In January 2007 I wrote about “The Girlfriend experience” and “The Girlfriend Experience Revisited” about the Liminal Institute

The Liminal Institute is an international performance unit. It was brought to existence by a group of artists who share the belief that performance work can – and should – cross the boundaries and definitions between dance, theatre, live art, visual design, music, pop culture and lifestyle.

Today I received an email from Martian Butler, one of the founders of The Liminal Institute, telling me “The Girlfriend experience it returning.

The Players

The Girlfriend Experience, Back Online

Internet game with 4 flesh and blood avatars at Picnic 0726Sept 07 12:00>28Sept 07 19:00
Amsterdam, Westergasfabriek
Pazzanistraat 41 | Amsterdam
organised by: Mediamatic | T +31 (0)20 6389901
organised by: Liminal Institute

Mediamatic and the Liminal Institute will present Martin Butler’s project
‘The Girlfriend Experience’ at Picnic 07. On September 26, 27 & 28 Butler
presents four human avatars to play with again on your computer. This time
you can log in from home as well as at Picnic on Mounir Noah Valentijn
(actor in the Dutch film Het Schnitzelparadijs), Marjolijn Vogels, Aimar
Pérez Galí (Spain) and Helga Wretman (Sweden). Choose an avatar, direct
them via Skype and discover what you can do with him or her.

Join The Girlfriend Experience at Picnic 07, in the Zuiveringshal Oost at
the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. Register on Picnicnetwork.org.

At the Zuiveringshal Oost you can play the game and watch the piece live.
Or play from your home.

Use

http://girlfriend.mediamatic.net

to contact the avatars.

The rampant growth of online avatar communities such as Second Life and
World of Warcraft has enabled the creation of a personal online social and
economic existence. Simultaneously this triggers inherent questions about
this existence, as it questions what the consequences will be for first
life, or reality.

When you use virtual avatars you can do as you please. In The Girlfriend
Experience you will have to get to know each other first. Player and
avatar explore what they can do for each other and how far the avatar
wants to go in performing specific desires. Who is really controlling the
situation remains ambiguous. You have 10 minutes to figure out what you
can do with your avatar after that, your time is up and another players
can take your place.

The title of the project, The Girlfriend Experience, denotes the
paradoxical character that online social interaction has. On one hand, the
safe anonymity by using the avatar, on the other the intimate releases and
projections that can spread easily. For Martin Butler is this the merging
of two apparent extremes, anonymity and intimacy, which characterizes an
important part of contemporary social traffic.

The Girlfriend Experience attracted worldwide attention when it was
presented for the first time at Mediamatic from January to March 2007.

www.mediamatic.net
www.liminalinstitute.nl
www.picnicnetwork.org.

–
Martin Butler

The Liminal Institute
de Ruyterkade 149
1011 AC Amsterdam

Thank you Martin for the advance notice.

As part of the Second Life Birthday celebration, this libsecondlife event is an open discussion about libsecondlife. It will start with a short introduction and background information and then everyone will be free to discuss any aspect of libsecondlife.

Open Source, The GPL and Second Life
25 June 3:00 to 4:00 PM SLT

Gareth Ellison will be discussing how LL’s recent GPLing of the source code is starting to affect the community, both technical and non-technical members.

This talk will be general discussion about open source in SL and what future might hold, and the merits of the different FLOSS licenses will be discussed along with some SL-related projects which have been generated by the community.

“It is my firm belief that in opening up the viewer and supporting open source in general, LL have laid out the path for Second Life and systems based upon it to expand in a way other 3D worlds would never have dreamed possible,” stated Gareth.

The program is called WordWeb, and “WordWeb is a quick and powerful international English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to look up words from almost any program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.”

Have you ever been reading an article and find words you do not have a clue what mean? With WordWeb you simply highlight that word and open wordweb from the task bar and the highlighted word is already in the look up space and the look up has already taken place.

There are tabs for the definition, Synonyms, antonyms, type of, types, Similar, and nearest words.

I seriously love this little piece of software…

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if

• You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
• AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

If you do not qualify you must uninstall the program after the 30-day trial period or purchase WordWeb Pro. The licence is designed to provide a small incentive for people with massively unsustainable emissions to cut down.

If you qualify for the free version you  can download it here.

My question is how to be one of the select few? I begin checking around and not getting any real answers, but I did find a bit of interesting information on the Vivox site. Vivox states they are “giving away a million minutes of free phone calls and group voice chat to the residents of Second Life. Don’t miss your opportunity to experience high-quality voice communications within Second Life.”

Vivox farther states:

To participate, go to any of the Vivox phone booths located within Second Life and follow the directions posted on the Million Minutes billboards to create an account and download Vivox Second Life Phone.

What you need to run Vivox Second Phone and experience in-world communications:

• A computer running the Windows operating system
• A Vivox Second Phone account
• The Vivox Second Phone client running in the background while you are in Second Life
• Speakers and a microphone headset recommended for better quality
• Broadband internet access required

Here is the last listing of slurls to phone booth and microphone locations inside Second Life.

• Vivox in Pulveria
• Electric Sheep
• Illusion Factory
• Jnana Island
• Millions of Us
• Linden Lab campus
• PARIOLI – Virtual Italian Parks
• Intolerable Ginsburg
• SLNN – Second Life News Network
• imagiLEARNING
• EduNation
• National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
  Earth System Research Laboratory
• Costa del Sol Resort
• The Hawaii Plantation Store
• OneWorld.net
• AFTRS – The Australian Film Television and Radio School
• Boomer Esiason Foundation – CF University
• Chase’s Manhattan
• Sarg’s Slides
• The Phoenicia Center
• Cyrotech
• Saturen Grill
• The Underground Cinema
• The French SLObserver
• Mercury Entertainment Services
• Corecon
• Yogundo Elementary School
• InkPot Coffee Bar
• DreamTai

Of course I can not guarantee that signing up early for an account will gain you the chance to be a beta tester…. but it seems as good a way as any to select a few.

Update 2/27/07 9:23 pm PST
I have found that the beta testing will be taking place only on the beta grid, and will require a separate viewer download. If you’re interested (and serious about) participating in the initial run starting next week, drop Joe Linden an email at 3Dvoice@lindenlab.com.

This update was taken from the official Linden Blog

The University of Michigan 3D lab has taken advantage of the released source code by Linden Labs and student Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowske have developed a stereoscopic version of the viewer that will work with a large-screen stereo projection system. This system uses passive stereo based on polarizing filters and was built from off-the-shelf components.

[via Open...]

From SLBuzz.com comes the following.

Second Life Statistics

SL Stats allows you to see how much time you spend in Second Life using a small attachment that your avatar can wear.
SL Stats is completely passive, and, much like the rest of SLBuzz, neatly integrated into Second Life.

How to get started
If you want to partake in this venture, go to the SLBuzz Store and grab one of the watches (they’re FREE!).
Then simply wear it. It will analyze your stats and create a customized profile for you.
The watch is modifiable, too, so you can even put the script into your own creations.

Miscellaneous Statistics

We use several techniques and methods in order to track non-resident related statistics, monitoring and measuring Second Life’s simulator as well as economic growth.

In the near future we will make more of these statistics available on this site.

I haven’t had time to play with this watch yet, but will check it out farther and come back and up date this post in the near future. In the mean time any of you who are using this watch to check on stats of the sims you are visiting… Leave comments here and let all our readers know what your experience has been.

The most interesting thing to me is that you can control pc games with the remote! This really makes me want to get a wii or just buy a wiimote to try this stuff out! I found a lot of people trying it out on different games. It can also be used to control World of Warcraft:

There was an interview of a blizzard developer who didn’t feel it was the best way to control your character in WOW. It still looks and must feel really cool though. I’m sure as people update these drivers things like this will get a lot more interesting.

There is even a way to use it in Second Life. You can get the instructions and scripts from Mi 72,48,94. Seems very easy to me but is it something which can enhance the SL experience? I don’t have a wiimote to try these things out but I’m sure others do and will find this an interesting thing to experiment with. Adam Reuters found it interesting and interviewed Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime about Second Life. I can see lot of potential with other programs and other controllers in the future which will allow much more reality into virtual reality.

Links to Wiimote related stuff:

• wiili.com – Main place to find the drivers and other stuff about wii hacking
• Second Life insider article about the Wiimote
• Another post about the Wiimote
• thewiicast.com – A podcast AND blog all about the wii!
• Someone playing a star wars game with their wiimote
• Someone playing Half Life 2 game with their wiimote