This morning I finally got around to watching the much vaunted Second Skin trailer about MMORPGs. I feel that the framing of the whole thing is wrong. Though virtual worlds have objective dimensions (the code, the UI, the subscribers, the paratext–by which I mean forums, blogs, guild sites, etc.), “virtual world” is also an intellectual…
Shaowen Bardzell (my illustrious collaborator and spouse) and I recently wrote an article entitled, “Intimate Interactions: Online Representation and Software of the Self,” which has just been published in Interactions magazine. In it, we argue that online representations do not always represent our offline selves, and it is a mistake to think they should always…
I have mixed feelings about posting this video, and WordPress won’t let me paste the object/embed code–not sure what’s up with that, so here’s a link instead: http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/ifc/2008/01/23/sundance_newfrontier/index.html It is supposedly a work of “multimedia art” (in the words of the usually hip Salon.com), shown at the usually hip Sundance, which shows how virtual sweatshop…
Read more Lame and Obvious Multimedia Art or Novel Ecommerce Prototype?
Holy transcoding, Lev! One of the interesting recent developments in Second Life fashion is the increasing extent to which programming and automation are a part of virtual dress-up. An interesting example of this is a line of clothing from one of Second Life’s greatest and oldest design houses: PixelDolls. What initially caught my attention was…
Read more Wearable Computing: Automation and Fashion in Second Life
Interaction Culture 