Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Kisa's Drunken Adventure With The Disembodied Voices
Hmm. This will, I feel, take a couple of Twitters and a Flickr pic to set the scene...
Cogdog: Hey Slers! I need some friends on the beta grid to demo the voice chat features! Meet at NMC Campus (139, 225, 42) on the BETA grid!!! (11:12 PM June 06, 2007 from web)
Kisa: @cogdog — no. Sorry. (a) I'm drunk, and (b) Voice is evil and just wrong and not SL at all. Plus, I sound like Barry WHite with a cold (11:21 PM June 06, 2007 from web in reply to cogdog)
Kisa: Oh, what the hell. Downloading voice beta... (11:29 PM June 06, 2007 from web)
Kisa: This is going to kill my Mac and mey sense of self. Phoey (11:36 PM June 06, 2007 from web)
... downloading ... precaching ... connecting to region ...
And so that's how, rather unexpectedly, I found myself standing metaphorically in a rather fetching ball gown in front of a crowd of people at an American conference, whilst my RL self was sat clutching an iSight, headphones on, knocking back more wine that I really should have been.
It was, I have to say, an odd experience. Mainly for two reasons:
1. Expectations
"Hey guys! Come talk to Second Life!"
"Hi Second Life!"
"Hiya"
"Woah. You're a guy!"
It's not that I don't like people knowing I'm a guy, it's just that I didn't like the immediacy of it. Normally, people find out through my profile, or they Google me and find this site. Either way, there's usually a bit more 'work' involved.
And I like that — it destroys that conclusion-jumping tendancy that seems to exist. You're not immediately lumped into some bracket or another, defined by one very obvious thing, rather than the sum of many.
2. Dislocation
The thing that most struck me about the whole experience though, was the sudden cessation of prescence. There's a discussion on SLED at the moment (and on Flickr come to think of it) all about how we relate to our avatars. I am, as I guess most people know, someone who tries not to draw any distinction between Kisa/Siobhan/Graham — defining each as just the resulting expression of myself in whatever context I happen to be in: my behaviours and mannerisms guided by physical appearance, environmental appearance, communicative techniques, etc.
And even though I'm predominantly in a third-person view all the time, and therefore not looking specifically through the needing-to-be-upgraded-from-default eyes of my avatar (I can't find any brown enough 
), I'm essentially experiencing the environment through her.
It just struck me, perhaps, that the keyboard is part of the connection I have with the screen. I have the words "leaned back in my chair holding the mic" in my head at the moment, and it was that letting go of the keyboard, and making some physical distance between myself and the screen that seperated me from my normal 'SLelf' — reinstating the Fourth Wall, so that I became a watcher, rather than a participant.
What was on screen was superfluous. Instead of feeling like I was stood there talking to Alan and Corbie, I found myself with my body located in a black chair in Lancaster, while my mind was in a conference hall somewhere in the States. And I think that 'redundancy' in my avie is made obvious by the fact that I felt I needed to make 'her' dance, just so 'she' wasn't standing there doing nothing 
Now, maybe it was an unfair situation to be critiquing. Perhaps in a normal environment — one on one conversations, with headsets rather than clutched microphones, hands still on the keyboard controlling my avie — perhaps then things would be different.
I just wanted to say that while it was fun, and cool — and I hope to God I didn't make a complete fool out of myself by being too drunk (although I do remember saying "Sorry, I'm vereh vereh drunk" a lot) — it confirmed in my head that Voice isn't the cure-all that some people expect, and that it's not going to be a case of just plugging a new feature in to make Second Life easier to use/communicate.
a phone call that takes place whilst one happens to be in SL
That's exactly what it felt like — identical to when someone calls you, and you 'extract' yourself from the grid to deal with it.
I do wonder, sometimes, whether the very vocal (ho ho) proponents of Voice — aside from those who approach it from an accessibility point of view — are simply not prepared to put the effort into mastering the keyboard. I realise that that's a gross generalisation, but I can't help but hear the words "typing's too hard" in my ears, and think "yeah, but I do OK thanks".
Without wishing to place SL in the category of "a game", I do think there's some milage in the analogy of it versus something you might find on the PS3 — and the comparison of the statements "this game is shit, because I can't play it" and "I'm not very good at this game, I need to practice more and stop being shit".
I suppose though, it would be quite valid to throw the label "Luddite" at me in respect to this — "Bah, Kisa's too scared to embrace the new" — and maybes new forms of expression will come out of it. I do think that Voice has a place within developments to increase my presence within the grid — but not on its own.
On its own, Voice is disorientating and disconnecting. The augmentation of one of the senses isn't enough to 'fix' interaction within SL. In fact, the augmentation of one acts to the detriment of the others. Give me stereoscopic goggles and touch-sensitive, spatially-aware gloves as well, and I might be happier. But for now, I think that anyone who thinks that Voice is the answer to interpersonal communication in a virtual space is sorely mistaken, and needs to learn to bloody type.
As someone who, on the whole, roleplays female characters in Everquest and suchlike, I too am not a huge fan of voice chat.
With voice chat it's immediately obvious I'm a guy, which is less of a problem now most people in the groups I play with know that. But voice chat also means I can't listen to music while I game since I have to pay attention more to what is said, rather than just scan the chat screen while I do other things. I also miss being able to scroll back up a conversation to see what was said, with voice its said, and gone.
The one time I do use it is when we raid — when there are lots of long, tough battles and you need all your concentration to coordinate things. In those instances its better to speak instructions than try and type something in the heat of battle. This is not really a situation that happens in Second Life
I also found a link to Voice Changer software, but haven't tried it out yet: but I'm guessing it's going to sound a little odd..
I also miss being able to scroll back up a conversation to see what was said, with voice its said, and gone.
Yes, and this is something else that I find awkward about it. It focuses your attention very much on the conversation, and locates it very much in the now. I find that convesrations I have within SL are invariably time-shifted — halfway through talking to someone, I'll pop off to put the kettle on, or I'll be working on something in front of me.
The conversations take a sideline — they happen at my own pace. And at any point I can zone out a bit, then scroll back to see what I've missed. And unless someone integrates a voice->text transcriber for the client, that's going to be completely lost, and discussion becomes ephemeral, rather than the web/blog/IM-like solidity it is now.
(As an aside, I wonder if it's my familiarity with text-based communication — my years spent in BBSes and chatrooms that makes me disposed against Voice?)
Voice Changer software [...] I'm guessing it's going to sound a little odd..
Indeed And I've said before that it's not the answer for me. It is, for me, as much about my own perception of the link between me and my avatar, and voice-changing software isn't going to alter what I hear in my own head.
A Small, Temporary U-Turn
Keen observers of the structure of this page will notice that I've gone against my usual 'minimalist' tendancies, and plastered tag-links at the top of each post.
It is not, I feel, a wholesomely sastisfying solution to a problem that I wasn't — until recently — convinced existed. But it will have to do until I come up with a more elegant placement of links to related Stuff™
I'm very much on record as being against Blog Cruft, and Becky 
had me in stiches the other day when she said:
you'd only be REALLY happy when Tranniefesto was a white screen with "rant" written in dark grey 18 point lower case Helvetica in the middle.
'tis very very true 
Red Explosion
It always feels like Summer's here, when the first poppies in my yard emerge.
I'll miss my little back yard — it's pokey and cluttered, but I love it
I find that convesrations I have within SL are invariably time-shifted — halfway through talking to someone, I'll pop off to put the kettle on, or I'll be working on something in front of me.
Same here. It's for this reason that, although I have Skype running all the time, I like to use it in text chat, rather than voice. This lets me carry on doing other things at the same time.. it also means its easier to have several chats going on at the same time.
Yes, me too And while we're on the subject of IMs (etc), am I the only person who finds the "So and so is typing..." indicators in a lot of clients really annoying — completely defeating the time-shift element of the medium?
It seems to boil down to the fact that talking using voices evolved as the best way to communicate in a world with a pervasive medium for sound. In worlds where the rules of physics don't apply... why try to copy them so slavishly?
why try to copy them so slavishly?
For 'data transfer rate' (i.e. the quantity of information you can transfer from A to B within a given time), sound beats typing 'hands down' (intentional pun).
although I don't use SL, I know the problem between voice<->text.
It's pretty annoying, because if you work to make a "virtual image" of yourself, the moment you present a "real image" of yourself to the audience of this virtual image, the virtual is destroyed and replaced with the real.
I hate that.
And it's not just voice, webcams for example, can destroy your percepcion of that character (or however you want to call it) and then everybody is sad and such.
Voice needs more concentration to speak, unless you speak when you're typing, I guess... I always find myself mumbling when I'm thinking what to say next.
Same as webcams, they need to be seen and interpreted to be useful
But text is pretty much abstract and with only a quick look you extract (most) of the info.
And really.
What's the point of having a "second life" if you have to link it to your first life ?
I'd be more interested in a text->voice synthetizer or some such. Tho that'd make it much more weird lol
Tags
I think the big flaw with tags is you've got to be extremely disciplined with them. Otherwise, you may as well tag everything 'brown'.
(That, and the fact that they're soooo 'last year' 
)
It is true, voice really does start to make one's avatar obsolete, which is surely a waste. With text conversation one moves about, sits on things, gets up from things, starts gestures and animations and so on (well, at least, I do). One is instantiated. Voice basically turns the whole thing into a phone call that takes place whilst one happens to be in SL in my experience, though admittedly that does come purely from Skype.