Community Projects

shadow-1.jpg A new project from USC based on the work of artist Bill Viola and headed by Tracy Fullerton is The Night Journey. According to the official site, the project is “based on the universal story of an individual mystic's journey toward enlightenment.”
I am a nube. In Second Life, I spend a good deal of time standing in one place awkwardly moving my mouse and clicking, desperately spinning my scroll wheel trying to get my view back centered on myself. Somehow, I’m looking down from the clouds, and then in the next instant I’m zoomed in to the side of a bank examining the wood grain of digital shiplap from an inch away. When I’m inside buildings and I try to look around at the audience, somehow I end up outside, stuck staring at the party through tinted windows. Everything’s dim as I watch the other figures gyrate and flex with their programmatic perfect, looping dance moves (someone’s got the Chicken Noodle Soup dance activated in their inventory!) I am the watcher on the outside, frustrated and ashamed as my avatar stands as still as Chief Bromden.
Angela sent the press release for this—it appears that Kongregate, the video game uploading site, is getting into the game business, so to speak. The company, it seems, is branching out from its online community status and is now funding game development projects.

Mary's written a blog entry for Grand Text Auto about MIT's new Center for Future Civic Media . You can read it here....