Places with an attitude

I wrote earlier about the Regina Spektor Listening Kiosks here and while I think it is a great idea and surely a great implementation (I love that texture baking going on there) I wonder how one might go on from here. I think there’s still a lot of experimentation possible in how to present e.g. artists in SL.
So my main interest is here in how to create a maybe new listening or viewing experience. This of course does not need to be related to artists to be presented in SL but can be anything. Just make something with music and maybe video and create an experience!

So some ideas might be: use Video! use some abstract videos, scale them, move them around, do new stuff with ’em. Use some fitting music along and change objects and textures and movement maybe according to the overall mood or bpm of the music. Try out maybe rooms like I did with my Star Room and animate them.

I think there’s so much possible right now, it just needs to be created. Of course it’s not easy and a lot of work to make something feel right but the opportunity is right now to collect a lot of experience. I also would like to experiment myself a bit along that line but unfortunately my first land plot is filled up with other projects right now and as one would need music and video stream access it wouldn’t be possible in a sandbox. But I guess some people out there might have some land they can use and thus should be able to do so.

So it’s up to you out there! 🙂

Create something and show me and I will come with my video cam! 🙂

Technorati Tags: 3d, discussion, Marketing, media, Mixed Reality, Music, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Silence

Yes, there has been some silence on this blog (at least relative to last weeks posting frequency) and so I think I will write a little update of what’s going on.
Main reason for not posting more is basically being busy in-world in trying to build my first somewhat bigger project which I will call The Vlog Theatre. More on that will follow in a later post (when it’s ready for prime-time). So I will go on with some sort of diary-style here. I’ve heard that this might not be popular but as a real artist I don’t care about my audience of course 😉

Events

I’ve also attended some events at the weekend. First I was quickly popping into that Dublin live music event (but wasn’t staying that long as it was again past my bedtime) and from what I seen there great music was going on! On the next day I visited FlipperPA Peregrine (finally met him “personally” and not just in chat) while they were having also some live music event with Kaklick Martin around at their place in Indigo as well as a photo exhibition with shots from within Second Life with the theme “unphotorealism” or something like that. Well I was invited to join that exhibition and so I did with my entry called “Nighttime” (to be seen here). I just wonder who has won the competition as I haven’t heard yet about it (probably not me 😉

BrainWHAT?

Also on the weekend I got brainwashed. All I found in my pocket was the attached photo although I don’t know anymore who’s hand that is. I just remember him saying “The FIC is a myth, though” and the reply “I guess you have to say that”. After that I remember nothing anymore…

Vlogging

Also on this weekend (on sunday) was my attendance at the first of machinima classes held by BuhBuhCuh Fairchild of alt-zoom studios. Unfortunately the class on the advanced topics was a bit late for me but I hope that it will maybe held another time a bit earlier. But for everyone out there who wants to do video in SL you should go there and visit one of these classes!
At that event it was also when I met moo Money again and we talked about vlogging (which she seems also to start now, see her blog here). One result of the talk was the creation of a vlogger starter kit which can be soon found in-world for free. It consists of my microphone and two animations to move your head etc. like it can be seen in my vlog episodes. I am also planning to write a little bit together about how to do video in Second Life. You also can see that mic in action in moo’s blog. The cool thing is that she went further and utilized Crazy Talk to add mouth movements (which I wasn’t digging into back then and used the head movement instead which still probably looks ok if you’re not zooming too close). I still have to check it out this week! (although I believe that it only works with still images which might be a small drawback depending on the situation).

And regarding Machinima: There’s a lot going on it seems and attendance to the class was quite big. moo also said she was planning on doing a weekly meetup (she’s the community manager of alt-zoom studios after all) and I am looking forward to all the great video will hopefully be done soon!

BTW, if you don’t know what vlogging is: vlog stands for video blog and thus is a blog with video content inside (also called video podcast sometimes).

Pirates

Yesterday I was visiting Pi again and saw Timeless and Chris creating some ships. Coming 30 mins later whole Pi seems to have evolved into some sort of sea, Timeless and Chris having swords and playing pirates while a mermaid was suddenly popping up in the water. Well, before you go looking, unfortunately everything is back to normal again. But it was fun indeed! 🙂 At least we had the opportunity for some photo shooting later. The first one who IMs me in-world about what the ad is about wins L$100! 🙂

and this morning
Of course it is always fun to get up very early in order to be able to visit Spin Martin at his Slackstreet sim in order to attend some concerts of SL musicians and the recording of the Eric Rice show. It was fun indeed but unfortunately I had to leave early as I had to catch a train in order to have some time to write this blog article 😉
I guess you can listen to that episode soon here and make sure to check out the next Slackstreet event next monday! (I believe it is happening each monday).

That’s for my wrapup of the last days! See ya soon in-world! 🙂

PS: I think I need to do more photos while I am attending events.. So remind me next time you see me 😉

Technorati Tags: 3d, diary, Music, photo, photos, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Photos!

So this post mainly consists of photos from the last days.

Tartarus

The turnout of the opening party was quite nice as far as I can tell and especially the architecture is great as well as have been all the particle effects in the Club Area. At the next party event there you should go and check it out! Some photos follow below

Portraits

And here are some portraits I did the last two days.

PS: If you need some photos made for yourself, contact me for rates!

Technorati Tags: 3d, architecture, Places, photo, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Tartarus re-opening today

A while back I was visiting Tartarus Island and was impressed by some nice architecture there. Unfortunately one day later everything was removed.

But it’s back on! And today is grand release party, so visit us and have a look yourself how the re-construction is coming out! The first DJ will be on at 10am SLT and there’s another event at 4pm SLT to re-open the Dance Club.

Tartarus can be found here.

Technorati Tags: architecture, Marketing, Places, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Episode 2 of “Yesterday in my Second Life” and episode 4 of “Tao Takashi On Air”

I think I wrote some little summary once and I will do it again now. This one will feature:

– The release of Second Life 1.10
– The release of my Video Blog "Tao Takashi On Air" Episode 3
– On the search for lights
– Doing video at Club Camarilla
– Attending the rooftop meeting at the Federated Media Office

So as you might see this is quite some list and it was indeed a long day especially as I also had visit a client the whole day for my RL work.
So after coming back I was finishing episode 3 of my video part of this blog labeled "Tao Takashi on Air" for now. As I posted it you can see it two posts down from here or so. In the meanwhile the grid also was open again and I logged in to see how things are working now that we have lights and flexible prims. Of course I started experimenting with it immediately and built some cinema like room at my land plot (first floor) utilizing some lights. I then told some friends including Slim Warrior (of course as she was appearing in that video) and suddenly I had full house! While having a traffic from 1-10 usually I had 680 this morning as Slim Warrior kept bringing more and more fans around to watch it 🙂

I left them at some point to check out some places with lights which might have been built altready. I did this by looking at Snapzilla as there were more and more posts showing some lighted buildings. I more or less selected one randomly and landed at RacerX Gullwing's site, creator of fireworks and Castle Wars and probably much more (didn't know RacerX before but seems to be quite a cool guy :-). He did also show some of his movies to me which were quite cool and I in turn invited him to see my most recent episode at my place. Being back there I met Slim Warrior again with another group of fans.
So just checking out some photos on Snapzilla seems to be a cool way of getting new friends 🙂
(but actually the first thing that happened when visiting RacerX was a crash of my client while he was starting a firework 😉 )

Next event a little later was visiting Club Camarilla. There has been some break there and I was glad to hear that events were being held there again. I met lots of friends I haven't seen in a while and one of my first things was to tell people to switch to midnight while I was creating some moving lights and particle effects to create a cool atmosphere. Having done that I thought it might be nice to do another video again. So I did and you can see the results below.

Watch the video

Coming back from Club Camarilla to my plot I found the next group of fans and after they left I moved got an IM that the rooftop party at Federated Media is just starting (which was at 3am in my morning already actually but who cares, today if holiday here). So I also went there and met another bunch of cool people (from whom I knew some already from IRC), like Frans Charming, Aimee Weber, Hamlet of course, Hal9k Andalso, Games Prototype, Spin Martin (I meet him everywhere these days), Tateru Nino and many more. I will upload photos of them to flickr as soon as that screenshot issue is solved (or not, who knows) but some are attached already. It was a nice hangout of various people from Second Life and for doing some business with Federated Media you were also able to meet Lovisa Tackleberry who does the advertising for it. I guess Hamlet will write more about it later 😉

So all in all it was a very busy but nice day and I met a lot of new and interesting people which is always great! Hope to have some more of these days 🙂

PS: Spin Martin now called me the "Steve Garfield of the Metaverse" but I am not that sure that this is true 😉

Update: Hamlet's report is now online

Technorati Tags: media, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Real hair dressers in SL?

After watching garfield roundfield spending some time in adjusting his hat I had an idea. Why shouldn’t it be possible that other people adjust e.g. your hair (with permission of course). This would mean you can have real hair dressers who might adjust and customize your hair in interaction with you like in RL 🙂

Of course this wouldn’t be restricted to just hair but would be cool for anything!

So please somebody implement this quickly! 😉

Technorati Tags: Real Life, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, usability, virtual world

Tao Takashi On Air, Episode 3 (At the red carpet)

Watch the video

This episode features some shots of the Second Life premiere party of X-Men this monday as well as the song "Dreams" by Slim Warrior who was performing there at that evening. I reported about it on my blog here before.

Excuse any mistakes and lag in this video as I wanted to get it out now before it will never make it 😉

Feedback is welcome nevertheless!

Technorati Tags: business, media, Mixed Reality, Real Life, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Second Life 1.10.0 is out now!

and it rocks! ROCKS! 🙂

I blogged about the preview version with a video here but now it’s out and it’s amazing!
Lights are just great and flexible prims will add to it as well but it’s also the little things which are cool, like being able to define the one-click action of an object, being able to define the start location on the login screen, having a sit cursor to see where I can actually sit and so on.

So, download it now and have a look yourself! You will find all you need here.

Congratulations to Linden Lab! 🙂

Technorati Tags: 3d, lindenlab, Second Life, secondlife, Tao Takashi, taotakashi, virtual world

Is Flickr Hiding Screenshots? (via 3pointd.com)

3pointd.com is having an article about Alan Levine who has some problems with flickr basically hiding his photos from Second Life from public searches.
As I think this is important for all of us Second Life users I just copy that article here in the hope that you will also email flickr about this (see email address in the actual blog post by Alan) to tell them how you see that case. I just did it and I am thinking about more carefully whether I should go pro now with my Second Life flickr account. If there’s no definite statement from them probably not.
So make sure you email them!

Is Flickr Hiding Screenshots?:

Alan Levine at Cog Dog Blog has a bone to pick with Flickr. I’d have one too, if I were him. It seems, according to Alan, that a Flickr admin has deemed his screenshots of Second Life to be contravening the site’s Community Guidelines — which they clearly do not — and has shoved his Pro account into the not-for-public-consumption area. His follow-up emails have gotten no response. I’m baffled as to why SL screens should be deemed unworthy, especially when there are so many World of Warcraft screens on Flickr. Game companies are generally fine with making screenshots available for public use, and Second Life expressly grants users the IP rights in their creations, so what’s the problem? Alan appeals for help at his blog, so get in touch with him there if you have any suggestions. I’m blogging it here for that reason, but also because the 3pointD world deserves to have its images given similar respect to those coming out of the real world. The real world will always be more real, make no mistake, but I see no reason to disallow images from the virtual world on a site like Flickr. The social, commercial and other experiences that take place in virtual worlds are no less “real” than the interactions we have in the physical world. Visual recordings of such moments should be able to take their place beside photos from the physicial world on a site like Flickr.

Technorati Tags: 3d, business, media, reality, Second Life, secondlife, virtual world

Something for Torley

After we had square watermelons in Second Life (as reported by Torley Linden) I now found this over at BoingBoing. So good to know that Real Life catches up!

Original entry:

Grow a square watermelon by putting it into a box. If my wife and I have another baby, we’ll see if we can grow a square kid.

Technorati Tags: blogs, design, Real Life