Ready, Aim...

Today I thought I’d share with you a little about stone slinging. I’ve practiced slinging in rl, an ancient but still active sport in the Balearic Islands. El foners (slingshot warriors) use a sling (fona), made of cord or leather. First, you gently place a stone onto the pouch. Next, hold both ends of the cord in one hand. Finally, very carefully, begin to spin it above your head, take aim, and *snap*, release one end of the cord and set your projectile flying. It’s really satisfying to hear the crack of the cord as you release it. It’s also really painful if you tangle yourself up in it. Slinging was historically used for hunting and defense. Now it’s a sport, rather male dominated, with annual competitions held in Mallorca. I practiced shooting my rocks into the Mediterranean, over the heads of unsuspecting sunbathers in Deya, and would duck into the spiky bushes when I missed the sea.

I was in the mood to hurl some rocks today so I searched on the slexchange for a slingshot. Among the scary flossy thongs also known as slingshots (very Borat), I found a catapult styled weapon at a Gorean supply shop but can’t figure out how to use it...do I need to go to Telnus? Would I be collared if I went? Surely I can’t go unless I know how to defend myself, so a bit of shooting practice first. I typically don’t play video games unless I’m waiting at the movie theatre (Lethal Enforcer, thank you very much), but Dangerous Geisha at Grossglockner is a great place for a gal to let off some steam without being bothered by obnoxious bling covered brutes thinking they're the Terminator. The games are free and, if you're a primitive like I am, they offer a bow and arrow to shoot with. Later, I took to the sims for some in-the-field target practice, and found a suitable spot at Aught, shooting projectiles among the ruins.

For more about slinging, look here and here.

I Want My Portal of Civilization!

I read an unsettling article the other day about the Cushing Academy, a prep school for children and young adults, that is eliminating its library of 20,000 books. The headmaster, Dr. James Tracy justified his decision this way: “You know [holding up a book], if I look at this book I am struck by how limited it is. This is pretty bulky. I don’t mean to belittle or disparage it. I love books, and I love the representation of culture that they embody, but, from an information perspective, this is a very, very bulky way to reposit data by today’s standards.” A book is too bulky? Has anyone tried to snuggle into bed with a Kindle?

Instead of books Tracy will provide computers which he has named “Portals of Civilization”. I hope you understand, dear readers, that the information you seek is chosen for you - as in any analog collection. But many of your online sources are chosen by Google and other filters. And if we’re talking books, for example, they have to be copyright free. You'll need to supplement! While it may seem convenient as you sit in front of the laptop eating crackers over the keyboard, nothing beats the serendipity (there’s that word again, MM ;) ) of browsing in the stacks. Here’s an interesting study taken from student discussion groups across the country. Some of their observations about research in the digital age describe how students waste time online not knowing what to look for, yet still sift through articles trying to make them fit their needs, or try to figure out if an article is up to date, or whether something is from a credible source. This article, “Google Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars” ought to give an institution pause before hurling themselves fully into the digital zone without the infrastructure to support the idea. Google makes mistakes, the article tells us, my favorite being a misattribution of the following book, The Mosaic Navigator: The Essential Guide to the Internet Interface, which Google dates 1939 and attributes to Sigmund Freud and Katherine Jones.

In place of the stacks the Cushing Academy spent $42,000 on 3 flat screen tvs that will project data from the internet. The reference desk was removed to make way for a $12,000 cappuccino machine. When I was 13, I did not drink coffee, and the last place I wanted to hang out socially was in school. But school and city libraries were always an escape, a place to explore books in peace. They are the most comforting places in the world to me, libraries, full of possibility, imagination, offering answers to all my questions, or raising questions, which is even better. In a time when most of us are tethered to our computers and gadgets, the physical sensation of turning a well-worn page offers a form of respite that cannot be replaced. There's also plenty to admire in the physical, like the well-worn publisher's binding of something other than a mass market paperback. As a friend's shrink used to say, I think what we're looking for here is a balance. The Cushing Library states that few of their books were checked out. I think it's up to the Cushing Library to make their library truly relevant to their students.

As for online resources, I know Teen Second Life has got some wonderful projects that would put Dr. Tracy in a happy technological flutter. And, for you older folks, our Second Life libraries can be great…just visit the Alliance Library blog for access to a variety of in-world collections. I look forward to how online collections will develop. A really fine afternoon can be spent at the R.F. Burton Library in New Babbage (shown in the photo above). Click on the stacks and you’ll have immediate access to a wide of subjects (online books from credible sources!) having to do with Steampunk and Victorian history and literature, domestic science, and spiritualism. I’m particularly proud to be a member of the Caledon Libraries, who set the bar for sharing access to library collections.

There are so many different ways to uncover information and become literate, and you students of life and students of schools have to know how to find stuff in a myriad of ways. But remember, as my friend Matthew says, no one beats the book’s terms of service.

City (Los Angeles)

I lived in London a few years back – got used to the soot and the tea breaks and the football (ah footie)! After a year, work demanded I take a short trip to the heart of America – Los Angeles - which I’d never been to. What a contrast! In LA, the sun always shone, the smiles were gleaming white, the streets were so smooth and wide. The moment I landed in LA, strangers, in line at Starbucks, at the gas station, in the middle of a crowded gig, just about everywhere, would embrace, shout “Hiya!” Call me!” and hand over a business card (often with no business described). But beneath their sunny smiles was a slight desperation. Making a living in LA was tough. Most visitors don’t see the back side of the Hollywood sign, the side left unairbrushed.

In City (Los Angeles), presented by the Brooklyn is Watching project, Miso Susanowa wants us to appreciate the real LA, its gritty, overwhelming side, the LA beyond the starry sidewalks. Susanowa recorded the sounds of the night outside her apartment window in LA at Hollywood and La Brea Avenues. Photographs of Hollywood Blvd. make up a three sided box in which Susanowa invites the viewer to sit among a moving grid of disorienting “snapshots” showing nameless, featureless faces. The chaotic sounds of the LA night is amplified all around. Viewing the installation in mouselook allows the viewer to become tangled in the grid.

As much as Susanowa wants to illustrate the dark side of her city, there is something rather beautiful about the installation whilst you’re immersed in it. The screen shots I took look like some kind of technofied marblized paper.

While the people I met in LA may have been struggling in their tiny run-down houses, they had fresh fruit to eat every day, dropping off the trees in their back gardens. Susanowa has captured LA as a city of contradictions.

Visit City here.

Pacific Theme by Broken Social Scene.

RMB City remembers New Orleans

I went to New Orleans for the first time in August 2005. As soon as I hopped on my first street car I felt I had found my feet. It was all that I imagined and better and I settled in as hard as five days would allow. Five days after I left, the city was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. I felt my heart breaking as I watched events unfold on the news. Ironically, I had been at a conference full of archivists – experts in preservation. After the disaster I remember a woman contemplating the ruins of her house. She held up a wet and torn piece of paper. “It’s my grandmother’s gumbo recipe!” It was her most valued possession.

Years later, the city still struggles to recover. In November 2008, Chinese artist Cao Fei (an artist with seemingly boundless energy) and architects Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix (MAP Office) collaborated on a project for Prospect 1, the largest international biennale in America, based in New Orleans. The artists created an environment in SL at RMB City. They illustrated and animated a line drawing depicting an area of the Lower 9th Ward (part of the city hardest hit by the flood). The installation was projected into the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New Orleans, and allowed gallery visitors to wander around the sim using ready-made avatars. A blogger for the Times-Picayune – the local paper – described the installation:

“Translucent waves sloshed over us from time to time. Buildings regularly collapsed... Drifting zombie-like through the sparse, lonely landscape was an endless loop anxiety nightmare -- an accurate depiction of post-flood New Orleans, wouldn't you agree?” (read more here)

I wandered around the colorless setting, admiring the strong black lines of the drawings. It took me a while to find a tiny square prim (on the ground near the trailer) that turned on the animations. Once I clicked on it, the sky immediately darkened above; clouds gathered, rain fell, waves pushed against the illustrations, which suddenly seemed as vulnerable as the gumbo recipe on paper. I sat in a little shed and felt the cold waters creep up around my ankles. A bigger disaster than Katrina would be if we forgot what happened there in August 2005. To read more about recovery activities in New Orleans read here.

Dispatch from the field

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth...(Tennyson)

The creature that haunts all steampunks - and Icelanders - is the legendary kraken - the multi-limbed creature who inhabits the cold dark sea - wrecking ships and harassing sailors. It seems the creature has adapted to its environment in Second Life and taken to the skies. That's right - Air Kraken have been spotted! That mythical creature, that legendary monster, is prowling the skies above Lovelace Liberty. I spent the evening in the field, documenting the battle, and have the scars to prove it...see the evidence here. Thank you to Not Possible in Real Life for breaking the news...

You are original

Welcome, friends of Achariya who may have found their way here...I started this blog when I started Second Life a little over a year ago...gamely at first, to explain SL to folks who might never try it out, then mainly to keep a record of things that have struck me along the way. On Monday I was invited to a benefit concert for Heifer International which took place at AM Radio's Refuge. Singer ColeMarie Soleil played live. In between self-deprecating comments ("Sorry 'bout all the mistakes in that one") she belted out these amazing, moving notes; spontaneous, kooky, dark, gorgeous. I relaxed into my headphones, cammed about and felt like I was in some kind of charming menagerie, with the music, the wondrous setting, and the intriguing assortment of avatars all in one place...inspired me to look up Darwin's 1858 essay on the varieties of species...

Primgraph Magazine

This entry is made on the run - i.e. sandwiched between rl obligations - but wanted to be sure to cite the Primgraph Magazine (edited by Alesia Markstein) "The Metaverse Magazine for the 1740s-1920s sims within Second Life". The content is very much worth reading (*ahem*, I contributed an article on Lady Lovelace), including articles on topics of General Interest, Arts & Culture, Fashion, Society and Technology. The magazine offers wonderful insight into the programming, social life and activities within Second Life's "before present"(pre-1950's) themed sims.

It's available in-world but I encourage you also to take tea (coffee/absinthe) and visit the magazine online via Calameo. The technology is really entertaining, allowing for a more actual reading experience - have fun flipping the pages back and forth, just like a real magazine, minus tearing and folding over the pages. Here's the link to the magazine - click "read the publication". Happy reading!

"Meaningful Fun"

Yesterday I attended a talk given by Tom Bukowski (Boellstorf), author of Coming of Age in Second Life – the first anthropological study of the metaverse. Bukowski spent two years conducting research, focusing on ideas of place, identity, avatars and sex. The lecture was packed, the questions provocative. Of particular interest was how he chooses to use the phrase “actual world” or aw rather than “rl” or real world. By using the phrase “real world” you assume a real world that is computer-free; that one life is more “real” than the other. One scholar calls the examination of that blurry line between the two worlds “boundary work” which is so appropriate. Regarding the separation between the aw/virtual world, Bukowski writes: “…what I find more significant and less debated is why we find the question of traffic between virtual worlds and the “real world” so compelling….A large body of anthropological work…demonstrates that crossing a boundary can strengthen the distinctiveness of the two domains it demarcates”. Virtual life is not a completely separate, isolated social world…Bukowski received a bit of skepticism from colleagues (though support at UC Irvine), but it seemed to me that this reluctance to examine virtual life likely stems from a generation of scholars who shy away from new technologies. Luckily, Bukowski-as-Boellstorf has been named Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, journal of the American Anthropologist Association, which ought to guide scholars, young and old, into virtual studies.

Read the first chapter of Coming of Age in Second Life.