The Drax Files: World Makers Episode 27 – Nylon Pinkney

Nylon Outfitters

Episode 27 of the excellent Drax Files : World Makers features Nylon Pinkney, a wedding photographer. However a small twist in the introduction informs us that Nylon is a wedding photographer outside of Second Life but not inside it. There’s a clue on why Nylon made that choice later in the video.

Nylon informs us that she makes clothing, accessories and skins, Nylon even informs us that she once made some of the Second Life starter avatars.

Again we see the Second Life avatar and the real person behind that avatar, which is a technique Draxtor Despres uses regularly and to good effect. Seeing and hearing the real person brings an element of realism to the Second Life experience.

We see Nylon at work, hand drawing textures, which Nylon admits aren’t perfect but Nylon also admits that she isn’t looking for perfect and that’s a good point, imperfections often bring something extra to a creation.

Paper Couture

Nylon’s mainstore is Nylon outfitters  and is based on her sim, Tableau. Nylon also has a more upmarket stores known as Paper Couture. There’s also another brand mentioned in this video, the Wrigglesworth residents which is a line for people who, look a tad older than the traditional Second Life avatar.

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Colin Marchon Explores Our Technological Identity Crises With An Excellent Web Series

Colin Marchon, who currently attends Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for Film and Television Production, has produced an excellent documentary series : Our Technological Identity Crises. The series consists of three short, but very powerful videos :

The videos are short, each one coming in at around five minutes and they are all absolutely fascinating to me. As this blog is largely about virtual worlds I’m going to concentrate on Part 2, but all three are relevant. Part 2 is a good pick though because it has a brief discussion about Second Life as well as aspects that are dear to Second Life users and beyond, terms of service and identity.

The video opens with Federico Pistono, author of Robots Will Steal Your Job But That’s Ok. Federico has a view on life that some will feel is a bit too extreme, he sees his time away from the keyboard not as being in real life, but as being AFK. This is an interesting thought but I find it a tad too technologically based to embrace it myself.

Then the video moves on to augmented reality and an important question arises, if digital representations are going to surround us in the future, what makes the world inside our computers and phones any less real than the physical world? The point here being, I think, that augmented reality will contain digital representations that will be considered more real than the worlds inside computers.

Francesca Ferrando, philosopher of the posthuman, adjunct at faculty at NYU then adds her thoughts. Francesca talks of how we can connect with millions of other people with a body of your own imagination. The body of your own imagination that Francesca is talking about is your avatar. There have been many discussions about how avatars are in many cases an extension of ourselves. Francesca then makes an interesting comment about Second Life :

I’m telling you the truth, the first time my avatar flew in Second Life, I had chills in my physical body.

An interesting perspective. The flight thing is interesting, I was never bowled over by flight in Second Life, but then again I had played games like City Of Heroes before I arrived. On the other hand, when Gene Roddenberry Junior visited Second Life, he was very impressed by the fact that his avatar could fly.

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A Visit To The Vortex Club In Second Life

VortexStrut2

There seems to be an impression that Dwarfins only spend time inside Second Life at taverns of a certain build, taverns that serve mead, taverns that welcome bar brawls or taverns that are frequented by female Dwarfins who will drink you under the table. This is a myth, sometimes Dwarfins step outside of their comfort zone and to exemplify this and tie in with Science Fiction being a theme in the Second Life news this week, I decided to head on down to The Vortex Club in Second Life to strut my funky stuff.

Vortex Club

The Vortex Club is one of Second Life’s oldest clubs and was opened on the 3rd March 2006 by Kris Spade and Gemini Enfield. The current build has a distinct Loki Eliot theme to it. There’s also a distinct Science Fiction theme to the build too, with colourful displays and video screens prominent.

The front of The Vortex?

Moving towards the entrance you can see the lights coming from inside, but your first step through the entrance is a bit of a false dawn.

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Linden Lab Call On Educators To Share Their Success Stories

UWE Education In Virtual Worlds MA

Linden Lab have issued a blog post in which they ask for Second Life based educators to Share Your Educational Success Stories. The post states :

Are you an educator seeing positive results from using Second Life? We’d love to hear from you! Please join us in this Education Forum thread to share your answers to the following questions:

  1. What educational organization do you represent?
  2. How do you use SL in your educational endeavors?
  3. Most importantly, what positive results have you seen from using SL?

From direct conversations, press coverage, and the like, we’ve heard of a number of organizations seeing positive results using Second Life for education, but we’re always eager to hear more and we hope you’ll add your voice to the thread.

Thanks!

There are many educational organisations using Second Life, I’ve covered a few here myself.

Inside the building

Education should be important by everyone, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a student at this moment in time. The use of virtual worlds in terms of encouraging lifelong learning, helping those who find traditional educational surroundings difficult, encouraging those who find gamification appealing, reaching out to people all over the world and educating educators to utilise virtual world spaces are a small example of some of the concepts that make virtual world learning appealing.

Deep Think Open University

There are of course many other reasons as to why education in a virtual world such as Second Life has advantages and hopefully Linden Lab will be able to solicit good feedback regarding compelling use cases.

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Science Fiction Author Elinor Caiman Sands Engages With SciFi Convention 2015 In Second Life

Inside Elinor Caiman Sands Exhibit

Authors outside the virtual world at times pay attention to the virtual world. Terry Pratchett visited once for a talk in a promotion of his book Nation. Science Fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson used to pop into Second Life for a talk or two, dressed as a coyote. I’ve talked, more than once, with Nara Malone who has formed community links with authors in Second Life and beyond into OpenSim, especially with projects such as The HyperGrid Stories Project.

Over the weekend whilst roaming around the Science Fiction Convention 2015 in Second Life I stumbled across the works of another author, UK based SciFi & Fantasy author Elinor Caiman Sands.

Elinor has a small exhibit in the Risa sim at the conference, featuring promotion of her books and some Second Life based artwork. Elinor is a fan of alligators, I’m not sure how many of them really exist in swamps in the UK, although legend has it that the UK was indeed once a very swampy land. However she does have experience of the British Labour party, so she should be used to people showing their teeth and trying to snap.

At the exhibition four of Elinor’s e-books are promoted :

  • Europa Spring
  • Elinor’s Little Book of Funny Critters
  • The Martian Ascent
  • Mouse About the House

These are all short stories and were published as Kindle editions in 2014.

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