Tag: second life

More Projects Than Time

Kabyle House
Kabyle House

One of my least favorite traits is overcommitment–meaning that I always commit to too many conferences/papers/projects and something always falls by the wayside.  My batting average is pretty good, but I still swing at the air a bit more than I’d like.

So, while I have the attention of the Cal community, I’d like to let one of my pet projects escape and maybe be picked up by someone who can properly feed and nurture an honors thesis out of the thing.

I’ve been intending to reproduce Bourdieu’s Kabyle House in Second Life as a fun exploration of digital habitus, with the attendant theory in scroll-overs, but I just don’t have the time.  If anyone would be interested in this project, drop me a line.  Or just do it yourself, and let me know about it!

Popular Online Visual Aesthetics

Bone Bead

Radical remediation, you say?

What’s odd is how ridiculously fun making this image was, and how it felt slightly transgressive.  Would I do the same with a photo of a skeleton?  With an assemblage from a Hansen’s disease settlement? This is actually fairly sedate; I could have added dancing kittens and diamond dollar bill signs.

When you make a photo “bling” on Blingee, it automatically saves it to the broader social network–what will people (probably mostly children and young adults) think when they see this next to more typical photos of grinning friends and anime characters?

More broadly, I wonder about this moment in internet aesthetics and whether it has more implications for visual representation in both the personal and professional realms.

I’ve never played World of Warcraft, mostly because I want to finish my dissertation someday, but partially because I never found it very appealing.  Frankly, it looks like a mess to me, but now I wonder if I just didn’t see the internal visual logic behind it.  Now that I’ve been in Second Life long enough to understand the importance of proper avatar maintenance, I can see how easy it is to end up with leopard skin and multicolored eyes.

This isnt my avatar, but you get the idea.
This isn't my avatar, but you get the idea.

As a sidenote, this person would actually get taken more seriously within Second Life than a tenured professor in a “newbie” skin.  An interesting commentary on this phenomenon is here, a commentary on the growing phenomenon of educators in Second Life and their conduct therein.

Regardless, it’s always interesting to perform these kinds of visual experiments to see how archaeological photos actually form the performance of our profession.  And I’d love to see more blingee archaeological photos.

Fake Dead People

joey-ramone-doc-martens

What exactly is the agency of the virtual non-human human? This question hit me when I was in the midst of editing what is shaping up to be my first publication, (Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology, a text refashioned from my more stridently titled paper presented at the World Archaeological Congress, Get Real: A Manifesto for Virtual Reality in Archaeology.  In this paper I establish Second Life as a pretty good venue for changing the way we reconstruct archaeological sites and examine the use of avatars and non-player characters (NPCs) in these reconstructions. My good friend (and professional copy editor!) Lei-Leen had done me the favor of proofing it and she highlighted my use of “person” while I was discussing these NPCs.  Certainly these people-created constructs were not people themselves.

In the paper I argue against the creation and use of NPCs in virtual archaeological reconstructions:

NPCs are “non-player characters,” entities generally created as a kind of set dressing, present to answer scripted questions about the reconstruction, or to provide ambiance. This tends to bring out the worst in reconstructive impulses; in one example, Julius Caesar reclines on his couch, reciting information about his villa to the user. A recent simulation of an African American site in Oakland, California contained prominent members of the community who stood by the side of the road to robotically impart their knowledge when approached by the user’s avatar. Turning people of the past into mere mouthpieces for their architecture diminishes the rich potential of reconstructions to impart information about complex lifeways. Using programmable objects such as the previously mentioned mano and metate allows avatars to act as their own guides to the past, populating the re-created ancient landscape with avatars of people interested in the past, interacting with artifacts and taking on roles suggested by these artifacts. This is simple for archaeologists who are accustomed to telling stories through objects and adds another level of interactivity to the virtual reconstruction.

I still believe this to be true, that fundamentally we are better off wearing Caesar’s crown for ourselves rather than asking a poor simulacrum about the weather in the Republic.  Thinking of Caesar as a non-player character in history is a stretch by any means.  But game developers (and digital archaeologists) will probably not stop populating virtual worlds with fake people.  These NPCs are nonhuman manifestations of a network of agents (polygons, “modern” humans, fiber-optics, and the dead person herself) and the relationships between these agents and as a result should be studied as such.  But does this understanding of an NPC as a network make it ethical to take such liberties with the visages of the dead? What does it mean when Joey Ramone comes back from the dead to sell Doc Martins?

Of course, I could just be reading too much Latour.  Let’s ask Eliza.

* Hello
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* Latour
> Tell me more…
* Have I been reading too much Latour?
> Can you elaborate on that?
* He’s a modern social theorist.
> What does that suggest to you?
* That I should be reading him for my dissertation.
> Say, do you have any psychological problems?
* Possibly.
> Tell me more…

Consider it Burned.

burning-catal_002

I’m happy to report that the Burning Çatalhöyük was considered a success! We soldiered on despite considerable language and technology barriers, including a point where Karl Harrison was trying to speak about the buildings and was completely frozen.  We had a lot of visitors throughout the day, and about 30 for the main event, with numbers dropping off as it got later in the day in the rest of the world.  The exhibit will remain up at least through January, and you can still visit by downloading the Second Life software and loading this URL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

The day of the event I managed to upload a video of Michael House and Karl Harrison discussing the burning of Building 77,  which you can view on the large screen in-world, but  can also view on vimeo, linked above.

I’m so happy that people took a bit of time out of their day to come check out the burn.  Kris Hirst from Archaeology@about.com had an insightful review:

http://archaeology.about.com/b/2008/12/12/second-life-and-public-archaeology-burning-catalhoyuk.htm

Declan over at the Moore Groups Blog also visited, in larger-than-life-size form!

http://mooregroup.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/catalhoyuk-in-second-life/

I would like to ask that if you participated in Burning Çatalhöyük, or if you have since viewed the reconstruction on Okapi island, that you take this poll:

http://polldaddy.com/survey.aspx?id=c5393d48b2124280

Finally, I would like to thank the following for their help with Burning Çatalhöyük.  I couldn’t have done it without you! In no particular order:

Noah Wittman
Karl Harrison
Michael House
Lizzy Ha
Ruth Tringham
Jason Quinlan
Michael Ashley
Niema Razavian
The DeCal Students!
Dan E.
Burcu Tung
Daniel Bracewell

Red and Hands

Red and Hands

I finally made something that just might be Archaeography worthy, so I abused my limited moveabletype knowledge and posted an entry over there about the wall paintings and Second Life.  Let’s hope I didn’t break anything in the process.

(I reposted it below as Archaeography is no longer)

This past summer I excavated a series of paintings on a platform at Çatalhöyük, the last being a spectacular series of five hands, negative white with a red background, all pointing west. While collaborating on the archive report with my fellow excavators, I decided to reconstruct the “red phase” of Building 49 in Second Life so we could see how the building might have looked while in this phase. The painting of the hands was part of the phase, and I began “fixing” it in photoshop, removing animal holes and replacing patchy areas of the paint, so I could import it into the virtual reconstruction.

The process made me uneasy, and very aware that I was not presenting a “real” or a “fake” representation of the past, but something in the hazy middle, a third space that does not exist for the archaeologists or the people of the neolithic, but a space that exists digitally. I decided to push this boundary, and made an even more figurative version, an unambiguous white and red representation that would better suit the cartoonish world of Second Life. It would look more real, make more visual sense in the context on Second Life than an if I had used an actual photo, baked on to the texture of the platform.

The fourth image is what brought the photographs together–I happened to glance up at one of the concrete buildings in downtown Berkeley, where someone had stenciled a hand, in negative, with a red background. I felt a nexus in the past/present/real/digital tangle come into sharp relief for one brief second, then become hopelessly, wonderfully intertwined once again.

I’ve been banging away at the buildings in Second Life–they’ll be ready by Wednesday, but only just!  The event is being pretty widely publicized, so let’s hope the servers in Linden world aren’t acting up that day.  I love that I’ve been able to get so much research for my dissertation finished, but I think I need a computer/media black-out week someday soon!

 

Burning Çatalhöyük

terrain_001

Burning Çatalhöyük: A Virtual Public Archaeology Event hosted by UC Berkeley Students and Faculty
2PM-4:30PM Pacific Standard Time (10PM-12:30AM GMT or Universal Time)
December 10, 2008
Location: Okapi Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0
(You must have the free Second Life browser)

burning

Join us for Burning Çatalhöyük, a project developed by OKAPI, the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük, and the UC Berkeley DeCal program. Çatalhöyük on OKAPI Island, in development since 2006, is an exploration of the past and present of a 9,000 year old site located in present-day Turkey.  In this demonstration we intend to burn the existing models down in order to better understand the use of fire in Neolithic settlements.  In consultation with fire experts Karl Harrison and Ruth Tringham, and architecture expert Burcu Tung, a team of undergraduate apprentices have replicated the burning sequence of Building 77, a structure excavated in the summer of 2008.  OKAPI island also hosts reproductions of modern developments present at the site, including a water tower, Sadrettin’s café, the Chicken Shed and the nightly bonfire.

Remixing Activities:

(2-2:15)
Guided Tour of OKAPI Island by Ruth Tringham, (Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley, and Principal Investigator of Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük) and the Remixing Çatalhöyük team.
(2:15-2:30)
Niema Razavian will introduce the work that the Fall 2008 Decal class has done on the island, and how this fits in with a broader UC Berkeley education.
(2:30-2:45)
Roland Saekow will demonstrate his teleportation system, to guide new visitors around the island.
(2:45-3:00)
Kira O’Connor will show the site datum she has constructed, and talk about how datums are used at archaeological sites in general.
(3:00-3:15)
Clark-Rossi Flores-Beyer will demonstrate the skeleton model he has managed to manipulate into a crouch position, in accordance with how people were buried at Çatalhöyük.  He will briefly discuss burial practices in the settlement.
(3:15-3:45)
Garrett Wagner and Raechal Perez will discuss their own reproductions of the interiors at Çatalhöyük, and how they decided to configure the space on their own.
(3:45-4:00)
Colleen Morgan (UC Berkeley PhD Candidate, excavator at Çatalhöyük) will wrap-up the program with a discussion of why virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites are important, and what Second Life can do to increase our understanding of the past.

What is Second Life?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world created entirely by its residents. Okapi Island is owned and build by the OKAPI team (that’s us below!) and the Berkeley Archaeologists at Catalhoyuk.

Getting Started
To visit Okapi Island, you will need to create a user account and download the client software–both free.

To create an account, visit www.secondlife.com, click on Join (in the upper right corner) and follow the instructions. Note: You do not need a premium account to use Second Life or visit Okapi Island.

Next, download and install the Second Life client for your computer:
http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php

Launch the Second Life client and enter your password. You will likely begin in Orientation Island. To visit Okapi Island, click Map, enter “Okapi” in search field and click Search. Alternatively, you can click on the following slurl (second life url) in your browser, and you will be transported there:

SLURL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

weaving_002

Verisimilitude

fire_chicken_shed_001

Y’know, as close as we can get sometimes, it’s just not the same as actually being there.

Çatalhöyük in Second Life – Mike’s Horned Platform

platform_001

I’m slowly getting better with the building tools in Second Life.  The platform’s texture is actually from the wrong building, and the horns are “concrete” textured, but it’s a start.  I have to make the features of the building before I can burn them, right?  Here’s Jason Quinlan’s photo of the real thing:

I spent a lot of the weekend writing about Second Life; it was nice to be able to actually do some building.

In other news, me and two of my friends (and fellow Berkeley graduate students) started a photoblog:

http://ancoda.wordpress.com/

Targeted Advertising

Afghan_Ad

It was a little strange to be reading the New York Times and realize that the targeted advertising was for the show at the Asian Art Museum that I helped to make a video for.  A video that was just (mostly) finished on Thursday.  We need to fix it up a bit still, but it works for now.  At some point I’m supposed to go and volunteer at the exhibit (pinch, poke, or prod a real archaeologist!), but I haven’t scheduled that yet.

I haven’t done much this weekend of the dead, a time when we should be honoring Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec protector of the bones.  If I finish up this article that I’m writing in time, I may hop on the BART to the Mission to go check out the procession they have there.
The article itself is about the work we’ve been doing in Second Life and it’s a little scary to write, as a lot of the virtual reality archaeologists take themselves Very Seriously while they are making their vacant little worlds and a few things I say in this article are pretty unfriendly to the concept.  I also wish I would have tried to publish on a slightly smaller scale first–but when do I ever do things like that?  My first conference presentation was during the plenary at the largest anthropology conference in the states.  Good thing I had no idea of the significance at the time!

I’m also not sure if I can ask if I can publish it in draft form online–more famous archaeologists have been doing that, but I feel a bit out of my league, obviously.  I’m also not sure of an appropriate length–supposedly it’s pretty open, but I don’t want to say too much or too little…so, no, I’m not worried about this at all!  Clear skies.

Çatalhöyük in Second Life – Update

As previously mentioned, while I’m not writing, I’ve been working on OKAPI island in Second Life.  I wanted an area where we could package and give away textures from our upcoming events so that people could recreate any part of Çatalhöyük in their own Second Life reconstructions.  Naturally, I chose to recreate Sadrettin’s on-site cafe, where excavators (and brave lab people!) go for an ice cream during the break between excavation and paperwork.  Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to create an adequate ice cream freezer, and the plants are off, but…well, it’s Second Life.

If only the ocean were really that close to the site!  Here’s a shot of the cafe taken by Mia Ridge (of Open Objects fame) for comparison:

Come and check it out, if you’re so inclined:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

%d bloggers like this: