My lifestream shows continued commenting on Digital Artifact entries for classmates… and I produced a few more images of my own artifact. There were some very amusing visual effects when I entered the OpenSim region on which the artifact is based and continues to develop as avatars slide about, knock into one another, start bouncing off into the water, etc. I have had a few “rescue” missions to bring underwater avatar clones back to the surface. An attempt to place a large skydome round the whole artifact, to make it look more like it was a moon hung in space with nearby planet surfaces, had an amusing visual effect. It bumped all the avatar clones right out of the way… they were all tumbling over one another and getting pushed along. Another rescue needed.
I had originally decided I could not afford the time to do a machinima of the digital artifact… but the moving imagery of a clone emerging as a cloud and rezzzing gradually really is one of the best parts. So I invested a couple of hours to produce a one minute machinima of this. The cutting and audio track mixing really does take time when you are not an expert at it. The result is on the blog, on YouTube and in the artifact itself at http://atate.org/ai/ai/ .
Everyone is putting in a lot of time on the course and the artifacts they are creating. But its fun to do so too. This opportunity brings out the thwarted (but not very capable) artist in me. I always feel I have more ideas than I can translate to artifacts I feel capture what I want to communicate. But the Digital Culture course offers a platform to release some of this.
I like to get ahead on tasks, so I have been preparing a good bit of the background and addressing technical aspects of gathering data for the ethnography study. I have chosen to address the Gerry Anderson Model Makers’ Alliance (GA-MMA). A start on the study is at http://atate.org/mscel/ethno/. Ethical issues of the study were addressed this week, and my lifestresams shows I engaged with the class on ethics issues. I blogged on it too. I am the School of Informatics ethics representative and look after our ethical processes.
There were a lot of entries in my lifestream from the activity in Second Life on IDEL11, which has been fun, and the start of my ULOE11 “Learning Task” to learn how to blow dry under a professional hairdresser. Lots more detail at http://atate.org/mscel/hair/.
There is the usual scattering of other lifestream entries, especially on Twittter, for some of my interests in world land speed record attempts which I have followed and supported since the 1960s. The next 2 years will see the most activity in this areas since the mid 1960s with attempts to take the record from just supersonic up to 1,000m.p.h.