Thursday, 15th June, 2006

Heard The One About The Constipated Mathematician?

secondlife building work

As I mentioned (did I? I'm sure I did ) I spent a good chunk of time this week on my hands and knees measuring the dimensions of the studio I teach in. I've been totally absorbed these past few weeks with trying to elaborate on the sense of purpose I felt while I was watching K do Actual Proper Work™ in Second Life a while back.

(After months of stumbling around, making pretty — but pointless — things, I suddenly realised that I could teach in Second Life. And at that moment, I felt a whole new wave of enthusiasm for it)

One of the things that I find curious about 3D online worlds, is how everyone seems to tend towawrds reconstructing reality in them. I think I mentioned this before, but one night I was watching a friend make a chess set, and he didn't feel it was right until he'd applied a wooden texture to them.

"Why does it have to be made of wood?" (asked Kisa)

"Um, I don't know" he said.

Even the 'fantasy' spaces in SL seem to have some semblance of reality about them. The only space I know where the emphasis is on building environments that don't have to conform to reality is The Port — the arts-based group I got involved with a while back.

But all that aside, I'm not about to buck the trend. In fact, I'm currently striving towards a sense of realism, rather than abstraction.

OK, here's part of our studio...

...and here's Kisa's version of it...

I've had to take a little artistic license with things like the doors and ceiling. I measured them all very carefully, but the camera angle in SL means that if I made the ceiling the right height, you can't see shit. And the doors seemed too narrow, so I widened them somewhat.

It's not bad, but I think I'm going to have play around a lot with the lighting to try and get away from the rather bland sense of the white walls.

...

The reason I'm going away from my gut instincts and recreating a RL space, is that in some way, it's the building that binds us together as a School. It's hard to explain, but there's a sense that that hulking great monstrosity in Leeds city centre does, perhaps, act as some kind of unifier for the seperate courses within it.

I wouldn't say it inspired an identity, but it does act, maybe, as a glue. Apparently it's being knocked down in a few (ha!) years, and recreating it in a 'virtual' space seems the right idea.

Anyway. On with the coffee and the waking up...

...

Oh yeah. Constipated mathematician ... he had to work it out with a pencil.

I thank you

It was more of a square really wasn't it?

So, a squircle then?

...

I'm actually really proud of this BTW The curtains are (heavily) Photoshopped images of the real curtains in the studio for a start, and I'm particularly chuffed with the little green seats.

Here's a short tour...

(Click on it to play)

Ack, it's just all guns and fighting to you people isn't it?

It's Not That I've Been At A Loss For Things To Do Today

photo

It's just that perhaps, the things I chose to do weren't particularly (a) interesting, (b) purposeful, (c) profitable, and (d) anything other than a little bit sad and retentive.