10 posts tagged “video”
Every day I am reminded just how lucky we are to share space on this planet.
Life has been incredibly kind to me lately. Two weeks ago I started a new position at the USC Network Culture project working on events and experiments in virtual worlds, bringing together my interest in public good, philanthropy and social care with the art of this new landscape. It is a dream job, working with people I like doing what I love. I get to create brave new communities, if not whole worlds. My role is to bring together unique collaborations.
We have tremendous opportunities here to imagine our lives as we choose them to be, as we plan to manifest them. In the old world of magick there's no shortage of discussion about imagination and manifestation as the keys to creating any new presence, real or somehow collectively imagined.
New media and animation inspires me; this week the happy song has been this track from LemonJelly. Enjoy, and don't miss 2:40 on this video.
Dulzura was largely destroyed during the Harris Fire that took out hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern California this past fall. Firestorms like that are rarely so intense and the areas destroyed in California are larger than many cities; hundreds are still without homes.
Over the last four years I've made at least 6 trips up the mountain to spend time with the monks at Madre Grande Monastery. After visiting a dozen major spiritual communities across America I found one that felt most like home, a Theosophical space for esoterics who enjoy the arcane mysteries and wisdom traditions from around the world. Madre reaches out to their community, assisting other fire victims while they rebuild their lives.
Their
In December we took two trips to Dulzura to assist with fire cleanup efforts. The monks were overwhelmed with the amount of work to do after the fires and were very appreciative of community support, from frequent visitors as well as from those who may have never been there before. For the month prior to our arrival the monks had to shower in a nearby town, 30 minutes away by car, and had no running water or phone on site.
We took a small team from Amoration with Burners without Borders to take on basic plumbing, electrical and welding needs for the community. The Amoration team took on a few basics: electrical boxes, plumbing in the remaining bathroom on site, welding the gate to keep the land safe. Madre Grande is in a remote but somewhat precarious location, just a few miles from the border with Mexico there are often border patrol and other people driving the road through the property. In the months after the fires there were also issues with locals and lots of utility trucks around, along with the county support staff that hauled out 40 containers and truckloads of burnt ruins away from Dulzura.
The future is uncertain for Madre Grande; they have a long road ahead and many decisions to make for their best possible future. Moving and rebuilding would be a great challenge but they may no longer be able to fulfill their mission in their current state on this property. As they assess the cost of maintaining a spiritual retreat and monastery we look to what we can do as individuals to support these spaces with our time, talent and care. AMO friends have donated awesome gifts such as new hoses and faucets, showerheads and sprayers.
Words do not do this place justice.
What you see here now is gone.
Art, like the spirit, is a temporary collection of idea and expression in some public display of opportunity.
This place has given me so many opportunities, such a rich landscape to consider over the years. Many of my toughest struggles and greatest joys have been known in these fields, from my marriage to the handsomest husband to tears flowing in a hot sweat lodge as asthma and I work to have a parting of the ways. I am not yet detangled from this mess.
We feel so lucky to still have my home, my handsome husband, my friends Marta and Rob who joined us for the first journey and who took these amazing photos of Madre Grande to share with you.
These places sometimes enter our hearts and do not let go.
I sometimes want to remember Madre and her fire the way it can be....sweet, fun and full of laughter, my wedding night, almond champagne by the case, hundreds of friends in full formalwear as our fire performer friends hit the stage. Madre Grande once hosted a regional Burning Man event known as Xara....please enjoy this video from our 2006 wedding to see the life that this place has known...and will hopefully know again soon.
As with anything in this world, take the time to explore for yourself.
All I can say is oops....I did it again. I'll continue to do it, and love it. This community, the greater community that Madre represents, means more to me than just about anything on this particular planet. The sickness I felt at its loss has been healed by helping clean and cook up a better future.
As many of you know parts of my job include creating new media shorts and immersion experiences for large and small audiences. Some of my work is very much designed for a niche audience, in this case those interested in philanthropy, law and the unique community-building challenges that entangle our digital lives. This emerging field of study has been led by USC, MacArthur and others as we try to chart a productive course through the etheric digital universe.
While some wrestle with the relevance of these spaces I am always encouraged to see 100+ leaders gather together for honest dialogue without the cost of travel or carbon in the air. We can do far better and we will continue to learn how to maximize these experiences for the masses. I for one need to learn how to buy new hard drives faster to keep up with the machinima documentary flubug that keeps infecting my mouse trigger key....lost the bulk of the footage today to a full disk!
For today's address before the UN Climate Change Conference the congressman from Massachusetts chose to appear in Second Life rather than fly to Bali and address the crowd directly. His talk on climate change and the metaverse of possibilities echoes the policy reflected at globalwarming.house.gov
Rep.
Markey, head of the House's committee on climate change, fielded questions on education, conservation and the "use" of Nature.....should we consider nature something to be used until those resources no longer exist? Do we have a role in preserving land, planting new forests, considering the greening of our cities?
This historic speech in Second Life wants to prove a point about energy use and climate change. For Rep. Markey to address the crowd for 20 minutes in Bali would take 5.6 tons of carbon emitted in flight from Washington. How many were used in Second Life?
"The technology is moving so fast that this really is just the beginning." Daniel Nelson from OneWorld UK noted. Daniel is also featured at the end of this In Kenzo machinima video attached from today's interactive town hall meeting with Rep. Markey at OneWorld Meetings Island in Second Life.
Those of you who know our work know that we've stopped producing machinima over the last few months. There's a handful of reasons why we've put our machinima releases on hold for 2007:
1) Overheating laptops!
2) Waiting for Windlight
3) Hoping for a Machinima Camera for true broadcast-quality captures (see the pic at right from Hollywood Games Summit for the Gamecaster machinima camera)
4) Unreliable access to platforms and sims
You can help us take on at least one of these challenges by voting for Amoration in the Blackbird/Wikia challenge to win a new HP desktop with a water cooling system that claims to be up to the virtual world overheating challenge. Help us out and vote today, leave us comments and let's move this media forward!
By picking up music from our Goodstorm mixtape at right or by buying a tshirt from the AMO Goodstorm you are making a gift straight to the AMO Studio team. Thank you!
These shirts are available RL and SL and custom designs with your avatar picture or group name are available starting at $6000L. Imagine having the same shirt for you and your avatar....it's easy and can help us grow our nonprofit work too!
Thanks for sharing your awesome endeavors here; we'll look for you at the AMO Action Dance on Thursday night!
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.
In February the last traces of ManorMeta disappeared off Better World Island. Where did this mystical, mythical build end up? After NMConnect we started a new island called AMO Island that will be opening later this month for the Digital Be-In on BioMimicry cohosted in Second Life. The integral community has joined us on AMO and many visionary artists are now coming in to install unique interactive pieces to spark creativity, conversation and compassion amongst avatars.
The ManorMeta community has been nominated for the NetSquared Innovation Awards and you can vote for us THIS WEEK ONLY! Your vote (for up to 10 amazing projects including SL Relay for Life, Info Island, Avatar Action Center and many Omidyar Network endeavors) will go a long way to helping these new innovators grow into vibrant organizations.
So what is ManorMeta? Some call it our Living Learning Lab, a place where innovators connect and explore ideas from science and technology, art and music, spirit and creativity. ManorMeta includes a series written for youth designed to move from TV to web, print and educational gaming. We began building in Second Life in early 2006 and now with our new build will be anchoring a new community of creative leaders from the virtual world. ManorMeta is the place where rockstars, scientists, kids and world leaders can talk and work out solutions for positive change....anything is possible in this space! We encourage you to become a part of the story: get involved with our online forums or visit the Amoration website and photo galleries to see more of the ManorMeta world.
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