Daruma Picnic at the Second Life Library Art Gallery

Daruma Picnic’s first name comes from the Japanese dharma or wish dolls. His first work of art in Second Life was his own skin, a full body tattoo of his own drawing of a Daruma doll. Since I met him soon after he arrived, I’ve seen all the phases of his SL career so far: “Avatar”, “Architecture”, “Darumas”, “Imported Painting” (his shortest phase), “Floating Overlays”, “Click Color” and now “Interactive Music Sculpture”. It has been interesting and exciting to watch an accomplished artist take on a new medium. It has also been great fun to see the inspiration meter go off when Daruma sees something that gives him an idea, and to see him working through it. He will be displaying many of these works at the Second Life Library Gallery (Library Gallery, Info Island (32, 117, 33).

For years he has been making layered studies for his gouache paintings in real life. His initial studies are drawings in felt-tip pen, which he layers in Photoshop. He has imported these studies into SL to create “floating overlay” paintings with many layers, “inspired by the ubiquitous SL waterfalls with their transparent layered prims and animated textures”.

His “click color” paintings are created entirely within Second Life through layering of transparent prims (primitive shapes, the building blocks of Second Life). The viewer can play with the interaction of colors and layers within the piece.

Daruma found particular inspiration in the interactive sound sculpture of Adam Ramona (Ramonia, Marni, (219, 198, 23) . Daruma says "Adam's interactive sound sculptures are simple in appearance, fun, intelligent, and immersive. ...Adam's work is mesmerizing and sparked my interest in interactive sound." Adam guided Daruma through the process of writing a script where collision of avatar with prim plays sound. He recorded the voices of 3 singers singing a variety of notes. The result is “a sort of free jazz work”. Multiple avatars can play notes within the sculpture at once to create music in Second Life.

The show opens on Saturday, April 28 at 6 PM PST and runs through May 28.

Reference Services Review - Esther Grassian on Second Life

Grassian, E., & Trueman, R. (2007). Stumbling, bumbling, teleporting and flying … librarian avatars in Second Life. Reference Services Review, 35(1), 84-89. Retrieved March 27, 2007, from http://proxy.lib.wayne.edu:2436/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2400350106.html.

This paper by Esther Grassian (UCLA) and Rhonda Trueman (Johnson & Wales) takes the form of questions and answers to provide an overview of the benefits and challenges for libraries in Second Life.

At NMC this week: EDUCAUSE Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments

This session is taking place in real life in Raleigh, North Carolina, and will be streamed into Second Life at the NMC Campus. If you can only catch one session, I'd recommend the 10:15 (1:15 EST) session with Sarah Robbins (Intellagirl).

Tuesday 3/27 -
11am to 12pm (SLT)
Generation G and the 21st Century
Richard Van Eyk (University of North Dakota)

3/28 -
5 to 5:45am (SLT)
Cognition, Learning, and Literacy in Virtual Worlds, Constance Steinkuehler (U of Wisconsin-Madison)

6:00 am - 6:45am (SLT) Cyberinfrastructure-enabled Learning Environments for Gen-Z, Gary Bertoline (Purdue)

7:45 - 8:30am Virtual Learning Environments in 3D, Phil Long (MIT)

10:10 - 10:55 (tentative): Immersion and Engagement in a Virtual Classroom: Using Second Life for Higher Education, Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins (Ball State)

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm The Bar May Not Be As High As You Expect: Considerations in Implementing an Immersive Learning Environment

More information is available at the NMC Campus Observer blog.

Info Island this week

Last week, Kitty Pope, Director of the Alliance Library System, announced that the ALA has given it the Information Today Inc. Library of the Future Award.

Tuesday 3/27 -
8am SLT (11 am EST) -
NO-CONCEPT CLASS: BUILDING
at Eduisland 2

Thursday
3/29 -

8am SLT: Info Island Tour by Jilliana Susei - meet at the Welcome Area

6pm SLT
Discussion: Catch the Librarian Buzz
Discussion of services and programs for teens at Eye4You - location to be announced
There is also a discussion here about the new Eye4You Alliance Island, and what it will have to offer.

InfoIsland

American Libraries Online: Internet Librarian says Second Life needs libraries

Joseph Janes suggests that librarians should be involved not just in collecting, organizing and cataloging objects in SL, but also "part of the conversation about what those objects are and do and ought to be."
Like everyplace else, Second Life needs libraries
By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist

Information Week Article: A look at the technology

This article describes what happens under the hood, as well as how Linden Lab is planning to handle hundreds of times the traffic.

Inside Second Life's Data Centers
As Second Life strains to keep up with recent popularity, InformationWeek looks at the real-world technology foundations of the make-believe world, and developer Linden Lab's plans to stay on top of growth.
Mitch Wagner InformationWeek
March 5, 2007

Even while Second Life struggles with its explosive growth and new popularity, the developers of the service, Linden Lab, are redesigning the service to handle hundreds of times as much traffic as it's dealing with today.

Second Life is seeing 20% monthly growth in the number of concurrent users, going from a then-record 18,000 users logged in at once in December to a record 36,000 on Sunday. The maximum capacity of the current network is 100,000 simultaneous users, Miller said. (the rest)

Lansing State Journal article on Second Life

My own home town paper did a nice article on Second Life today that mentions the Michigan Library Consortium among local users and entrepreneurs. And, refreshingly, not one mention of SL porn, Anshe Chung, or Prokofy Neva.
Second Life bring virtual, real life together
Barbara Wieland
March 8, 2007