NMC Campus Observer

Symposium on Creativity: Tuesday Highlights

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Aug 15, 2007 12:39am

Here’s a quick recap of the sessions I saw today at the NMC Symposium on Creativity in Second Life. Only about two days into this week long event, it is apparent that our breakout session presenters have really caught our intended spirit of making the sessions very active, so there is no sitting in rows looking at flat slides!

I missed the first session of the day, The Magician’s Cookbook: Scripted Solutions for Non-Programmers from Lyr Lobo (aka Cynthia Calongne, Colorado Technical University) and Farley Scarborough (aka Jeff Hiles, Wright State University) but caught most of the one by NMC’s own Shukran Fahid (aka Robin Winter) on Advance Planning: Building Efficiently is Key to Long-Term Usage of your Land.

It’s apparent that Shuk not only knows SL building, planning, etc inside out, but he can explain it very well, as he covered such things as megaprims and zones of activity on a sim. With colleague Ravenelle Zugzwang, they showed the use of a scale model for the One Cleveland sim and how they dealt with managing a large number of prims on that build:

Later, we shifted from building to performance as Phorkyad Acropolis (aka Stephen Schrum, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg) and Meghamora Woodward (aka Megan Moran, San Jose State University) shared their experiences of Poetry and Theatre Performance in SL.. See below for the audio recording for this breakout session.

Poetry and Theatre Performance in SL

Phorkyad provided examples of poetry and readings of it via text, typing in a poem he wrote called My Muse:

[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: My Muse
[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: For every poet There is a destined Muse;
[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: The Fates select her—The Author can not choose.
[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: On our first meeting, I recognized you thus;
[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: Destiny’s message: Poetry born of us.
[12:06] Phorkyad Acropolis: When in your presence, I’m granted all I sought.
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: Your touch, like a snare; I find that I am caught.
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: Your inspiration Brings sun to all my days.
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: Words made to soar by Your smiling lips and gaze.
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: Silent temperance Melts not my Ic’rus wings
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: And every sweet touch Playing as my souls sings
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: Should the stars allow that choice, more than I’m due,
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: I would never make Another choice but you.
[12:07] Phorkyad Acropolis: *end*

To explore this mode of poetry, the audience was asked to come up with eiter a 12 word poem or a “pyramid poem” (where each line is one syllable longer then the last. Some responses included this pyramid:

[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: One
[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: Time I
[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: Wished that I
[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: Could really do it and
[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: It turned out I could YES
[12:13] JoannaTrail Blazer: *end*

and a few 12 word poems:

[12:14] Maverick Young: Each day arrives clothed in new hope and healing light; another chance.

[12:14] CDB Barkley: My Second Life runs
[12:14] CDB Barkley: circles
[12:15] CDB Barkley: around my first.
[12:15] CDB Barkley: Do I need a Third?
[12:15] CDB Barkley: *emd*

[12:16] Kim Chihuly: Rainy day. Cloudy sky. I stay home and eat popcorn. Watch movies.

[12:17] Radar Radio: OK - Writing expresses my world seen through open eyes but shaped by misperceptions.

Phorkyad went on to describe ways that poems are read in world via audio; Meghamora described her experiences being part of an SL acting group.

The pair then ended with a performance of a new SL play, Gestus, a work in progress they were looking for feedback–

Moving into the Second Life afternoon, a group from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) described their second life project related to the study of archaeological sites.

And then it was time for one of the best sessions so far (for me!), Effective Communication Design with Scripted Objects with Ann Enigma (aka Hilary Mason, Johnson & Wales University. According to Ann, the most creative expressive part of SL is scripting!

Her session was framed around the concept of a clear design approach when developing a scripted object. After a brief introduction, and an effective comparison of illustrating a point in the flatness of PowerPoint versus doing so with a 3D object, Ann cleverly assigned us to groups according to experience with scripting:

Each group was charged with coming up with a single topic or concept to build, and with some tools and scripts she provided, we were asked to develop a design model and then to try and start building.

It then got very active as the groups went to work:

This was a most energetic session! Thanks Ann!

The 6:00 PM session was a field trip to Boracay, where Corwin Carillon (aka Nick Noakes, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) demonstrated several examples of Web2.0 In Second Life - There’s More than You Think.

Corwin showed us screens that play images from flickr, boards that are updated with content from RSS feeds and Google calendars, objects that allow Google or wikipedia searches, plus we talked about Twitter tools that work in SL and blog tools (BlogHud) — see the photo I snapped and posted from this session.

At the end of the day was Intro to Machinima by Buhbuhcuh Fairchild, Alt-Zoom Studios, but this dog was pooped. Luckily, I can catch it Thursday morning.

Corwin shared landmarks for the creators of all the devices he showed, which you can find and practice using on Boracay.

Story filed under: Campus Headlines
Tags: slcreativity
See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)