Agent Cyan (aka Vaneeesa Blaylock)

Agent Cyan

The Quest for a Virtual Haptic: Hello everyone, my name is Agent Cyan. I have a license to visualize. I’ll be your virtual tour guide for the next 20 days. We’re going on an “Art Hunt!” We’re going to visit 20 artist-created environments in 20 days. We’ll pay a visit to each of the current 20 Artists-in-Residence at the Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) regions of Second Life.

A Virtual Haptic

Our mission is twofold:
1) See what the artists are thinking about.
2) Think about their work in terms of the Question here at LEA11 / Alice in Cornelland:

Can you create a virtual haptic?

Can you create visceral experience in virtual space? I don’t so much mean Force Feedback Gloves, Bodysuits, Vibrating Joysticks. But is it possible, be the “vibrations” mechanical or mental, to create a sense of touch in virtual space?

Artists like Douglas Story & Desdemona Enfield create works that move. Works that emit sound and light when your avatar body comes in contact with them. Artists like Bryn Oh create less “kinetic” environments, instead focusing on layer upon layer of texture. And just like RL if you have a significant experience with someone is there a deeper mental groove from that experience?

Utopia Parkway Station

SIM 1/20: LEA11

This first stop on our 20-day tour is LEA11 / Alice in Cornelland. And this is the quest for a virtual haptic. Ongoing projects at LEA11 include:

• Performances, workshops & special events
• Virtual Artists Alliance’s Haiku Speedbuild
• Avatar Blogger Month!

June is Avatar Blogger Month. We are challenging Avatars who Blog, from all worlds, to do a post a day during June. We will feature their blogs on “Big Screen TV’s” at Utopia Parkway Station.

You’ll notice that the photos in this series are “crappy” old Cyanotypes. They’re more work to make than a modern print. And lower resolution. These prints offer “less” than modern prints. But sometimes,

Less is More

When architect Mies van der Rohe said that he was speaking about the “clean modernity” of his contemporary architecture. But “clean” can be “austere,” and Robert Venturi wisely riposted

Less is a Bore

Vaneeesa Blaylock / Company history dome. Feat. Laundromat & Disco!

“Less” Lets You Explore

At LEA11 we’re thinking not of austerity, but of a “less” that is the messiness of texture. The less of a “crappy” cyanotype. The less of a virtual environment that leaves enough gaps for personal experience to explore and intertwine with it. As we move deeper into our digital century Maker Culture, Analog Culture, and Body Modification Culture, all are on the rise. It is as though even in the Physical World they share our Alice in Cornelland quest to find touch. To rediscover visceral experience in a virtual (or physical) world.

The old wooden lighthouse at LEA11

R E L A T E D . M A T E R I A L S
• Alice in Cornelland
• June is Avatar Blogger Month
• Agent Cyan / iRez
• Agent Cyan / Instagram
• Lindenarts Blog

click any image to see it larger
all images photographed on the LEA11 sim

The post LEA11: Quest for Virtual Haptic appeared first on iRez Salon.

Banksy Banksy Banksy! He’s a genius! He’s so mysterious! I wonder who he is? Bla bla bla! That’s just great. If you’re Banksy. Or Justin Timberlake. Or maybe even James Franco. But if you’re Banksy’s girlfriend, it mostly just sucks. He gets to be the world’s most famous / infamous artist, and you get to be the pathetic girl with the deadbeat boyfriend who all your friends think is only there to suck you dry. FML.

Banksy’s Girlfriend

Hi, I’m Alexis Smith. I am a publicist. No, I am not Banksy’s publicist, but I am the lucky girl who gets to put up with his big secret identity. I’ve been Boris Johnson’s publicist since he was a Minister for Higher Education, and for 5 years now, I’ve been a publicist in the London Mayor’s office. A few years ago I also took on the House of McQueen as a client. Sorry I can’t tell you Banksy’s “real” name, duh, so I’ll call him “Charles Rosenthal.” I’ve lived with Charles / Banksy for the last 10 years. In 2008 we moved into a really bangin’ flat. Of course we had to tell peeps we got it with the cash I was making from the new client, but it was actually because “Mr. Rosenthal” had evolved from no-income street artist to an art star making a fortune.

Fucking Lois Lane

When we first dated he was just a part-time clerk at HMV Records and he made less money than he spent on his projects. So Banksy’s Girlfriend wound up paying the rent and subsidizing projects. Yeah. THAT turned out to be a pretty sweet investment. Who knew there was so much cash in being a vandal!? And in case you don’t know, today the London street art buff out crews leave the Banksy stuff up. He’s a freaking tourist attraction and they can’t afford to take him down! No kidding! And, no shit, if another street artist goes up over Banksy, they buff the other artist out, and then the buffers FIX the Banksy piece!! Technically though he’s still a vandal with a stack of arrest warrants on his head. Besides, peeps LOVE that he’s anonymous. I think it might actually tank the Banksy Art Market if his ID was outed. Anyway, “Mr. Rosenthal” is making a fortune these days. Great for him. But every friend that Banksy’s Girlfriend has still thinks she’s dating a total loser.

Security freak? Maybe! I got to tell ONE person about my stoopid boyfriend’s stoopid “secret identity” – my sister Amy. And even that required secret tattoos, blood rituals, etc. Clark Kent’s girlfriend never had to deal with half the crap I do. Being fucking Lois Lane would be a cakewalk compared to being Banksy’s girlfriend!

He’s Using You Ali!

I don’t get it Ali, you’re young, smart, you deserve a guy who really appreciates you. Instead you’ve got “Charles” who, I’m sorry Ali, but he’s just such a deadbeat! He’s a loser Ali! He’s a loser and he’s using you! I love seeing you Ali, but I really can’t stand to even put up with him. He’s so obnoxious and self-righteous and then he never even pulls his own weight. It’s just really sad. You give him free rent, you give him free everything! What does he give you? What does he do? Honestly Ali, it’s just such a shitty deal for you and I don’t understand why you won’t see that. You deserve a lot better than Charles. You should be with someone who will love you and take care of you. But I don’t see how you’re ever going to get that as long as you have that useless leech Charles attached to your blood supply / bank account. Gawd, I wish you’d just dump his lazy ass Alix!

I should just have that tattooed on my forehead.

My boyfriend is the most important artist on the face of the freaking earth, but every friend I have in this world thinks he’s is a useless deadbeat who never does anything.

Banksy’s Laptop

Oh yeah and, whatever you do, if your boyfriend has a secret identity, don’t be checkin’ yur email on his laptop! It’s a whole, kabuki “data ritual” to make sure “Charles” doesn’t accidentally send an email from “Banksy!” So if Alexis wants to check her freaking email, yeah, not gonna happen! Good luck Banksy’s Girlfriend: Charles is so busy taking care of Banksy’s needs, who knows where I fit in.

And who am I dating anyway?

Does the Mask Hide the Real? Or reveal it?

Sometimes I wonder who my boyfriend is, Banksy? Or Charles? I guess if your boyfriend is an accountant by day and an Alliance warrior by night haha, well IDK who you’re dating then either! Is it Charles who’s real and Banksy is the performance? Or is Banksy “real” and Charles the stooge. And anyway, will Lois Fucking Lane ever love Clark Kent just for who he is? Or does Clark always have to compete with the “Man of Steel?” Or maybe the whole world is dating Superman, and it’s just Lois who dates the nerdy guy.

OMG! Why does she keep dating him!? Ali’s smart in so many ways, but when it comes to Charles, honestly, she just gets stupid. No idea what she sees in him. All I see is a great big zero. It’s like a cult thing where he’s got her brainwashed or something. Weird. Creepy. She goes on about how great he is, but I wonder if she really believes it or if it’s just a show for her friends. IDK why she won’t let us help her. I wish there was some way we could make her see who he really is.

Originally posted on:
Banksy’s Girlfriend.co.uk

R E L A T E D . S T U F F
• Banksy.co.uk
• Julia Kim Smith / With Banksy
• Nick Stern / You Are Not Banksy

• Alexis F. Smith / Tumblr
• Alexis F. Smith / Google Plus

The post The Crappy Job of Being Banksy’s Girlfriend appeared first on iRez Salon.

My father’s mother, Sarah Dukelski, died when I was very young. I don’t have any “real” memories of her, only “virtual” ones. What I mean is that my childhood memories don’t stretch back far enough to remember her. The only way I know I spent time with her is because of the “virtual memories” in my father’s photographs of me sitting in her lap.

My mother’s mother, Viviana Mendoza, and I did share a couple decades of time on this earth. But by now she too has been gone for, well, for what is but a flicker of time to the universe, but a chasm compared to a human breath.

My father passed away in 2008. My mother is still alive and thankfully, well. My daughter turned 21 six weeks ago! So Happy Grandmother’s Day! (and Mother’s Day) to my mother, Magdalena Guerrero Blaylock, aka “Maggie Bla”.

I don’t anticipate being a grandmother myself anytime soon. But I suppose when you have a 21-year-old child, you never know.

Back in 2011 Tara Sophia Mohr was inspired by the fantastic project The Girl Effect and she organized The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign. Now in 2013 Mohr’s been inspired again, this time by Paola Gianturco’s work on Grandmother Power, and she’s organized The Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign!

Mohr offered many prompts for bloggers to motivate their post, but I didn’t get past #1 before I had to start clacking at my keyboard:
1. What kind of world do you want for your grandchildren?

I’ve been thinking about Patriarchal Culture, The Military Industrial Complex, and Slaughtering Animals, lately. Actually, I have thought about these things for a long time. But now is the first time that I’ve thought about them not as separate issues, but as a constellation, as different facets of a complex. I’m not here to bash the male gender, nor to aggrandize women, nothing is that simple. Still, when I think about these issues that I care about they do seem to have a sort of common testosteronefulness to them.

I’ve also been thinking about that old author cliche,

Men write about important things, like war;
women write about unimportant things, like families.

I think everyone recognizes this as a cliche. Even so. The world and the values that it represents are exactly upside down from the world I want to live in. It’s exactly upside down from the world I hope my grandchildren will live in.

• The culture of war is so pervasive, can we ever get past it?
• Can my grandchildren live in a world where violence toward women exists only in history?
• Is it time for me to move past “eats very little meat,” to an actual vegetarian?

Perhaps connecting Patriarchy, Misogyny, Militarism, and Carnivorism seems strained to you. I am not writing a political platform. I am not writing a marketing brochure. I am only striving to find a space for myself to be in that has some degree of internal consistency. I would like to move as far from violence as matter-of-fact normative as I can. I don’t want films that glorify violence. I don’t want songs with misogynistic lyrics.

13 months ago we marked my daughter’s 20th birthday by stepping outside the 2nd story window at her art gallery space in Palestine and waiting for midnight to mark the start of her 20th year. (then we went back inside and danced!)

Civil Rights 4 My Grandchildren

What I do want isn’t really a new dream at all. I dream of my grandchildren living in a world where they are judged not by the color of their skin or their gender, not by their sexual orientation or their body image, not by their ableness or their age, but by the content of their character. That dream from another century is incomplete. Although I do believe we’ve made progress, we still grapple with all of those chauvinisms. But in our own century I have to add something new, I dream of a world where my grandchildren don’t have to check their civil rights at the door to cyberspace.

Are giant new media nation-states like Facebook and Google+ more like “public utilities” where there is an obligation to serve everyone? Or more like “shopping malls” where you check your civil rights at the door and are only allowed to practice consumerism within the bounds of that public-feeling but actually private space. So far these new media private clubs have been able to dictate behavior and deny access on their own terms and by their own changing whim. But when the ears of a culture are increasingly listening to online voices, to say that I can leave Facebook if I don’t like it, and that my civil rights are not violated because I can still go stand on a soap box in the park and shout to the few people there, just isn’t true. When a culture lives online, to deny online speech is to deny speech. There are no civil rights online so long as Vic Gundotra or Mark Zuckerberg get to decide what the acceptable and unacceptable ways to spell my name are.

IT’S MY FUCKING NAME! Don’t these billionaires have something better to worry about than how they’re going to allow me to spell my name? (neither Facebook nor Google+ will allow you to use their service if you spell your name “Vaneeesa.” In order to use these platforms you are required to change the spelling of your name to “Vanessa.”)

In “The Seniors Project” we imagined our future selves.

What’s in a Name?

Dukelski… Mendoza… Blaylock… Gundotra… Zuckerberg…

With such a tumultuous world, should I really be worrying about men who tell women how to spell their first names? Or women changing their surnames to their husband’s surnames?

Family name practices vary across the globe, but it’s still true today that when heterosexual couples in the English-speaking world marry, the vast majority of women trade their birth name for their husband’s. What if we flipped that? What if we just flipped that for one week? Ignorance breeds fear and hatred. Knowledge brings understanding and inclusivity. What kind of culture are we creating when so many men never spend a second thinking about name changes and so many women give up at least some bit of who they are and what their lineage was?

Single? Engaged? Married? What if everyone flipped family names for 7 days? What if married women went back to their birth name? What if men forgot their own family name for a week, and exclusively used their wife’s family name? It’s a small thing. Still, you can’t appreciate someone else’s life if you’ve never walked in their shoes. I hope my grandchildren live in a world where we take the time to walk in each other’s shoes.

Although I wish it wasn’t so, my grandchildren, realistically, will inherit a world that does include violence toward women. They will inherit a world that doesn’t pay a woman an equal wage to a man. They will inherit a world of patrilineal descent. I hope my grandchildren can walk in as many different shoes as possible. I hope my grandchildren can use their knowledge to build a more egalitarian world.

Ignorance is fear.

Knowledge is power.

For my grandchildren to build a better world, we’re going to need more teachers. We’re going to need more journalists. And, oh, look at that… we’re going to need more bloggers!

R E L A T E D . M A T E R I A L S
• Girl Effect Blogging Campaign
• The Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign
• Girl Effect.org
• Global Grandmother Power.com

The post Happy Grandmother’s Day! appeared first on iRez Salon.

Vanessa Bartlett, track star

You’ll be able to see VB’s Instagrams on your mobile of course, or, lookie-lookie, right on this very page!

L I N K S
• Sponsor Vanessa
• Chester Half Marathon
• Race Day Tracking / Vanessa Bartlett #4016
• St. Mungo’s, emergency homeless services
• Vanessa Bartlett / Instagram
• Vanessa Bartlett / iRez
• Vanessa Bartlett.com
• Chester is about 1/2-hour south of Liverpool

click on any image to see large
use buttons or arrow keys to scroll thru
click on caption / hashtags to see the user’s pix on instagram

#vb131

[photonicgallery type='instagram' view='tag' kind='popular' tag_name='vb131' thumb_size='180' columns='3' count='30' ]

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Avatar Bloggers Unite! By proclamation of, well, me, June is Avatar Blogger month!

WHO:
Any Avatar Blogger who blogs about their adventures in 1 or more virtual worlds. Any worlds. Gaming worlds. Building worlds. All that matters is that your avatar is the blogger.

CHALLENGE:
30 posts in 30 days. It’s easier than it sounds! Don’t think you’re writing the great novel! Just a simple post a day. A short post. A photo post. Any post. 30 posts in 30 days.

SIGN UP!
Anyone who accepts the challenge gets a cool badge for starting, another cool badge if you succeed, a kickoff party, a completion party, events along the way, AND we’ll feature your blog on it’s very own large-screen monitor and treadmill desk at the LEA11 Sim in the virtual world of Second Life. Did I mention parties? How do you sign up? Easy! Just put your name and blog URL in the comments below and we’ll set up your computer workstation immediately!

ALICE IN CORNELLAND
Avatar Bloggers rock and June is a great month to celebrate them. But the project is also part of the “Alice in Cornelland” project which seeks to examine immersive living in virtual space.
• Alice in Cornelland

NEWBIE BLOGGER?
It’s actually exactly one year, kk 53 weeks, since Syp’s awesome “Newbie Blogger Initiative” to get more avatars from all worlds to start blogging. If you aren’t a blogger yet, what better month to start than June! There are so many peeps who’d love to help you with anything you need!

STINKIN BADGES
I said there’d be cool badges, right? Yeah. Anybody wanna design those?

SCHEDULE OF EXCITEMENT
• Sat 1 June, 12:01am GMT – 2am (Fri 31 May, 5-7pm SLT / PDT) Kickoff Party @LEA11 & tentatively live streamed for residents of all worlds.
• Sun 30 June, 12:01am GMT – 2am (Sat 29 Jun, 5-7pm SLT / PDT) Grand Finale Dance Party @LEA11 & tentatively live streamed for residents of all worlds.
• various other excitement to be announced!

R E L A T E D . M A T E R I A L S
• Gimme Six / Virtual World Tours, iRez
• About Blogging / iRez
• A is for Avatar
• Why Do You Blog? / Strawberry Singh
• New World Notes
• Newbie Blogger Initiative / Biobreak

The post June is Avatar Blogger Month! appeared first on iRez Salon.

(Diary #39 – Mom’s Instagrams of me ‘n Fiona in ballet clothes)

The Blaylock Family Exposed. Curated by Fiona Blaylock. Gallery Fiona, New Toulouse.

You know how agent 007 has a license to kill? Yeah. I think my sister has a license to piss off. I was genuinely happy for Fiona when she told me she’d rented a space in New Toulouse and was opening a photographic art gallery. When she said her first show would be “tasteful nudes,” I imagined that meant she’d found a young photographer who’d found a compelling way of working with the human figure.

It never even occurred to me that it could mean she’d poured through decades of family albums and created a dubious collection of The Blaylock Family naked!!! OMG.

Fiona!!!

As you see in the photo above, when I went to her opening on Saturday and saw the brazen display of myself, my mother, my daughter, and many other family members all naked, I actually passed out! The human animal is nothing if not resilient, and today, Monday, 48 hours later, I’d adjusted a bit and returned to Fiona’s gallery to photograph her installation for this blog post. (I have to post it for her because typing words on the Internet is too hard for Fiona) First shocked by the installation, today I was shocked again, this time by its absence! Apparently the New Toulouse Police Department shut her show down on obscenity complaints from neighbors. The show was only up for 24 hours when NTPD closed it down. When I arrived with my documentary crew today, all we found was an empty gallery.

Fiona’s show raided! I stand in the doorway of an empty gallery!

Now what?

I saved space in today’s edition of iRez for a Fiona article and now all we have to show is an empty gallery. Hmm… perhaps we should run something slightly less scandalous. My mother was a diplomat in the Reagan Administration and she dragged Fiona and I across the globe in her travels. In addition to being a good Republican, my mother was a total ballet mom. Whatever you do, don’t get caught complaining that your toe shoes hurt in the Blaylock house! When we traveled ma always had an assistant call ahead and find space in a local ballet school. She was determined to circumnavigate the globe without having Fiona or I ever miss a single ballet class.

Mom’s been posting our cheesy ballet pix on Instagram since at least 1977. I know that’s earlier than many people even had cell phones or the Internet, but as a cold war era government lackee ma always had access to the cool toys. Anyway, these old ballerina pix aren’t half as embarrasing as Fiona’s not-so-tasteful family nudes. So here’s a little portfolio of some of Ma’s Instagrams of us.

If you want to follow ma’s pix, on Instagram on your phone she’s: maggiebla
Or on the web you can visit: instagram.com/maggiebla
For more Fiona antics: irez.me/tag/fiona-blaylock

Click any image to enter “slide show” mode, then use arrow keys to scroll thru pix
(photo near bottom with 3 girls in it is: Left: Fiona (big chest) Right: Me (flat chest) and the pasty white girl in the center is our friend Trilby)

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Saturday’s Memory Box Workshop @LEA11 had 5 intrepid participants who thought about ways to bring the images, words, sounds, movement of virtual life into keepsakes that evoke a virtual sense of touch or a sort of virtual corporeality.

P A R T I C I P A N T S
Alice Liddell
Esparanza Freese
Hiawatha Runningbear
Marisol Kanto
ReneeIlene SpiritWeaver

L I N K S
• Ziki Questi’s blog
• Alice in Cornelland
• LindenArts blog

The Memory Box Workshop was held as a part of the project:

Alice in Cornelland
Quest for a Virtual Haptic

Images & Video Clips:
click any image to enter “slide show” mode, then use arrow keys to navigate

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Romeo and Juliet Poster

What started as a crazy idea around a kitchen table in early February is now less than a day away from becoming real. The show opens for the first time this Saturday, April 27th, 2013 at 2pm SLT at the Basilique Playhouse.

So how does one actually stage a dance number in Second Life? Well, I thought I’d document the process of how I put together one of the last numbers in our upcoming 90-minute production. Consider what I describe here and multiply it by 10, and you might get a feeling for how much work goes into this kind of performance.

This particular scene I’ll talk about takes place after Romeo has killed Tybalt, as revenge for killing his best friend Mercutio. He is banished from Verona and flees. Meanwhile, Juliet’s father, unaware she is already secretly married to Romeo, has arranged that Juliet marry the governor’s son, Paris. Desperate, Juliet goes to Friar Lawrence for advice. He then concocts a cunning plan that has Juliet faking her death by taking a potion that will put her into a deep sleep. Her family will think she’s died, and will put her in the family tomb. In the meantime, the Friar will send a message to Romeo informing him of the plan. Romeo will come to the church and then take her away with him to Mantua. Unfortunately, the message doesn’t get through, and Romeo hears of Juliet’s untimely “death”, and ends up joining her in more ways than one…

The Playhouse with the Promotional Backdrop

For our production, we needed to have a way of showing Juliet taking the potion and ending up in the church all in one scene. It’s the seventh scene of nine in total.

My first step is selecting the music. For this number, we chose Moby’s “Sleep Alone”. It has the right melancholy mood and was a unique addition to the other songs which range from jazz to rock to folk to classical.

After selecting the music, we started building the scene. We built all the scenes for Romeo and Juliet and this image shows the entrance to the church where Juliet enters to take the potion.

Juliet at Centre Stage

The Playhouse itself was custom-built with this production in mind. The sets are a mix of furnishings, building parts and backdrops made from inworld photographs. For quick changes, the sets are all powered by rezzers that Harvey built specifically for the performance. Below is the control panel that is used to launch everything from the sets, the backdrops, lighting, curtains and special effects like fading buildings and smoke.

The Set Control Panel

For costumes, we went with a ‘40s theme, mainly because that’s the theme of our club, the Basilique. Because this is actually a dream sequence, I decided to dress Juliet in a fantastic costume made of candles and skulls made by PurpleMoon.

Juliet in Sleep Alone

Next comes choreography. I first cut my teeth setting SL dances to music with our Burlesque show, but this is considerably more complex. For the Burlesque Show, we mainly stood in one place on stage, did the number, and that was it. For Romeo and Juliet, we actually need to tell a story through choreography. So getting Juliet from centre stage to lying on the altar asleep, while dancing, is a challenge in itself.

I selected dances from MyAnimation’s new Ballet Series and created a playlist in a Dance Hud. The playlist must be set in perfect time with the music to give the impression of a fluid and meaningful performance.

Juliet sleeps

Frustrated with Henmation’s Dance Control HUD, which managed through the Burlesque show, but has buckled under the strain of what we’re now doing, Harvey developed his own proprietary dance HUD, which is a speed demon under the toughest conditions. Here is the playlist I created in Google Docs, that I then use to upload to Harvey’s HUD.

My Playlist for Sleep Alone

So what I do essentially, is chop the song into bits. After doing this, I might get about 6 or 7 natural breaks where the song changes direction – a prelude, a chorus, a verse, an interlude, etc… That’s the best time for a transition from one dance to another. After cutting the song up, I then play that bit over and over again, while trying different dances to it. Once I find a few that fit, I’ll make a notes and then move on to the next bit and repeat the process. Once that’s done, I make a playlist.

Once I have the best 6 or 7 dances that fit the song, I then block the choreography. This involves moving from one place to another to tell the story of the scene. We’ve used all sorts of approaches to this, from double-click teleports set to “move”, to automated stage movers that move you using a series of landmarks. While both work well, for this number I’m walking from place to place as it allows a little more spontaneity and control, which I like.

Finally, once I’ve got all the playlist and blocking done, then I practice the number. Over and over again. I’d say it takes at least half a dozen times to get to the point where I feel completely comfortable with it.

And that’s just a simple solo scene. Mixing it up with others, blending in couple dances, fight and furniture animations all adds to the fun and complexity. And that’s just the dancing parts.

Once the scenes are set, we need to make sure we have the streaming appropriate cued, the lighting right, and the curtains opening and closing on time.

We’ve written our own poetry inspired by the play, and I’ve read them and recorded them as voiceovers.

For this production, we’ve also experimented with a few special effects we haven’t seen before. For example, we’ll be delivering actual lines from the play in local chat while the dance numbers are going, using an automatic talking device. Yes, we actually went through every scene of the play and pulled out the lines that best fit the story we were trying to tell, and how we were trying to tell it.

The music too, has been a wonderful journey of curation. Not only have we chosen 10 songs for the dance numbers, but because we need time between songs to change sets, costumes, and get into place, we also have selected 8 additional songs that help to tell this seminal story. It’s such a great range of music, featuring songs performed by Nat King Cole, The Black Eyed Peas, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Buble, Queen, Jack Black, Papa Roach, Cowboy Junkies, Lily Allen, Josh Groban, The Swell Season, Duran Duran, Coldplay, Indigo Girls, and of course, Moby. We’ve even thrown a little London Symphony Orchestra and Enno Morricone into the mix.

So it’s been a fantastic journey and so much fun. Working so closely together with Harvey on this has been another incredibly creative and enjoyable exercise in stagecraft, writing, music choice, costumes, choreography and technology. Ame Dovgal (who plays Mercutio) has been super-trooper, planning and leading 3 dance numbers of her own, every one of them fantastic. She’s also in 2 other numbers playing Juliet. Cloe Nyn (playing Paris) and Belice Benoir (playing Tybalt) from the Amouresque have been a pleasure to work together with, and have contributed loads to rounding out the edges of the performance to give us a complete cast. Purdie Silkamour wrote most of the verse and was instrumental in brainstorming with us in the early stages of production. I play Romeo, but also play Juliet at the same time for one really busy number (the meeting), and in the proposal scene, and Juliet’s final “death” scene.

I do hope you’ll join us for one of our performances. We’ll be opening on the 27th of April, Saturday at 2pm. We will only have 30 seats available to keep lag down, so if you intend to see the show, please arrive early.

We hope to see you there!

The post How to stage a dance production in Second Life appeared first on iRez Salon.

My stupid sister Fiona opened an art gallery featuring pix of OUR FAMILY NAKED!? Is she stoopid? Anyway, as you can see in the video “Touts” this kind of lead to a slapping fight between us. Oh well. She deserved it!

Sometimes she makes me so angry!

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Memory Box Workshop in Second Life at LEA11 on Saturday 27 April 10am – Noon, PDT

Make a Secret Place

As part of the Alice in Cornelland Quest for a Virtual Haptic, we will hold a Memory Box Workshop on Saturday 27 April at the Linden Endowment for the Arts “simulator” LEA11. All are welcome. Participation is free. You might like to bring images or text of moments, experiences, or persons from your life journey. LEA11 will provide prims and a lite lunch.

Make it Anyplace

This workshop takes place in the virtual world of Second Life. You may also participate from other virtual worlds (WoW, Minecraft, etc) other 3D modeling environments (Maya, 3DS Max, etc) and other 2D creation platforms (Blogs, Pencil & Paper, etc)

Tickets!

Tickets are free and available here:
• memoryboxworkshop.eventbrite.com

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Reblogged from vanessabartlett.com

From the Buddy App presentation at E-Mental Health: Harnessing the Power of Digital. Photo with thanks to @claireOT

It might feel counterintuitive that technological tools should serve as arbiters of human emotion. Plastic and aluminium may have mouldable ergonomic properties, but they can’t give you a hug at the end of a miserable afternoon.

Last week I attended two consecutive conferences that illustrated the myriad ways that humans do use technology to illustrate and augment feelings of mental distress. Cinema and Psychosis at The Barbican and E-Mental Health, Harnessing the Power of Digital at NHS South East were organised with very different agendas in mind, but in my opinion, both helped to demonstrate how technological tools have become so essential in helping to change perceptions and aid treatment of mental crisis in a rapidly developing technological world.

E-Mental Health: Harnessing the Power of Digital at NHS South East

Cynical readers might suggest that offering remote therapies and monitoring patient progress via a mobile phone app is a shortcut to saving the NHS money. I don’t doubt that E-Mental health can be cost effective and time saving, but there was plenty of anecdotal evidence on show at this event to suggest that it can also be a very effective method of helping individuals to counteract loneliness and express difficult emotions.

“they prefer to communicate with technology than with other people”

The first speaker Ali Mousa was a young mental health service user who develops E-mental health phone apps. He presented My Journey, an app that helps users to monitor their mood by asking a series of questions and recommending positive courses of action. He observed that when it comes to expressing difficult emotions young people in particular often “prefer to communicate with technology than with other people”.

As a generation of ‘digital natives’ reaches maturity it seems inevitable that mobile technologies might come to the fore in mental health recovery. A growing dependence on mechanical devices to regulate human emotion might seem a little dystopian; indeed social scientists such as Sherry Turkle have asserted this dependance might decrease quality of life for most users. Yet it is important to remember that many E-Mental Health applications simply augment rather than eliminate the intimacy of human contact.

“without people, its just a pile of stuff”

Jen Hyatt’s E-mental Health website Big White Wall allows users to access a digital community of people with mental health issues, as well as offering one to one live therapy sessions with a range of practitioners. It is a tool for instigating person-to-person interaction between individuals who may, for example, be too anxious to leave their home or seek other forms of social contact. As Jen suggested, although the technology is designed to support users remotely, “without people, its just a pile of stuff”.

“allows young people to experience the emotions of a given situation”

Translating and understanding the experiences of others is also a crucial aspect of TryLife, a new Internet based drama series for young people. In the first episode users control the decisions made by a female protagonist, potentially leading her into crisis situations such as a failed exam and even a rape. Paul Irwin Director and creator of TryLife suggests that the game “allows young people to experience the emotions of a given situation” so that they might need to experiment less with risky circumstances in their offline lives.

Cinema and Psychosis at The Barbican

The NHS using mobile phones to give remote therapy might sound like a fairly radical use of digital innovation; yet technological devices have been employed to convey the symptoms of mental distress for a long time prior to the social media age. The kinds of techniques used particularly in TryLife to aid empathy, have their origins in much older cinematic forms.

Cinema and Psychosis at the Barbican sought to provide a theoretical overview of why and how the big screen has been used so frequently by master directors such as Hitchcock and Polanski to portray experiences of mental crisis. In the first session Dr Ian Christie established the parameters for much of the discussion with a short clip from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920s silent film that tells an elaborate story of persecution and fantasy from the perspective of an asylum inmate. For the viewer, the discovery that the narrator is in a mental institution only comes at the end of the film, allowing experiences of fear and persecution to be experienced as real before they are destabilised.

“Cinema is experiential so facilitates this empathetic understanding”

Dr Vaughan Bell drew on the work of Karl Jaspers, a psychiatrist who described the experience of psychotic delusion as a “fundamental change in meaning” to build on Christie’s assertions. He used examples from Rosemary’s Baby to demonstrate how small pieces of evidence from everyday life might conceivably be constructed to create elaborate delusional propositions. He emphasised that “Cinema is experiential so facilitates empathetic understanding,” allowing the viewer to inhabit the protagonists delusion as part of their own lived experience. It is the ability to trigger empathy and not accuracy that gives the cinema its power.

Still and POV shot from Rosemary’s Baby, 1968

To close the Barbican conference we were treated to three newly commissioned films made by young people who have experienced psychosis. Adam Tivenan, Gregory Hilton and Dolly Sen all expressed a desire for their films to reflect challenges they had faced in their own lives and to contest popular misconceptions about so-called ‘madness’.

It may take time before google invents a mobile phone that can give you a proper hug, but for now it seems evident that technology will continue to be an important platform for the expression and treatment of mental ill health. As digital innovation becomes more sophisticated it makes sense that our relationship with it will become one of greater co-dependence. After all, what else do we innovate for other than to find more diverse ways of fulfilling human need?

Follow Vanessa @vanessabartlett

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Xue Faith & Miso Susanowa at Haiku Speedbuild at the Afar region of Second Life

Second Life / Virtual Artists’ Alliance / Haiku Speedbuild event wants YOU to read poems! For our April events we’ll be using poems from Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda’s book Love Poems. Each week we use 4 poems and participants pick one to inspire their sculpture creation. I’m looking for peeps who’d like to make short poem reading videos for us. I’ll give you a list of poems and you can pick any 4 to read. Your human can read them by simply going to YouTube, clicking Record Now, and reading them to your webcam.

Or…

Your avatar can read them by making a little machinima. Here’s a sample of Hanna Lee reading poems from last month’s book, Haiku for the Single Girl, by Beth Griffenhagen:

If you’d like to read, you can contact me by email:

or in Second Life I’m
Xue Faith, aka FaithXue Resident

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Before I get into the post, I must apologize as I haven’t posted here in over a month. I’ve been preoccupied with real life a bit so wasn’t able to get to writing a post here. However, now that it’s my spring break and I have life a bit more back in order, hopefully you’ll be seeing more of my face here!

I’ve recently started a weekly meme on my own blog where I blog a different idea every Monday. I originally started this because fellow blogger Tymmerie Thorne mentioned something about blog memes on plurk and that got me thinking and gave me this idea. However, every week that I’ve posted one so far, I’ve had at least one or two people approach me and ask me what exactly is a meme and why am I doing them on my blog.

An internet meme (rhymes with team) is basically a virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea. Majority of internet memes can be found on tumblr and are usually mildly amusing however teetering on the verge of annoyance, such as your rick-rolling and your gangnam style dancing. A blog meme is similar in nature but more like a blog challenge, to help fight writer’s blogger’s block. Basically they are like templates that bloggers can use to fill out and participate in something thus increasing their blog content and contributing to the blogging community.

I must admit, I’ve really been enjoying reading the memes and getting to know my readers more. I have added a whole bunch of new bloggers to my reader and even made a few new friends I’ve chatted with inworld (which is rare for me).

I’ve done three blog memes so far and they can all be found in my memes category on my blog.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do another couple of posts here this week before my spring break ends. Hope you’re all having lovely spring weather! I hear it’s still snowing in some places.

In the photo: Strawberry Singh
Location: Second Life

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Earlier this month, Trilby’s typist had the opportunity to hear Donna Haraway speak in real life. Haraway is the author of “The Cyborg Manifesto”, and namesake of avatar DJHaraway, a VB/CO experiment into the nature of identity. She was one avatar with multiple operators. Would she develop an identity? Did she need one? People were invited to log in and document DJ’s adventures in a flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/dj2012

Donna Haraway was an excellent speaker, brilliant and enthusiastic. She touched upon many ideas: string figures, coral reefs, bacteria, and cooperation between animals. I had the impression that, rather than a conventional lecture where something is explained, she was bringing about the conditions for the audience to have an epiphany. Her message was both scientific and spiritual, that humans are destroying the planet because we feel we are separate from all other life. We reproduce too much, we cause other species to become extinct, and we generally make a mess of the earth. If we want to survive, we need to change our attitude and realize that we are part of the earth, and that other species are our relatives. We have never been separate, and in fact, we aren’t even individuals.

Donna Haraway was signing books after the lecture, so I asked her to sign, “When Species Meet.” As she took the book, I explained that I was a member of VB/CO, a performance art group in Second Life, and we had made an avatar with multiple operators to explore the idea of identity. Then I told her that we had named that avatar after her. She laughed and said, “I like that!” She was still smiling as she signed my book. She wrote: For you and all your avatars in 1st and 2nd life.

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This week we’re at the just announced LEA11 (Linden Endowment for the Arts) project Alice in Cornelland. Haiku Speedbuild is lucky to be the first event at this new education / exploration region searching for a “virtual haptic.” Our March poems are from Beth Griffenhagen’s book Haiku for the Single Girl, and this week they’re read for us by 16-year-old slam poet & photographer Hanna Lee Reehl!

One night my mom asked,
“You do still like boys,” (pause) “right?”
Yes, Mom. Sadly, yes.

DJ Haraway & Gina Broono / inspired by Beth Griffenhagen’s Haiku for the Single Girl

I’m apathetic
About my chipped nail polish
Among other things.

Ami Tamura / inspired by Beth Griffenhagen’s Haiku for the Single Girl

I hope that men will
Forgive me for not being
Zooey Deschanel.

Fafner Hofmann / inspired by Beth Griffenhagen’s book Haiku for the Single Girl

Short machinima of projects by: Haraway & Broono, Tamura, Hoffman:

H A I K U . S P E E D B U I L D
• irez.me/haiku – posts about people and ideas
• xuefaith.co.uk/haiku – posts with weekly poems & sculptures

• DJ Haraway’s Tumblr
• Gina Broono / Journey of Life
• Ami Tamura’s Blog
• Fafner Hofmann / Pirats Art Network
• LEA11 / Alice in Cornelland

S K I L L . B O R R O W E R
• Music: Hack the Network / ccMixter

H A N N A . L E E
• Hanna Lee’s Tumblr
• Hanna Lee Reehl’s Business Tumblr
• Hanna Lee Reehl / Instagram
• Hanna Lee / Flickr

B E T H . G R I F F E N H A G E N
Haiku for the Single Girl
• Tracy’s New York Life / Photos & Author Interview
• Haiku for the Single Girl.com
• Haiku for the Single Girl / Amazon.com
• Beth Griffenhagen / Twitter

The post Haiku Speedbuild #2 appeared first on iRez Salon.

Hi Beth — congratulations on your wonderful book Haiku for the Single Girl!

You’ve done a really nice job of creating a simple yet sublime, playful yet honest, little volume that is a joy to hold and read.

I am the host (brand new host actually) of a virtual world event called Haiku Sculpting. Each week we put out 4 haiku, and artists have an hour to create a virtual sculpture inspired by their choice of the haiku. In the past we’ve often used ancient Japanese haiku that contain moments of simple beauty. Even so, I wonder if the distance between us and these poems might make them a bit less accessible for some. I thought that trying somewhat more contemporary and more Western haiku would be a fun change. We’ve decided to let our virtual sculptors be inspired by your book for March.

Would you be willing to read 4 of them for us? Since it’s a virtual sculpture event, the time and place of your reading doesn’t matter of course. If you’d turn on YouTube “record now” and simply read any 4 haiku of your choice “to your laptop” and send us a URL, then the sculptors could view your video, pick one, and create a project.

Here are a few samples that were created yesterday:

Haiku Sculpting #1 – 3 March ’13

today’s Haiku Sculpting poems were from Haiku for the Single Girl by Beth Griffenhagen

Huntress Catteno picked:

In my neighborhood
Even the homeless woman
Has a boyfriend. Sigh.

Huntress Catteno

Mia Wallace & Dr. Wiggles collaborated on:

I like trysts with guys
From other countries. It’s like
Stamping your passport!

Mia Wallace & Dr. Wiggles

Corcosman Voom worked with:

I am convinced that
All available men are
Somehow damaged goods.

Corcosman Voom

Corcosman Voom’s finished sculpture

No worries if you don’t have time to read for us, I totally get it… and if you are able… we’d be thrilled and honored.

LMK if you have any questions!

Warm Regards,

Xue

Xue Faith
Host, Haiku Sculpting
Virtual Artists’ Alliance

Xue Faith & Miso Susanowa

B E T H . G R I F F E N H A G E N
Haiku for the Single Girl
• Tracy’s New York Life / Photos & Author Interview
• Haiku for the Single Girl.com
• Haiku for the Single Girl / Amazon.com
• Beth Griffenhagen / Twitter

H A I K U . S C U L P T I N G
• irez.me/haiku – posts about people and ideas
• xuefaith.co.uk/haiku – posts with weekly poems & sculptures

The post Dear Beth Griffenhagen appeared first on iRez Salon.

Misali

A week, only a week until that day when he lost her… He was used to the silence now, the absence of her voice.

The piano player felt at home, especially because the villagers never criticized him for his unusual attitudes. Sometimes he sat at the wheel of the rusted truck forgotten near the old gas pump, listening to the silence of birds and crickets, the wind, the rustle of leaves and the creaking of the wood in the old shed, a symphony directed by an invisible maestro.

 The villagers simply walked by and waved a friendly hello. They cherished the presence of this eccentric middle-aged man whose wish for solitude didn’t really bother them. They respected it and simply accepted it as they accepted anyone else’s peculiarities.

There was one place where he would sit often, sometimes till night time took him by surprise, a staircase that embraced the side of the cliff and ended abruptly at a gate. This gate, covered in old branches and weeds, semi-opened as a hopeful promise, was dangerous. It made him want to play the piano again. He knew it that first time he walked down those steps. So, unintentionally, he sat at the foot of the stairs by the gate more and more, and looked at the rock that created a plateau with a view over the soft surface of the sea where he imagined a weave of pictures floating about, reminding him that he could not hide forever.

He was not alone. He didn’t know it, but the little girl had been following him, determined to find an answer to a very simple question, why he never listened to music. Her mom explained to her that he was terribly sad, and that’s why he stopped playing his piano. That much she could understand. But she didn’t understand the fact that he never ever listened to any music.

She noticed him staring at the rock. Every day, longer and longer, he would sit and stare at that rock. Sometimes he even seemed to cry, knees up, his head resting on his folded arms. She sat at the top of the stairs, watching in silence from a distance.

The piano player dreamt of pictures floating on the water surface. At first, he could not make out what the pictures were. Then he slowly realized that they were the pictures of the village, the lighthouse, the pathway to the café, the Buddha, the lake by the playground. In his dream, they felt more like reminders than lost recollections floating away. They would rotate discreetly as if saying “look, look, here’s your life”.

Surrounded by silence and safely anchored in a routine of solitude and contemplation, he had been living in that village for almost a year by then. That fact didn’t go unnoticed to the villagers. A newspaper featured a full-page article about the famous cosmopolitan piano player whose loss, a year ago, made him choose to hide away in the middle of nowhere. They knew he would be sadder.

That Saturday, no one felt like playing any music or dancing. No one had ever talked to the piano player, but everyone felt his pain. They all understood his need for distance, all but the little girl who still couldn’t grasp the need for that heavy cloak of silence.

The villagers sat around the dancing floor, the old record-player patiently waiting. They muttered about what to do. Some suggested they should throw a party for the piano player, a chorus of protests firmly dismissing that possibility. The mood was not for parties. Others suggested a gift, some flowers or a freshly baked apple pie. Many nodded in agreement. An apple pie would be good, everyone liked apple pies. But the little girl didn’t seem to agree. She kept shaking her head silently. It had to be something with music, she thought. The grown-ups’ discussion lasted until the late hours of the night without a final decision.

There was something bugging the little girl though. The newspaper article had a picture of the piano player’s last performance and that picture made her think.

A week later, a group of villagers knocked at the door. He sat straight in his sofa, undecided. However, the villagers were insistent. The knocking continued. He opened the door. An elderly man surrounded by villagers of all ages urged him to come along. The piano player waved a hesitant negative, but the villagers would not take no for an answer, so he reluctantly went with them.

They followed the coastline under the light poles to the windmill rotating merrily. There seemed to be an energy building up that made the piano player extremely nervous. They took him to the top of the stairs leading down to the waterside, in silence, watching him.

As he walked down the stairs, he saw something on the rock. Could it be? He got closer and closer, his heart pounding uncontrollably, his footsteps echoing against the wall of the cliff. He couldn’t believe it, he simply couldn’t believe it. His feet splashed in the water, as he rushed to the rock.

Suddenly, everything flashed before his eyes, the concerts, the success, the interviews, the cars, the houses, the vacations abroad. Helen… Oh, Helen, how he missed her. The funeral, the excess of flowers of all colors and shapes and sizes weighing on his pain, and the time he spent hiding in his apartment, wishing no one would try to be nice to him with soups and stews and apple pies. And the flight, the flight to this village of strangely silent and friendly people who sang and danced every Saturday but who never overstepped the boundaries he had set.

Now this. He looked at their faces beaming with joy, complete strangers he had never even tried to get to know. He sat down dragging a silence along that seemed to last forever, until the little girl stepped from behind her mother and sat beside him, one little hand on the hopeful whiteness. The piano player smiled and played. He played one song after another into the sunset, the villagers sitting on the rock around him, happy.

The little girl set her hand on the piano player’s arm while he played. She closed her eyes and suddenly she understood. He had never stopped listening to music. He had listened on to the waterfall, to the birds, to the waves splashing, the wind, the crickets, the branches brushing against the old gate.

Misali

And he played on and on till the last song, Helen’s favorite by Pearl Jam. He looked at the villagers and sang in a low whisper “I’m a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love… stay with me”. Thank you. In his mind, the music sheets flew away softly, finally free.

“My name is Lisa. What’s your name?” the little girl asked.

“Paul. Would you like to learn how to play the piano, Lisa?”

And the little girl smiled.

***

A short note before I wrap up, this narrative was inspired by Second Life’s sim Misali. I encourage you to visit this location where you’ll recognize many of the elements mentioned in the story. And the piano does play Pearl Jam’s “Breathe” (click the music sheet), the perfect finish to the story. Enjoy!

The post The Piano Player – Part II/II appeared first on iRez Salon.

Misali

The piano player sat at the edge of the cliff. Beside him, the unused telescope monitored the lost horizon where a wounded lighthouse continued to shine, its static light pointing vaguely to the sky. Small silver waves sparkled toward the shore where the remains of an old dinghy rocked back and forth wondering about past trips and forgotten lovers.

A second chair kept him company, as if someone else sat there beside him. He still spent many hours thinking of her and the music played on in his mind while his fingers drummed away, against his will.

He moved to this quiet village a year ago. He wanted to leave all the familiar places behind, the places where he could see her face in every corner. The times they spent together were filled with adventures, shared futures and eternal smiles. She was not with him anymore. He didn’t want to listen to the stubborn melodies his mind hummed and hummed continuously.

The villagers welcomed him with a vigilant formality. They knew he was a famous piano player eager to protect his privacy, but he only really wanted to protect a painstakingly built wall of silence, the silence where her voice could not be heard. Most days were difficult, nights were worse.

Sometimes, he dreamt of a black and white room where black chairs scattered about danced to the silence of a black radio, a nearby coats’ hanger threatening to join in. Curiously, there was a window above from where a ray of light shone, giving him some hope. He always felt like climbing on a chair and peaking through the window, but he never did. He feared a renewed loss in an eternally revisited dream, strenuously balanced between an endurable vision and an intolerable nightmare. There was also a tub with warm steamy water, inviting him to jump in. When he did, he invariably ended back at the village. And the dream was over.

Those months went by slowly. He walked around, waving back at the occasional passer-by and spending many nights at the open-air cinema where black and white films were shown against the wall of a local house. No one ever joined him. The villagers had watched those films many times before for sure. Occasionally, there was a slideshow of pictures taken at the village, the lighthouse, the lake by the playground, probably the result of some contest long forgotten. Whoever changed the films and the slideshows was never to be seen. He didn’t know it, but they did it for him.

Every Saturday, the village organized a ball. The loud singing and laughter cautioned the piano player not to leave the warmth of his fireplace and the company of an old mute radio. He would sit at home hypnotized by the rhythmic dance of the flames, wishing he had the courage to go outside where the bright white lights hung from a cord above the dance floor.

The worst part was the music playing intertwined promises of perpetual love. They triggered painful memories of her, and when he tried to be rational and think of the flow of notes as A plus B plus C, his fingers gained a will of their own hammering away on the arm of the sofa.

At the edge of the cliff, the sun was setting, the shadows growing into dark duplicates of the chairs, the telescope and the trees. The clouds were gloomier too, readying themselves for the night and for that day of pain, the day he had lost her.

The piano player always delayed going home. He waited till the last minute, the very last moment when the sun slid away toward the other side of the world to search for more broken hearts, he thought. Before he finally stumbled through dusk to find the way back, he always took a last look at the fallen lighthouse hoping that it’d point him in the right direction somehow.

Misali

Throughout the months, he discovered many spots where he sat for hours, the wooden bench with the lamp next to it, the old bridge, and the broken windmill looking up at the power lines where imaginary clothes danced in the wind and spread a sweet scent of freshness. Someone had placed a painting of trees with fluttering birds next to a lamplight sitting on the floor. Those leafless trees made him think of the past and also of the future. They planned to have children. They planned to see the seasons go by. They planned to sit together at the edge of some cliff and watch the sun disappear with the reassuring belief that everything would be ok.

He also spent a great deal of time walking in shallow waters at the bottom of the cliff where he found an entrance in the rock. A wooden pathway took him to a small cove where a Buddha whispered silent mantras and the echo of the waterfall behind it was silenced by its tranquility. That place brought him peace, even the silence he eagerly searched for. The villagers, on their way to a café nearby, would look at him with surprise. He sat in front of the statue for a long time with water up to his chest, his eyes closed.

That’s when the little girl noticed him for the first time.

(Part II, the conclusion of the Piano Player’s story)

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Welcome back me!

You might be wondering: “Who the heck are you and why are you in my inbox?” Well, I don’t blame you, it’s been over over 2 months since I wrote an article for iRez.

That’s me, Canary Beck, Singing in Second Life (photo by Nearly Doune)

I want to share a whole bunch about what I’ve been doing that’s been keeping me away, but for now I just want to talk a little about my latest interest: singing live in Second Life.

This Saturday at 1:30 SLT, for the first time ever, I’ll be standing in front of an international audience at the Basilique Club in Second Life, and singing for them from my flat in London. Who would have thunk it? So, how did I get here?

I knew from the get go of starting the Basilique, that the usual contests we used to run at our old club just wouldn’t cut it anymore. “Best in (whatever colour)”, “Best in Superhero”, “Best in Latex Unitards”, etcetera, etcetera… well, the alluring interest of these kind of events only lasts so long.

The first idea was to put on a Burlesque Dance performance. The show took a few weeks to prepare and I’ll be documenting how that’s done in another post. It ended up being a great success and we were even invited to take the show out to other locations, which we have and plan to do more of in the future.

A Burlesque Spectacular. Click big to make large!

Then we had a campfire concert with Harvey Crabsticks. This concert took place in our Campsite and was really well received by both regulars and newcomers to the club alike. Harvey isn’t an experienced performer in Second Life, but he does know his way around getting it done, and did a great job entertaining us!

Campfire and Song – Click to make big!

I suppose it was that experience that helped inspire us to the next step: An Open Mic Night.

Open Mic Night – March 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM SLT – Click to make big!

Step 1. Decide to sing live in Second Life

Inspired by Harvey’s performance, I put myself forward to sing. Apart from singing lessons, both private and in classes, I don’t have a lot of experience performing in front of a group of people by myself. Just deciding to do this was the first step of many.

While the art of singing takes an extraordinary amount of time to master, we all have to start somewhere. So if you can carry a tune, have a reasonable sense of rhythm, and have the confidence to perform, you should feel ready to start.

The Nicecast Broadcast Screen

Step 2. Setting up live streaming

To sing in Second Life, you need to broadcast an audio stream from your computer to the internet. Drawing on my experience as a DJ, getting this part sorted out wasn’t difficult at all. When you DJ, you play songs from iTunes (or another audio application) and this signal is broadcast to the internet through a stream (e.g. Shoutcast) in Second Life. Most venues in Second Life will have their own stream you can hook up to.

Because I use a Mac, my best choice was an application called Nicecast. Once installed, I simply need to set it up with the right stream settings to make my computer into a stream server (all the instructions are provided on the Nicecast site).

Cost: The full version that gives you all the options is $59 USD (Nicecast is a free download).

Step 3. Get the kit for audio input

You can sing in Second Life just by using a headset or built-in laptop microphone. However, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you do, as these options pale in comparison to the quality you can get from something designed for the purpose.

The Yeti USB Microphone from Blue

For my microphone, I chose the rather phallic-looking Blue Yeti Standard USB Microphone. It’s not cheap, but it does capture a very rich, high quality sound, so I’m very happy with the purchase. Also, it has the essential Cardoid setting, which is ideal for vocals and helps to exclude surrounding noise. It’s USB, so it just plugs into my Mac – no converters required.

Cost: £111 on Amazon.co.uk

To filter some of the Ssssss sounds I might produce singing into a microphone, I got this Adjustable Pop Filter to attach to the front of it. It arrived today and I still haven’t tried it yet.

Cost = £25 on Amazon.co.uk

The Essentials Vocal Booth

While totally optional, a baffle cuts out the echoes and ambient noise you might get as a consequence of not doing this in a professional studio. I ordered this Essentials Vocal Booth, which will arrive for another couple of weeks.

Cost = £70 on Amazon.co.uk

The Vocal Booth needs to attach to a microphone stand, which I didn’t have (because I didn’t have a microphone!). The Blue Yeti microphone comes with a stand that sits on your desk, and it also has a screw socket for a proper microphone stand, which I ordered from Amazon.co.uk.

Cost = £25

So that’s the kit done. All together, it’s not cheap (about £230). If you’re only doing this once or twice, like I said, you could just get away with the basic mic that is already built into your computer or the same headset mic that you use for voice. This kit however, is an investment that I hope to get a lot of fun out of for many years to come, so it’s worth it for me.

Karaoke versions of Landslide

Step 4. Choose your songs and a set list

Now it’s time to choose songs. There’s really no advice I can give you here apart from choosing songs you enjoy and can identify with, ideally with some kind of personal meaning to you, as that will likely come across in your performance.

It’s also a good idea to choose songs that don’t challenge your voice too much at first. Trying to stick within your octave range to start with is a good idea. Usually, trying a song out and getting some feedback will help you know if it’s right for your voice at the moment.

Importantly, whatever song you choose will need to have a commercially available backing track. Search for backing tracks using the name of the song (e.g. “Landslide”) and “karaoke” on iTunes (as above) and you’ll see if you can find one for the song you want. Don’t choose the first demo you hear, as there are several options for every song and some are in different styles and quality. This of course limits you somewhat to popular music, but that’s still a very wide range to choose from. Buy and download the track from the iTunes Store.

Cost: 79p per song.

In terms of a set list, it’s a good idea to choose a variety of songs to keep the audience guessing a bit. I’ve chosen mainly slower ones with some that are bit more up-tempo. I’ve chosen a track from the ’70s rock, folk pop, ’90s indie, and a standard jazz track.

Garage Band Screen Shot

Step 5. Practice (using a digital mixer is optional but extremely helpful!)

Once I got my USB microphone, I plugged it into my computer and launched Garage Band (which comes with all Mac computers). This software enabled me to add the backing track and sing over it on a separate track. I then adjusted the volume levels between my voice and the backing track. This is important because not all tracks are recorded at the same volume, and some need to be dialled up or down to suit your voice better. I was also able to warm and compress my voice, while reducing reverberation, and adding a subtle performance effect that provides the auditory illusion of singing in an amphitheatre, which tends to more closely simulate real life.

The best part about using Garage Band; however, is the feedback you get by recording yourself over and over again, and learning from the playback. Anyone who has practiced singing knows feedback is essential for improvement. Recording and playing back immediately allows you to get such instant and specific feedback that your learning rate increases dramatically. I usually feel I need about 20 practices of each song to make it “ready for primetime”. In this case, I needed only about 5 iterations to feel comfortable. Of course, more practice would always help, but eventually you have to just get up and do it.

Rehearsing for Open Mic Night (photo by Nearly Doune)

Step 6. Perform!

So here comes the big day! Reading about a performance is really no substitute for hearing it yourself, so I invite you all down to the Basilique on Saturday at 1:30 SLT (that’s a SLurl by the way). I’ll be sharing the stage with three other amateur singers and performing four songs including: Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”, Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel”, Jewel’s “You were meant for me” and Nina Simone’s “Summertime”. Attendance is open to everyone and is free of charge. I hope to see you there at my Second Life Worldwide Premier! And for one last picture, here is the play bill:

Open Mic Night Play Bill

Oh, and before I leave you, here’s a sneak preview of an early cut I made of my version of Landslide, exclusive to iRez! For the live version of this and all of the other songs, I’ll see you at Open Mic at the Basilique – Saturday at 1:30PM SLT! Enjoy.

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After 4 years and 200 events our amazing Haiku Speedbuild host Special Jewell is retiring. Starting this month I’ll be the new host and I’d like to mix things up by trying a few new ideas. Nothing’s set in stone, they’re just ideas to try and we can flip anything back at any time.

Haiku Sculpting

I’d like to try calling our event Haiku Sculpting, to emphasize that we’re using prims and textures to create a work of art. Yes it can be Sculpture, Landscape, Architecture, or anything else, just like before, but I hope we can think about art objects and installations that respond to a poem, rather than a build that illustrates the poem.

The Finale

Our standard end of event is to vote and award ribbions and money. I know in-world peeps love those Linden Dollars, and I’m happy with that. But I thought we might try letting go of the ranking business and ribbons and money for a little while, and use the time, instead of votes and drum-rolls, to walk from piece to piece and let the artist and audience say a few words about each project.

The Poems

The Haiku we’ve had for our events have been sublime. But perhaps their distance in space and time from our contemporary moment has sometimes made them harder to access. To get us started we’ll be using 2011 poems from Beth Griffenhagen’s book Haiku for the Single Girl. Also, one poem might not speak to everyone participating in Haiku Sculpting, so we’ll put up 4 poems. Participants can pick the one they like and make a sculpture in response to it, or they can take a feeling, a gestalt, from all 4 as their inspiration.

Old Homes, New Homes

Long-time VAA benefactor Peri Afarensis has offered to continue her generous support of both VAA events, Photohunt and Haiku Sculpting. To launch our new series we’ll be moving the event up to her museum level. With the end of Special’s tenure as host, we’re also saying goodbye to our generous hosts at Heron Shire. We can’t thank them enough for all the hospitality they’ve shown us. Lothar Leborski has agreed to let us hold some of our events at his CSULB region, and since we’ll be visiting the virtual CSULB campus, Leborski is arranging to have the “real” CSULB MFA Poets provide some of our poems, and to read them to us on YouTube. Vaneeesa Blaylock has offered to host Haiku Sculpting at the LEA11 Alice in Cornelland region as part of the exploration there of a virtual haptic. Starting in March then we’ll rotate among Afar, CSULB, and LEA11.

Special Themes

I’ve arranged a few themes for March. All participants are always welcome to work in any manner that feels best to them, but we’ll encourage a few ideas to try. Here’s our March Schedule and each week’s Theme:

Artist Miso Susanowa

Sunday 3 March – Afar – Twisted Prims
The amazing “prim twister” Miso Susanowa will give us a prim twisting demo from 10:00 – 10:25 and then we’ll have our Haiku Sculpting event from 10:30 – 11:00

Sunday 10 March – LEA11 – Partner Game
This week we’ll work in pairs, either with someone you bring, or we’ll pair peeps up at the event. The idea is that You put down a prim, shape it, texture it, do what you like with it, and when you’re done, then it’s my turn to put down a prim in response to your prim… and we take turns for the hour…

Sunday 17 March – CSULB – Let’s Get Physical
Our TBA guest artist will give us a demo on working with physical prims this week, and then we’re off to create!

Sunday 24 March – Afar – Fashion Sculpting
Have you noticed how architectural / geometric this year’s spring fashions are!? haha, I have:
• galleryxue.co.uk/tagged/architectural-fashion

This week we’ll have avatar models on pedestals, and our Haiku Sculptors can apply prims to the body to create “fashion” or “body sculptures” in response to our poems. We also need participant models this week to stand on a pedestal for an hour: large peeps, small, human, other, we love you all!

Sunday 31 March – LEA11 – Easter Peeps Edition
IDK exactly what an Easter Peep Haiku Sculpting is exactly… but I’m pretty sure it’ll be lots of fun and filled with sugary delights!

To Repeat:
All of our “themes” are encouragements to participants, not requirements. Everyone is welcome to participate. Everyone is welcome to work in whatever way they desire.

Photos:
• Peeps: myLot / Audrey
• Architectural Dress: The Imaginarium Apparel

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