Welcome to
 MAGAZINE
a critical review of virtual business and culture |
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| click on these links for: | Features | BLOG | Editorials | Contact |
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Welcome to
MAGAZINE
a critical review of virtual business and culture |
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| click on these links for: | Features | BLOG | Editorials | Contact |
|
SLART
BUSINESS NEWS Following the disappearance of Zero Point [read the article], we have been looking into how residents of the Second Life® virtual world can protect their assets. |
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People were incredulous when they heard that Zero Point had vanished. On the SLART Blog there is a comment from Prokofy, who experiences build losses constantly: "I usually have it happen at least twice a month on my sims." and was under the impression that a normal support ticket requesting a rollback would solve the problem, suggesting "...perhaps you'd just prefer to fulminate and make a drama out of all this?" A "rollback" means that Linden Lab® takes the backup copy of data on a simulator from before the loss occurred and restores it to that state. The problem that can occur is when the loss is on a parcel and others own parcels that have changed since the event. Their data will revert to the previous state as well, causing them to have losses of recent changes. We are not aware of the technical reasons, if any, why the code for a single parcel cannot be copied from the backup and pasted into the current simulation. Garret Bakalava wrote that his log-in was closed because of a two cents account deficit, but he accepted it as normal business procedure. He also assumed a rollback was possible. We have not received any word from Linden Lab whether the reason a rollback was impossible was technical, political, or a business decision. It may have been art criticism. One SL resident in Metanomics Group chat was glad to see Zero Point gone, calling it "A flashing neon sign on an otherwise tasteful shoreline." |
Whatever your opinion of Zero Point, or of the system in general, if you want to create in Second Life then you need to protect your investment. What happened to Sabine could happen to almost anybody. Your build can disappear and your inventory can be wiped out, whether from a technical glitch or an accounting error, either on your side because you didn't notice you were in the red for two cents or because their computer hiccupped. Sabine's inventory was returned in the incident, but the issue with inventory return is that it clumps inventory items into small bundles, named for one of the items, and you have to rez each one and see what's in it. That means opening each returned object in the virtual world, seeing what appears, examining all the pieces, figuring out what they are and where they should go, and saving each one anew. Then all the pieces need to be reassembled into the original form, like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle. In a complex build with thousands of pieces, it is nearly impossible to sort that out. There are tools that can help. Sabine was just given Rez-Foo, a utility created by master scripter CrystalShard Foo. This enables you to box a construction up to 192 meters in diameter--96 meters from the box in any direction. You can move the entire construction by moving the box, save a copy of the construction, and give a copy to someone else to hold for you in the event of a disaster that includes loss of your inventory. You can buy Rez-Foo at the Script-Foo shop. We will report soon on more ways to protect your investment in Second Life as a SLART Business Feature. |
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Lunar Drawing Contest at SJICA
West Coast artists now have an opportunity to win land on the moon. The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art is hosting the exhibition Crater Bay Area (May 30-August 2, 2008), the installation of the Lunar Drawing Contest that was held in New York City at Location One, where Filthy Fluno won a deed to Lunar land. You get a half hour to sketch a 10-foot model of the moon, in traditional or digital media, and your drawing will hang in the museum for the duration of the exhibition. If you would like to participate in this project, click here for an entry form. This is a real life event that is being simulcast at Artropolis in the Second Life® world. Winners of the Artropolis Crater Bay Area
contest were announced at a ceremony July 20, which also featured an
exceptional performance by Cylindrian Rutabaga singing moon-themed songs. Click
here for pictures of the winning artworks. ==== We have been following the work of Madcow since first viewing it at Morris Vig's Oyster Bay Sculpture Garden last year. The works were each composed of over 1000 prims, and only one was on exhibit each week. Now you can see a sim-wide exhibition of his works based on fantasy and myth at the New Media Consortium's Ars Simulacra region.
Teleport to Madcow's exhibition ==== The SLART
in-world book Great features: click the inside of the cover and a menu appears with the contents. You can go directly to an article without turning pages, or close the book. You can also click on the edge when reading a page to bring up this menu. On the last pages there are hyperlinks that will open this website for current reviews and news.
Join the SLART Magazine group in-world to receive notices |
VIRTUAL RENAISSANCE Museum of Natural History at the University of Florence If you are thinking about going to Florence this year, the end of October might be a good time. Mario Gerosa is curating an exhibition of virtual art under the auspices of Fondazione Sistema Toscana. The exhibition will be presented in conjunction with the 2008 Festival of Creativity, October 23-26. The information about the Virtual Worlds component of the festival is primarily in Italian on their website.click here to read the press release ===
SLART®
BUSINESS
There are over 475 art galleries in the Second Life world, according to Sasun Steinbeck, creator of the Art Gallery Owners Group. As the chart above makes graphically clear, the number of confirmed galleries stayed about the same from the end of 2007 until May, 2008. Confirmed galleries must display the Art Galleries of Second Life Kiosk, which dispenses the gallery list and HUD that enables gallery goers to visit every gallery in the Group. This is an awesome tool if you have not used it, and is the best way to discover what hundreds of artists are currently doing. It is possible that the gallery growth rate continued during the flatline period, but was not apparent because new gallery owners had not become aware of the Group or had not configured their kiosk properly. A New Art Gallery Map Sasun has just created a website-based interactive Second Life art gallery map. It has zoom and position tools, you can click and drag the map, and the mousewheel will zoom in and out. You also can enter a region name at the top of the screen to find galleries in that region. If you click on one of the "buttons" that identify gallery locations, the name of the gallery pops up, along with the gallery owner and type of gallery, with a link to "teleport now" to the gallery. There is also a database generated list of galleries that you can sort in several ways. With nearly 500 locations it may take a minute or two to load them all, and there is an "update map" button at the bottom that will refresh it. Sasun is still testing it, so please report any bugs. It is here. ==== Free
SLART®
BUSINESS
Download: ==== Read about SLART® products and services in the Media STEP Inside
Design, March-April 2008, Vol. 24 No. 2 |
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The beautifully
printed archival paper limited edition
SLART®
publication is available. Click here. |
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is a registered trademark of Richard Minsky
Second Life®, SL™ and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
No infringement is intended. SLART brand products and services are not
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