New World Notes pointed out this fascinating experiment in virtual/real world cross-over and while at first glance it was an amusing and brain-twisting experiment in bring the real and virtual together, I actually think it’s a prototype of things to come.
With all the talk of immersive worlds (and more about Castranova’s concept of an exodus to “the” virtual world later), augmented reality gets lost in the flood of talk of Warcraft and MMORPGs and Second Life. I’ve imagined before what a future concert might be like (wake up music industry!) – one in which the artist appears both live and in a concurrent virtual space, and where attendees at the live event are able to access 3D content using portable devices (phones now, augmented reality sunglasses or implants later) including song archives. While the real world concert is taking place, participants in the virtual concert hall might be remixing songs on the fly, mashing the experience so that it is no longer a stand-alone event, but rather the source for a veritable flood of user-generated content.
As described on their site:
The merged realities of ‘All Saints Gardens’ on Oxford Road, and its online three-dimensional counterpart in ‘Second Life’… for the first time, allow ‘first life’ visitors and ‘second life’ avatars to coexist and share the same park bench in a live interactive public video installation. Entering into this feedback loop through a portal between these two parallel worlds this event exposes the identity paradox in Second Life. ‘Liberate your Avatar’ examines this new crisis and reflects the history of ‘All Saints Gardens’, relocating Emmeline Pankhurst as an avatar within ‘Second Life’ where she remains locked to the railings of ‘All Saints Gardens’.
>While the real world concert is taking place, participants in the virtual concert hall might be remixing songs on the fly, mashing the experience so that it is no longer a stand-alone event, but rather the source for a veritable flood of user-generated content.
Dusan, let’s just catch our breaths here for a moment.
I’m a big Second Lifer as you know. And real lifer, too! But the mash-ups are just not convincing.
I’d like for once for people to actually report on what people actually do with these mash-up thingies, rather than just get ecstatic about the idea of them. OK, we got it, it’s cool, people can look in a window and see avatars in a virtual world. Get the screen big enough, it’s a blast. They stare at the screen, then turn away and deal with people in real life. There’s some interaction, but…are they really doing all that fabulous user generating of content? Or are they just consuming in a more fractured manner?