Tom Eckersley exhibition

As a spare time activity I'm putting together an exhibition of posters by Tom Eckersley for the ArtsPlace gallery on Eduserv Island.  The posters, 24 of them, have been selected (and used with permission) from the Eckersley Archive hosted by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).

As with any activity like this in the UK, clearing rights over the images has taken a while but I'm grateful to staff at VADS for dealing with this side of things on my behalf.

As you can see, I've got as far as uploading the images and plonking them onto poster sized prims.  Note that I used Picnik, the online image manipulation tool, to add a frame to each poster.  Now I need to get the sizes and aspect ratios correct, position them on the walls of ArtsPlace and create a notecard for each holding VADS catalog record for each of the selected posters.  Shouldn't be too long, assuming I get my finger out.

Watch this space...

ArtsPlace SL has moved

I've moved ArtsPlace SL to the new Eduserv Island. This means it is in a more controlled location, without my needing to worry about who is moving in next door so to speak.

The new SLURL is:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/64/93/26/

I apologise to people who have bookmarked or referenced ArtsPlace using the old SLURL - hopefully, this location will be more persistent.

If anyone has any suggestions for new exhibitions that could be hosted in ArtsPlace I'd be keen to hear them. I'm primarily looking for exhibitions based on library or museum collections.

Museums and the Web paper

ArtsPlace gets a mention in the following paper for the Museums and the Web conference:

Urban, R., Marty, P., & Twidale, M. A Second Life for Your Museum: 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments and Museums. In J. Trant and D.
Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto:
Archives & Museum Informatics, published March 31, 2007 at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/urban/urban.html

Artslib talk

I was due to give a brief talk about ArtsPlace SL to the artslib group in SL today.

Unfortunately time didn't allow it. Shucks... I'd prepared my talk and everything! :-)

Never mind... I hope to do the same thing next week.

My neighbourhood

The area around ArtsPlace SL is beginning to get built up, with land that has been sitting around for sale for quite a while being bought and used. My near neighbours now include a number of Spanish people (there seems to be a growing Spanish community on Pak), a swimming pool (pictured) and a bondage gear stall! Nice.

Coincidentally, I've tentatively been offered space to move ArtsPLace SL onto the new ALA Arts Infoisland, though the area isn't currently open for access, which if it happens will be a much more appropriate location for me.

ArtsPlace SL in the AvaStar

The WPA Poster Collection at ArtsPlace SL has got a mention in the current issue of The AvaStar (Issue 4, Jan 12th 2007, page 27 [PDF]) under 'Art and Design'.

An impressive and varied display from the American Library of Congress.

How cool is that!?

Lights!

Hmmm... OK, so the lighting still isn't working properly in ArtsPlace SL. It works fine on my work laptop, but not on my desktop machine at home. I assume it has something to do with how well spec'ed the video card is??

Anyway... I need to investigate further. For the time being, if you turn up at ArtsPlace after dark and you can't see well enough force the sun to 'noon' in your client.

Addendum: Thanks to advice received from the AllianceSecondLife Group I now realise that I needed to enable 'local lighting' in my SL client preferences. Doh!

New ArtsPlace SL building

One of the things I had to do over the Christmas break was to redesign ArtsPlace SL from the ground up. My previous design was very inefficient in its use of prims, which meant that there were very few left over for actually building the exhibitions.

In the new design I was much more careful about slotting prims together carefully, in order to minimise the number used. Basically, I've come up with a modular design, three same shape building blocks fitting together to create the new overall shape - two downstairs, one up.

Before building I also re-landscaped the ground, giving a nicer sloping area, meaning that the new building is at ground level on one side, but raised up on the other.

I also had an issue with lighting in the old building. I tried (and failed) to use lots of small light blocks, each one over one of the exhibits. In the new ArtsPlace SL, I've simply resorted to making the whole of the upstairs ceiling into a light source. This gives ample light on both floors after dark.

WPA Poster Exhibition

The WPA poster collection exhibition went live on target (Jan 4th), although I confess that I've added a set of four display boards about the WPA since then.

I think the exhibition works quite well, though I would have liked to make it more interactive. I anyone reading this has any ideas for how the exhibition could be improved I'd be interested to hear about them. For example, if I had more skills in the animation creation business, I'd consider adding some kind of animated exhibit about how the silk screen printing process works.

The exhibition consists of 51 posters, arranged on 8 display boards inside and outside on the upper floor of ArtsPlace SL. Each poster can be clicked on to retrieve a notecard containing a cut-down version of the Library of Congress catalogue entry for that poster.

There is also a general introduction to the collection as a whole.

Over the weekend I've also added four display boards that provide an introduction to the WPA. This is particularly useful for non-US residents, like myself, who may well have never heard of the WPA. The text is taken more or less directly from the Wikipedia page about the WPA - therefore, I take no responsibility for its correctness. Though, to be honest, I don't have any significant concerns in that direction - I have a lot of faith in the collective knowledge that builds Wikipedia.

Radio silence

Apologies for my lack of postings over the Christmas period, caused mainly by me forgetting my Blogger username and password in the transition from the old beta Blogger service to the new one :-(

Anyway, just to note that the WPA poster collection exhibition is still scheduled to be opened upstairs at ArtsPlace SL tomorrow (Thursday). I'm working on it right now...

Coming soon - Library of Congress American Memory exhibition

I'm pleased to announce that the Library of Congress have allowed me to host a small exhibition of work from the WPA Posters collection, part of the now very substantial American Memory collection.

The exhibition will run for 4 weeks from Thursday January 4th 2007.

I'm very grateful to the Library of Congress, particularly Caroline Arms and Phil Michel, for their support in arranging this at very short notice. I hope we will all learn something useful from it about how best to use SL to host this kind of work.

The builders have moved out...

I've pretty much finished with all the major building work and now have a rather nice area of 'gallery' space spread over two floors, three entrances, a teleport between floors and an upstairs outside seating area (currently sans seats!).

I originally built a third floor, but hit my parcel prim limit (essentially I'd used all my available building blocks). So I removed the third floor and have decided to stick at two. To be honest, the building looks much better balanced at two floors rather than three.

The prim limit took me slightly by surprise - I hadn't done my homework properly. But I suppose it helps to keep the money rolling in to Linden Labs.

So with the basic space finished, I now need to populate it with exhibits - the lack of prims might be a limiting factor here I guess. My current plan is to use the downstairs area for stuff that I develop - though I'm open to offers - and the upstairs area for exhibitions of other people's work. I'm planning on making each exhibition last three or four weeks. News about the first exhibition will follow in the next post.

Well see how things work out...

On geography

It strikes me that the geography of SL can be quite disorientating. In RL we are used to geography being one of the things that defines what is and isn't possible - where you can easily get to on foot, and where you have to take a car, train or flight for example. In SL, everything is a search and a teleport away - co-location means relatively little.

While the teleport experience is quite liberating, it also means it is very difficult to get a sense of the overall layout of things.

I'm not complaining you understand. Just noting!

There are still occasions when I walk or fly somewhere - but often it is only because the teleport sub-system doesn't always seem to function 100% at the moment.

I'm partly thinking about this because I've built ArtsPlace SL on my own land, well away from its arguably more natural home on a sim like InfoIsland - and I'm wondering how much that matters. Clearly, there are issues with who your neighbors are in terms of what you look out over - but in terms of where you are, I'm not sure how important it is. At the moment I'm assuming that passing traffic is an irrelevance compared to getting good visibility is SL search engine results?

Welcome...

Hi, and welcome to the ArtsPlace SL blog. This is primarily where I'll post news and updates about ArtsPlace SL, my home in Second Life (SL), but I'll also use it to share my experiences of SL more generally.

Who am I? My name is Art Fossett and I've been a resident in SL for a couple of weeks. Not long... but long enough that I know I like it. And long enough the begin building stuff. Stuff like ArtsPlace SL, a space in SL intended to allow libraries, museums, archives and galleries to come together with artists and like-minded people in building innovative digital creations.

I've no idea how or whether this is going to work out... it may all come to nothing. But it seems to me that there is a potential in this pace for interesting things to happen.

In RL my name is Andy Powell. I work for Eduserv, a UK not-for-profit charity that works to support the effective use of ICT in education. I'm Head of Development for the Eduserv Foundation, a role that is largely about providing advice to the education community about the use of ICT and about providing some funding to support that where we can. In RL, I blog at eFoundations. To be honest, I'm not yet sure how my RL role and my ArtsPlace SL role are going to intersect.

Anyway, that's enough for now... I'll try and keep posting here regularly, as my experience of second life grows.