[iDC] The SL Unleashing.

Wed Jan 13 15:50:10 UTC 2010

As I watch, bemused, the unfolding of SL Enterprise – which seems to be to
be at best half-baked – my biggest concern is that the creation of this
expensive option might ultimately result in LL withdrawing the support they
have proffered to non-profits and educational institutions via discounted
rates for island sims and services. I hope that will not be the ultimate
end. 

In the meantime, we are pursuing our more serious projects, which don’t
really require access to the “greater SL user community” on Reaction Grid.

DD

From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [mailto:idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net]
On Behalf Of Mechthild Schmidt
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 8:04 PM
To: micha cardenas / azdel slade
Cc: idc
Subject: Re: [iDC] The SL Unleashing.

Micha and list,

Your experience with LL bureaucracy is not what I would have expected. My
supportive mail was based on small to mid-scale student projects, my own art
work and my general support of open source and the community it fosters.
None of my uses require extensive research - 

... So I humbly adjust my view on LL support of academia.

Best,

Mechthild Schmidt

On Jan 12, 2010, at 2:34 PM, micha cardenas / azdel slade wrote:

I forgot to add, but wanted to share, about the university/artist pricing...
To be totally safe, let's say that I have a close friend who recently
started working on a project with a local medical school to do simulations
for hospitals of expensive things like evacuations and difficult things like
pandemic virus outbreaks. Their group was in discussion with linden labs
about getting a grid/nebraska server, but  it was hugely expensive (55k) and
the restrictions were outrageous. Not only were they not allowed to even
have access to the command line on the machine or install any software, they
said they were responsible for backup (how, if we can't install backup
software or access the database???) because they were "likely" to lose all
of our data (scripts and objects) any time there was a software upgrade.
They also worded the contract so that they own any "derivative works" and
the group owns "artistic output" but were very vague about what that meant,
only saying that "artistic output" means video, images and sounds, but
refusing to say that the group owns what they'd actually be spending most of
their time building, scripts and objects. After that insane debacle they
decided to put our energy into researching opensim and that's where they're
headed now. 

I could go on and on, but that would bore you, and it was totally clear that
linden labs is only interested in building up a walled garden, and they
treat corporate/educational customers with their own grid machines the same
as opensim, as a terrifying "outside" to be kept as separate as possible. 

2010/1/11 micha cardenas / azdel slade <azdelslade at gmail.com>

Hi all, 

I just wanted to chime in quickly, because I'm swamped this week... Thanks
for mentioning my work earlier, I really appreciate it. (and liz, i'm a she!
;-)  )  Stephanie mentioned to me that I should pop in here and the
discussion has been very engaging already. 

It seems like this is often a problem new media artists are faced with, or i
feel faced with, is wanting to engage a critique of technology by using that
technology, and the danger of advertising that technology or being the
avant-garde that leads to later commodification. I see often in San Diego
these cheap little minicars with GPS audio tours of the city and think of
how locative media has been commodified that way. Or the other day I bought
my first online video through amazon because I couldn't find episode 12 of
fringe anywhere else, and it was exactly like all the other sites,
megavideo, etc, except with a $2 charge. In that case, the pirates
totallypaved the way for a profitable service and amazon reaps the rewards. 

So I often find people looking at my work and thinking I love second life or
I'm promoting it in a way. But I still hope that I can subvert the original
intention of these technologies for something I think is more ethical or
positive. Like when I used an HMD in my performance, all the ad's for HMD's
are military guys training for warfare, not transgender / transexual people
developing new genders. Or similarly with the Transborder Immigrant Tool, I
think we're using the GPS system, deployed by the US military, to subvert
borders, not exactly their intended use. 

I have a lot of strong critiques of linden labs, but my hope is that they're
just the AOL before the Internet, as I wrote in this series of articles:

http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2008/08/01/_a-warcry-for-birthing-sy
nthetic-worlds_-part-1/
http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2008/08/08/_a-warcry-for-birthing-sy
nthetic-worlds_-part-2/
http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2008/08/15/_a-warcry-for-birthing-sy
nthetic-worlds_-part-3/

and that soon we can all move towards opensim and a distributed, more
"democratic" or horizontal metaverse where we control the servers and all
kinds of new possibilities will open up. 

Until then, I still use SL largely for a question of audience. Its hard
enough to get people to an event in SL, I think (and when they do show up
the sim crashes), than to get them to reconfigure their viewer to log in to
Opensim. 

I just try, when I talk about my work, to talk about the critiques, how SL
can be a space of freedom with regards to gender or bodies, but it can also
be a space of hyper racism and sexism without consequences, and it can be a
great space to build your dreams for fee, but it is also a hyper commodified
space where most people buy everything including their eyes and skin. But of
course no medium is without problems, or platform, I guess a big part of the
question is how well our work brings the inherent
inconsistencies/contradictions/conflicts/joys in things to life...

Ok, once I get through more of this week I'll chime in on the discussion of
DAC...

Thanks!!!

  micha

2010/1/11 Mechthild Schmidt <mschmidt at nyc.rr.com>

LL gives all academic and not-for-profits a 50% discount on land/island
purchases.

That is quite a discount. Most other cost (outside of advertizing) such as
services, objects, scripts are sold by other SL members not by LL.

The pennies of upload costs for media do not deserve mention.

I believe LL should be a 'model citizen' and promote fair working conditions
(I'm sure someone from LL is following this topic).

But (unless the transgressions are egregious) I do separate the company from
the product they make.

While wondering myself if SL has stagnated in their development or made
unwise turns in their management philosophy, I feel there is too much
Linden-bashing in these posts. 

So I feel compelled to come to the defense of SL:

To me SL is a wonderfully creative tool with a very low learning curve for
basic tools.  I do not expect Maya functionality in a real-time app. The
camaraderie was mentioned already. SL brings together like-minded people
across cultures (though anglo-american dominated). It is far from perfect,
but it has much potential if the development keeps up with other virtual or
social media platforms.

I find it actually quite a compromise between commercialism and altruism. I
do not know of another platform with that extent of functionality,
popularity, accessibility etc that has the option to be free of charge at a
low level. I know WOW has free servers - but you do not own the assets, a
hugely important aspect to me.

Yes, I have a laundry list of complaints - but bottom line LL provides me
with a very affordable, creative tool that they support and develop. Of
course they have to have commercial clients. It would be naive to think they
could exists from just the artistic and academic community alone, such as
Allan's $14 or my own frugal ways. In fact we are piggy-backing on the
financing of the likes of IBM. 

So let's play nice and share some of our ideas and playbor.

(For the record - nobody pays me to write this)

Best,

Mechthild Schmidt

Mechthild Schmidt

Degree coordinator, Clinical Associate Professor

Digital Communications and Media

McGhee Division, New York University

726 Broadway, #669

New York, NY 10003

mschmidt at nyu.edu

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----

on cost of climate bills: 

“... take into account ... the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of
the human race. Period.”   

Kevin Parker, global head of
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/deutsche_bank_ag/inde
x.html?inline=nyt-org> Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate
policy. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09cost.html?th
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09cost.html?th&emc=th>
&emc=th

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On Jan 10, 2010, at 11:33 AM, Lynn Hershman wrote:

The original linden folks were committed to the arts and offered student

art competition with not only free land but $5000.00 prizes.  Also helped

in an installation at the Venice biennalle,

San Jose tech museum and my installation at sf moma.

I am not sure if this continued when the new administrators  came in.

Simon Biggs wrote:

I am not aware of Linden sponsoring any academic institutions or research

projects. However, they do make free land available for one off

time-limited

educational activities. I considered that as a taster to attract deeper

(paying) involvement, but perhaps it is part of a larger marketing

strategy?

Best

Simon

Simon Biggs

Research Professor

edinburgh college of art

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk

www.eca.ac.uk

Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments

CIRCLE research group

www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

simon at littlepig.org.uk

www.littlepig.org.uk

AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk

From: helen varley jamieson <helen at creative-catalyst.com>

Reply-To: <helen at creative-catalyst.com>

Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:22:04 +1300

To: 'idc' <idc at mailman.thing.net>

Subject: Re: [iDC] The SL Unleashing.

linden must also benefit enormously from all the academic research

that's been done into/around SL; i wonder, does linden fund/sponsor

anything, or are the universities/researchers paying for their land etc

as well as donating the research?

helen

ricardo at ambriente.com wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I'm not on Second Life although I'm one of those people who created an

avatar long ago and didn't return to it.

I'm writing now, because when I read about critical artists using SL,

I'm

dumbfounded by the lack of criticality toward Linden Lab, their

treatment

toward employees and that artists using SL are uncritically contributing

to a commercial product with questionable ethics.

I'm largely writing from the position of an educator who has seen

talented, young students eagerly take jobs with Linden Lab only to be

overworked and underpaid - taken advantage of for lack of professional

experience.  Linden Lab has a history of hiring young talented college

graduates, paying them a low salary and demanding well over 8 hours a

day.

 Kids stick with the job, because they think it will lead them

somewhere.

I find this treatment of young artists entirely unethical.  And it's

disappointing to here of critically engaged artists using a corporate

platform without a critical perspective toward the corporation that they

are playing tribute to by contributing to its environment and popularity

while it mistreats its employees.

ricardo

--

____________________________________________________________

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst

helen at creative-catalyst.com

http://www.creative-catalyst.com

http://www.avatarbodycollision.org

http://www.upstage.org.nz

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-- 
micha cárdenas / azdel slade

Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Artist/Researcher, Experimental Game Lab, http://experimentalgamelab.net
Calit2 Researcher, http://bang.calit2.net

blog: http://transreal.org

-- 
micha cárdenas / azdel slade

Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Artist/Researcher, Experimental Game Lab, http://experimentalgamelab.net
Calit2 Researcher, http://bang.calit2.net

blog: http://transreal.org

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