itscatt

Essentially  I have been exploring the lively offering from google. In some ways it has the possibility to create a linger factor, that hard to manufacture stickyness that is the heart and soul of what we call web 2.0. Since the browser oriented 3D world is being offered in beta I really had little expectation of it. My online 3D world experience is limited to Second Life, and like many I have turned away from that interface after an exciting first few months. In this case I was interested immediately in the sorts of whimsical environments that are slowly being made possible to create, and some of the talented strategies of the makers who create them. Once I had downloaded the plugin and installed it I began happily blundering around figuring out how to add items and decorate spaces and well…its a little bit like playing dolls in a good way…having fun.

There is a little more depth to it than meets the eye. Personally I have not entirely figured out how to get my images or videos to load into the frames and the huge video jumbotron. Also I am not sure how to get the lively “room” to display in the blog correctly. Those are just momentary glitches …nothing an early adapter pauses for. After all when I started online with my own account I had to climb all the way to the top of the library just to get in front of an amber monitored terminal to crash onto the VAX.

There seem to be few offerings, at first that is. Since the service is itself created by employees working on their 20% time from google, I started to search for things using unusual or less usual search methods. Try clicking on the tags or name of an author say “Rich” and often times you will find a larger number of items pop up than the ones in the standard “catalog”. Wow spotted fur coat for kittie!

The whole idea is a little bit topsy  turvey to the usual “web 2.0″ social networking service. Usually the user generates the content more or less, and the service provides the hosting. That has in the past been the formula that has caused services like tribe.net and Second Life to grow very quickly. In some ways lively is turning things around, they are limiting the content for now to that created by their own artists, however the primary place where the lively rooms are located is out embedded in blogs and websites. They make the content you provide the place and the mash up.

Some of the real limitations of Second Life and shared 3D spaces are made more apparent in Lively. Only 20 people can be in a room as visible active participants at a time. Additionally about another 80 can watch in a passive mode. The rooms are slower to load if they have more items or people in them, and at first you may only see a sort of skeleton shadow figure as your avatar loads in your shape and clothing. If you see a spinning green and white half-sphere on the floor that represents an object loading in to the view. Similarly a rough human frame means another person is loading into the room. Once you can see an chat with your fellow lively travelers  you will find people from all over the world in the main popular rooms. Somehow once a room become popular people continue to flock there to see what it is like to experience it first hand.

If you see a colored thought bubble above a characters head it indicates that they are typing, the  simplest way to enjoy this sort of interaction is to stick to simple pleasant very polite exchanges. Wait around and say hello, most of the time you will find some very interesting people and the few unpleasant ones can just be avoided. You can create private rooms also which is very different from Second Life. If you want to play in your dollhouse with just your pals you can do it without there being scripted bugs recording your im conversations or people using  camera view to spy.

Slowly the offerings of shells and objects will increase, as well as the choice of customizable avatar. Some of the articles I read today mentioned a 3DS plugin for creators of content down the line and most of them mentioned that because items were listed as free obviously paid for items were coming soon.

Last year when I read about the mash up between social networks and google earth3D I thought that we were headed for a very down to earth corporate service after the very otherworldly Second Life.  Just a year ago Second Life seemed right on the verge of becoming the “virtual everywhere” offering physical flagships in the cybersphere of their “grid” to corporations like Nike and countries like Sweden. Possibly google observed the unfolding and figured out from the other 3D avatar services that the teens butter their bread. Despite whatever sorts of strange press surrounded the curious and complicated fracturing of that world of promise for content creators several things conspired to make it a very improbable place to play ball in as an 3D art consultant. Most important was the general sense of scale that would get mis-translated because of the numbers of people “online” at any one time.  Try telling a Dutch businessman that even though there are 30 million people online thousands are not going to be showing up at once at the festival they are envisioning (and which they want to pay you to help envision).

A shared environment has its limits and the number of people and objects in a space have a limit even in a virtual space. Actually especially in a virtual space, the largest group I have ever been a part of was at a innovators group the ” Metaversed” meeting in Second Life and that was about 75 people with people crashing constantly and the traditional second life horrible lag. Considering that most clients wanted to have mass gatherings with hundreds or thousands of visitors, often showing a promotional video at the same time …and all set in a feature rich content laden environment…well often it was just far too difficult to explain the limits. You have a customer who feels that they have given freedom to their imagination to captivate  a worldwide audience, this is not the sort of person you want to have to explain the cold reality of rendering power to.

With lively from google  the limitations are right on the surface. You can have twenty avatars in your space at once visible and you can use the provided content. There is a high quality and a sort of design uniformity to the offered features. Search around there is often more of it than first meets the eye. Mixing and matching 3D objects and spaces or shells with thematically driven avatars and clothing there are lots of possible combinations. Issues of scale and texture are mostly worked out and it is this level of quality helps to smooth over the strange visual cutaways and limited views inherent in any 3D landscape.

Since the service is growing quickly there is still a game like quality to it, collecting the hidden rare items and finding the more dynamic gadgets has been pretty fun so far.  It is a little bit like collecting dolls or construction toys without having to worry about stepping painfully on one of the pieces in the middle of the night. Integration with sketchup seems possible. If there will be a 3DS plugin then blender 3D objects will be a source of possible content. Talk around town is that the Linux version and Mac OSX are swiftly coming next around the bend.

Rapid prototyping has been a force in production type design for some time now. Prototypes modeled in 3D on the computer can actually be printed out in 3D at various levels of scale so that they can be studied and altered very quickly.   This is an important aspect of visualizing a final prototype and it can be an invaluable tool while seeking investment capital as well as while refining the design.

Really rapid prototyping can include creating paper models and even simply visualising an environment that is viewed with 2D media. Recently I picked out my exact hotel room by looking at the simple 3D model of the layout and a 2D image of its placement in relationship to the car parking space and the rest of the hotel guests. It was really handy and made it a really nice stay.  In a way this is the more personal style of rapid prototyping that leads to a system of wealth without money. Not the elimination of money rather the elimination of the perception that  money limits or defines wealth.

We create elaborate expressions of whimsy and beauty and personal humor when our societies are peaceful and we have time to put our energy into creating a healthier environment and a functioning environment of innovation and personal growth.

The RepRap printer is an inexpensive 3D printer that is moving towards a different type of wealth than we usually visualize.  A wealth of innovation resulting from Open Sourcing the design environment in conjunction with the Open Source movement in software and hardware. Objects first created in existing Open Source 3D modeling programs like blender can be printed up in 3D on these printers. They can be fabricated with plastic, metal silicon, ceramic, and soon birodegradable plastics as well as possibly PMC. Those are the traditional type materials. Similar to the fab@home system RepRap can also create all sorts of elaborate 3D structures with chocolate or icing. The fab@home people have some experiments with cheese also. Evil Genius Laboratories are making inexpensive prototypes using sugar in their 3D printer. One of the benefits is thatit is very inexpensive, once they have worked out edible standards the other benefit may be really amazing new candy. Like candy chains and balls inside of balls.

What makes the RepRap stand out is its ability to print copies of itself. Currently the machine is capable of poducing about 1/4 of its own parts, the goal is to create a 3D printer that can replicate itself entirely. To that end they ask each person who owns a RepRap to print two copies of it and give them to someone who will create the full printer and so forth.

Here is where it gets interesting:

What would you print?

Imagine if you could have museum replicas of certain things printed out, or even the simple list: a flashlight, a pill container, plant labels, a child’s toy tea set. There are lots of needs that are met in ways that could be rapidly adjusted with this system.

For inventors working together on projects of same interest there is even more potential energy to be released in this project.

Say you make Spainish Bagpipes in Spain,  several of your star students live in California where they also make bagpipes and play them. You have designed a fipple for the bagpipe reed that is plastic (plastic works well for bagpipe reeds), they have downloaded it and are using them in California. One of your students gets an idea for an innovation and adjusts the design slightly. Excitedly you print a copy and set about to adjust it to a set of bagpipes. So do several other bagpipe makers all over the world and by the time a day and night have passed they are all discussing it. Lets try this…and this…and this.  Three more copies of the fipple with several adjustments suggested by several bagpipe makers can be readily and immediately studied by the venerable makers. By the end of the week they are all playing the innovations.

The time it takes for them to decide which adjustment they prefer may stay the same. Certain emotional decisions always take a certain amount of time. Certain intellectual decisions can be made faster and faster with a more robust and representative selection of data.

Out here in the mountains it is easy to see how this could immediately enrich the lives of the farmers and ranchers in any community. Printing up a drop spindle and crochet needle to show someone how to crochet when you are many hours distance from a store with such goods, making a bob for a fishing trip, plastic parts for a fish hatchery,  a set of stacking dolls that you lovingly handpaint for a sisters birthday,  A hanger for a newly sewn shirt,  a latch side part of a backpack that has gone missing,  a button for your visiting nephews shirt.  You could print a pennywhistle and you could print a set of pan pipes. You could probably even print a decent ukelaile and possibly even a decent set of uke strings. That means a lot of fun when you are sitting by the river in the summer.

Wealth is all about an environment of whimsy and self expression and cultural play. Celebrity is about admiring people who have a deft command over these sorts of arenas. Probably our views of wealth shifting towards quality of life will involve a shift in our celebrity gaze, however it is doubtful if it will eliminate celebrity in any way. What may be eliminated is the misperception that money means that you automatically enjoy all of the intangible aspects of wealth as well as the tangible. If you are able to make certain choices about the way you expreess yourself in  your living environment and expand your intellect and sustain your creativity without having to sacrifice stability and functionality then you are living a rich life. When you revision your original purpose it is easy to see that much  our thirst for self expression is greatly tied to our thirst for wealth as a means of stability. We want to be inventive and have quality of life.

What if you could have most of what you wanted  and needed without having to subjugate anyone else to do so? If you could pretty easily live without destabilizing the environment that you are dependent on to live then you would choose it. Even if it meant adjusting your habits and your daily practices.  I think the naturalness  and the intelligence of that choice speaks to most people.

What if you could gather up all of your kids broken unused or really unwanted toys and salvage them over in a bio-digester to print them out some new ones. You could even print out scientific models for your children, the human body and the way that a hydropower system works. Who knows you might find your own kid in there some day printing out a drip irrigation system for mom for mothers day.

Imagination without limit is a powerful thing.

As an end note to this story imagine after a weeks visit with some dear friend being able to print out for them the parts for a reprap printer so they can go home and print out the same teaset for their kid they so enjoyed, and more crochet needles and fishing bobs and even hair curlers and chocolate easter eggs…

Imagine it a lot and imagine it fast because this is your world, it is here and it is now.

Imagine it at your school, at your daycare center, at your local farmers market.

An acting troupe that can print its props on arrival anywhere in the world.

An art teacher who can print out extra cameras for a student population that is suddenly enthusiastically swelling in number.

A retired archaeologist printing out copies of beads found at several remote digs,  comparing them and working in the comfort of her retirement using daily google map updates and social networking with the other professionals working on the dig to study current findings.

A businessman traveling sends his small son a miniature version of the temple in Tokyo that he visited in the morning, and a small plane that he rode in, and also a model of some of the special sushi rolls and a mini sushi makers set. They converse over video phone about the toys and how they relate to his journey. The small boy sends his father a model of a set of promotional chopsticks that he won in a video game where he mastered math concepts. The father will be able to use them in the morning and show them off to his hosts.

Stopping by the coffee house to get  provisions for a day out at the beach. Next door they have a big fabricator at the HackBoyz Lockers, and you drop by and pick up your order from your locker. Its several new pairs of flip flops, a few beach toys and some sunglasses and fins for the kids.

In a remote beach location a pair of young scientists set up a remote lab to track rare crustaceans.  While they are having drinks and getting used to most of the choices on the local menu their hosts at the local hotel are finishing printing the sets of calibrated tools and specimen collection devices that they will need for their first expedition in the morning.

Its the long term effect of Open Source.

Imagination and inspiration.

Simply connect.

Its been about a month since my little green XO came in the mail. I managed to order the OLPC laptop towards the end of November so mine was made and shipped with the early batches.

Like many other people my first images of the laptop are with me all smiles and admittedly a few happy tears.

A suprise outcome is that the laptop has made me bolder. It has been some time since I used a terminal and often I hesitate when it comes to line command. This is utterly irrational, although I hesitate to change my oil filter too even though I used to know how to do that by rote also. Of course the terminal has gotten easier if anything to use. You just have to type it in exactly right that is all. Alt-f2 is happy.

It was only a few days after getting the lappy that I managed to also get the Ubuntu onto my salvaged hp compaq presario tower. At this point it is fully updated to 7.1. I use it primarily to work on Blender 3D, and of course we use it on the internet for GIMP image work and so forth. Ubuntu is very sweet and it is lovely and stable.

I have yet to mesh network with anyone on my little green XO laptop. We call it lappy and I do use it every day. Mostly I am exploring the squeak smalltalk environment on it represented by etoys. Smalltalk is an interesting and totally powerful media rich environment that has a sort of playground with soft fences called etoys. Once you get the basics down you can unlatch the gate to the more powerful system underlying it all.

It is all built on fedora redhat Linux.

The XO is funny because you have to use one to learn how to use one. It is utterly constructivist and entirely charming. When I figured out that I could bookmark several pages using the star feature…and switch between them I was genuinely uplifted in a funny way. I love to use the ereader mode also to do tutorials on the other machine, and to read PDF.

The most green computer you can have for your next computer is realistically a salvaged unit re-done with Ubuntu. Its worth giving it a try. You essentially have to download a .iso file and then create a special cd with it on it. The file must be intact…if it doesn’t work that is usually the problem. If you stand over the nearly 700mb download it should just work easy just click the buttons and go. Once you have a good cd you have the magic tool for installation.  My unit had an outdated version of windows on it so I chose the erase and install. It takes awhile, and often you have to do some updating afterwards, however it sets you up with a self-updating system (it prompts you anyway) that has all the great Open Source projects already on it, Open Office, GIMP image manipulation, Blender 3D, and so forth.

If the machine you are reviving has a working DVD drive on it then you can just order the DVD from the Ubuntu site and run it off of the live cd. Ubuntu is really compatible with a huge lists of systems and hardware. Do not hesitate to get a book to help with the process..they usually come with live dvds as well. I used “Moving to Ubuntu” to help ease the transition.

If you are an artist working in Blender 3D I highly recommend it.

My next challenge: getting everything connected via a home server.

for six more days.

OLPC give one get one

The reception of these new units has certainly been warm so far.

Its easy to get excited about these units because they represent the combined hopes and dreams of thousands of people.

The dream started out loosely called the “Dynabook”, and the concept was simple and very widely held; create a book that can deliver information so children can learn how to learn. The XO does quite a bit more than that, it connects communities of learners.

The program is set with very clear goals to benefit young children and to create saturated areas of learners in the participating countries.

Galadima in Nigeria is the first village to benefit with a simple school building and parental interest being the ready tools at hand for the project to implement.

Images of the children with XO laptops in Thailand are also starting to emerge:

of course American kids love it too!

There are so many reasons to love this laptop. You will have to explore the site at OLPC give one get one to get a sense of the tools that are readily available to help kids start learning and enjoying the machines. They can immediately make art and animations, play music together and record songs and photographs. It will be fascinating to see what sorts of art emerge and the young ideas which will be sent out as the kids become very familiar with using the educational software and cruising the internet.

Its astounding really how much is packed into these super sleek units, Personally I will enjoy having something smaller to carry around with me than a standard laptop. Since moving my studio online last year I have been needing a small laptop that can access my studio life while I am on the go. Of course I was very interested in purchasing one of these from the very start because I am determined to submit a special needs project application for dispensation of the units to Rroma children in Europe who likely will not be included in government education programs because of the apartied like conditions for Rroma people in Europe.

The program also seeks to create a microeducation system that the children themselves can operate in order to create classrooms and schools where there are no facilities or adults present to keep the learning process moving forwards. Microfinance has been established as a viable model for Womens Self Help Groups internationally through the Grameen bank and the principle has even been found useful for street children in New Delhi. This exciting principle of group learning activity I believe can be extended into education very easily and naturally.

When schools and classrooms are not readily available it is important that children have a fun system of using the mesh network as a tool to create small classrooms and even small schools. The tools can be extended to children who have limited resources, one laptop can become a school for many children if they are very careful to teach each other. The system which I am working on currently is meant to also be useful on handhelds like cell phones, as well as extending the classroom to paper and pencil activities and even just using a stick and some dirt. Two people teaching each other skills is the simplest unit of microeducation.

Basic literacy involving symbolic interfaces is the first step. As the children get older we will hopefully have more and more for them on the internet including validated curriculum. The small laptop represents libraries of knowledge, entire universities and whole faculties and even access to medical help and refugee services. It is easy to ponder how much is actually packed into the little unit when you consider the facilities and information that is suddenly possible… it is easy to forget the real boon.

Bringing the children to the table.

People we have real problems in the world and we need to access as much genius as possible. We need these kids to help us figure out what to do next, how to meet the challenges of our global situation. We are not merely giving the children equal access to the possibilities of the information age, we are bringing more intelligence to the table in the global crisis discussion. The modern threats of epidemic, global warming, deforestation and urban population can all have some real help from getting these laptops into the hands of these kids. In the next five years our international intellectual society could be greatly impacted by the emergence of ideas from a huge population that has previously been forced to be mostly silent.

My mind reels when I wonder “What will they tell us?”

Slowly I have developed an odd relationship with my avatar in the 3D Second Life online environment. Mst of the time that I spend in the multiplayer metaverse I am alone more or less. Its just my avatar in my studio learning about 3D building and scripting and creating images and generally doing what artists do in their studios. because The reality of the picture is that I am here in my livingroom reclining on a large bed/couch on the floor observing all of this on two 22 inch LCD screens means that it is more like playing with a doll in a little dollhouse than really being alone.

Of course some times I go on Outings.

And sometimes I take classes.

Often I seek a retreat for meditation.

and companionship.

Whenever I am in contact with other people, with their avatars however unusual, I am quite aware that I am using my “doll” to interact with another very real person. Really I am acutely aware of this which is one reason why I am pretty reclusive and happy in my strange little ghetto neighborhood on the mainland grid. Without very much gaming experience besides Windwaker and Sim Theme Park and Myst and a few others I needed extra time to get used to building objects in 3D space and working with the red green and blue arrows. It took some time to be able to build up enough chops just to move around the space really elegantly at all.

Part of the trick of second Life as well is understanding when you are having trouble because of something in your control and having trouble because of something out of your control. Itis a lot like life, and actually it itself is part of life.

Mostly I talk to my avatar.

and also she talks out loud to herself

For some reason I get some great satisfaction outof this strange puppet like fourth wall between us which makes me want to comment inside of a comment by having her speak aloud through local IM in world to *herself*. Really after awhile I started to see her as a sortof seperate person, as if like the dolls of my childhood imagination she had her own life in her own partsof this world. In some childish way I begin to feel bad for how alone she is sometimes.

She looks up at me with that free Malibu skin and somehow itslike she is saying “Are you there?”.

Sometimes I take her out just for fun. Since my very first day running around in world in Second Life I have loved Svarga.

Today it has literally grown itself into a fantastic natural setting with a really cool tour.

Sometimes I like to go there to relax, especially after a particularly difficult research effort.

One of my early Christmas experiences as a child involed the idea of a heavily advertised toy on TV. The toy was an art kit, with it you could sort of release this horse sculpture from the stone.

I really thought that the stone itself had complete integrity that it was somehow part of life that the hurse was there in the stone, and by some alchemy it would be magically released. The toy itself quickly revealed itself to be some plaster-like solid square covering over a plastic toy horse. There were small child safe tools in the kit that could be used to patiently ease the horse out…admittedly I remember using water to sort of loosen the majority of the mold from the figurine.

Somehow it didn’t match the idea that I had in my head about the way that Art was supposed to work. A couple of years later I would start learning handbuilding in ceramics and basic pottery and some of my ideas changed around then.

Eventually I realized that the horse is really trapped in the deep sculptural amber of the artist’s mind.

Developing the ability to roughly create 3D duplicates of existing objects is seemingly very different than working with stone. My own art studies never included much formal sculpture, however I was married to a sculptor during University and a bit after and our circle of close acquaintances included several really adept stone cutters from Latvia. They told me that in a way my childish view was closer to the truth than I could know. There is a grain in stone that will only allow it to do certain things, and some of the great European stone workers beleived that the forms they were releasing were indeed the stone speaking through them.

In the 3D world there is this issue of scale. Thankfully due to the thriving ecosystem surrounding the great Open Source tools that we use now like Blender 3D and GIMP there are objects already scaled similar to the world around us. There are aluminum beverage cans and spoons and even some pretty sweet cars. My first inclination if I wanted to work out a sculpture of a horse would be to look for an existing model to tinker with.

In this way you have to have a strong sense of your own imagination. There is no grain in the stone to lead you. The computer almost always involves the tactile sensation of tapping the keys and moving the mouse. There is very little sensual input to fall back on. In ceramics you have the amazing texture of the clay, and its many types of give in the many potential materials processes available with it. Painting always has that really smack you in the eye quality of the sensual aspect of the paint. the colors are so good. it is also very physical you stand ready at the easel for hours walking back and forth across the studio. Because you need to get all sorts of views of the work in order to tell what it really looks like the main activity in a painting studio is pacing like a tiger and drinking tea to stay warm. Thats one reason why it is fun to paint in groups because then you can all pace around together like tigers and drink tea.

Developing models in 3D you end up shifting your perspective manually.

Most of my ability to build in 3D was actually developed in Second Life. After a serious eye injury last winter I spent a month recouperating and keeping my brain really active by learning many of the inns and outs of this giant metaverse environment which allows international interaction and which includes universities and embassies and many interesting technical development groups. Its also got a large bunch of sightseers, and some actually rather diverse and engaging environments and people. The people are represented by Avatars that can include all sorts of variation. You would expect fashions to develop and certain trends to follow through…you would be right there. Fantasy extends from the bling and the pin-up avatars to the space fish and flaming angels.

Some people have a very constructed approach to participating in such a loose environment. My avatar there is pretty close to what I look like, thats a pretty simple tactic and one I chose to take. I also have a couple of Male avatars and at times I used to use on to build outdoors undisturbed or to travel in crowds without and interference. I have also been lightly interested in creating a graphic novel using both avatars as characters. The system in Second Life includes an ability to film the screen. Its called Machinama and it is pretty fun. There are a couple of things to get used to, like it films the whole screen exactly as you see it (except I think the avatar id names are gone), so any cursor moves or drop downs are recorded. This is useful for making the many tutorials that you can find on youtube which can help you get started building in Second Life. Its quite a challenge actually making useful art footage however.

The learning curve as they say, is a little steep on all this. The best this to do getting started releasing that horse from the stone is find a way that is fun for you. If you are very good at drawing start from there. If you enjoy Second Life go take classes there its fun.I you can just set up a background set of photos and rock out in blender than do that. Sometimes you are going to be able to find a horse that you can alter to approximate your vision, other times you will have to build one from scratch.

Really I am not sure how you manage to keep things in scale with each other, or if I am often just being entirely fooled by the ability to composite a shot. So far I understand how you can use the composite feature to create different effects on different objects. Mostly I assume that it is like layers where you have control over the way that sections of the screen appear. Soon I would like to figure out how to import models into a scene together, and creat a blend file around that scene including setting the lights and maybe even a bit of a camera track. Mostly I just haven’y gotten that far…and I also know that I need to get more memory first. The best way to work is to have a seperate hard drive kust for mostly scratch disc, and then also a seperate drive to keep the bigger libraries on so that the main hard drive does not get borked. Realistically its best to have two or three machines to render on I suspect plus a couple more to actually work on while things are rendering and of course one to lug around.

Meanwhile there are several more chapters for me to plow through in the essential Blender book which I am currently using to stay focused. The manual online and some of the online books were not able to bring me into fluency as quickly as this nice tight book. Often I sort of rewrite everything as I go and eventually I expect to be able to create several levels of tutorial based on what skills need to be practiced at what levels to keep moving ahead.

Essentially it is that same sense of wonderment, that same idea thatthere is this unique and very special horse…or whatever…that is somehow writing to be brought into form. Like a whole toybox in your mind that is just begging for you to open it up and play. This time the little shoes will not get studk in your foot at 3 am when you go to the bathroom in the dark. You can use a paintbrush that has all sorts of colors and patterns and magic tricks and you can make those amazing ideas come to life and even in the process you can discover ideas that you didnt even know that you had. Sometimes you just get all of these skills and these tools together and ideas start to just pour out and as long as you are able to keep going with it and trust that the ideas might appeal to someone else.

The barrier between the imagination and realization is gone. There is no shortage of materials, there are endless colors in the paint box, the brushes come in every size imaginable and there is always another clean piece of paper. No lie. Welcome to the world of modern Graphic Arts. The potential for idea exchange is boundless, our conversations now extend into this other non-verbal space. Sometimes our visions and creations extend also into a verbal space and with it we bring a glimpse of the new world. All the media has come together. The new world is our world.  Really it is a world that we already inhabit.

In my habits this includes a teapot. Several times a day I have a pot of tea, often herbal. In fact I can be quoted as saying “The future is a place where there is time for tea” which I stated when I realized that parts of the future could not keep accelerating. We simply could not keep working longer hours. We simply cannot be expected to take care of a household and socially interact and be healthy with out really having the times to sit down with our loved ones and have a simple cup of tea? We do need time to talk together, to share stories. Of course this is the culture of California that I am expouting. Most of the world is civilized enough to have kept this practice. We however are on the edge of America.

My next project in Blender 3D is to make a copy of this teapot. Essentially once you have intermediate modeling skills there is no end to the amount of chops and practice that you need in order to move forwards modeling. A teapot is a usual intermediate ceramics class project and so already I have a sort of internal grammar which I can use to layout the project. There are considerations for the spout, the handle, the lid and its handle, and the foot of the teapot. Overall there are limitations on the functional shape of a teapot that include anti-spill on the proportions between body, spout and internal strainer. The small teapots are the hardest to make…this one pictured above was set against the wall in the samovar Cafe in San Francisco (once I saw them whisk it off and use it). A Samovar is a large metal kettle or urn essentially that you can heat with charcoal wood to make tea in the desert on the silk road and such. There is a difference between a kettle and a teapot, and a samovar that is used to pour very hot tea from up very high above the glass to cool the stream . There is also the noble metal ibrik with which you can make almost anything. ..especially Turkish coffee. The teapots used for tea made from rare curative herbs and spices are small and round to encourage steeping. They are poured in small steaming cups to be savored as many of the delicate herbs have amazing and lovely flavors.

As part of the Many Merlins project today I will Import this image into Blender 3D and then I will work out modeling something like its counterpart. Lately I have come to slowly collect everyday objects…these are the things that give our world a sense of scale and constancy. Old pop bottles and salt shakers and milk bottles have an inspiring integrity of object. Of course I have wooden drawing models and a decent one of the hand as well. My cabin is pretty small so I have really very few collections of objects on display…I used to have lots of small bottles in the windows, or selections of crystals of different sizes and colors, sometimes a plate of acorns…that sort of thing. Small feasts for the eye which are encountered around the house. There is less of that since I moved the entire functional studio into the house (the paintings really don’t all fit), by necessity I have had to learn how to make every corner count and many parts of the house have several possible functions at once. While studying Organic architecture and handmade houses up at a friends house I saw many drawings in an old book from the 70s made by hippies of little houses in the Caucasus mountains made of woven sticks and cob walls. This is so far up in the mountains that mostly they live on a sort of probiotic yogurt like drink made with tea. Its pretty rugged. There were these lovely stick woven garnaries up on stones like giant baskets.

These people live pretty spartan, mostly its just a room with a low bed, a couple of really small stools, a low round table and a fireplace. Thats the basics. My inclination is to have a more old school Turkish style house. The large room with vented windows and long wide couches appeals to the Cali style part of me that wants to sit and sip tea and talk to my family. Currently I use a big bed in the livingroom, and it would be sweet if there was another one for guests to fully lounge on. The only modern adjustment would be that next to the seat of honor would be the keyboard, and remote control. Along with the best view of the garden gate and incoming guests, the seats of honor would also reserve the best view of the common Monitor screen of the computer/TV and maybe a healthy amount of surface space for laptops and books. The modern world need only make a few small improvements on the visions of the ancients. The old great leaders knew about planting rows and rows of trees alongside the roads. There was a basic understanding of agriculture being the seat of the great cities, forests as , of rivers as roads, the ancients used tidal monsoons and yearly winds to sail around the known world. Buckminster Fuller points out the ancient Phonecian maps in his work and remarks that “Venice” is merely the last holdout of the “Phoenice” and “Venetians are Phonecians”. These days searching for answers we are dusting off the ancient ways of doing everything.The world of imaginal possibilities needs fodder from every possible corner. All the doors come bursting open and the imagines amazing objects and toys and dolls and trees and greenery and roads and world and vehicles just keep pouring out and pouring out.

Yet we need more.

More imaginations need to be brought in on this one. All hands on deck me mateys, its time to trip the light fantastic and make our way out of all this trouble. We need to get clear of the things that don’t really matter and get grounded in the habits that sustain our ability to imagine. Its heave ho until the job is done.

Liam Lynch who I watch every day these days (lynchland podcasts) says that everyone has a Hollywood in their livingroom so why not just jump in. Its fascinating to look at his work and start to see exact models that I have seen around. Some of the individual pieces are like little tutorials where you can see he was getting settled in a specific feature and ended up playing around with it. Mostly what keeps me going along with my work is this spirit of play. In his work you can see that he was working out shapes and voice matching here, or that by this point he really had the walk sequence down with his models. There is familiar trail that we all have to tread to get this work under our belts enough to let the imagination really loose, and already there are a few guys up ahead on the trail waving and saying

“Come on guys! Whats taking you so long?”.

Speaking of those trailblazers, the other day outside the Mall in Eureka I heard Soulja Boy blasting from a car window for the vey first time. Soon everyone will be able to Crank Dat. Its why we do.

My first assignment for myself, and for my future 3D students is to build a tower chamber for Merlin. An Alchemists lair with all sorts of tools and books. Really the idea is to practice building a large amount of models while building up a scene. Somehow I would like to integrate it with the other early blender tutorials. Who knows maybe Merlin will have an octopus in a tank on the side (from the subsurfing tutorial) and a tray of gingerbread men that dance. Certainly it would make sense in some modern way for merlin to have a penguin doll or two around.

Essentially the idea is to use everyday objects and scene layout to give a sense of narrative. Building a theatrical environment it is easy to focus on the objects that are directly related to story, these days it is also important to focus on the environment itself as part of the story.

For this reason it does not really matter what time period this Merlin tower is constructed in. My own preference would be a sort of sustainability saturated steam punk scenario. Others might like the historical challenge of actually locating Merlin in the time of The Uther Pendragon line when he was purported to live. More often with subject matter that lends itself to fantasy there is a chance here also to step sideways…to create a small world with its own logic and its own set of rules. After all it can be any sort of wizard. The idea is in any case to construct a series of objects and a general scene which depicts an alchemist in some pursuit of the philosophers stone. Laboratory apparatus, horticultural experiments, specimines in jars, books and maps are all suggested. At bare minimum the room should include at least ten of these sorts of objects, and in addition a window, a door, a shelf, a workbench, a stool, and a fireplace.

Advanced units would include a distant river, a mill wheel, an animated owl (or penguin for that matter), a book of spells, a cooking distillation set, lamps, an animated broom and a large mirror opposite the doorway.

Hopefully by the end of the project all of the participants will be willing to share their inspirational material and model outcomes and eventually we could end up with many many Merlin’s rooms with lots of magic tools and models that would all work to scale, Merlin being sort of a standard sized human character. Of course you can name your wizard anything that you want, and if you are so inclined you can outfit your wizard as a pilot major on a pirate ship or explorers fleet secured away in your own room with your sextant and your astrolabe and rutters. Pilots were the wizards of the explorers world able to transpose myths and stories into useful cartography and able to find fresh water and edible victuals in completely new and foreign lands.

You could also be a very young Merlin living in an underwater society which uses mostly solar bacteria technology and which exists either in the distant past or future.

At this point all that I have personally made towards this effort is a mortar and pestle, and the monster head from chapter 5 of the Blender book. I thought that the monster head might be neat as a sort of decoration in one of the corners sort of shoved into a shelf. It could be like a bronze head of Baphomet or something. It is pretty simple these days to find some nice images old woodcuts depicting old apothecary labs and interesting apparatus. By all means include every Rube Goldberg device and strange spy lab machine from modern films, cartoons and television that your imagination desires. Merlin might have a computer screen, Merlin might actually be in a modern tower with mostly child’s wizard toys, Merlin might be in some parallel universe entirely based on geothermal energy and mostly taking place in large caves under the land near the shore.

We are all Wizards in this medium, we can magically wizard up really anything we want. The big decisions have to do with how to model and how to texture, how to use the inherent smoke and mirrors of the environment to produce the effects you want. A particle sand beach with dynamic water will only need a seashell or two to seem complete. A spot of moonlight on your mermaids hair and you can almost see her sparkling eyes. Eventually it will be fun to create composites of the different scenes and have them printed and shown all together…its the sort of thing that looks great in the hallways of an educational institution. Many Merlins.

One of the inspirations for the Many Merlins assignment for 3d artists is Liam Lynch’s Lynchland episode 18 (podcast) which has a very simple wizard room. Already I had been researching steampunk lab equipment in Second Life sort of gathering some ideas for the creation of a more elaborate set up. Its natural that the ideas should all meld together into one and extra credit for anyone who comes up with grunge textures on some of the walls or even graffiti outside the tower window.

Up to a certain point the mind and the monkey are fooled by realism. Working with John Rueters and the worlds largest camera the 20 X 22 inch Polaroid it was astounding to find that the mind truly accepted the objects that were represented in the fiction of the chemical gel as present in the room. The school of photography which we were pursuing in the Summer Arts intensive course where I was an assistant teacher had to do with theatricality and photography. the act of making giant photos is itself theatrical and it lends itself to a highly upbeat very theatrical atmosphere.

Really this absorbtion in a world which is created in complete detail all around you is where all of my training comes from. Part of the first lectures that I ever attended on mime and actors theatre concerned how much realism, how much prop, and how much characterization to use. Creating the worlds largest stage in the late seventies at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire we had our own philosophy of character which revolved around the Green Umbrella. My good pal Dennis Day on of the Entertainment directors in those very fruitful years is the one who really expliained it to me.

In order to create a good character you only really need one really good solid prop. If you get caught up in the details it will only bog you down. His character…Newington Butts…was a courtier who lived in a constant state of drunkeness. His costume was a simple and rough approximation of a court like outfit, and he wore tights. Other than that his most noticeable feature besides his swaying walk and slurred tongue was his long trailing cap end constantly stuck in his goblet.

Peg explained it differently, for her it was all about projecting character across large spaces without any amplification or real tricks of theatrical focus. She always taught that you have to create a huge cartoon character just to be seen at all. The green Umbrella for her was the prop which set the character apart. They were both powerfully physically present performers and it is no wonder that there was thought and structure to the way that they approached the creation of character and the dynamics of large scale audience interaction.

All of this revolves around the delicate balance of the red curtain. How much is simply suggested and how much can you add to the experience by fleshing out certain details. Objects of daily use say, or functional details that suggest an alternate intricate world. With 3D work you are pretty much limited to visual and auditory experience as you are building the imaginal world. Smell and physical presence do not translate and for the most part there is little physical stimulation (save in unique complex devices like controllers).

In Post Modern art for some time while I was in school in the nineties I enjoyed the proliferation of site specific installations. The central hall and Foyer Gallery leading to the classrooms would suddenly be full of personal objects, possibly the smells of cooking and the repeated recording of ambient sounds from a household. Or another day it would be entirely covered in illuminated X-rays. The acceptance of almost *anything* as art had opened up a whole new world of freedom for the simple shared spaces of galleries and artists studios and eventually of course even our homes and streets. Today outdoor shrines after a disaster are a common and accepted sight. When I was a child these displays were still seen as a vulgar public nuisance. These days creative expression in the public sphere is seen as an important physical symbol of public opinion.

Translating all of this dimensional design flow into the cg world of 3D possibilities is pretty mind boggling. Like much of photography you can create almost any illusion that you desire. You simply have to think of the scene and then create it…or even just go discover a scene in the world. In 3D you have to create or import every detail. If I want a fish bowl I need to make a fish bowl, water, and a fish. If I want the fish to swim I have to decide between a very simplistic sort of movement animation and a more complex and more realistic one. Does the actual fish need rigging? Is it a detail in the background of a scene?

Overall this is where the many arts converge, in the combined ability to pay attention to important aspects of detail and the broad sweeping ability to create suggested backstory and even story beyond story as in worlds beyond. When I first started researching existing builds in second Life my primary search was always goldfish, koi, ponds and basic water features. These features rapidly revealed to me some of the more talented builders and some of the really beautiful builds currently available because as anyone knows in animation and in 3D the really difficult effect to create beautifully and realistically is water.

In general my minds eye is most fascinated with worlds of organic complexity revealing interlocking levels of complex dependence that create sustainable structures. essentially I was deeply affected by adventure examples like the Swiss Family Robinson and other castaways who could forgo the usual grammar of space and construct elaborate structures to serve their needs free from the usual aethetic dogmas. Like the coconut radio in Gilligans island some of these features were whimsical and practical. This is one of the reasons why I love the image of the live-in lab, the secret hideout, the modern home that is studio and clubhouse and home all in one. There is a freedom from the usual architechtural grammar that is engaging. A door opens and instead of a room full of furniture you find a room full of sun and plants. Through small windows we glimpse complex interactions of a myriad of plants and animals just beyond the frame. This was the world of fae, faeries and dwarves and pixies that steal rings and hairpins and live in little matchbox beds and eat faerie cakes from petal plates and drink faerie wine from flower goblets.

Of course the 3D landscape does not lend itself to this interior world of highly articulated structures. You must know your five elements. You must not fear scripts or particles or even uv texture mapping. With these tools in hand it is possible to go forth and create something more than realistic, create something engaging and thoughtfull and reflective enough that people want to come back to it again and again.

because of the strong presence of fantasy and gaming in the world of cg there is a lot of material already leaning in that direction. It becomes overwhelming at first to know how to procede towards an actual art objective without just churning out more faeries and more synthetic looking landscapes or creating replicas of real life objects.

Lliam Lynch is my hero on this one:

“ Come on… the technology is here… you’ve all got a tiny Hollywood in your living room now. It’s like playing..“

My initial introduction to the metaverse 3D service Second Life came through the SALT lectures on podcast. The Seminar For Long Term Thinking was introduced to me by Danese who knew that I needed something auditory to occupy my time recovering from a severe eye injury. One of the speakers was Philip Rosedale, known in Second Life as Philip Linden the creator of the metaverse grid. Philip is also known for his earlier work on Realplayer software technology allowing web streaming of video and audio content online.

The lecture was interesting because he was talking about “what happens if you digitize everything”. One of the conclusions that fascinated me was his observation that after having all the mansions and bling and cars they can imagine most people seem to shift around and adopt a more subtle simple Buddhist perspective and stance” in world”. He also mentioned being able to use software that acts as an agent between the grid and the web…in particular the babbler. The babbler is a “HUD” that people can use to translate very basic conversation. It uses the online babblefish service to translate from many languages. Phillip mentioned being able to visit a predominantly Japanese build and sit and exchange simple polite pleasantries with someone very far away. this hooked me in right away. It would just happen to take me about two weeks to start to recover and at the same time I absorbed myself in Second Life. One of my good friends signed up and he checked in on me there, it was nice I was able to help him with his chemistry homework also. Eventually I did end up making friends in some of the Nipponese sims.

Rosedale talked about the idea of making everything digital, and of course here we include aspects of the imagination previously not yet visible to other people. There is an exchange with the Linden system of dollars and US dollars so that it is very cheap to be very wealthy in this game… that is not a game… that has loads of simulacra and fantasy gear from all sorts of realms imaginal and real. From the start the biggest challenge has been filing.

Yes oddly the world of 3D objects and fashion and even skins and eyes demand some sort of order. Okay clothes and photos and textures are sort of easy and laid out already in the inherent file system which is a standard part of the linden grid. Its the swimming fish, the particle generating trees, the swan boats and the whiteboards that get sticky.

Where do you put your croaking hopping frog?

Your video streaming “TV” system?

Of course…of course there is a folder already made for you called “objects”. In this folder I use the rudimentart five element method …”earth air fire water metal” to create sub categories. This gives me fundamental speed as a builder. In addition in my upper folder set I have an additional elemental set to deal with such disparate matters as flashing disco floors and newbie kits. I have a folder there just for instruments. Its all research and it has all been quite fruitful…however I noticed that the system started breaking down lately.

The folder is called “hobo goodness”. These are mostly very clever objects created and often scripted by an in world artist who releases them open source to encourage quality items in the game. There is a hobo school bus covered in graffiti…and a hobo raft with a little cook fire and so on. This has added a whole new level of perception for me into the grid and really it has gotten me interested in building there once again.

Another interesting thing about your files is that it is sort of like your sock drawer at home. No one really knows if it is messy or not. You could have thousands of objects labeled “object” (my training as a programmer makes me shudder at the thought) or even “snapshot” or “new notecard” if you are not diligent about labeling and filing. When you are interacting with someone, other than how refines and detailed out their av looks you have no idea whether thay have 11,000 unsorted objects or a tight 5,000 all nicely labeled and easy to find.

What doe that mean? essentially that means making it easy to use search. As I went along months in learning the grid i became aware that it was more important if something was labeled “blue candle” than if it was filed under “flaming objects”. Somewhere along the way I picked up the tidbit that people usually can only see up to five categories of files, and only down about three levels. If its more complex than that they have to scan. Like so many initial impressions of second life this one was to be tossed aside. Folders are important and taking time to regularly organize the impressions and ideas learned in second life is important. I keep notes on my wikicatt regarding scripting and often I do try and keep track of my textures and photos because when all is said and done that is all you really get from second life. At this time the grid is entirely Linden owned and you are essentially subletting server “grid” space from them if you own land.

Mostly it is information.

From the start last February I decided to document the small plot that I bought for at least one year and document the changes a new part of the mainland goes through over a years time. At this point I have expanded my parcel to a little over double its original 512 size to acomodate my “Ebisuya Atelier” and two small entrance type areas. For over six months now I have had my primary studio activities take place here online, and I have learned quite a lot about manipulating objects and building in 3D. Previously my primary 3D gaming experience involving a complex interface was Windwaker where I indeed am a master of winds. Other mostly younger people with lots of hours in 3D space and an immediate command of complex interfaces from gaming will probably take to building 3D models a lot faster than I did. There is great hope for the Wii in this department and I would dearly love to be able to build 3D in space rather than with a mouse. I know… I know… I should be able to hack it all together right now…I still haven’t figured out how to get the G5 hooked in to the stereo right (its “preferences” right?) let alone the monster frankenstein linkage of computer doom which would mind meld printers scanners tv xp and 98 and OSX and eventually even Ubuntu all together.

All things in good time.

Really there has to be two coherent filing systems in order to be really successful as an artist and long distance student in Second Life. You need to keep your chops up staying organized on the grid, and you need to keep track of what you are doing in a meaningful way off-of the grid. This in part means not being stingy about what a file contains in its label. Be kind to yourself and keep prodigious notes. The challenge also means finding a way to keep really good duplicates of your important class notes and scripts, and textures, and photos, because until they figure out a way to move your objects between grids onto your own server that is the only way to save your work. Document your installations as thoroughly as you can stand. try and stay on top of the images that you generate in world and out of world and the best practice would seem to be keeping most things on your own hard drive and handling your own backups.

Admittedly I have not quite got it where I want it. Sometimes I spend a week flying a Starax Pegasus around the Burninglife Installations rather than carefully putting all of my images on my gallery. As an artist Open Sourcing everything means more than making your process as transparent as possible, it means striving for a sort of internal coherence in the process itself. Already it has helped my working process greatly to have my own wikicatt and my recent exploration of 3D modeling has been mostly documented over there.

The biggest demand is for decent textures really, that is where I would suggest you keep the tightest ship. Try and keep backups of everything. Right now I am excited to see how some of the textures look in blender, and the possibilities of bringing over what I have learned as well as some of my materials from one system to another is pretty exciting. There are a lot of great brushes for creating great textures in GIMP and the best textures seem to have a mix of photorealism and handwork rather than just one or the other.