Lives Online: CyberCultural Studies

By our class meeting on April 20th, you are to accomplish the following:

• Develop 3 substantially different avatars and be able to switch among them on the fly (this will involve creating a folder for each in your inventory that you can drag onto your avatar to instantly change)
• Add 3 Second Life users who are not members of The Cultured group to your friends list (this means that these 3 users will have to accept your offer of friendship)
• Build and keep an object in Second Life
• Develop your profile

We’ll be spending time in Second Life as a class between now and then, but you will also have to spend time outside of class to get them all done.

Good luck!

Since we’re moving into Second Life after spring break, I thought now would be a good time to look at some of the Digital Dartboard entries for SL.

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This week’s Friday Machinima is a blast from the recent past — it’s the machinima video from the midterm exam!

And for more on Text 100, check out their web site. Or watch this (non-machinima) video from Text 100 about branding in virtual worlds:

(x-posted to Digital Digressions)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has reached an agreement with YouTube to create 3 new “channels” on YouTube that will feature BBC content.

This, of course, after another mass media giant, Viacom, issued cease-and-decist letters to YouTube forcing YouTube to remove over 100,000 videos Viacom claims are its copyrighted property.

Now here’s an interesting question: if you’ve briefly heard about the BBC deal and want to learn more, which of the following news stories would you feel most comfortable with:

• The BBC News article
• Yahoo! News’ reprinting of an Associated Press release
• MacWorld Magazine’s news article

And why?

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0..9

Click the link below to get to the second edition of the Digital Dartboard series.

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This week’s Friday Machinima picks up on the ideas we’ve been talking about in class about the tensions between only observing and actively participating in online communities.

There’s been a lot written about online spaces and online games, but not much of this high-level discourse has been done inside these spaces. This Spartan Life changes that. It’s a talk show that features various famous digital theorists, artists, and game designers, and it’s recorded entirely within the virtual world of multiplayer online Halo. (Click this link or the image below to go to episode 1 of This Spartan Life.)

Damian Lacedaemion, DJ Octobit, and the Solid Gold Elite Dancers are your guides to some of the smartest talk around about “the finer aspects of life, music, art, sex, movies and yes, even games.” And it’s all dipped and fried in a golden batter of Halo goodness. Frag-tastic!

There are four episodes so far, but I’m linking you to the first one to get a better feeling for the project. The other episodes are here.

(X-posted to Digital Digressions)