Innovation feeder

Well Scion have done it again. After being the first car manufacturer to stage a virtual care launch in Second Life in 2006, this time they’re letting users design their own crests for the car. A new campaign put together by Strawberry Frog [based in NY & Amsterdam], lets users pick from a range of graffiti inspired symbols designed by Triston Eaton and put together their very own coat of arms. Users can print out the images, save them to a gallery or [for for a few thousand dollars] actually get them customised for their cars.

Check it out at scionspeak.com

Sydney’s growth & progress post-Federation left Melbourne for dead. Since then Melbourne has been stuck in the position of ugly sister, great personality shame about the face. There’s no question that Melbourne is the city who tries harder to compensate for the lack of natural attractions & global landmarks. In fact it is Melbourne’s inability to rely on big business or holiday weather that has seen it put its heart & soul into creating an innovative urban culture unlike no other.

It is this drive to compensate which has culminated in Melbourne’s push to become the cosmopolitan & cultural capital of the country. Melbourne’s streetscapes & city laneways, innovative buildings and relentless events programs have ensured that Melbourne remains a lively bustling urban metropolis that will never play second fiddle to Sydney.

Melbourne will become one of the leading creative business cities of the world. Just as Silicon Valley was the poster city for the nerd revolution, so too will Melbourne become the pin up girl for the creative generation. Due to its progressive culture & ethnic diversity, Melbourne will become the hot market for new products & entrepreneurs across the world. Melbourne will be the creative centre of Australia; a city that appeals to imaginative & inventive minds across the globe, participation will be the cost of entry.

In Sydney people you’ve just met will tell you over dinner how much they just dropped on their new pad at Double-Pay. In Melbourne the richest dude in the bar is probably the one in the corner dressed in the faded cords & rocking out with a glass of red. You wouldn’t have noticed him and that’s the point. In Sydney it’s great because anyone can make it here. In Melbourne it’s all about the “old boys” connections. You need to be from the right family, have the right connections or make friends with the right people. No matter how much your house is worth.

Sydney can be financially exclusive. Melbourne can be culturally exclusive.

Sydney means big business but Melbourne means creativity.

If Sydneysiders want to know ‘where do you work and how much do you earn ?’ then Melbournians want to know ‘What footy team do you barrack for and what are you into?’. f Sydney is a beer in the sun where you can be seen then Melbourne is a glass of red in a basement bar where you can’t be found.

If Sydney is the one night stand then Melbourne is the girl you bring home to mum.

Sydney is up there and in your face, showing you her ways. Melbourne says, ‘You have to discover me.’
Bernard Salt has a nice quote “What Melbournians see as a strong & vital Melbourne-based culture, other Australians sometimes perceive as nothing less than self-absorbed arrogance. It all depends on whether you are viewing Melbourne rom the outside in, or the inside out.” it’s probably true, but that doesn’t mean we’re not right now does it…?

In New York City HBO has just launched it’s latest project - HBO Voyeur.
A brand new project directed by Jake Scott (…son of Ridley). It’s a multimedia display where you can peep into the goings-on in eight NYC apartments in one building, and see how the lives of their occupants are intertwined.

Check out the full story on :: Streetpeeper

The idea of net.art has been around for quite some time and is starting to get some attention on the web as several projects become more visible.
Wikipedia defines this kind of Internet art as art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating.Net.artists use the web to communicate – often utilising URL addresses as part of the piece or message and also to give the ‘piece of art’ a sense of ownership. And in English… this basically means that if the artwork is made up of a URL and then a clever message on the homepage when The URL loads, then that particular work cannot be reproduced without the URL because the URL is intrinsic to the piece. Got it? Here’s an example – log on to www.hell.com and you will receive the following homepage. This my friends, is net.art.

Whilst some of you will be scratching your heads trying to work out why someone would bother creating that, looking at that or even writing about it, remember that part of being innovative is looking for people who think and approach things differently. Net.art is a completely different approach to not only the idea of art, but also the function of web pages and internet addresses.

So geek out over that.

This piece “Peacekeepers” is from one of my favourite Australian artists MIGS a.k.a Mike Chavez. Much of his work comments on australia’s culture & political context and his canvases look fantastic. This is a guy with a lot to say and definitely worth a look.

Check him out :: MIGS

Hi folks

Just thought I would let you know that I’m just in the middle of putting up a new exhibition of street art photographs I took in Newtown, Sydney Australia.

I’ve got some ripper stencils of the cultural terrorist, the usual anti-Govt and anti-war stuff and some beautifully designed stickers. Anyway, the walls are almost finished so if you’re in-world drop by the gallery & check it out.

What is Second Life exactly?

Second Life is what’s known as a MMORG which stands for Massive Multiple Online Role Playing Game. This basically means that it is an online game to which thousands of users around the world interact in different roles (or characters) simultaneously. It’s also often called a ‘metaverse’ a phrase coined by Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel SnowCrash (1992). Stephenson’s definition of metaverse refers to a high definition 3D digital virtual world where users, represented by their avatars (game characters) can meet and interact just like they do in the physical world.

Instead of building websites like in today’s Internet, Metaverse developers build fully 3D virtual spaces (scapes) which can closely mimic the physical world, or be as different from the “real world” as the imagination of the developers permits. For example, in the Metaverse you can visit an accurate replica of a real city, a future imaginary space settlement on Mars, a micro-scale world where you can see individual molecules and cells, etc.’ (Quote source :: uvvy.com)

Second Life was founded by Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab in San Francisco California in 1999. Version 1.0 was launched on the 23rd June 2003 and is continually updated as Linden Lab re-release new versions to support the evolution in-world. In 2004 SL had 14,000 residents, in 2005 it had 59,000 and now in 2006 Second Life consists of 216 km sq of virtual land that hosts over 514,000 residents who hold over 500 events a day and spend upwards of USD6.8M a year on resident-to-resident goods and services.

Still think it’s insignificant and only for nerd losers?

I’ll post some more but in the meantime; check it out :: whilst it’s still in what marketing people would call “the early adopter” phase, as broadband penetration increases and drives prices down (especially in Australia) and as more corporates move in world and the game gets more press, we’ll find that parts of the game become more mainstream.

The only way to get a real sense of it is to check it out for yourself.

If you do, drop by my art gallery and say hello :: Kitty Kabuki’s Street Art Gallery

Inside the Machinima

Machinima is the creation of film or movie content inside a video game. For those of you not playing second life until 5am in the morning, let me explain…

You can create sets inside a virtual world game which feature houses, landscapes, movie theatres or any kind of background you could imagine in real life. You can dress the avatars (characters inside the video game), have them speak in-game via a microphone and even have them act out a pre-prepared script just as you would in real life. In fact, professional machinima is more similar to real life than you might think.

You can shoot from any angle inside most games (if you have the right equipment), you can then edit & create effects in post product just as you would for normal movie content. Where multiple actors are employed, teams emply different real life individuals to play their avatars and follow the director’s script.

In fact, one machinima workshop we went to, a team showed us how they had built a series of cars & machines inside a virtual reality game :: when we looked at the sets we realised that even in-game they had only built two dimensional objects because they only needed to shoot them from one side!

Whilst machinima is gaining popularity amongst avid gamers it won’t be long before mainstream cottons on thanks to the likes of Gofish.com and Youtube.com distributing the content to a wider audience.

Imagine if you created a whole TVC in-world . . No talent fees, cheaper location & post-production . . Not to mention a greater variety of distribution channels.
Sound crazy? I bet a mainstream brand will jump this puppy in no time.

Check out this video of a real virtual machinima studio.

One of my favourite artists :: another piece from miss van

The grafedia project has been around for a while now, it’s a combination of graffiti & media..obviously…people pick or write in the real world and add @grafedia.net then underline it. Anyway who sees that word with “@grafedia.net” knows that the word has been linked to some additional form of media in the virtual world.

Check it out at :: grafedia.net