Our Latest Class Adventure

Today in class we went and checked out the University of Western Australia's Sim.  There was a bunch of projects made by different students that were competing for a wealthy prize, which I can't remember at the moment.  So anyway, this area had a big land and there was even artwork in the air, so naturally the sim provider set up teleport points for us to get around.  The HUD that is on our screen was also incorporated in one of the artworks.  I thought that this was a new way to view art, and potentially interact with it.  You never know about something until you experience it.  These students were very competitive with their projects, so they used many senses other than sight.  They incorporated a lot of music in their work.  There are also projects that you can go inside of, such as a giant head that seems to be pretty creepy (since my avatar seems so insignificant to it).  When you go inside of the head, there seems to be parts of the brain and parts that seems like an anatomy project, very cool at the least bit!  We also noticed as a class that this sim also happens to be a big platform in the sky.  We have always been used to sims that were created on land by water.  Very interesting.

The next student tour we had was a place called Enchanted Tales Sim in Enchanted Forest.  This island had so much detail with such a massive, beautiful forrest.  The trees were so huge, the biggest I've seen in a sim thus far, made my avatar seem so small and insignificant.  I spent most of my time going around the forest getting lost, but it was okay because there was a lot of nice nature landscapes to discover.  There was a lot of architecture that had "No Entry" marks.  Too bad though because it looked like the best part of the island.  There was an underwater area that had a bunch of tropical fish and sharks floating around.  It inspires me to possibly make things not just on land but also on water?  Overall, this island has so much detail from the sky, to the fish in the water.

No Progress for Me in Second Life :(

I wanted to get back to working on my movie theatre that I'm designing in Second Life.  I'm trying to make this theatre huge, like an IMAX theatre.  Apparently we are restricted to using only 25 prims for our project, and I'm already approaching 50!  I'm no where even close to done and I'm basically back to the drawing board.  My new mission is to complete a theatre within 25 prims, so I imagine I'll have to make this theatre a lot smaller, also by eliminating some of the walls.  I'm going to have to meet Anne in my ARTS 450 class that will have some tips in order for me to accomplish my goal of creating this theatre within the prim limit.

I decided to go around to other places in Second Life that could be places of common interest.  I looked all across for places that people can communicate about the hip-hop artist, Eminem.  I kept looking for places all over but I couldn't find a true place that really served him well.  There would be places that set up pictures of him, but nothing that fancy.  I stopped looking after a while because I feel like I was making no progress.  For someone that has the most fans on Facebook, he must have an area on Second Life that pays him proper homage.  I'll have to look around more in the future because I'm interested to see what people make for celebrities.

Anyways, I was playing a fan on Second Life this week, almost acting like a Paparazzi guy trying to snap photos for a story.  Maybe I should enter into some Eminem forum sites that may have something related to a dedicated Second Life sim.  Maybe I should do some research on the demographic of the percentage of Eminem fans that are on Second Life.  There is a stat for everything on the internet, so maybe that should be available if I look?

First Class outside of Chico

Today was the first day we met as a class to conduct a field trip, but this time we were located not in our physical seats at the CSU Chico campus.  I logged in from my hometown of Sacramento, CA, while most other students logged in from Chico, CA.  We met okay.  It took a few minutes to really round up everyone.  We teleported for our trip to The University of Delaware's sim.  Tyde Poole was the student that showed us around.  We managed to finally meet up and then we started to move around the sim.  There were many places to look at art, and even there was traditional art galleries that were available to walk into.  It showed many artworks of Andy Warhol and another exhibit that was focused on black music in the past.  They were mostly paintings and photos that were available to view in high quality.  I started to fly around and I noticed that everyone was traveling towards the ocean.  I tried talking to a few students but then I immediately came up the conclusion that the Second Life viewer must of timed out, or had some other technical difficulty.  I had to log out and come back in, but when I entered back in, I couldn't really find any of my classmates.  I started to look around a little bit more and I noticed there was a crime scene.  Apparently the University of Delaware set up a game where you act as a detective.  I started to travel through the trees and terrain to find a dead woman that had her underwear removed.  I was meant to believe that this body was raped before it was killed.  Oh Second Life drama!  This place had too much detail from my ariel perspective that I will have to come check out later.  I got back to the Chico State campus in Second Life to see people working on their projects and I started going back to work on mine.

Day of Building

This is my first real attempt today at creating architecture in Second Life.  I've screwed around previously just by putting shapes together but never have I really started a project until now.  I have decided to make a movie theatre that many people can come sit and enjoy watching my music videos, or any other content I decide to put up on the web.  When I teleported to my land to build, I accidentally fell off and fell for a very very long time (as you can obviously see in the picture).

I started with what seemed like a blank canvas.  I was all alone on my island and it was surprisingly hard to put my idea together at first.  Just being able to mess around with every prim didn't turn out as I expected it would.  I played around with a lot of ideas that I drew in my notebook, but I figure this project is going to be pretty time consuming by the fact that I plan on adding a lot of detail in this theatre.  I really just spent the majority of my time realizing that the theatre needs to be bigger and bigger from what I originally planned.  So I decided to make more terrain to build on.  The theatre should be able to be functionally if it's on a big platform.  Anyways, the pictures show my progress so far.  It doesn't look like much, but I felt like I've put forever into this project so far!

Day of Touring

Today I showed to the my ARTS 450 class the area I explained all about in my previous posting here.  Everyone seemed to get a kick out of it.  They were finding things that I just hadn't got to exploring yet.  Maybe that is a good thing that there was so much content?  I believe so.  We were playing for a little bit but then we ran out of time because we had to start our tour with an artist we planned with.

As a class we went over to Lennox Hill to visit an artist who goes by the name of Scottius Polke.  He was dressed up as a cute otter for an avatar.  He was a real shy person with his speech, but what he wanted was for us to go around and play with all the interactive objects he has provided.  He created a house that was something out of a cartoon.  Unfortunately I don't have any snapshots since Scottius disabled people from taking pictures.  We were saying as a class that the visuals kind of look like the show, South Park.  There was a lot to do, such as bouncing on a bed, moving trash around in the room, to getting electrocuted by an outlet.  There were also giant socks laying on the ground that once given a sniff, my avatar feel to the ground, paralyzed!  Scottius toke us to another area that replicated a 2D drawing he made.  He created a 3D environment that almost perfectly modeled his painting, and avatars could go around looking for clues to what the story was about.  I looked around for a while but I couldn't really find anything pertaining to the story.  Maybe it was just me.

Finding an Exciting Place!

I started looking for an area I can take my ART450 class to.  I wanted to chose something that had a lot of detail that can have an avatar there for quite some time.  I started roaming around looking for sports affiliated things, because that's what I generally like.  I came across a hockey rink that seem to be pretty impressive that actually offered a league that real people could participate in.  If you look at the pic, the whole arena is made to detail, and there are also corporate sponsors such as Nike, Subway, and Burger King.

So then I decided to look around some more to see what else I could present to the class.  I then thought about looking for art works that were located in cathedrals and historic buildings.  I wanted to take them to replica sites so its as if we were taking a field trip to Rome or something like that.  I was looking around for a while but couldn't really find a great replica place.  The best one I found was a replica of the Sistine Chapel.  The artworks were beautifully crafted on the walls, though I believe the owner if this building could of finished adding more detail.  This work is close to complete.

I finally set my sights on Phaze Demesnes.  This is a magically land that has everything mythical, such as Castles, dragons, and fairies.  This is a giant sim  that has multiple islands that feature content for a lot of people to have fun with.  I actually happen to find the person who set up the sim too!  She was promoting her translation software company as a side project (I would assume its her main purpose of funding for her land).  Either way, the island was what I chose for my class to see.  The amount of detail is insane.  You can scale any wall and just see how high quality the artwork is.  It's really fun to get around too.  Its not as conventional as walking or flying around.  Since flying is disabled, you must either ride dragons around, or enter these little doors (reminds me of Alice in Wonderland)
that teleport you to a different part of the island.  A very big and well developed sim that should have more people visit indeed.  It's great even for couples to visit because there a lot of activities to do such as dancing and giving each other back rubs.

Big Day As A Class For Second Life!

There was a lot on our agenda in ARTS 450 as we ventured into Second Life.  I entered Second Life to find my avatar starting to dance like Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  This happens automatically because someone in my group of friends triggered that action.  Once they trigger it, everyone in a certain radius will begin to do the dance.  In this case, it was the Thriller dance!

We then entered a site that was dedicated to the annual ritual of "Burning Man."  Once called "Burning Life," now is called "Burning 2."  There was a lot to look at and play on, such as swings and hot air ballon rides.  There wasn't a lot of people there really like the real Burning Man.  I wonder why?  Could it be because those people are so high on whatever that they can't seem to use a computer okay?  I shouldn't be one to judge I guess.

We then entered an area guided by Jamie called "(ROMA) - The Original Ancient Roman Themed Estate Since 2006."  This land had a lot of detail to everything that was roman.  There was even people that were even avatars going around that belonged to the area that were dressed in the roman theme clothes; even some with their clothes off!  We ran into people on chariots, to lions, and I even ran into a station where you could even tweet about the area.  That was social marketing I have seen at it's finest so far in this program.  I would love to visit again when I have more free time!  The people behind this place must have studied a lot of roman architecture.  I even was going around and found the three-eyed fish that is in the show, "The Simpsons."  Must be huge fans?

Next, we went to a fairy land named "MayLou Design" presented by Lizzy.  This place was very well detailed and it allowed flying to be fun and adventurous.  This was because there were floating islands that featured content that I would find out of a story book.  The island seemed to offer a lot of properties one can by.  As you can see in one of my pics, my avatar is lounging in a property someone can by.  

Then we took time to visit a simple art gallery that was made out of single prims that one may view the gallery in  It featured a bunch of different artworks made out of different mediums.  Quite an interesting and fun way to put a gallery together.





Terrance took us to an area that featured all sort of globes, called "Fortune Land - Secret Spheres" that you can walk through.  Connecting each sphere was a tube that seemed to be constantly moving (Since the sides were made of a moving gif or something of that matter that I'm not quite educated with yet).  Unfortunately there were no screenshots allowed to be taken in this area so I don't have any to present, sorry.  It is an interesting take of how to connect landscapes in Second Life that someone wouldn't easily think of right off the bat.

Lastly, Karen took us to a haunting place that dealt with purgatory and the levels of hell.  The land was called "Jackson Rhys Gallery."  We were in a sense of Limbo when we entered the land.  Based off the story or tellings of "Dante's Inferno," we traveled as a class through each stage.  It was all pretty creative since we saw haunting images and painful scenes that I would never want to probably walk around in real life.  I'll just let my avatar do the dirty traveling for me!  A very dark place for sure, so I'm glad we got to visit the area in a well let classroom!  After a while of searching around, we eventaully ran into the creator of the land.  We started to ask the creator some question but the creator ended up leaving after a few.  We got the idea that the creator didn't really want to spend time with us.  Whatever, we don't need them anyway.  Overall, today was a big trip since we visited so many places.  Can't wait to get back in Second Life again!