Song ‘Speeding Cars’ by IMOGEN HEAP (used with permission of the artist)

Medium rez 48MB MP4 download here

Special thanks to

• Song: IMOGEN HEAP
• Animations: Sinewave & Abramination
• Dance consultant: Richard James-Allen Physical.tv
• Nevada timelapse footage by Gary Hayes & Nadia Warner

Machinimatography, editing, avatanimation & concept by
Gary Hayes

LYRICS by Imogen Heap

Here’s the day you hoped would never come
Don’t feed me violins
just run with me through rows of speeding cars.
The papercuts the cheating lovers
The coffee’s never strong enough
i know you think it’s more than just bad luck

There there baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
Now now darling
oh don’t lose your head
cause none of us were angels
and you know I love you yeah

Sleeping pills know sleeping dogs lie
never far enough away
Glistening in the cold sweat of guilt
I’ve watched you slowly winding down for years
You can’t keep on like this…
now’s a bad a time as any

There there baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
Now now darling
oh don’t kill yourself
cause none of us were angels
and you know I love you yeah

it’s ok by me..

it’s ok by me..

it’s ok by me..it was a long time ago

it’s ok by me..

it’s ok by me..

it’s ok by me..it was a long time ago

There there baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
Now now darling
oh don’t lose your head
cause none of us were angels
and you know I love you yeah

There there baby
it’s just text book stuff
it’s in the ABC of growing up
Now now darling
oh don’t kill yourself
cause none of us were angels
and you know I love you yeah

There, that got your attention, in true call-to-action style! I went to an interesting panel discussion today down at the Electric Sheep tower about ‘alternate reality games’ in our world. There was an eclectric crowd such as one (devon1234 Allstar you know who you are) who insisted on setting off fireworks at the beginning (pic above), people wearing cubes on their heads and the omnipresence of DestroyTV, the sexy camerawoman broadcasting video (not just stills as in my other post) to the bio world at destroytv.com.

There is a link at the end of this post to a bio site run by SL’s Future Salon that explains the speaker’s connections to bio world games and those strange recorded ‘speech’ things, avies in a podcast? Still beyond me how this works. Anyway back to the event, panelists were skillfully moderated by Electric Sheep’s (ESC) own SNOOPYbrown Zamboni as they tackled the complex issues of running alternate reality games here in Second Life. Among the other panelists (shown in the images below) were Zero Grace, Adrian Vanalten, danhon Giles and Aip Pomegranate I believe, although they kept using their alternate names a lot, confusing? Anyway to the discussion.

Zero Grace (who is also known as Tony Walsh apparently) did a nice text introduction about ARGs while the audio was fixed:

“Over the last 12 years I’ve worked as an artist, writer, and designer primarily with web-based sites and games for the youth market. In the last few years I’ve been involved more heavily in game design. I designed game play and wrote storylines for two editions of Xenophile Media’s ReGenesis Extended Reality Game based on the Canadian TV series ReGenesis. and I was a game designer and writer on the Xenophile and Double Twenty co-produced ARG “The Ocular Effect” based on the ABC Family TV movie “Fallen.” My work in alternate reality gaming over the past couple of years has involved a heavy broadcast component and combines some traditional elements like puzzle design and interactive storylines with non-traditional elements like interactive video and working with gaming hooks embedded into broadcast TV.”

When the 90 minute panel really got going there were lots of issues and questions that kept coming up:

• How to devise a ‘game’ that truly plays against and parallel to the consensus reality of our world vs just a ‘treasure hunt’, and if this world is enough in itself (what a question!)
• How to make money (Linden dollars obviously) from running these games
• How hard and time consuming it is to develop a rich and deep narrative and keeping it going
• How to keep control of the ‘game’ as many players take it to areas you never considered possible
• How to make the media in this world, video, sound, text, im, chat, objects, outdoor media, role playing avies etc: etc: work together seamlessly – merged media.

The audience as they do were asking lots of parallel questions and comments (which I find intriguing as a parallel narrative) to the slightly ‘from another world’ audio. One that stood out was from Matthias Eisbar who in relation to a game where a player was set-up to play guitar in front of everyone, talked about the 4th wall and players trying to get behind the mask.

” There are serious privacy issues for any actors though everyone wants to pull back the curtain but breaking the 4th wall like this – sometimes the idea that it’s a game gives people the excuse to cross lines – what if he gets hit by a car getting the guitar?”

InKenzo also raised a point about writers for ARG’s

“writers must be embedded and fluent in ARG worlds….it will not work with two separate teams.” and on linking games “for ARG developers, why must it be competition? there are ways to float between worlds here and there’s no shortage of ways to link games”

I haven’t quoted much from the panelists themselves as they will be on the recording coming up at the Future Salon site which has more information from the bio world here.

Tomorrow looking forward to my friend DanCoyote Antonelli’s SkyDancers 2007 – I have a VIP seat at the 9pm performance, now wheres my glad rags

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from Inside Second Life – using OpenSource – SL Mail, Postie & Cron

The one just above and to the left is nearest Esperance and only about one minute to fly or five to sail. I noticed it was called Kittyland and decided to pop-over. There was no one there at the time and arriving it felt very residential until I spotted some reocgnisable platforms heading skywards in the distance.

Well its a small world. Here is good old DanCoyote Antonelli again – the main artist from the New West visit I did a few days ago. Weird. What a small world this is! All the other buildings on this double island are very residential, a few furries tree houses but mostly a sleepy domestic place. Getting nearer to the art work in the corner

and I spotted some great animated layered, texture works across the various floors. Very DCA. Here also references to his aeriel piece ZeroG on the notice boards – all very odd being just across the water from Esperance. I spotted again the art rubric

1st Generation:  Paintings, digital or otherwise uploaded into SL
2nd Generation: Art made with only SL default inventory materials
3rd Generation:  The synthesis of 1st and 2nd Generation and  scripting

Definitely 4th generation for me then as I am not keen on the 1st gen stuff.

Anyway great that this is my first island hop, a peaceful artistic community. Will report again from other local communities for now though something about that sixth finger thing I keep seeing everywhere…

The sixth finger symbolizes the computer cursor, or mankind’s intervention into the metaverse (VR).  The black hand itself attempts to make the connection between pre-historic artists who painted their own handprint on the walls of caves over 16,000 years ago and the similar efforts of artists today in the virtual world.
I have also used the sixth finger as a metaphor for human adaptation to the world of wonder we inhabit in Second Life.  Thanks Linden Labs and cheers to the whole community in Second Life!
DanCoyote Antonelli and DC@Spensley.com

I have heard about early mankind and someone once said it is similar to this world at the moment, I have no frame of reference but I do like the idea that I am the start of a new evolutionary path.

Posted by Gary Hazlitt from inside Second Life