12 posts tagged “interactive”

In Kenzo, Common Cure, Rhiannon Chatnoir and many Second Life luminaries are joining forces at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC to launch the new Amoration.net and celebrate our partnership with the Vesuvius Group.  We're having a great time sharing virtual worlds and the future of interactive media with the traditional web communities.  While we meet quite a few people who are familiar with SL, there are very few people in the traditional web world who are thinking about the 3D web and the future of our integrated communications.  This is a great time to be an avatar worldchanger!

Imagine rebuilding the real world from the ground up, prim by prim.  What would you change and how would you create public good?

Five finalist projects are realizing their revisions with the Second Life and the Public Good Community Challenge.  Now through June 30th you can vote for your top three of these five amazing endeavors to be awarded a total of almost one million Linden dollars! 

On July 1st at 4PM the University of Southern California's Network Culture Project will award the top three with L$100,000 a month for three months to build their dream of public good from the virtual world.  Avatars can take a minute right now to determine who will win the big awards to be given out at the International Island amphitheater on Monday afternoon.

The projects currently up for awards:

Texas Obesity Research Center
Native Lands Cultural Outreach
Mauerkrankheit/Wallsickness
Interactive Accessible Home
Ability Commons

Any avatar can vote for their top three projects and offer resources to these endeavors; volunteer to help them build out a new community or reach out and partner with these projects to grow real world impact from Second Life.  Voting ends June 30th so send in your feedback today and visit these projects on the web or on International Island to explore new ways to rebuild the real world through virtual efforts.

This community challenge is part of ongoing philanthropic research by the USC Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Communication based in Los Angeles, provided with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, cosponsors of the State of Play conference where awardees will present their new work in October 2008. 

Thank you for participating through your votes and feedback and by helping us build vibrant communities in virtual spaces.

For more information contact Resident Annenberg inworld or email networkculture@gmail.com. 

Second Life Justice Skyart

True, present, deeply engaged.  Aware of everyone in collaboration, their roles....strengths.....weaknesses.
Circles of trust built around flexible systems that allow for people to grow and change over time.
Diversity, creativity, user-created worlds with room to build onto "the game" or whatever challenge is set out in a day.

These games are our lives: little interactive diversions are the way we have learned to interact and touch our world.  For some of us this is full immersion in some digital form, while others dabble with cell phone photos and social networks.  The result is similar....over time, new patterns emerge in the game players who have learned to type their thoughts most clearly, as if QWERTY was the universal language.

I still contend that love = energy in every brilliant game.  There's endless ways to design a strategic playspace but no play feels like play without love.  We need that passion in order to enjoy the playful experiences of our lives.

Tools are endless, available from anyone with enough creativity to build a better bridge.

In this world my flights are as long as I want them to be, not dictated by oil poured into a plastic and metal machine.  My mobility is endless too and soaring never gets tiring.

"The Game" is vast, our board the streets and homes within homes.  Perhaps you live on Baltic or St. Charles, or maybe Ventnor?  Pacific?  I've seen the boardwalk homes and they need work too.  What do you most want to see there next?

Find what you love and do it.  Happiness in life really seems to be a constant process loop on this basic love pursuit.  The game then, at any stage, is really about where your heart is at.

GreenMan08-9
Originally uploaded by Johnny Shoepainter

Deeply inspiring photo....this is from a series of photos where the artist, Johnny Shoepainter, shows his progress along with his painted shoes along the way. This is GreenMan9 by Howard Rheingold, also media lecturer and professor, writer and all-around cool guy. If you get a chance check out his art in Second Life or out in public art adventures around the world. You can read some of his recent work here on civic engagement: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.097

Most of my day is spent envisioning ideal environments. 
Here's my life desires:

*  Collaborative safe spaces for creativity, innovation and invention

*  Surrounded by sweet people in vibrant communities supporting each other through interlaced networks

*  A vibrant mix of flora and fauna respected and integrated with human life

*  Low cost local energy production from existing materials and resources

*  Easy to find resources without searching multiple websites and real world locations

*  Immediate supply and material retrieval for projects

*  Low cost exchanges and shipping of objects with little friction or time wasted

*  Secure access to basic survival needs:  water, air, food, shelter

*  The right to cultivate and consume any food or medicine known to man that's still available and not extinct

*  To be surrounded by beauty, filled with art, living in love

What do you want most?  What do you need?

We are up against some epic challenges in these coming decades.  We have each other and only this awareness that will chart our future.  Where do you see us going?

Inspired by a look ahead ten years on Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120119369144313747.html

Start doing this NOW if we want to survive and thrive these next 50 years:

• Stimulate green industries and build local alt-energy solutions into daily life
  
• Challenge the US FDA, the WTO and World Health on issues regarding the Codex Alimentarius
• Local water purification systems available to all people (and animals, plants, ecosystem)
  
• Stop deadly practices like Mountaintop Removal and chemical dumping in our waterways in favor of clean mining
  
• Gut parts of the USPS and our local post offices (I'm a Postmasters' granddaughter -- this is heavy to say)
• Rethink our entire transportation system and reduce automobile use
• Work from home in virtual spaces, attend business gatherings without unnecessary travel
  
• Create a foundational framework for international transparency and governance that is decentralized and democratic for the vox populi
• Restore Habeas Corpus
• Provide universal internet access, public computers and basic training to all students at a young age
• Learn to see ourselves as infinitely abundant, free and capable of reshaping our experience
  
• Love without fail: no abandon, no boundaries. 
  

Tell me your path, your desires, your challenges.

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We've come a long way in a few months!  The next major AMO event is happening this Sunday December 16th from 11-2PM at AMO Island in Second Life, a dance party to benefit Great Strides with DJ Nexeus Fatale.  Bring out your horses and help us raise money for equine therapy.  Every boogie counts.

GIVING CIRCLE
The ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD GIVE XO CHALLENGE ends soon.  Do you have someone with small hands who would love the XO laptop's ease and portability?  Give one get one, a great opportunity to share goodwill.

At AMO we've seen the potential for empowering young talent to do more with their digital skills.  In the last two years our interns have gone on to great work with professional companies and nonprofit organizations...all for scripting or designing items in Second Life!  Those who still wonder about the power of the virtual world for education should visit Holy Meatballs, New Media Consortium and the SLEDucators who are teaching and taking on exciting new research endeavors in the wild petri dish of the metaverse.

LAND TO LEASE/OWN!
We have mainland for sale along with office/research area plots both land and sky on AMO.  Talk to me directly if you are looking for space in the coming weeks.  Short term and long term opportunities available.

AMO is all about experimentation.  This month we collaborated with the Car Lovers to host The Ridebuilders Challenge on KULA last Friday.  I get the privilege of announcing the winners for the sweetest rides in Second Life! We awarded over L$50,000 to the following artists for their extraordinary work

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winning entries displayed

To make a gift for AMO visit our giving circle page at Amoration/International Humanities Center.  Your donations support our virtual internship programs along with providing the AMO Island space for groups to develop new works in the metaverse.  Thank you for supporting new media bridgebuilding experiments!

Bridgebuilding and Rebuilding
For the last few weeks we have been coordinating with friends at Madre Grande, a monastery and retreat farm near San Diego and the Mexican border town of Tecate.  During the Harris fire around Halloween they lost most of their residences, archives and gathering spaces; seven monks are now living in one building together as they work out a long term rebuilding plan in the midst of codes, permits and inspections, cleanup and fire debris removal.  One of the monks was an interactive designer for the Cartoon Network, another a financial officer in London; this bright young ecumenical group of leaders has appreciated the support of the AMO community along with your gifts dedicated to this rebuilding effort.  We were glad to go to Madre Grande with Burners without Borders last week and we will blog in more detail with photos soon.  Thanks to Marta Collier, Brent Heyning and Rob Darman for their wizardry with pipes and electrical tech!

The leaders in AMO never cease to amaze me.  Thank you all for getting out there and doing what you love to do most.  Come visit us soon in meatspace, metaspace or any space!

In AMO,
In Kenzo

Gabriel, Consuela and YuenLin are in Chad visiting Sudanese refugees and those affected by the genocide in Darfur.  You can help by watching videos and taking action every day to share these stories from survivors.

Next Gen Games Story: Clive Barker

Game and interactive design:  if there are rules, fuck them!

More coming later today with photos from top game and media production teams, demos and more.
Tell us what you think of changes in the game design world!