The ‘Remains’ panel discussion @ Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States, from letft to right: Rubaiyat Shatner (James Morgan, Ars Virtua), JOE Languish (Laura Jones, anthropologist and archaeologist), Chloe Mahfouz (Renée Ridgway, artist & curator), Kliger Dinkin (Brad Kligerman, artist & architect).
Yesterday marked my own first interaction with other avatars in SL, and, unfortunately for the organizers, it was kind of like how most skeptics might’ve imagined it. To quote James Morgan via Rhizome:
If you haven’t been in Second Life then you cannot understand the lengths to which something can go wrong. It was certainly odd for the world to be offline at the beginning of our conference yesterday [and they didn’t get the sound working – imagine giving a prepped 15-min presentation by typing just the important bits in real time!], but I have to say that Laura Jones, Brad Kligerman, and Renée Ridgway managed to maintain composure and have an interesting session on remains.
Yes, the second part of his statement is dead on – despite technical problems. It was admittedly more like a chat, where other things interrupt (BRB!), than like being at a physical conference, where that is the sole thing you are doing (and I think audio might have helped there), but that is the nature of SL, I imagine, and I think the generosity and interest of everyone I spoke to actually showed an enjoyment in navigating that space. There were continual slippages between SL and “RL” names and activities, my favorite part being when Brad / Kliger’s beautiful but dopey-looking avatar (which had just finished giving a pretty intense “talk” about his work) said he was “fried.”
SL means never looking bad or having morning breath, no matter what happened the night before.
Hopefully I’ll ‘see’ some of you at today’s sessions – I’m on the second one, “Body in Quotes” – program here and instructions on participating here.
