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.

Ok, Alright

Disclaimer: I am jet lagged...feeling loose.

The symbol on the flag above means something like - "Ok, Alright". I think. It is according to the signs that were scratched onto fence posts, sidewalks and walls by hobos on the move looking for safe shelter. Read You Can't Win (a cautionary tale written by hobo Jack Black in 1926).

I read this review of the recent Second Life Community Convention, written by Andrew Sempere aka Tezcatilopoca Bisiani. He describes almost precisely why I find myself continually returning to SL, giving up valuable time to this seemingly intangible endeavor. Community is his operative word and perhaps that's why I starting thinking about the community of hobos...signaling to one another, "hey, it's ok, it's alright, stick around..." . He writes, "Why would an otherwise sane and healthy adult professional work a full work week and then spend hundreds of hours logged into a virtual world? Why, exactly, do we care so damn much? In its specifics, the answer is as varied as each of us, but in general it all ends in relationships, and community, and the sheer joy of building a world with people of like mind." His enthusiasm is motivating, the diversity of his projects is inspiring, and he uses the word "thrilled" in his review. I like.

Leap before you look...

"The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap..."
-W.H.Auden

See you in a couple of weeks, dear readers!

hope you enjoy your summer holidays...

The Cult of Personality

Artist Kasabian Beck asks us to consider celebrity within Second Life in his latest exhibition at Hotel Dare, “Slebrity™”. Presented against the spare white walls of the gallery are several panels depicting the names (in an also spare, sans serif font) of well-known personalities – creators of all types - within SL, seen in the image above. Struck by the cult of personality in the metaverse, Beck muses on “the very idea of virtual notoriety, how it is sought, attained and why it is or is not important...” I wasn’t familiar with all the names presented in the gallery which is an important point. It’s possible I might not have known any of the names – what meaning would the exhibition have had for me then? The names chosen have been curated – by the artist – revealing his own particular world experience. This exhibition will mean something different to each viewer and ought to inspire discussions about what I call the “flux” of personality. What most of the names have in common is that they are brilliant self-promoters. In art, reputation can be considered more valuable than in many other fields where celebrity is cultivated. Look at the Young British Art movement of the mid ‘90s; young artists, with small bodies of work behind them, created retrospectives and museums dedicated to themselves, to protest the English art institutions that had belittled them. Is the tone of this exhibition condescending? Do these names have any value at all as ideas or things to disagree with?

Virtual fame is the same as any other kind of fame, earned and unearned. As psychologist James Houran writes, “we need celebrities as much as we need food, water and shelter. We need them to feel connected.” These names on the wall are humans, not martians, not simply avatars. We condescend to these human fundamentals, our desire for celebrity, at our peril because we are human – not always wonderful but very predictable and found in all environments. A thought-provoking exhibition...go to Slebrity and have a think.

The Quiddity of Objects, 2 of 2

In rl I work with contemporary artists and many of them create installations. One could categorize their work as conceptual art. After a number of years working with this genre I’ve come to reappreciate more traditional arts, or, rather, craftsmanship. I’m eager to see the hard work, the time spent, illustrated in the construction of a work of art. The time an artist spends making offers insight into the working process in a way that conceptual art may often not.

As I make my way around the galleries and museums of SL, I look with a rather critical eye at both virtual art and the presentation of real life art in the virtual world. When I heard the Smithsonian was sponsoring the Latino Virtual Museum I was excited to see what they’d produced. It’s the Smithsonian after all. Curated by Olga Herrera, the museum includes selections of paintings and archives from the Archives of American Art and other Smithsonian collections. I ambled toward an oversized photograph of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera...and squinted. I refocused, cammed back and forth. Nope, still blurry. I tried out a few other images and they were all out of focus. The technology of SL allows us to dig deep, get close, immerse, and it’s up to the curators to ensure they take full advantage of the technology. It’s not enough to throw a photograph, or other object, into the metaverse for mere presence if it’s not useful to visitors. While the LVM provided much text about the image, they seem to have forgotten about the value of the photograph alone. I’d like to see the flowers in Frida’s hair, study the works of art hanging on the wall behind her, or the food on the table in front of her. One photograph has a hundred stories to tell and the curators should allow the visitor to make their own observations.

The Smithsonian might take a look at the Dresden Gallery , a replication of a rl museum. The paintings are carefully rendered. Each is cataloged with basic, tombstone information. Almost minute details can be observed, as in this detail of a painting by Johann Thiele (The Elbe Sornewitz in Hoarfrost and Fog, 1741), making it useful for both the general browser and the scholar.

On the making of objects in SL - the real masters can be found in our 3D artists, like AM Radio, whose builds are thoughtful replications of real life things always elegantly assembled. Just look at the swirling hoses on this engine.

Or the felted platter and transparent plastic cover of a turntable, made by maclane Mills. The details observed are the fingerprints left by reality on the imagination of these artists. Both Mills and Radio capture the quiddity of an object – its “whatness”. It’s a testament to their receptivity and curiosity about objects, as well as their technical skills that make them craftsmen. Wrote Brahms, “Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.”