Let me laugh and play...

I just read a lot. Loads. Tons. Words, words, words... made of light emerging from my screen, rendered by O ands I's.

Reading is to recreate a meaning on the basis of decoding the letters words, and understanding the words by knowing about the context, the world in which they are set.

So I tried to grasp the thoughts, motives etc's behind the flickering dots on my screen. trying not to fall asleep as it was text full of boring brainwords, pretend legalese... totally lacking perspective really.

And it was all about greed. About snapshooting and attribution, and copyrights and who is the original creator, who should get the profit, etc, etc. In the physical world the question of copyright and patents ALLWAYS comes down to the dudes with the most money anyway. No case has yet made it, to the courts in the physical world, prolly becoz, no profit mentionable was ever made from an SL snapshot being sold.

As kids we get born into the world and wants to explore it. We play, we pretend, we recreate, we try to grasp and mainly we have FUN. When I got into SL as Kean Kelly that was the first thing I found: my childhood fun. We could play with each other in sandboxes, pretend, explore and laugh, a lot. The only limit in there was my imagination. I could create anything i would imagine.

I never fully understood who decided that growing up should be so boring. Adults never go out and play in the rain. Suddenly the fun things was deemed a waste of time. And SL is becoming a bit like that... loads of people whining about copyright infringement, people selling pictures of SL. And the original 'creator' fighting with the 'photographer' over the loot.

One creator went so far as to claiming she'd rather limit access to her creations... than having a "... snapshotographer to come over, take a high rez snap, apply 2 filters in Photoshop, make a smudge here and there and/or there and sell prints in RL of what I have created...".

All this, the rules we make, (they are so hilarious no?) will shape our use of this playground. And the fun will stop. All because of simple greed.

That’s why I now will set all I make in world from now on to free.

And I will attribute the creators if I feel like it. And if that creator is especially needy, and greedy, and nasty, I'd prolly refrain from doing anything at all with that creators stuff.

And I will dance a merry dance for people like Four Yip, Runo Runo, AM radio, and Eloh Eliot who makes beautiful quality content and share it freely.

May fun and beauty rule over greed any day. Lets laugh eh? Anyway... money is really just a value we agree on in the first place. We have the means today to live like kings, if greed didnt come in the way.

Happy New Year.

I've Been Yipped...

I was shy... and Yip said she was too... hehehe... its an odd situation really... even more odd to be shy about being 'looked at through four Yips eyes'. And it's really a great painting. Intense.

"How close is you avatar to your real self" Hamlet Au wanted to know. I told him the truth: That I look exactly as my avi in RL. Deformed feet and all :p

Is that me?... The vibe is sorta me... but i do look more soft and rounded in RL. And i definately look older on Yips painting, I kinda like that. I was allways mistaken for being way to young anyway, with equal loss of authority (problems with getting access to the clubs and stuff).

"Now you know how I see your avatar" Yip explained...

You can see her painting in world at http://slurl.com/secondlife/recursion/47/14/781

Avatar Communication

"You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate." Paul Watzlawick

In a virtual environment, it seems, we lack some of the modalities of communication. We apparently communicate with verbal language only, vocal (as in voice chat) or non vocal (as in regular chat). We lack the body-language and the para-language when we talk in Second life. Or do we?

We also emote. A lot. I have been really amazed of how well we all get the message through this communicative-wise simple channel. So in lack of the non verbal modalities, emoting was created and enhanced to a pretty sophisticated level. Mitch Kapor keeps spilling some info about avatar puppetering and body mirroring all over the web, so the nonverbal side of communication might be enhanced very soon.

And in SL we even dress up - or not. Create ourselves in the form of an avatar. Or not. And this communicates stuff no matter what. In the movie 'Second Me' by Anna Thommen, Eifachfilm Vacirca shares some really fine points regarding this.

Also the latest debates about skinny and fat avies shows that how you choose to look tells alot about you. It's a statement. Even when it's not.

We could for the fun of it, try to box this in (the brain loves that no?). Avatars could be categorized in overlapping labels like:

• WhoCares - this guy (it is mostly guys) gets into SL, picks a common made up avatar of some sort, makes some minor changes and sticks with it. Famous whocares: Phillip Linden
  
• Toonie - furries, nekos, greenies, tinies, robots etc. Your avi looks nothing like anything found outside the fantasy worlds. Famous toonies: Vint Falken.
  
• Crossover - here we have the people who pretend to be opposite in some aspects of your RL self in weight/height/haircolour/age/gender/race/beauty/economic status etc. Famous crosssovers: Marianne McCann.
• RealLifer - tries to make an (often but not allways enhanced) lookalike-version of their RL selves. Famous Reallifer: Mitch Kapor, Hamlet Au.
  
• Shapeshifter - changes shape often, plays around with it. Famous shapeshifters: Torley Linden, Andromega Volare.
  
• Roleplayer - here the avatar is clearly dictated by whatever part you play.
  

I am sure there are phases in time too, like Rob put it in his blogpost 'the naming of names'.

So what does your avatar tells us?

Now-here :)

Alessandra Kingsford: we are all schooled to look for the future
You: yes
Alessandra Kingsford: and we miss our lives going by
Alessandra Kingsford: as we look further and further ahead
Alessandra Kingsford: maybe that's the part of what makes SL so amazing
Alessandra Kingsford: it is only that moment
Alessandra Kingsford: there is nothing more

So true in weeks of disrupted asset servers and whutnot.

To melt into the sun...

When someone dies who has been a major hub in a social network, it's like the essence of that persons work stands out clearer. Such a person passed away this Saturday.

I had the honour of meeting her for the first time a little less than a month ago. As a SLP student I wanted to know a bit about how Second Life could make things possible that was otherwise Not Possible In Real Life (NPIRL) for people who has suffered from aphasia after a stroke. The Sojourner, or Soj, was in my eyes one of the best experts in the area, since she as a multiple stroke survivor and Speech Language Practitioner knew aphasia from both sides.

Even though she was busy, she took her time to talk to me, a total stranger. We talked for a couple of hours, and what stands out now, is her wish... 'I would really like to see SLP’s come into SL and learn about it and its pros and cons'.

Second Life really has a potential for everyday magic... and Soj was, as another friend put it, 'pulling rabbits out of the hat every day'.

You can visit her memorial at Dreams, light candles and make donations for the project.