<<But not for a second do I buy the argument that synchronous virtual worlds like Second Life are the future of the net.>><br><br>I agree. Nevertheless is a very interesting art space. SL has a curious cybrid format. I mean a
space between on and off line networks that can be used as new layer of
our territorial experience. I'm working now on a new project conceived for SL, exploring its potential as a cinematic space and the resources its inhabitants can use in order to get different points of view (flying, zooming etc).
<br>It seems to me that the cinematic experience you have there announces in some ways what can be the the migration from machines of motion to machines of vision, or the new cinema. Peter Weibel wrote some years ago a long essay on digital images that could be a point of departure for that discussion:
<br><br>"The nineteenth century was obsessed with motion - with illusions of
motion, and with machines of motion. There were two kinds of machines
of motion: the first tried to analyze motion, the second to synthesize
motion. The analysis of motion was the task of the camera; the
synthesis of motion was the task of the projector. The evolution of
cinema in the nineteenth century can be attributed to two major trends:
firstly, to the progress in experimental physiology and psychology
leading to the Gestalt psychology, and secondly, to the advances in
machines attempting to adapt and transfer the physiological mechanism
of perception into machines capable of the visual simulation of motion
and - herein lies the problem - not into machines of perception.
<p>Therefore,
what we know as cinema today is in fact already a reduction of the
nineteenth-century principle that began to investigate machines of
vision, but finally reduced them to machines of motion. There is the
moving-image industry with its motion pictures, that is to say: the
Hollywood system. Its code is a legacy of the nineteenth century, and
reduces the initial exploration of machines of vision to machines of
motion. Only the avant-garde cinema of the 1920s, 1950s and 1960s
maintained the original intention of creating machines of vision.
Classical cinema, therefore, already diminished the initial enterprise,
which was about perception. Perception was reduced to the perception of
motion, and remained on the retinal level because there was no pursuit
of the question of how our brain perceives the world. People
constructed machines with a kind of graphic notation - "la methode
graphique" (<a href="http://www.expo-marey.com/" target="_blank">Etienne-Jules Marey</a>) - of motion. This method can be said to be still valid, tragically enough, today.</p><p> What Marey did was to analyze, and deconstruct, motion with his
famous graphical method. It made no difference whether a drawing
machine was used or, as in the case of <a href="http://photo.ucr.edu/photographers/muybridge/" target="_blank">Eadweard Muybridge</a>,
a photographic machine. Both Muybridge and Marey soon realized that it
is not enough to analyze motion, but many other machines had to be used
in order to project, to synthesize, motion. We may conclude this
interpretation with the fact that cinema was invented in the nineteenth
century. The twentieth century merely turned the nineteenth-century
inventions into standardized mass media - including television, which
became a consumer apparatus. As a side-effect, we simultaneously
turned this machinery not only into mass media, but also into art, an
individual approach. </p>
<p>Cinema is a writing of motion (cinematography); it is just a machine that simulates motion for the eye. The avant-garde, from <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/vertov.html" target="_blank">
Dziga Vertov</a> to <a href="http://www.vasulka.org/" target="_blank">Steina and Woody Vasulka</a> , kept to the initial idea: machine vision - not machine motion. Vertov gave us the term <em>Kinoglaz </em>,
the camera eye. With the advent of video (Latin: I see), it was clear
that we had to make a paradigmatic shift from imitating and simulating
motion to imitating and simulating vision with the help of machines.
We had to change from cinematography (the writing of motion) to what I
would call the writing of seeing: opsigraphy, from the Greek word <em>opsis </em>
(as in "optics"). Or even to opsiscopy, the seeing of seeing - in other
words, the observing of observing mechanisms. In cyberspace, for
example, when you see yourself and your actions as an image, you are
already in opsiscopic space. You are observing yourself in a picture
that you observe; it is an observation of the second order. In fact,
cyberspace is the beginning of opsiscopy: of machines that see how we
see."</p><p>In short, I think SL can be considered an opsiscopic space that allows to transcend sometimes the basic descriptive movements we do in our FL (First Life) and because of this points to new directions in the digital arts field in general and digital images in particular.
</p><p>GB<br></p><p><br> </p><div><span class="gmail_quote">2007/2/25, Trebor Scholz <<a href="mailto:trebor@thing.net">trebor@thing.net</a>>:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The Second Life (SL) buzz sounds just like the tech-salvation propaganda that surrounded the telegraph, the BBS, and later mailing lists. Rheingold and Lessig gave lectures in SL,<br>70 universities built a "campus" on the island, non-profits are storming in, businesses are opening up, avatars are exchanging "real life books" in SL, people set up galleries (but
<br>where is the audience?), performance groups do their thing, and avatars demonstrate against the war. It's a stunning social experiment.<br><br>But not for a second do I buy the argument that synchronous virtual worlds like Second Life are the future of the net. Nevertheless, I'm quite interested in SL as a model for civic
<br>participation and cultural production. Environments like Second Life are one emerging aspect of networked sociality and I am curious to hear more about the amateurs who, on the<br>proprietary grounds of SecondLife, are willing to give their immaterial labor away for free. We discussed that before with
<a href="http://Amazon.com">Amazon.com</a>.<br><br>The always amazing Henry Jenkins writes: "I take my good news where I can find it and for the moment, the coverage of SL, bad though it often is, is helping Americans in general
<br>adjust to the idea that there may be something positive to be gained by having an active fantasy life on line." But SL is not just an all-American phenomenon. Just look at attempts<br>of re-branding Africa, for example. There are, of course, obvious limits to the use of such environments in developing countries as it takes high-powered computers and a whole lot
<br>of bandwidth to have a decent experience in SL.<br><br>Particular examples of participatory culture may fade but networked participation will not go away.<br><br>Jenkins: "And for the moment, the debate about and the hype surrounding SL is keeping alive the idea that we might design and inhabit our own worlds and construct our own
<br>culture. That's something worth defending."<br><br>My main question to Jenkins and all of you concerns the relationship between this virtual world and "first life." Do these virtual worlds merely provide an inconvenient youth with a
<br>valve to live their fantasies of social change (elsewhere), or do they, in some measurable way, fertilize politics in the world beyond the screen?<br><br>Trebor<br><br>Second Life<br><a href="http://secondlife.com/">http://secondlife.com/
</a><br><br>Get A First Life<br><a href="http://www.getafirstlife.com/">http://www.getafirstlife.com/</a><br><br>Teaching experiments in SL<br><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/11/13/second.life.university/index.html">
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/11/13/second.life.university/index.html</a><br><br>A Western shot in SL<br><a href="http://bellsandspurs.com/_video/">http://bellsandspurs.com/_video/</a><br><br>"More than 70 universities have built island campuses in Second Life"
<br><a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6157088.html">http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6157088.html</a><br><br>Lynn Hershman screens new film in SL<br><a href="http://lynnhershman.com/newprojects.htm">http://lynnhershman.com/newprojects.htm
</a><br><br>Avatars Against the War<br><a href="http://lotusmedia.org/post-protest-processing">http://lotusmedia.org/post-protest-processing</a><br><br>Re-branding Africa in SL<br><a href="http://annansi.com/blog/2007/01/africas-second-life/">
http://annansi.com/blog/2007/01/africas-second-life/</a><br><br>Images of Activism in SL<br><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/venicevandal/sets/72157594474252794/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/venicevandal/sets/72157594474252794/
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