Linden Labs to Third Party Viewers: "Get Lost"

This just in from Linden Labs: they've changed their Third Party Viewer policy. They claim that some of the changes have to do with privacy (I'm not convinced they're legitimate privacy issues, but OK). But one change has nothing to do with privacy -- it's strictly intended to squash innovation:

2.k: You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

LL will break many of TPV features in the next few days. So goodbye region windlights until LL's own viewer gets that feature ... if it ever does. Region windlights were an extraordinary boon to the arts community. [EDIT: see discussion in comments.]

The announcement adds,

We encourage Third Party Developers to continue innovating with unique user interfaces, niche features, and ways of interacting with the virtual world, and we look forward to working in partnership with developers on ideas they have for new or improved shared experiences for all of Second Life. We want to incorporate more innovative new features into Second Life to improve the experience for all users, and we encourage TPV developers to submit proposals through our standard process.

Yeah, right. It's horseshit. Basically all TPVs are allowed to do is tinker with the user interface and a couple of other things.  And as I read it, if the TPV developers come up with ideas, basically they have to work for Linden Labs for free.

See the Phoenix announcement for more.

Honour McMillan on Split Screen, also photos

Honour McMillan has written an excellent post on shellina's and Pinkpink's installations at Split Screen ... which is a good thing for me, given my continuing inability to find time to write my own blog post on them.

But at least now I have a few pictures:

shellina Winkler: Apocalypse 2012: Who's Afraid of the End of the World?

Pinkpink Sorbet: Lots of Nybbles

shellina Winkler and Pinkpink Sorbet at Split Screen During February

During February, Split Screen  is hosting shellina Winkler's "Apocalypse 2012: Who's Afraid of the End of the World?" and Pinkpink Sorbet's "Lots of Nibbles." I have no time to blog right now, but Quan Lavender wrote two excellent posts so read them instead!

Post on shellina
Post on Pinkpink

Here's the SLURL to the entrance.

And another one bites the dust....

An addendum to my last post: Flora Nordenskiold, who ran the Nordan Art Gallery, just announced that she has left Second Life entirely. She doesn't explain her reasons, and I won't speculate. It's another great loss for the SL art community on top of all the others, since Nordan Art promoted many innovative artists and even had its own prize for works in the UWA competitions. I had met her once or twice, but I didn't really know her. Even so, all my best wishes to her, whatever she may do.

Pirats and the Contraction of Second Life Art Spaces

IBM's Exhibition Spaces. The New Media Consortium. IDIA Laboratories. Caerleon. The University of Western Australia. The University of Texas - San Antonio. Odyssey. Immersiva. Crossworlds Gallery. All of them are major art spaces or supporting organizations that during the past couple of years, have either reduced their presence in Second Life, narrowly been rescued, or closed entirely. I'm sure I've missed several, and others are known to be in danger. True, some of these places pulled back (or out) for non-economic reasons, but contraction in art spaces affects SL art no matter what the reason. Now we may lose Pirats as well.

In the meantime, Linden Labs established a sandbox and self-curating gallery, and more recently opened a couple dozen sims for artists to work on (full sims by application, parcels by land rush), all under the auspices of the Linden Endowment for the Arts. The new sims quantitatively counterbalance at least some of the losses, possibly more so, but for various reasons the trade is not equivalent.

There's a petition going around asking (demanding?) that LL cover Pirats's costs, or maybe give Pirats one of the LEA sims. I certainly sympathize, but I think the idea is a bad one. It's also unlikely to succeed: Bryn Oh, who's worked a lot with the Lindens (e.g., through LEA) and has an international presence that brings attention and respect to SL, didn't get a penny of support (nor, from the sounds of things, even attention) from LL when her sim Immersiva was closed due to the loss of its sponsor.

Actually I think LL was right not to pay for Immersiva. For one thing, they would immediately be hounded by charges of favoritism, which they get often enough anyway. It's not LL's job to choose who gets land free and who doesn't, and I don't want it to become their job. LEA, for all its pros and cons, provides Linden Labs a bit of a firewall. Besides, from LL's perspective, better that charges of favoritism be directed toward LEA (as some have, rightly or wrongly) than at the Lab itself.

For another, there's no such thing as a free lunch. One of my concerns about the LEA sims is that they may foster a sense of entitlement among artists -- as it is, even without LEA, some artists (fortunately a minority) feel entitled to space merely because they're artists. Here's more food for feelings of jealousy and favoritism. There are hints that the LEA sims may already be undermining artists' feelings that they need to maintain relationships with private sim owners, which reflects a larger problem that artists don't really understand what curators do and how it contributes to the development of the arts.

However, unlike Thirza Ember, I don't think the trouble with the LEA sims is that what the Lindens giveth, the Lindens may taketh away: as my list above demonstrates, a sponsor might depart no matter who it is. That said, there's certainly the question of what Linden Labs gets by providing all those sims. I'm not certain I know what it is; but the fact the question leaps to many people's minds reflects their reasonable worries about dependence upon the company.

In other words, all told, I think the SL arts community is best served by independent art patrons.

One thing I do think Linden Labs should do is restore the discounted tier for educational and non-profit organizations. They brought more people and more respectability to Second Life than corporations or anyone else. They also have more reason to explore and exploit SL's capabilities. Of course, such a change won't help private landowners, but it would be a start.

Meanwhile, art sims are now turning to "crowdfunding" (numerous small or even large donations) for their survival. Immersiva was rescued this way -- Bryn obtained a couple of enormous donations and a great number of small donations, and due to her huge following, she reached her goal in a single day. But that experience is atypical.  Crossworlds tried something similar, but last I heard, they didn't make it. Odyssey squeaked through, just barely, by becoming an artist-supported sim. Pirats is now attempting crowdfunding too.

I've heard through the grapevine that a few people think that asking for donations is equivalent to begging, and yes in many ways it is, but so what? Every arts organization in the US has to do fundraising. And in SL, outside of a tiny number of people and organizations who can afford a sim singlehandedly, that's the only remaining option. Well, and leaving SL for other, less expensive grids; but there are drawbacks to that strategy too.

FreeWee Ling has started a group called ArtGyro to discuss the sustainability of SL arts. It hasn't met yet, but hopefully it will prove a venue for further discussion -- and action? -- on these issues.

For now, however, there's an immediate sustainability problem at stake.

Pirats is an important organization. Merlina Rokokoko and Newbab Zsigmond have done extraordinary work -- and it is work -- promoting SL arts and many, many artists. I've become a "passive member" at $50, and if you're reading this blog, click this link to become one too. Or if not Pirats, choose some other independent arts organization. Keep SL arts on its own feet.

The SOPA/PIPA bill's effect on the Internet

Selavy Oh's "Der Schauer" and Oberon Onmura's "Wave Fields"

I'm badly behind on blogging, which is a pity, since there have been some excellent builds recently. Unfortunately Haveit Neox's Second Libations is gone already; its destruction was quite a spectacle, I took lots of photos, and maybe I'll get around to posting them sometime.

But there are several builds currently on view that I've been telling friends about, and it's time I blogged them. I'll talk about two in this post, and try to get to some others later. I wish I could discuss them in more detail ... ah well.

Selavy Oh, Der Schauer at LEA24

In Der Schauer (The Shower, as in rain shower), Selavy brings together many of the strands she's been working on over recent years. She has also taken advantage of the new option of putting a windlight setting into an entire region so the sky is gray in all viewers, not just Phoenix and Firestorm (be sure you have the environment editor set to the default). In her blog post, she writes that "this installation has no static elements, everything is growing, falling, changing." By "everything," she means everything, and some things change in response to your own activities. Near the landing point there's a cloud of small cubes swirling around, leaving white trails behind them, occasionally bumping into each other, and sometimes changing color (you must have shadows on in order to see this, although you may find that it kills anti-alias). Larger cubes slowly shoot through the sky as well, leaving cubes behind them, bouncing on objects or the ground and taking off again. On some cubes, images flash on the surface. White towers like needles rise up from the ground, and occasionally collapse down again, making a clatter as pieces hit the ground; if you bump into or land on top of one of the towers, it will collapse immediately. Large sticks scattered about in piles will move if you bump into them. large circles of light form in the water and slowly disappear again. Step into the water, and land forms under your feet; land slowly changes on its own as well, so that if you return to the landing point it may have a different shape. Selavy also has two bots: Positive Hinterland stands motionless near the middle of the sim -- I've seen her get buried by the land -- while Negative Overland wanders aimlessly about the sim. (I'm not certain, but I think these bots are needed for terraforming operations, and when Negative bumps into things or walks onto the water, she'll alter the setting.) Along a circular perimeter there are occasional aurora borealis effects as well. Der Schauer is the ultimate expression of Heraclitus's dictum, "You can never step into the same river twice."

(Click images to enlarge)

Oberon Onmura, Wave Fields at LEA20

Oberon's build is all about motion too, but following his typical style, it takes a minimalist approach. He has split his sim into quadrants, each populated with a field of cubes floating above water, halfway into a large colored translucent screen. In each quadrant, one more or less random cube begins turning like a wheel. The ones next to it pick up this motion, and then the ones next to them, creating a diamond-shaped wave of movement across the quadrant, highlighted by the color sides that the cubes acquire when they start in motion (an interaction of the shaded cover over the quadrant, the black bottom side of the cube, and the angle of sunlight). Sometimes two cubes in different parts of the quadrant start turning one shortly after the other. Sometimes the wave stops at the quadrant's border; occasionally a wave passes through the border into the next quadrant; at other times; once in a while two waves interfere with each other. As the cubes turn, they stir up spray from the water, giving the waves' movement the sense of intense physical force. Once in a while, a field of cubes is switched off -- the cubes become translucent, shake out of their moorings, and in a thick mist of spray they sink to the bottom and disappear. The quadrant is repopulated with cubes in a different manner within each quadrant: methodically dropped from a dispenser in the air, emerging from below, randomly appearing and falling into place, or tumbling out from a jumbled flying mass.

(Click images to enlarge)

Although both Oberon's Wave Fields and Selavy's Der Schauer pivot around the concept of change, the two installations also contrast. On the one hand, Der Schauer is primarily oriented around randomness and arbitrariness; Wave Fields, on the other hand, begins with the seed of a random cube launching into motion, and sometimes quadrants are refilled in an arbitrary way, but its focus ultimately falls on the powerful yet orderly expansion of waves until they crash into their borders. You need to meander about Der Schauer in order to discover its many elements; Wave Fields, however, calls for stillness and observation, even meditation -- in fact Oberon provides a tower where one can take a seat scripted with camera control, giving you a perfect view of the wave patterns. These are two of the many "must see" installations currently on view.