life have been widely reported since our launch. I do not expect any further reporting beyond that.
Lowell: Are there any particular issues with Second Life that have hastened the decision to leave?
Craig: Our focus is now moving towards other social media options that are gaining in popularity and functionality on computers, mobile phones, TVs and game consoles. Watch out for such announcements in coming months. It is important for a communications company like Telstra to continue to experiment with emerging Web 2.0 applications
Lowell: What will happen to all the BigPond content? Does Telstra have any plans to archive it or even make it available for BigPond customers to use as a basis for further content creation?
Craig: There are no plans beyond helping our customers transition their inworld residences to other locations
Lowell: Does BigPond have any plans to continue development of products in virtual environments at all?
Craig: As per above.
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For mine, after the impact on the community of residents, the disappearance of all the BigPond content is the biggest shame of the decision by Telstra to withdraw from Second Life. It appears they’re not ruling out further forays into virtual environments, but aside from that and anything they’ve learnt from the experiment, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of joy for BigPond customers who are Second Life residents.
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