PseudorealityPrevails

Jazz and Swedish Muppets

The song Ma na ma na, instantly recognizable to all muppets of a certain age . . .

 . . . apparently originated in an Italian fake documentary, Svezia – inferno e paradiso, about everyone's idea of Sweden (among muppets of an over-21 age!):

- Link to the Overthinkingit.com blog thanks to @douglaswolk and @annaleen

Surrealized: WWI Poetry Archive as immersive experience

Today I visited the WWI Poetry Digital Archive, in Second LIfe [SLURL].  The archive is hosted at the University of Oxford, but has been repurposed in Second Life with an encampment and trenches, featuring audio files of the poems, vintage photographs, scans of the poet's compositions in handwriting (including cross-outs and revisions), sentinels, and oral history about various aspects of trench warfare.  

Upon arrival you are given the option to be a nurse or a WWI soldier, I picked nurse.  After spending some time with the encampment and several poems, including one by Siegfried Sassoon, I proceeded to the trenches, where the transition from real to surreal, in history accomplished by simply walking or driving a few miles towards disaster, is here enabled by a personal balloon, which allows you an aerial view while the general perspective is explained.  The soundscape is impressive, distant shots and cries grow louder, you can see explosions, and as you land: rats scurry.

I spent a fair amount of time near Wilfred Owens' Dulce et decorum est which, combined with a soldier's reminiscences of his first experience with mustard gas, grounded the horror of the new technologies of death.  As I listened, around me swirled green mist in which words from both reality and poem mixed in a miasma of literalized metaphor.  Which, to many accounts, WWI was.

Entrenched, over the top, no man's land; an enhanced sense of irony, a suspicion of sentimentality, and an overrun of euphemism - in many ways, this conflict wrote the world we live in.  This installation well worth a visit, and just in time for Veteran's Day.

Second Life SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Frideswide/2

Oxford University site: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/

Intangible Method (a digital fairy tale)

by Scotto Moore:

A multimedia performance/investigation into the strange phenomenon of a woman discovering that all her activities are posted online, just moments *before they happen . . .

LINK: Scotto's web

Fashion Plate

Going to have to get some new virtual duds that mirror the Barbie I had in the 70s:

Obamicons

My favorite current music style, and my favorite current president, together (currently):

This one featured in the NYT.

Shepard Fairey-inspired mashups.  Make one of your own!

Superstructing

I've been playing/reading superstructgame.org, Jane McGonigal's latest 'alternate reality' game.  The idea is that it's 2019, and major threats are destabilizing civilization (disease, refugees, political unrest, violence, environmental collapse) and their combined effect will result in the extinction of humans in 40 years.  Point of the game - figure out how to not go extinct, by coming up with ideas to fight these threats and build new sustainable infrastructures. 

This past week I realized the game ends Monday (it's only 6 weeks long), and I'd better start posting (I always think I have about twice the time I actually do, 6 weeks = 3 months in my mind).  So I created a blog with my futuristic ideas with pics and links, and also references to what existing structures might be extended into future-crisis-solving ones, and I was ready to start copying things into the text field forms that comprise half the game UI (the other half being endless scrolling lists) and start linking other superstruct ideas with each other to make mega-ones - when I paused.

World without bees.  World without oil.  World without humans.  World without - ideas?  Because Superstruct is nothing if not an idea aggregator.  The unbelievably lengthy pages and pages and pages of description and instructions full of new kewl buzzwords (mobbability!  stigmergy!  mesh2mesh identity!) seem a little too slick, predesigned to be conference-friendly, lacking only some concrete examples to undergird their lovely theoretical flow. 

There's basically no game UI.  Game instructions are way too lengthy, game-play itself just text-field forms, game-display is text-heavy narrow-width scrolling columns of text and links, game-function shows a lack of basic AJAX-y type features like a dynamic ratings system, Google map modal story mashups, integrated photo galleries.  These features, or lack thereof, combine to make the whole experience feel less like a game than a wiki. 

What there is, discoverable after considerable time spent wading through the text and posts, are some interesting ideas.  And some nice stories.  And a few photos and videos as well.  But it's not a game,it's an aggregator with a theme. 

And suddenly I became not that thrilled with the prospect of posting my ideas to an aggregator.  Because after the game is over, someone is going to aggregate them.  Someone is going to draw larger conclusions.  Someone is going to make predictions for the future.  And then someone is going to present this at conferences. 

And that someone is not going to be me. 

But then I thought - why not?  Maybe that someone could be me if I stopped giving my ideas away, stopped undervaluing them, and started packaging them.  With 10 years of design work under my belt, I think I could come up with a reasonable package.  So I decided not to post to the text field forms, after all. 

I suppose in a way this game has been a good experience for me!  Just not in the way the game designer intended.  But she has aggregated enough ideas that she should be able to come up with a new game, eventually.  Maybe Peter Gabriel can help.

Keepin' it Real?

Reuters reports that Facebook is terminating accounts with avatar names!!  "You can’t be on Facebook without being yourself," according to the Facebook COO [italics mine].

I'm almost tempted to sign up again.  Almost.

The Man in the Mirror Suit

I'm going to be casting a critical eye on the current state of machinema for this fall's OtherZine.  My initial motivation was to evaluate the process, it's DIY filmmaking taken to the next level.  Building a world is necessarily more open-ended, and involves more in terms of people and culture, than just building a set. 

As of a few months ago, the machinema I'd seen was only adequate or conventional, in terms of line quality (which has to be simple because complex line patterns would not stream well), shot composition, and of course narrative.  Short films everywhere, especially animations, are susceptible to the one-liner syndrome, where there is a big build-up to the single, often gothic, point.  Or on the other extreme, they are pretty and ambient with no narrative arc whatever.  I have no huge reason to suspect this has changed, although I'll be looking.

But what interests me more is the process.  Building a world for itself, not for the express purpose of making a film, and then eventually making a film within that world, seems to be not only about individual or group expression, but about this strange impulse we have to copy everything.  Our art so often involves duplicating aspects of our world: novels, realistic painting, photography, film, virtual worlds, video games.   But what if we could extend it even further, what then?  What if we could duplicate the world so perfectly that experiencing the latest artwork felt like - actually being there?  Would this be worth it?  Because, you know, we are already actually there.  What is the impulse for these ever more elaborate copies?  What do we get out of them? And where might they be leading?

"Dear John" letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

We need to talk.

I am breaking up with you.  Things just aren't working out.  I don't like who I am when I am with you; unfortunately, you bring out the worst in me.  You do have some good features, it's true.  But we are going in different directions. 

I could say that it's not you, it's me, but it is you, too.  You definitely have some problems, I hope you get some help.

I know breaking up by blog is lame, but I need to communicate with you in a way you understand.  I would say that I wish you the best, but I am not entirely sure that I do, so I will not say it. 

I took all my stuff back; I deleted your photos and erased all your messages.  Please do not try to contact me again. 

Sincerely,
My Avatar

Coke or Pepsi?

The bulk of this conference focuses on pre-built and pre-scripted virtual worlds.  The illusion of choice is presented by quantity; here are 19 different shirts for your avatar, here is a game where you collect virtual pets, here is a puzzle with 11 branching pathways. 

But not only is customization not true creativity, it actively diverts it, in the same way that junk food fills you up but provides no nutrients.  A type of choice is involved in selecting skin tones and hairstyles from a menu, but as a closed system it is not creative at all.  It is also perfect for the commodification of those impulses, as finite systems have closely defined elements that can be (and are) packaged and sold.  This environment of faux choice is further compounded by the fact that we live in a culture of commodification anyway, from objects to ideas, and so we're familiar with that context and easily fall into the usual behavior patterns. 

This qualitative difference, between customization and creativity, is where the tech can really be used for good or evil.