ABC – Page 2

Thursday’s Fictions Q&A a success

July 29, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

This afternoon, the ABC Island Ampitheatre played host to the Q&A session following the ABC TV screening of Thursday’s Fictions.

The panel consisted of Dr Richard James Allen , Dr Karen Pearlman, Gary Hayes and Story Consultant Jacqueline Turnure and the discussion was moderated by Christy Dena and audio streamed. Around twenty-five people sat in-world on the discussion with lots of questions around the translation of the story into SL, the collaborative process that allowed the project to succeed and the potential for such projects to increase the engagement of the wider community with SL as an entertainment medium.

Check out Thursday’s Fictions in-world

(For more pictures: go here).

Filed Under: Art, Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, community, event, thursdays fictions

Thursday’s Fictions

July 25, 2007 by Editor 3 Comments

A fascinating Australian collaboration is about to make its SL debut. ‘Thursday’s Fictions’ is described as a surreal dance fantasy and it’s screening on ABC TV this Sunday, 29th July at 3pm AEST. Directly afterwards at 4pm at the ABC Ampitheatre on ABC Island there’ll be a Q&A session with Dr Richard James Allen, Dr Karen Pearlman, Gary Hayes and Story Consultant Jacqueline Turnure.

A standalone SL presence based on Thursday’s Fictions is close to completion. Gary Hayes was kind enough to point us to the build for Thursday’s Fictions for a preview and it looks like being an interesting and interactive presence. It’s likely a landmark for it will be provided at the Q&A session on Sunday.

Check the ABC website for more details on the screening or the LAMP blog for more detail on the SL build by Gary Hayes.

We asked Gary for his thoughts on the build:

“It was particularly exciting recreating what I had read and seen of the film and making it relevant to Second Life – so I was careful not to just clone the sets or be too real world in translations of the metaphors of spirituality – but try to imagine given unlimited pallette what the choices around reincarnation could be”.

Gary also gave a brief synopsis of the film and the SL build’s relationship to it:

“It is the story of a lady called Thursday who tries to cheat reincarnation in that she takes the wrong things with her into each new life. So the Second Life experience is to get you, to think about what qualities you would carry with you into a new existence. I have built a small user journey through this and the idea is to go into further development to build all the story elements – the days representing new lives. Richard Allen and Karen Perlman have been great in allowing me to work with them to be very SL specific with this”.

Update: Check out Thursday’s Fictions in-world”>

Filed Under: Art, Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, hazlitt, landmark, thursdays fictions

ABC Awards and a Denton groundswell?

July 23, 2007 by Editor 3 Comments

The ABC have taken home a ‘C+T Award’ at a ceremony at last week’s SMPTE conference. The award was in the Rich Media category for ABC Island.

The ABC’s announcement of the win was as follows:

” ‘We are delighted to receive the inaugural C+T Award for Rich Media as recognition of ABC Innovationâ€™s strategic approach to virtual worlds,’ said Abigail Thomas, Head Strategic Development.

‘ABC Island is the ideal place for us to work with our audiences to discover what they want in this environment and to tailor our presence accordingly.’

In March 2007, the ABC became the first Australian broadcaster to establish a presence in Second Life. Since then a number of events have taken place on the island including a simulcast of a 4 Corners program exploring virtual worlds and an open forum in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts.

ABC Innovation also received a nomination for the Broadband Production Template in the Rich Media category.

The C+T Awards were devised by Content+Technology magazine to recognise innovation in products, production and projects throughout Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.”

On ABC-related news, a voting box at the ABC Island Sandbox is showing some support for an Enough Rope interview with an SL theme.

Thanks to Wolfie Rankin for the heads-up.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, media

Party time for ABC’s 75th Anniversary

July 3, 2007 by Editor 2 Comments

A bunch of Australian SL users organised a party on ABC Island as an impromptu celebration of the ABC’s 75th anniversary:

Stalwart ABC Admin Wolfie Rankin was a key organiser, helped out by a number of other active community members.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, community, event

ABC: Island damage ‘server error’ not griefing

June 7, 2007 by Editor 6 Comments

The ABC’s Abi Goldflake has clarified the cause of the damage done to ABC Island on 22nd May:

“We’ve now finished investigating the ‘griefing’ episode on ABC Island on 22 May with Linden Labs. I’d like to set the record straight publicly here. It was definitely not a deliberate act of vandalism but was in fact a server error caused by the island crashing during a routine back-up. Linden Labs were able to restore the island to its normal state through a rollback a few hours after we requested it. Despite some inaccurate stories in the press, there was no cost or long-term damage to the ABC Island. As I said at the time, we’re very grateful that we have such a strong community on the island who alerted us to the problem and were on hand all day to help with the situation.”

As we reported at the time, we believed the damage was unknown rather than griefing-related. Either way it has indeed been a great example of members of the Australian SL community working together.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, community, griefing

BigPond and ABC make debut on NWN’s Headcount

June 5, 2007 by Editor 8 Comments

Veteran aussie SL writer Tateru Nino has released her Mixed Reality Headcount for this week, and as promised the Telstra and ABC presences were measured and feature prominently – The Pond at number four and ABC Island at number eight.

Tateru has invited comment on the stats.

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, Metrics, telstra

ABC Island Update

May 22, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

As anyone who’s visited ABC Island this afternoon will know, things are back to normal. Rollback is one of the strengths of the platform and it was demonstrated today. At the AIMIA seminar this evening on The Future of Virtual Worlds (wrap-up of the event will be published tomorrow), Abi Goldflake recounted how the community response to the issue had been a vivid demonstration of the Australian SL community working together and that the cause of the issue was yet to be established.

It was also a demonstration of how Australian SL users value the Australian community areas that are available.

Update 1: Abi Goldflake has posted a message to the ABC Friend Group on the events of yesterday:

“Hi everyone, just to recap for those who didn’t hear – the island has been rolled back after being griefed and everything is back to normal. We’re working with Linden Labs to try and find out how this happened so we can prevent it in future. Thank you so much to all of you who helped us detect this and then deal with it – the loyalty of the community has been fantastic to see. I’m thinking we might have a small memorial (!) in the sandbox with some pictures of the bomb site for those who didn’t see it.”

Update 2: The mainstream media has also covered the issue, led by the ABC themselves mid-afternoon yesterday, with ninemsn and Sydney Morning Herald following suit

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, griefers, rollback

ABC island hits a snag

May 22, 2007 by Editor 15 Comments

ABC island today experienced a significant degradation overnight due to unknown causes. Veteran aussie resident Wolfie Rankin, who is one of the ABC island admins, was offered the whole ABC Sandbox as inventory, which obviously rang some alarm bells. The island looks a little different at present:

We’ll keep in touch with the ABC’s Abi Goldflake to determine further details as they become available.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, usability, wolfie

ABC’s Alien Competition

May 17, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

It’s been an active week or so on ABC Island. In recent weeks the first Sandbox Challenge was completed: designing an Alien.

(Photo courtesy Gary Hayes)

First place was Alien no. 5 which was Rifty Ristow’s. Second place was no. 8 (the brain in the jar) by Diag Anzac and third place was no. 7 by Sabs Moo. The booby prize went to no. 6 which had zero votes (also by Sabs Moo!). The three winners will be placed on a sky platform above the sandbox for posterity, for all to see.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC

Prim School 1 – did everyone pass?

May 16, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

The first Prim School was held this evening on ABC Island. Led by Gizzy Electricteeth, forty aussies were shown the basics of object creation. Future sessions are planned for those who’ve mastered the basics – joining the ABC Friends group will ensure you receive notice of the next session.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ABC, gizzy