[-empyre-] Multi-world creations

["Christy Dena" <cdena@cross-mediaentertainment.com>]

I'm interested in finding out about more multi-virtual world or
multi-location and mixed-reality artworks. [Thanks Jo for passing on the
info about Turbulence btw :)]

Ars Virtua held a 'trans-instance' event to remember Jean Baudrillard:

[quote]
Today at 4 pm SLT Ars Virtua held a small wake for the passing of Jean
Baudrillard. The event was held in World of Warcraft and telecast into
Second Life in our first trans-instance event. The audience was small but
very engaged. Documentation which includes a copy of the live video from WoW
can be found on our Baudrillard Wake page.

As a tribute to Jean Baudrillard's life and work I felt that it was
appropriate to use the world of simulation to deliver my message through the
highly popular simulation gaming environment found in World of Warcraft. As
part of the continued simulation which we call artmaking this tribute can be
seen as an initial foray into a synthetic world for a purpose in which it
was not necessarily built. A tension is created by this detournement of the
space, that is the reutilization of the combat based game environment for a
public function, ironically because it already is used as a community
gathering place. The actual detournment is inverted (inverse detournement??)
because of the reuse of the sphere for a tribute rather than an action of
political protest.

Those who think the irony of this is counteractive to Baudrillard's
philosophy about simulation have missed the point. He did not object to
simulation, for what is art if not the simulacra. He objected to blindness
to the fact that every bit of everything is a simulation.
[/quote]

http://arsvirtua.com/more.php?p=14


Eric has created 'Saijo City' - a work that exists across many virtual
worlds and sites across the Net. Eric's work is inspired by the desire to
create a novel but in a different way. Instead of writing down words he has
decided to create a 'world' that exists in Second Life, Kavena, podcasts,
Ficlets, lots of different sites. Eric is, among other things, a graphic
designer and so the city in SL is pretty impressive.

[quote]
We believe that all that makes up Saijo- this massive mutation and hybrid of
roleplaying, fiction writing, graphic design, storytelling, gaming,
multimedia- it is not new, per se. We take elements and rearrange them (meta
guilding for example, is not new) so that it becomes an organic piece of
work that operates on the principle of slightly controlled organic
emergence.
[/quote]

Eric is slowly creating the world in the same way a writer does -- building
up the characters, class systems in the fictional environment and the
fictional history. He has charts etc at Facebook. But all of this is public
rather than a private development. Eric is creating these elements in the
hope of promoting active participation in its creation too. In response to
copyright control of franchises he has 'splintered' the copyright of his
world.

[quote]
That's where the Saijo model is a bit different. The main characters are in
fact, All Rights Reserved. However the city- the backdrop- is conceptually
blessed with Creative Commons licensing, so a fan or artist could create a
derivative work, based upon the setting of Saijo City, as one might write a
novel that's set in San Francisco, New York, or Paris. We believe that all
that makes up Saijo- this massive mutation and hybrid of roleplaying,
fiction writing, graphic design, storytelling, gaming, multimedia- it is not
new, per se. We take elements and rearrange them (meta guilding for example,
is not new) so that it becomes an organic piece of work that operates on the
principle of slightly controlled organic emergence. So in that regard, it's
new. It's a love. It's a passion. It's an administrative nightmare.
[/quote]

I find the attempt to create a fictional world across many virtual worlds
and websites interesting (of course -- multi-platform art is my passion). 
But I also find his attempt to splinter the copyright interesting. Of course
there has always been examples of collaborative works, but many creators who
are weened on franchises and fandom are exploring an active participation
model of 'world' creation. 

More info about 'Saijo City':
http://infocalypse.ning.com/ 
http://www.kaneva.com/spin
http://www.kyte.tv/saijo_city 
http://ficlets.com/authors/spin
http://saijocity.com