The ARCH


Opening of Real Life +Second Life Museum Exhibition at The Tech: Keynote by Philip Rosedale
May 29, 2008, 2:13 pm
Filed under: second life, the tech | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this year, The Tech Museum of Innovation invited Second Life residents to collaborate around the design of exhibits for their real life museum in San Jose for an upcoming exhibition, ‘Art, Film & Music’.

They had already built a replica of their physical building, and set up an exhibition hall where participants from around the world were given space to develop virtual simulations of their ideas for exhibits, and initiate collaborative efforts with others.

The Tech’s virtual exhibit collaboration hall was a veritable creative incubator of ideas, with a tireless staff hosting a steady stream of workshops and events to help designers build the skills necessary to describe their ideas in Second Life.

Given the extraordinary potential for collaboration in Second Life, I didnt’ want to miss out, and developed a variation of the ‘Wikisonic’ concept to submit, since it seems to walk a fine line between Art and Music. I rezzed the concept inside the hall, and put out a Help Wanted sign for anyone who wanted to join the team (and solicited YOUR help here!). Annie Obscure (Annie Ogden in real-life) found my call for help and jumped in almost immediately with a flurry of brilliant ideas for executing the idea in real-life. Together we worked together to develop the concept into a proposal that ended up being chosen for construction at the real-life museum! I also need to thank John Street (Dirty McLean in Second Life), who found a way to realize the crazy collaborative music idea last year – when almost a dozen other scripters told me it couldn’t be done!

Ahead of the exhibit opening, I built a new Wikisonic installation (teleport link), and created a new machinima here:

So, I’m off to San Jose next week to attend the Art, Film & Music exhibition! The Tech is also hosting a Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design on June 4, 2008, the day of the opening. The event will take place at The Tech in San Jose, and will also be streamed live to The Tech Virtual Museum in Second Life. Keynote speakers will be Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab founder and Chairman, and Peter Friess, Ph.D., President of The Tech.

Summit Invitation

Agenda

1:00 – opening remarks from Peter Friess, President of The Tech Museum of Innovation

1:15 – Keynote by Philip Rosedale, Linden Labs Chairman and former CEO

1:45 – Q&A with Philip Rosedale 2:00 – visit exhibit and talk to people in second life

3:00 -breakout sessions on: -creative commons and open source (Rob Stephenson, moderator) -future of museum collaboration (Peter Friess, moderator) -community exhibit development (Nina Simon, moderator) -building real versions of virtual exhibits (Rich Turner, moderator) -marketing impact for museums of working with second life (Lisa Croel, moderator) -experience of volunteer curators (Second Life, facilitated by ?, moderator)

4:30-concluding remarks

All images in this post taken from The Tech Virtual website unless otherwise noted.



Exhibit Opening @ The Tech, February 6th (tomorrow) at 10AM SL-time
February 6, 2008, 1:26 am
Filed under: the tech

If you can’t already tell, I’m pretty excited about the work being done over at The Tech.  Given everything we’ve been learning about the nature and potential for architectural collaboration in virtual environments, I think they hit the nail on the head when it comes to ideas that are ‘right’ for SL.

They invited me to build an exhibit around the idea of Reflexive Architecture, which opens tomorrow (Feb. 6) at 10AM.   I will be giving a short presentation and a brief tutorial about using one of the open source reflexive scripts (thanks again Fumon Kubo!), and describing some of the ideas behind Reflexive Architecture.

While you’re there, be sure to check out their exhibit workshop hall -lots of great stuff there!  Teleport via SLurl.



Wikisonic at The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop
February 2, 2008, 11:45 pm
Filed under: the tech, wikisonic

Help me out here!  I submitted a project concept to The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, based on the Wikisonic project I blogged about a while back.  The main idea of the project is to invite collaboration, virtual and otherwise, toward the design of museum exhibits for The Tech museum.   By submitting the concept, I have essentially open sourced the Wikisonic idea.   For whatever the concept is worth, it is now licensed under a Creative Commons license, and can be reused as long as the authors are given credit.

Please join the project by registering HERE, then visiting HERE, and collectively propel this thing into something feasible and buildable in the real life museum!

Here is a machinima piece I did a while ago while doing a demo for Bettina Tizzy of Not Possible in Real Life.

The installation is still on view in the Gallery of Reflexive Architecture.



Wikitecture @ Metaverse U
February 2, 2008, 1:43 am
Filed under: metaverse roadmap, metaverse u, studio wikitecture, the tech

I am sincerely honored to have been asked to present at the upcoming Metaverse U at Stanford University, February 16th and 17th. I will be demonstrating the Wikitecture concept, and I am confident that the presentation Theory Shaw and I have put together will be quite compelling – complete with a live demo inside of Second Life at the virtual design/build site.

If you can’t make it to San Jose, the conference is slated to be streamed live to the web, free of charge. After the conference, these videos will be archived and made available on a Stanford University website, to become part of a global conversation on virtual worlds. Bravo!

I am also very excited to be attending the Metaverse Roadmap workshop on the 15th, and will be heading over to The Tech museum on Monday to see the ‘real life’ space of their collaborative exhibition design project I have become very fascinated with. Should be a pretty exciting trip!

Here are the details for Metaverse U:

“On Saturday, February 16th and Sunday, February 17th, 2008, Stanford University, in conjunction with the Stanford Humanities Lab, will host the Metaverse U conference. Technology leaders, artists and academics will come together and exchange ideas in a public forum, about the hot topics of virtual worlds and Second Life. Conference highlights will include virtual art galleries and a Saturday afternoon panel discussion with three of the leading thinkers on virtual communities: Howard Rheingold, Cory Ondrejka and Raph Koster. Metaverse U aims to challenge traditional conference models with collaborative and inclusive opportunities for participants, both virtual and corporeal.

“Virtual worlds have garnered tremendous interest since their recent proliferation, both in the media and in academia. Given Stanford University’s prime location in the heart of Silicon Valley, we think the time has come to explore the cultural, technological, legal, and economic issues surrounding virtual worlds.” Henry Lowood, Metaverse U conference organizer and curator for history of science & technology collections and film & media collections in the Stanford University Libraries

Discounted advance admission rates, (corporate $400, academic $200, student $100), are available through February 11. Registrants will have access to all conference activities, including networking events, and lunch on both days. Tickets will be sold at the door for $500 (cash only) and no student or academic discounts will apply.

To ensure that its impact extends well beyond the actual conference, video from Metaverse U will be streamed live to the web, free of charge. After the conference, these videos will be archived and made available on a Stanford University website, to become part of a global conversation on virtual worlds.

Metaverse U falls between two other major events in the Bay Area: the next Metaverse Roadmap workshop, hosted at Stanford University on Friday, February 15th, as well as the 2008 Game Developers Conference that starts on Monday, February 18th. Accordingly, seasoned academics, journalists, and industry leaders in both virtual worlds and games will be flooding the Bay Area.

Sampling of participants:
Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford)
Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture)
Beth Coleman (MIT)
Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning)
Wagner James Au (New World Notes)
Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive)
Raph Koster (Metaplace)
Daniel Huebner
Kari Kraus (University of Maryland)
Rob Lanphier (Linden Lab)
Mike Liebhold (Institute for the Future)
Howard Rheingold
Rebecca Moore (Google Earth)
Jerry Paffendorf (Wello)
Byron Reeves (Stanford & Seriosity)
Christian Renaud (Cisco)
Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford)
Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us)

RELEVANT LINKS:
Metaverse U homepage:
http://metaverse.stanford.edu/

Conference Schedule:
http://metaverse.stanford.edu/agenda/metaverse-u-schedule

Koster, Ondrejka & Rheingo profiles:
http://metaverse.stanford.edu/koster-ondrejka-rheingold

Registration:
http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now

CONTACTS:
Corrie Goldman, Stanford Humanities Outreach Officer
Office (650) 724-8156 or mailto:corrieg@stanford.edu

Henrik Bennetsen, Metaverse U Conference Chair
mailto:hbe@stanford.edu


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