Second Life Object Creation

For my object creation in Second Life I chose to try and replicate my Epiphone electric guitar. At first I just tried to figure it out with a basic understanding of how to manipulate prims as you can see in the picture below. The first guitar didn't look so hot.

However, I went back again after watching a few Youtube videos and reading some tutorials and discovered the legit and yet tedious way to make a very realistic guitar. In the second picture I have basically constructed the body of the guitar and just have to lay textures and skins on it now. So this is my before and after once I read up and became more aware of how to edit and manipulate prims. 

Second Life Performance Ideas

I have two different ideas for a Second Life performance:

First one would be to have everyone dress up as a fast food mascot. Since Second Life is full of beautiful avatars where health isn't a real life issue and eating has no bearing on health or physical appearance in a virtual world it would we interesting to incorporate fast food America patriotism in a virtual space. So if everyone dressed up as Ronald McDonald, Jack, Wendy's, etc etc. and paraded around it could potentially turn out to be very interesting.

My other idea was to dress up as a giant television screen. I have this television made already so I could distribute it to everyone in the class. On the screen of the television would be an actual live streaming or feed or our avatar portraiture or us in real life. It would be like dressing up as a TV and then walking around with a video feed of yourself on the screen. It would actually be easier to do this from a youtube video but nonetheless be very interesting as a performance piece in Second Life. 

Second Life self-portraiture update

I tried to make my eyebrows stand out more in my second avatar. I still think it doesn't look like me as much because my eyebrows and eyes are very close together, and this other self-portraiture makes my eyebrows stand out more. Here is a comparison shot.

SECOND LIFE SELF PORTRAITURE

Here are a couple of screen shots of my avatar portraiture from Second Life. I tried 12 times and finally decided this was the most successful representation of myself.

Art & The Avatar: Ambiguity of Identity in 3D Worlds Questions

I thought it was very interesting how Artistide Despres refers to digital worlds as places where, "people would be able to communicate, create art without many fences: place, race, etc., as only a communication between mental avatars." Interesting thought that would be ideal in a Utopian world. My question regarding this statement is, because people, by human nature are judgemental, how does a virtual world with living human beings made of flesh and emotion able to stem away from the basic human reaction to judge? Just because the space has turned digital and race, sex, and gender don't matter in a sense, there is still a human controlling an artificial world, wouldn't art still be the subject of criticisms just as much if not even more in a virtual world?



Another question I have regarding this article focuses around the idea of immersion. I have been to several comic conventions where many artists are against the digital world and still very much dependent on analog art. Because this article talks about being able to reach individuals globally and doing so by avatars that can easily be multiplied, alters and even discarded is this really representational as analog art? If an avatar can be easily multiplied, discarded or altered how could they truly be a factual representation of self identity?

Because an avatar is clean, and simple (in the sense that it does not have to eat or has bodily smell) I can see how one might enjoy living in a digital world more so than a real world. Avatars are interesting to me because they show how people want to be, or want to look often times. The idea about creating an avatar that looks very similar to the self is like combining reality with virtual reality, which are two very different things. When you log out of second life time stops and picks up again where you left off, it doesn't do that in reality, yet people see themselves differently in both perspectives. I like the idea of facing my realistic self in a virtual world, it feels like a new and very innovative way to view oneself, kind of a step up from looking in the mirror.

Re-design of personal HUD display

I went ahead and redesigned my cell mutation meter. I am pleased with the results. I believe that it looks more like a cohesive piece now that the meter has that 1960's feel like the actual meter on the Geiger counter.