Second Life -- "A libertarian paradise where there are no zoning laws"

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Second Life -- "A libertarian paradise where there are no zoning laws"

3/19/2008

By Trent Batson

Even though Anderson is an experienced SL builder (both "architect and contractor"), he still needed advice about how to create an art exhibit in SL. As is always the case, an experienced SL artist came forward, someone whose avatar is Tayzia Abattoir. Tayzia is the curator of the oldest art museum in SL. Also assisting Anderson was the New Media Consortium, in particular Larry Pixel [Larry Johnson in rl], head of the NMC. "He manages a huge conglomerate of sims," says Anderson. "The MIT sim is under his aegis. [NMC] just donated a quarter of a million dollars to develop an open source [environment] in SL."

According to the NMC site, on February 26, 2008, "the New Media Consortium (NMC) announced a $250,000 two-year collaboration with Sun Microsystems to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project, an effort that is aimed at making it easier to learn, work, and exchange ideas in virtual space. The project will develop a range of standards-based, portable open-source educational spaces, content, and objects, and use them to extend Sun Microsystems's open source Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland virtual world platforms."

But isn't this art ephemeral? We asked Anderson. "Very much so, and that gives it its value for me," he said. "It's kind of poignant knowing I put these things up, people can see them awhile, and then they go away. That's very much in the spirit of second life. People come into SL, they look at it, they see a landscape; the metaphor they take away with them is that this is a geography, things are next to each other. But because you can teleport from any point to any point, geography is really meaningless; it is more helpful to think of it as a movie back lot -- as you know, SL is littered with these abandoned or mis-used sets. I would rather have my stuff come down and not just hang out there forever. I do save the key components to my work and could always resurrect it. If I did, I'd want to make changes. If I took the time to set it up, I'd want to do it differently."

We asked Anderson what would you say to college art teachers. "I would say, you want to look at SL as a place to teach sculpture and to teach design simply because it's very forgiving, you can make multiple variations, iterations of objects that you create, not limited by the size of your studio, and accessible from anywhere. If I was teaching a sculpture course or a design course at the college level, I probably would use SL as one of my platforms because of its flexibility, its lack of physical limitations."

He recommended that people visit Fairchange Village on Fairchange Island in SL to see an exhibit.

Even though Anderson's exhibit has "ephemerated" away, you can still find out more from him at his blog: slowsculpture.livejournal.com/.

"Blackthorn Hare" is his avatar.

[Images courtesy Doug Anderson.]

Trent Batson, Ph.D. has served as an English professor, director of academic computing, and has been an IT leader since the mid-1980s. He is currently a Communication Strategist in the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT. batsontr@mit.edu

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Trent Batson, "Second Life -- "A libertarian paradise where there are no zoning laws"," Campus Technology, 3/19/2008, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=59960

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