Swim Venus
The ultimate chemical skin peel!
Updates from Vanessa Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Vanessa
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Vanessa
Waterfall on Venus
Taking a refreshing acid rain bath in one of the waterfalls on Kimika Ying’s Sister Planet at LEA29.
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Vanessa
Farm Animals
Next door to Kimika Ying’s Sister Planet is Lisa Asynja, Lor Asynja & Maxje Constantine’s Jomsborg which just had its grand opening on Saturday! Meanwhile, here’s me hanging out with the farm animals.
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Vanessa
DragonCon VR Edition!
EFF, io9, The Harry Potter Alliance, Southeastern Browncoats, The Baker Street Babes, Wattpad, & The Organization for Transformative Works all supported Project Secret Identity at DragonCon this weekend! They took photos on site, and VBCO participated remotely via a VR March on Saturday 30 August. We all had a lot of fun and made at least a small statement about basic human rights here in the 21st century.
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Vanessa
## Semi Factual A while back we were…
Semi-Factual
A while back we were talking about ideas like Counterfactual History and Creative NonFiction and blurring of fact and fiction. Christa really liked the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.
Today Madeline Raynor over at Mashable.com has written about “15 Captivating Autobiographical Books That Mix Fact and Fiction,” including O’Brien’s book.
http://mashable.com/2014/09/01/autobiographical-fiction/
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xtaforster
Thanks for this list, VB! I can use it with my 10th grade class, where I teach not only O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical book, but also Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, too. xo
Vanessa
Sister Planet
Kimika Ying (of Oceania Planetary Park where Virtual Ysidora danced last year) is working on a new installation, Sister Planet. It’s Venus. But not 2014 Venus. More like 1950 Venus with carnivorous plants and other mid-century fantasies. Ying’s also interested in taking the 19th century Steampunk sensibility and moving it forward to the 20th. Kind of like 1880 Steampunk & 2014 Planetary Science meeting in an alternative middle of the 20th century.
Anyway, Emma Pleyel-Maybe and I were hanging out there this week. We’re sitting on the rim of a surprisingly genteel, if active, volcano.
Vanessa Blaylock & Emma Pleyel-Maybe @ Kimika Ying’s “Sister Planet.”
Vanessa
DragonCon!
Project Secret Identity
Exciting News! EFF, io9, The Harry Potter Alliance, Southeastern Browncoats, The Baker Street Babes, Wattpad, & The Organization for Transformative Works are all supporting Project Secret Identity at DragonCon this weekend! If you’re there at Dragon Con in Atlanta, 29 August – 1 September, you can visit photo stations at the convention: EFF (Second floor at the Hilton) or Southeastern Browncoats (Table #1000 at AmericasMart).
VBCO Invites You 2 March!
For those of us who aren’t we can take our own pix and add them to the Project Secret Identity website. And for those who like to march, we can get together at 10am SLT on Saturday 30 August to carry our signs, march, and take pix. We’ll provide signs, or you can use our sign with pose and apply your own slogan (texture)
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Vanessa
Avatar Hangouts!
Photo: Bloom Girls by Thelma Felix.
Meetup! Hangout!
Kind of like Google Video Hangouts. But since you’re already in-world, you don’t actually need “Google Video.” Still, a great chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones. Kind of like a dance place without the dancing. But you can dance if you want to. Kind of like a philosophy discussion group without the philosophy. But you can talk philosophy if you want to.
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Ravanel
This looks cool! I missed the first hangouts… is this still happening?
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Vanessa Blaylock
OMG, it’s alive!?
The “first” one was pretty fun:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vaneeesab/sets/72157647595830605/I guess I wound up deciding to focus on “Other Projects” rather than do repeated hangouts… although it would be cool to do one in LOTRO!!
Last weekend I streamed for 24 hours straight!
http://virtualpublicart.com/vaneeesacamAnd next month we’re doing “Dawn” — it’d be really cool if you wanted to join in for that! We could all admire your pretty SL hair! 😀
http://virtualpublicart.com/events/activities/12/Long time no see! Hope all is well with You, Tiger, and the Laptops!
xo
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Vanessa
Hello Worlds
Worlds Ninja!
In a Virtual World you’re already chatting with your logged-in, in-world friends. But we don’t chat so often with offline friends. Or friends who frequent other worlds. Worlds Ninja is a quick, easy & asynchronous place to keep up with your peeps, where & when-ever they may be!
Image: Ninja by Dani VR
Vanessa
## Comments on Re search You may have…
Comments on .Re/search
You may have noticed over the months that the comments on .Re/search often put the wrong person’s face with the comment. We haven’t been able to resolve this and have now switched to “Disqus” comments for .Re/search.
It should pretty much function the same. New comments should avoid the wrong face issue. I’m not certain if it will be importing faces for the old comments or not, but at least they won’t be the wrong images. And it looks like it cleans everything up going forward. 🙂
Mke, and -
xtaforster
I tried commenting (I have a disqus), but I don’t see the comment yet. I’ll check again later.
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Vanessa Blaylock
Oh gosh, it’s always something! I don’t see your comment on .Re/search OR in the “moderation cue”… can you try another one?
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Mke
I haven’t done much coding of comments, but I have done some with avatars and bbpress.
My first thought would be to check if/how the site is cached.
Next step is to check a plugin conflict – minify, CDN, or something associated with Javascript.
Or if the site uses a comment related plugin check that.
The WP Codex says the avatar function is pluggable which means functions are easily overridden.
Outlier possibilities: document structure issue (open element tag), php loop error.
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Vanessa Blaylock
thanks Mike! We had a comment issue here on .Re/act in the past, that your comment would go under the wrong post! That turned out to be some issue with Jetpack Comments & this Houston / P2 theme. Turning Jetpack Comments off solved that.
Meanwhile, over on .Re/search we’ve always had a “wrong icon / avatar” issue. It’s intermittent. I’m thinking it might use the right avatar if the commenter is logged in to the website, and if not, it uses the author’s avatar for the commenter!? As far as I can tell, that’s an issue with .Re/search’s “Diablo” theme. Moving to Disqus may have been overkill, but it seems like it’s resolved (or driven over) that issue.
TY!
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Vanessa Blaylock
Since the “existing” comments have been “imported” to Disqus, your name and comments are still there, but it doesn’t automatically have your Icon / Avatar. (it will on any future comments)
If you go:
disqus.com > edit profile > mergingand “merge” your comments, then, voila! Your icon will “populate” all over .Re/search!
Vanessa
Kimika Ying: Sister Planet
Christa asked me for a link to Kimika Ying’s new installation
Sister Planet
Adventures on the world of Venus as it might have been.
Kimika Ying: Sister Planet
She’s actually just received her 5-month land grant and only started work here, but it’s a pretty compelling environment already. With the Site Dance course coming around again, I’m sure I’d like to do some work here!
• In-world SL-URL: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA29/166/121/22
• Website: venus-sisterplanet.blogspot.com
• Previous Installation: Oceania Planetary Park: oceaniaplanetarypark.blogspot.com
Vanessa
No Hangout with Andrea
Sadly we couldn’t get Andrea Foenander in our Google Video Hangout today. I tried to Text Hangout and it would let me 1-to-1 “hangout” with her, but it rejected her plus anyone else. IDK what the issue was. Perhaps a firewall at her university? I’ll try to “Hangout” with her from her Home/studio sometime and see if that was it.
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Andrea Foenander
Very disappointing to have missed today, my sincere apologies. I hope that I can rectify this before the next discussion. In the meantime I would like to send some info about the proposed event for September and invite all to participate in the discussion
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Vanessa Blaylock
So sorry we missed you today Andrea! Yes, perhaps we can work out the tech details on the Hangout.
And YES, your “September Event” sounds intriguing… I’m eager to see how it goes!
(maybe work on another name besides “September Event”? 😀
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Vanessa Blaylock
PS: I’m sure we’ll sort out the Google Hangout issue… but if all else fails, we do have a chat engine over on .Re/search:
http://practicebased.re/search/chat/
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Vanessa
Stop Me B4 I MOOC Again!
Hi Guys, I’ve somehow enlisted myself in 2 MOOCs starting in September.
From Stanford:
OpenKnowledge Changing the global course of learning
2 Sep – 12 Dec 2014
From CalArts / Coursera:
Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance Works
29 Sep – 14 Nov 2014
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Vanessa
Andrea Foenander
Michael’s invited Andrea Foenander to join us on Monday! Here’s the talk she gave at EZTV in April!
She’s got a lot of compelling ideas as well as an exciting upcoming project to tell us about. Ideas like
How would contemporary culture & art historical discourse be different if Charles Saatchi liked riding a bicycle through a virtual landscape instead of plopping formaldehyde sharks on gallery floors?
Michael has asked similar questions when he’s talked about all that art history has failed to include in recent times. For myself, I’ve felt that work with Virtual Reality & Virtual Worlds has existed in a space separate from the object production & commodity culture of the main art historical narrative.
An event like Burning Man exists largely off the art historical grid. It’s not much talked about in museums, galleries, art fairs. Yeah it’s had impact in so many ways, including inspiring Philip Rosedale to create his Virtual World. Famously, one of the key reasons Larry Page & Sergey Brin allowed Eric Schmidt to be CEO of Google, was because he’d been to Burning Man.
Does New Media want/need validation from Old Media? Or does it create its own independent cultural narratives?
Vanessa
Mixed Berry Shake hangouts 2014
Hangouts 2014
2nd Monday of the Month
• Aug 11 – facilitator: Michael
• Sep 8 – facilitator: Ciara
• Oct 13 – facilitator: Hugh
• Nov 10 – facilitator: Kate
• Dec 8 – facilitator: Vanessa
Nobody has to be a facilitator. Everybody is welcome to facilitate. You don’t have to do a lot, but you could pick a few topics and help juggle the hour.
Open Timetable in Google Drive
Pix
• Raspberries Macro by Liz West
• Reward for work: Blueberries by @rsseattle
• Kiwi by Sergiu Bacioiu
• Berries by Matt Becker
Michael J Masuci are discussing. -
Michael J Masuci
I will be sending out some topic ideas very soon. A scholar in London is creating an online seminar event that I’d like to try to get the Bluberry Shakers involved in doing a collaboartion for. I’ll give details at the Aug. 11 Blueberry Shake hangout.
See you all at the ‘shake’.
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Christa Forster
Vanessa
## Alien Baby I was delighted to be…
Alien Baby?
I was delighted to be “friended” by a distant RL cousin on FB yesterday… and then quickly horrified by her (to me) extremist neocon values.
It’s kind of shocking just how few, short posts it takes to convince me that we’re diametrically opposed on just about every Social, Political, Ideological, Cosmological-Philosophical-Theological dimension I can think of.
Of course I think my cousin is insane. But since she seems to reflect the majority values of my family, perhaps it’s not that she’s insane, but that I’m… hmm… an alien baby??
And then… wow… Alien Baby! What a great performance work that’d be.
I wonder how that piece might go…
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xtaforster
Are you putting this out there for the group to ponder as a possible group performance?
xo
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Vanessa Blaylock
yes I said yes I will Yes
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Vanessa
## Emoji Only Social Net If you use…
Emoji Only Social Net!
If you use this link to sign up, they’ll connect us when they launch! 🙂
http://emoj.li/#7aC97bGv7aC97bGT
Ciara are discussing. -
Ciara
Oh, thank you, Vanessa! This is great!! I updated my OS from snow leopard to mavericks last night, allowing me access a whole new world of pictograms and hieroglyphs 🙂
I’m an octopus on a bicycle (well, two bicycles, actually – so many limbs to arrange…)
This is the link I received in order to connect with friends: http://emoj.li/#7aC97bCZ7aC97bqy7aC97bqy-
Vanessa Blaylock
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Vanessa Blaylock
hey… how come my emoji’s not showin up? Oh no, we found .Re/act’s weakness!
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Ciara Finnegan
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Ciara Finnegan
Octopus-bike-bike not showing up for me either though it gives the illusion of display before posting in Safari whereas in Chrome the emoji display only as empty rectangles…Mysterious…
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Vanessa Blaylock
IDK… maybe it’s something about the text formatting of .Re/act’s “theme”… try Twitter! Works great there… I’ve sort of started my own Emoji only campaign on Twitter. Or, of course, anything on your mobile!
Hope 2CU on Emoj.li soon! 🙂
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Vanessa
## The Team is whoever comes to play…
The Team is whoever comes to play
Ciara made an interesting comment at the end of today’s hangout, that since she wasn’t one of the “Original Blueberries” she always felt a sort of “imposter complex” (my word not hers) about her participation.
It reminded me of why Richard Stallman left his beloved MIT AI lab and founded the Free Software movement. It all started the day Passwords arrived at the MIT AI lab. He hated the idea that someone who sat at the computer yesterday could have control over what someone who sat there today could do with it.
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Christa Forster
Interesting, Vanessa. Ownership is a very powerful force in the American experience, isn’t it?
Vanessa
ONE Night Video
Michael just sent over a video from our mixed reality collaboration with EZTV & Donna Sternberg & Dancers. TY!!
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Monerda Skute
Wow! The live dancers were wonderful. And they had a freaking drone flying around! How cool is that!?! Congrats to everyone involved in the production!
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Vanessa Blaylock
Yessy! Which color were you?? 🙂
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Vanessa
## Medici University on Facebook With MOOC Magazine…
Medici University on Facebook
With MOOC Magazine / Warhol coming out Saturday morning, 00:01am BST, now’s a great time to “like” MU on FB!
https://www.facebook.com/medici.university
Vanessa
Hugh’s SL Visit
Makin stuff in SL Sandbox with Hugh
Hugh came to visit today. We made some stuff in a sandbox and looked at some art installations. It went pretty well but after a while he had some sort of graphics lag or freeze.
Hugh, here’s some thoughts on that:
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Scott Lord
Good luck with your course on Research Papers, Hugh. I opted for British Literature, Communication Science and The Resurrection of Richard III (not Richard II) instead.
Sorry for any investigation into the world of college pranks and artistic deceptions that may have crossed your path, I’m actually a serious writer.
Vanessa
## 8 Months Just realized we started PBR…
8 Months!
Just realized we started PBR 8 months ago this week! Fast creeping up on a year. Whether it’s Medici assassination attempts, or Warhol confidantes trying to trash his legacy, we continue to live in such a divisive world. It was truly a special opportunity to meet so many generous peeps in PBR and to share ideas about art & culture with you all.
Thanks everyone!
xoxo
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Ciara
Crikey! Eight months! It’s an almost-birthday 😉
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Vanessa Blaylock
Yes! Crikey! (did you get that word from Oscar?)
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Ciara
Er…maybe…(He’s got a knack of putting words in my mouth!)
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Vanessa Blaylock
IKR! (he’s no dummy!)
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Ciara
He’s with me at the moment. We’re trying to knock our heads together for something for the July PBR MM issue…
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Vanessa Blaylock
Oh cool! It could be something new… or any of the work you created back then (assuming we can still find stuff from ’13! 😛
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Scott Lord
My Dear friend, Professor Talbot Rice is very impressed with your efforts. Now that you mention it, someone at a Boston University wrote a monograph that it was glaring that there were attempts upon the life of Queen Victoria Regina and that Sherlock Holmes was absolutely mum on the subject. Talbot has a buggieboo about historical artifacts- there’s a shoe on a statue he thinks is priceless as pieces of some historical art-what-objects-are-used-for before they become what we call ready-made. Like culture or society revolved around the manufacturing of slippers in Persia. No theories on whether the real Queen Victoria was left handed and her twin sister was righthanded and converted to Communism and then Hinduism, more that it was just her liver.
Vanessa
Time Zones
To help our global colleagues meetup at the same time, here’s a little conversion chart for a city near you!
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Hugh
That’s great thanks Vanessa. I am California +11 GMT+4
Vanessa
ONE Night Pix
Monerda Skute (pink) & Trilby Minotaur (blue) VR dancing on the side of a building as LED illuminated dancers perform on the ground.
Oh wow! We never knew we were on! We waited from 8-11pm waiting for our cue, and were told a few times, You’re on in 5 minutes, but we thought we’d never been cued. Apparently, we were on! For about 1/2 hour they tell me. We never were cued to do Section 3, the most animated and live portion of the performance, but as you see here, Monerda, Trilby, Harmony & Scarlett were projected in gigantic splendor in the outdoor performance in Los Angeles celebrating the anniversary of EZTV.
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Monerda Skute
I apologize for duplicating my comments, just realized I wanted to say congrats here. Not enough caffeine yet 😀 “Michael, Van and fellow cast: It is so cool that your dance performance was a success and congrats about LA Weekly giving it Top 5 honors! We avatars had fun despite anxiously awaiting our cue 🙂 The projection photos look great and I can’t wait to see video. I bet the RL dancers were super!”
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Vanessa Blaylock
duplicate comments? Can you have too much of a good thing? 😀
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Vanessa Blaylock
Dear anyone reading – I’d love your thoughts!
The projection you see is avatars on a “white” background. Technically an SL “white” but not “full bright” white. I thought “full bright” might cause gamma issues with the on-site projector.
I thought about a Black background – this would have been cool in that instead of illuminating the whole side of the building, we’d only have avatars up there dancing. My fear was that the dancer’s bodies tend to roll into shadow, so with a black background you’d only get 2/3 of a body or so with the rest disappearing into shadow.
So, the white background felt, all things considered, aesthetically preferable.
What do you think?
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Scar
i think its pretty cool either way good job us!
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Vanessa Blaylock
Thanks again Scar! And Harm, Moni & Trilby! Haha, I didn’t realize we were on… but hey… you guys look great! 😀
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Christa Forster
I liked what Kate Johnson had to say today in the Mixed Berry Shake hangout: they both worked in different ways — the black background featured the dancers as floating on the surface; the white background highlighted the dancers beautifully.
Vanessa
## Mixed Berry Shake 4 June This Monday…
Mixed Berry Shake 4 June!
This Monday, 9 June ’14
9-10am California Time
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Got a topic for discussion? Add it as a comment to this post and I’ll put it on the agenda!
Vanessa
Well the cameraperson just disappeared without a word…
Well… the cameraperson just disappeared without a word… so it would seem that we’re not going on…
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xtaforster
Oh, no! Want update soon….
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Michael Masucci
The event actually went very well! The audeince loved it and the city has asked us to make it an annual event if we’d like.
Turns out the delays in Fly By going on had to do with Donna’s costumer accidentally cutting the wire on one of the illuminayed costumes. This actually made time for the volunteer Jackie to arrive and set-up the SL laptop. She was very nervous and that may have translatted overseas to Van and her group.
I sent Van some images of her dancers both being projected 45′ wide to the audience as well as onto the aerial balloon which was not originally expected. But sincve the tech team was waiting for costumes to get fixed, they made additional switching sp that Van could swicth back from the balloon to the Library wall.
The event was named one of the 5 top dance picks for that weekend by the LA Weekly, in a townj where an awful lot of dance takes place each week.
Sorry if there was any confusion. I was stuck waiting in the wings to perfoam live music for Fly By, so was not in the loop, and Kate was dealing with re-programming the evening to keep the event running smoothly for the crowd while waiting for Donna to fix her outfilt.
The audience of course never suspected anything was ever wrong and everyone appreciated what went down.
Thanks Van!
P.S. now that this three-month long series oif evenst is over I plan to resume contributing to PBR.
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xtaforster
So happy it all worked out! When Van posted her comment above, I mused on how many things can “go wrong” or — more accurately — cause stress when technology is a component in performance, which is amazing, because performance is already stressful enough (but in a good way, of course). 🙂
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Monerda Skute
Michael, Van and fellow cast: It is so cool that your dance performance was a success and congrats about LA Weekly giving it Top 5 honors! We avatars had fun despite anxiously awaiting our cue 🙂 The projection photos look great and I can’t wait to see video. I bet the RL dancers were super!
Vanessa
OMG Still waiting to go on You can…
OMG Still waiting to go on!!!
You can cut the tension with a knife!!
Vanessa
ONE Night VR Costumes
Trilby, in the wardrobe, with ponytail, and optional stars
Our VR Costumer Trilby found some stars that can go with the wardrobe.
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xtaforster
So lovely!
Vanessa
ONE Night Costumes
ONE Night Costumes, front
Hi Trilby, here’s what the RL costumes are going to look like. They’re not completely done yet, and the dancer in turquoise doesn’t have her LED lights on, but you can get an idea of what they are like.
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xtaforster
Hello! Is there a portal for the virtual audience today/tonight? Break a leg!!
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Vanessa Blaylock
It appears that then don’t have any broadband internet at the venue and are doing it all by WiFi connection. They don’t think they have enough bandwidth to stream our avatars IN to the venue and also stream the event OUT on Ustream, so, sadly, neither you nor the VR dancers will be able to see what’s going on! 😛
However Michael does say they’ll record video of the event and have it online some days later.
Happy June!
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Ciara
Best of luck to the performers in both locations! I look forward to seeing Michael’s documentation.
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xtaforster
As do I!!
Vanessa
ONE Night – Projection
Photo by Nimbin Mardi Grasses
For the video feed TO your giant projector, it should definitely be a laptop running Second Life. This will be vastly higher quality than any sort of external live stream. For the video feed FROM ONE Night, it’s less critical for us, anything will let us see what’s going on and help cue. A better image is nice of course, and it’d let some remote viewers join in.
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Ciara Finnegan
Wow! This sounds like a really fantastic collaboration! I’m looking forward to 31st:-)
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Michael J Masucci
Thanks so much! Very helpful. I will share all this with the tech team and will get back to you next week with any questoins. We are so happy that you are going to be a BIG (pun intended) part of ONE Night and Fly-By.
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Vanessa Blaylock
Great Michael!
Just realized I made one mistake: the VR Cinematographer, can’t be the VR Stage Manager – or at least can’t be on the same laptop – whatever’s on their laptop screen will be the live projection, therefore they can’t open a chat window to talk to us, or it would project on the building. So we’ll need to be cued in some other way.
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Aero Bigboots
AlexandreLois1
Ananda Crystal
Andrea Foenander
astrid
Aunt Renie
Aurelia Scheppers
Christa Forster
Ciara Finnegan
Bird on a Cyber Twig
Diptheria
Donnie Archer
Edie
Elle
Emma
Elizabeth Taylor Swift
Fanny
FeelsEmpty
Glad Kidd
Izzy
Jade Ravenheart
Kate Nova
Ken Doll
Mary Anning
Meg O'Ryan
Michael Masucci
Mireille
Molly Ross
Monerda Skute
Myra
Neeva
Newton
Michel Nostradamus
Oona
Oscar
Owen
Patrick J. Sweetman
Paypabak Writer
Pearl Grey
Rebecca Narum
rmarie
Ryan
Scarlett Luv
Sello Tape
Serra Qendra
Teresa of Avila
The Knight
Tiffany Mosienko
TrilbyM
Tullia Aragona
Vanessa
veyot
wendz tempest
Xue
Yellow Fever
Ysidora Pico
Yves
Zsophia
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