Fun with robots and donuts

Friends Bibi and Count Bayliss are the happy, over-worked owners of a set of sims that I became acquainted with via racing. On one of said sims, Snowpeach, Count set up an homage to renowned British motorsport venue Brands Hatch, which we use in both MotoSL and FormulaSL. But this post isn’t about racing, it’s about the Museum of Robots next door on Kubrick. This is a comprehensive, well-curated and polished display of the electromechanical cybernetic stars, sidekicks, and villains from Hollywood classics and the shelves of toy stores all over the world. It’s all there, from Metropolis’s Maria to the Terminator, infinity and beyond!

Eric Joyner and Bibi Baylis: a conversation at MoR

Now Count and Bibi have put together an art exhibition of the work of Eric Joyner, based on the artist’s forthcoming book, Robots and Donuts. On the evening of Monday the 15th Eric was on hand to open the exhibit, graciously taking time away from his Famous Artist Duties to present a talk, and then engage in a Q&A with the gathered throng.

So you missed that bit, but chin up: the exhibit will run through August, so just go browse the collection, ok? And take a look at Eric’s website and blog. Maybe read this article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the man’s work. See what’s up at the San Jose Museum of Art, where Joyner is a part of current show “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon“. Or pick up a copy of Robots and Donuts (in pre-release) on Amazon! This is seriously fun stuff. Seriously.

New home, same old look

I’ve moved, but you’d never know to look at the place. My old “home” on Hotgates has undergone a change in ownership at Stanford, passing to the care of the Stanford Libraries as an archival site along with NEWare, the adjacent project space island that was the Humanities Lab’s initial foray into Second Life. Hotgates is still open, and looks the same as it did before, but with its new role as project memory it no longer serves my needs for project development, experimentation, and general goofing off.
So now I have Hotspot! Initially, it’s pretty much a duplicate of Hotgates, although I expect the two islands will diverge rather quickly. But the galleries for the Revolutionary Tides and Crowds projects, the Asian-American Art exhibit, the Life Squared pavilion referencng the Dante Hotel and Roberta Breitmore projects, all will remain as long as they’re of interest.
Here are a couple snapshots of Hotspot, Day One:

A “Type One” island freshly transformed with Hotgates’ RAW terrain file.

Sundeck, Buddha garden, and beach pavilion in place: first things first!

So far, so good. Y’all come!

SpeedLimits: a centenary

In 1909, Italian poet Filippo Marinetti published “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” in Le Figaro. In 2009 the Stanford Humanities Lab (SHL) and our partners will inaugurate a critical and speculative examination of this movement, in the form of an exhibition named Speedlimits.

Speedlimits is a mixed-reality exhibition focused on the pivotal role played by speed in modern life. The exhibit will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Italian Futurist movement, whose inaugural manifesto proclaimed “the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”

We’ll begin teaming with the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA), with an installation in their museum in Montréal. In a reversal of normal procedure, this real life exhibit will serve as secondary source support for the primary show, a virtual-world, extended version of the real-world exhibition spaces. Following the CCA show, we’ll move on to the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami, to be followed by other venues in North America.

The images here are of a model of the Montréal CCA space I’ve set up on Hotgates, SHL’s island in Second Life. I’ve populated it with imagery relating to some of the themes we’ll be examining within the broad context of the modernity/speed equation. When it’s complete, in addition to the replicated RL galleries, we’ll present a number of virtual galleries with no physical equivalent, some curated by critics and scholars, and others reserved for visitor-generated content and curatorial concepts. We’ll be conducting international design competitions for this part, and we’ll have some kind of “press kit” with guidelines for content development (tech specs, genres, curatorial aims…). I think this is going to be a lot of fun, expect to hear more on the subject in the coming months.

MotoSL Season 3 awards party

Saturday morning: everything in place, waiting for the crowd.

The MotoSL awards party finally got taken care of this weekend, after a couple of delays. The first season’s event happened the same day as the last race, down by Les White’s bait shack on Misp. That was a logistical nightmare, getting trophies and plaques engraved with names of riders whose ranking in the championship wasn’t decided until that day!

Season two was a bit more organized, with a week between the last race and party time. I hosted the event on Hotgates, Vince did some nice trophies, lots of people showed up to collect their gold, and a lot of us stuck around afterwards to soak in the hot tub and schmooze.

This year, planning was a bit more “relaxed”. The last race of the season was at PSU, on March 8th, and management took an extra week to get all the loose ends tucked in. Worth the wait: we had nearly 30 avs on hand at Hotgates this time, celebrating the new champions. I’ve put up a few more pictures here, hope you enjoy them. See you all next season!

A bringing up to date

[To my dear friends in and out of SL: thanks, for all your love and kindness. ]

Over 3 months without a post, and it feels like longer. It’s been a busy time, but for one reason and another it’s been hard to sit down and do an entry here. The biggest news, I suppose, is that health issues in RL have had a significant impact on my SL self. My racing season went downhill in a big way starting in January, when I lost a good deal of hand dexterity and sensation and also quite a lot of time, in hospital and unable to practice. Not the way I wanted to end my MotoSL season, certainly. And I never imagined it would actually mean bowing out of RaceSL competition completely, but that’s been the upshot. So for now I’m an ex-racer, but I’ll continue to be involved in the racing scene, with some sort of series management duties to be determined. And maybe by the time MotoSL4 comes around, I’ll be back in the saddle again.

In the meantime, I’ve found that all those hours I’m not spending at the track looking for a tenth of a second to shave off my lap times are actually pretty useful for getting other things done. I’ve got some interesting new building projects to talk about, so stick around, and I promise the next post won’t take 3 months to appear here.

A somewhat more ambitious build: d.school at Stanford

Hotgates is getting crowded! I’ve been contributing some SL mock-ups for colleagues at the recently configured Design Institute at Stanford, laying out some optional floorplans for the upcoming interior renovation of their building on the central campus.This is the first option, of three provisional designs. When I offered to do this on Hotgates, I didn’t realize just how big it was going to be! It’s not quite a quarter-sim in area, but it’s close. Prim count is up there, too…That’s the full set, 3 days later. From this, following some walk-throughs and machinima presentations, the d.school people can pick and choose among some alternative layouts for different bits of the building, and then I can get to work on a model of the final design.

Silk Bamboo’s new reiki clinic

Over the weekend my good friend Silk Bamboo introduced me to a recent discovery, a bit of Portland, Oregon in Second Life. This is a very nice place in so many ways: the quality of the reproduction of Portland landmarks and ambiance, the abundant good nature of the developers and occupants, and the social worthiness of the entire enterprise. You can read a great article in the online Oregonian here (with a balanced view of SL, as a bonus), and watch a very nice promo machinima on YouTube here.

Silk was offered space to set up shop in this virtual Portland as part of their small business incentive program. She graciously offered me the chance to lend a hand with building her clinic, so I put together a minimalist structure that suited her needs and fit in with the local theme and architecture. This is the first thing I’ve built in SL that isn’t for my RL lab or some research project! So now all you stressed out, bothered and uncentered avatars can go to Silk Bamboo Health for your reiki treatments: “energy healing and balancing” by a true professional.

Here Silk is administering the clinic’s inaugural treatment to Ty Magpie, the driving force behind the creation of NW 21st Avenue, Portland Oregon. This sim is a treat, visit!

Wrapping up FormulaSL Season 1

There was some great racing at the FSL season closer on Saturday at Snowpeach, but it could’ve been a better finale for OMG Racing, certainly. Silk and I had our worst combined finish of the season to close it out with a whimper.  Congratulations to Jafo Tendaze for his driver’s championship (sewed up with one race to go, last week at PSU, actually), and to Jafo and Crippy Oh’s Archer Racing for taking the team title.

Teammate Silk was on Crippy Oh’s tail in the drivers’ championship going into the race, only 4 points behind, but a 6th place finish spoiled her late-season run on 4th overall. I was too far back from Jafo’s championship-leading points tally to catch up, and in turn I was out of reach of any contenders for my second spot for the season overall, but I managed to throw away what looked like a sure race win in the closing laps. From first to fifth in a heartbeat! (You can read Les White’s race report here, and review the final point standings here.)

Well, that’s racing, and this season provided some of the best. OMG Magazine finished second in the team ranking, after making a run at Archer in the latter part of the season that saw us pull well clear of third-placed Codename Denmark. I ended up second overall in driver points, Silk in fifth. We’ll be baaaack!

Pre-season MotoSL racing gets underway

After a very long hiatus, MotoSL 3 kicked off last Saturday with a practice race at the PSU track. It was a chance to show off the new OMG bikes and the team’s nice leathers provided by sponsor Szentasha Fashions, and also to get together with a few of the oldtimers I’ve been racing with since the latter part of Season 1. In the pic above, left to right, that’s Matt Kraken, Dena Dana and Gianluca Mahoney warming the bench next to me before qualifying gets started.  Race Director Les White is in the background, making it all happen.

It felt great to be back on the bike in competition again. I qualified on the front row, a few tenths behind Jafo Tendaze, and thanks to a badly-considered gearing change on the grid I had the displeasure to watch him pull gradually away from me on the first lap. Damn, I hate when I do that. But as I crossed the line on lap 2, the timer said I was in first place! Ever the gentleman, Jafo contrived to crash on his second lap, and handed me the lead. From that point on, it was just a matter of circulating at a reasonable pace and not running off the track. Crippy Oh and Jafo joined me on the podium (well, in the pits near the podium anyway: it was a pretty informal day) in second and third spots.

One more test race in a week or two, then the points chase begins. It should be an exciting season! Check out the RaceSL site for a few action pics.

OMG’s MotoSL3 team bikes are done.

Ace modeler, texturer and procrastinator Vincent Nacon (that’s the proud daddy admiring his handiwork) finally found some slack in his busy schedule to squirt the paint on the OMG Magazine team bikes for the impending MotoSL 3 season. Definitely worth the wait, Vince did a great job of applying my annoyingly complicated design to SL’s fussy prims.

Of course teammate Xia Mirabeau and I had to do a bit of vamping on the new toys. Here we are on the quay at Les White’s Misp Shipyard, all dolled up in our custom Szentasha Fashions leathers (sponsor plug!), ready to roll. The bikes should be in the rezzers starting today!