International Architecture is Here

Is it possible to be efficient as both a local and global creator?  Virtual vocations create an opportunity for international collaboration that is unparalleled — have we learned to work efficiently together across boundaries?

International Architecture

The architects of today’s International Architecture in Virtual Worlds panel hosted by the US Department of State in Second Life explored both the global and local implications of their shift to Second Life as a tool for professional design and education.  Judy Cockeram, Amr Attia, David Denton and Jon Brouchoud (also known as JudyArx Scribe, Archi Vita, DB Bailey and Keystone Bouchard) took an hour to join participants inSL for a streamed discussion followed by a tour of their key architectural builds.  Students and designers were given time to explore open source 3D design solutions like the Wiki Tree and Studio Wikitecture along with the gorgeous landscape of reimagined Cairo being built with the collaborative design team led by Amr and David.

International Architecture

After years of producing mixed reality events it still astonishes me when we can beam multiple speakers from around the world through space and time to join us in one place.  Synchronous collaboration still has its challenges (try finding one time zone that works for Egypt, New Zealand and the US) but we were able to gather 70 people from over a dozen countries in one place to share a conversation about architecture and international partnerships that may prove fruitful for a burgeoning new industry.

International Architecture

As the 3D web and our collective design desk radically evolves we are wise to make the best use of the tools in front of us, not only the Wiki Tree and www.archvirtual.com for Architectural design community but also the rich global community we share inworld at these panels, conversations and events.  Together we are asking questions, exploring potential, offering perspectives and hopefully opening a few eyes and ears along the way.

International Architecture

I am grateful for the professionals working virtually to share their work with a larger global audience and learn something new from people half a world away.  Their willingness to explore new methods is what gives us a rich landscape to explore and build on together, scripting new doors where none existed before.  Whether we work in architecture or public diplomacy, we  have this amazing time and space to share together and explore what our world could be like if we could take the best of our cultures and bring them together.  The virtual landscape is a dreamlike media where worlds can mingle and merge, much like our real world malls and living spaces where cultures collide, and I am grateful for the builders, creators and trailblazers who are making these worlds worth living in.

Thank you to Any1 Gynoid for this CNN iReport; take a few minutes to see more of the photos and videos shared at this event tagged #intlarchitecture.

FOR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCES: Architecture in Virtual Worlds

Friends and followers of our virtual work, thank you for being supportive of our experimental multimedia endeavors over the last five years.  We have taken an interest in participatory and interactive media to the top of the field for mixed reality and streaming conversations where leaders can come together across borders and share their common interests.

This weekend it is my pleasure to cohost an international panel of architects working in Second Life and other virtual worlds to create new types of living experiences.  I invite all international readers to join us in Second Life or on the web this weekend by listening in to our panel at 10AM PST on Sunday, asking other professionals how they approach international collaboration in their field and blogging and tagging #intlarchitecture in your photos and conversations.

Join us inworld this Sunday for a fascinating meeting of the minds!

The formal invitation:

The United States Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs invites you to attend

Architectural Design and International Collaboration in Virtual Worlds

The panel will discuss how architects utilize virtual technologies for international development partnerships.

Panelists from various countries will explore the efficiency of virtual worlds and shared 3D design platforms as environments conducive to cross-cultural collaboration.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

10:00am Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) or 10:00am Second Life Time (SLT) 1:00pm in Washington DC 7:00pm in Cairo, Egypt

The panelists for this event (and Second Life avatars):

Amr Attia (Archi Vita), Architect – Urban Planner; and Associate Professor of Architecture and Planning at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt

Jon Brouchoud (Keystone Bouchard), Owner, The ARCH Network, Studio Wikitecture Founder based in Madison, Wisconsin

Judy Cockeram (JudyArx Scribe), Architecture Professor, School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

David Denton (DB Bailey), Architect and Urban Planner located in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, California

President Barack Obama, in his speech from Egypt this June, spoke of international collaboration as a high priority for all: “We will match promising Muslim students with internships in America; invest in on-line learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.”

Can virtual worlds be the online network that facilitates international collaboration? Projects like Studio Wikitecture led by Keystone Bouchard in SL demonstrate that 3D virtual spaces can be a rich and useful toolkit for architects to work together and share common elements. This panel will explore cooperative design projects where international architecture in virtual space may be more efficient than a flight from the United States to Egypt.

Amr Attia and David Denton have worked together as architects in Second Life for the last two years. Their ongoing work has brought unique benefits to Cairo and California where these gentlemen architects work in their respective studios. Amr and David will share their experiences followed by a tour of their reimagined Cairo mall built in Second Life as a example of architectural collaboration across borders. Judy Cockeram, a professor of architecture at The University of Auckland in New Zealand, will share how her students have used Second Life to redesign public spaces with stakeholders and organizations.

The State Department Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) explores 3-D virtual world platforms like Second Life for showcasing and hosting IIP products and services. IIP engages international audiences on issues of foreign policy, society, and values to create an environment that can be receptive to U.S. national interests and foster open dialogue. IIP communicates with foreign opinion makers and other public audiences through a wide range of print and electronic materials published in seven world languages. IIP also provides information outreach support to U.S. embassies and consulates in more than 140 countries worldwide.

Teleport Location: Hosted on Annenberg Island in Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Annenberg/181/97/25

If you have any questions regarding the organization of this event please send an email or Instant Message to Mishie Sands or In Kenzo in Second Life. If you run into technical issues during this event please IM Mystique Lacombe, Resident Annenberg or Buffy Beale in Second Life.

lightninglove.eventbrite.com

lightninglove.eventbrite.com, originally uploaded by .inKenzo. evonne@amoration.

http://lightninglove.eventbrite.com to get your passes for our summer camping weekend with artists from the Lightning Temple, hosted in Malibu. Fire + Art + Music + Workshops + Community + Pool + Hot Tub + Wooded Walks! Limited passes available, $30/$50 at the door until sold out.

Projects I’m excited to grow in 2009

While this is a personal list of food on my burners, I’m reposting to Amoration for focus throughout our volunteer base and future endeavors. Ideas, feedback, connections always welcome, I love it when you suggest friends, movies, resources to help us grow these projects.  We are especially looking for talented singers, musicians, builders and other lightning rods to join the temple touring team for 2009, we meet again on January 8th.

1)  Lightning Temple Tour, Events, Writing, Education and Resourcing the Best Possible Futures….our interactive work is broad and wonderful and we’re turning up the juice on the tesla coils to try new performance stunts never seen before live.  We will change the way millions play with energy in their daily lives through a global green core of altenergy leadership.

2)  Transitions: Place for Dreams is an extraordinary collaboration of education and digital resource leaders from many nonprofits who are designing new tools to help transitional populations build new homes, businesses and lives through social media…currently looking for programmers familiar with open API development for search tools and widgets.

3)  Sugar Shack Arts: After 8 years of growing intentional community in Los Angeles we are hitting our stride and welcoming amazing new people into our home for 2009 creative pursuits such as the Lightning Temple design meetings

4)  Social Action Media:  Causecast, Social Actions, Change.org, Nurture, SocialVibe, Causes on Facebook…time to integrate action everywhere.

5)  TekFarms:  Solar and Alternative Energy and Agriculture model farming, connecting small communities for best practices, a larger database that has the potential to inform a larger EcoData endeavor.

6)  ManorMeta Mysteries: Red Lightning   The stories and comix behind the Lightning, problem solving series for young audiences to tour with the Lightning Temple.

7)  Nonprofit Commons:  I joined this community as TechSoup back in 2006 and look forward to envisioning 3D nonprofit web landscapes with many organizations within the commons in 2009.  We’re currently finishing the build of a new EcoCommons for 20+ green and earth-friendly organizations to collaborate and grow new works.

8)  SMS & Color-based Emergency Awareness Systems: moving toward a mobile and easily scalable way to communicate in many languages about pending disasters such as tornadoes, fires and other fast-moving situations where quick text messages and mobile applications can save lives.

9)  Expanding knowledge of herbal plant, root, seed medicines: intention is to work on healing natural teas, oils, foods that can eradicate tumors and unwelcome growths in the human body.

10)  LoveNet:  The inner structure that allows the farms and intentional community network to grow, a cross-disciplinary group of leaders who understand love to be their first mission in every work.

Peter Sistrom’s Illustration of the Lightning Temple, 2008

Lightning Temple poster

temple poster, originally uploaded by .inKenzo. evonne@amo.

More details on the tour for 2009 and experience design and development from the growing Lightning Temple team, now nearly 100 top artists and performers joining us to electrify the core and energize the masses. We will be sharing documents with potential sponsors and partners for tour and events and you are welcome to contact Evonne directly for more information.

Isn’t this artwork from Peter amazing? I want to be there NOW! Can’t wait to see you all out there, in the fields and deserts of America in 2009. Thank you for supporting the work of AMO volunteers around the design table and everywhere we live and work together.

Lightning Temple updates

Lightning Temple at WordPress will soon become our main site for updates while we maintain the wiki for public details and idea sharing.  Enjoy recent updates including 3D video walkthrough of the temple as it is being built by our team of engineers and artists.

Tags: lightningtemplevideo 3d sketchup

Dallasheals.chipin.com

dallas loves the beat, originally uploaded by .inKenzo. evonne@amo.

Dallas loves the beat…..unfortunately his rear flank and leg are badly wounded and his tail will likely be amputated. He’s freaking out and keeps asking why he can’t fully feel his tail…there’s some feeling there we think, he seems to have slight reactions but not more than numbness.

We set up http://dallasheals.chipin.com to help work out his future care and surgical needs. Our familiar is very appreciative and glad to be alive and we are thankful that so many in our community have cared enough to help with his care and attention while we were away on honeymoon. It is so wonderful to know that no matter where you go you have community and people ready to embrace you, whether you’re a cat or a human.

Essentials of Virtual Community Building

No matter who you are, where you come from or what challenges you are hitting right now, there are a few things we all share in common.  We need a few basic things: food, water and shelter are followed by education and communication with others who share our experiences.  Deep down we want to bond and experience a sense of connection.

Connections thrive when we create solid and healthy communities and this is where virtual worlds excel: the immersive landscape is appealing to network weavers as it provides an infinite canvas for collaboration and experimentation.  My avatar In Kenzo wears her wings as a visible reminder to crosspollinate between the worlds and bring people together so that millions can come together and create the emerging 3D web.

When I first sat down with Douglas Thomas of the USC Network Culture Project he excited me with an idea:  Create a challenge to grow the communities of the virtual world.  Together with a stellar team we crafted The Second Life and the Public Good Community Challenge and successfully gave away a million L$ to winning projects chosen by a panel of experts.

Through the process of reading over 20 proposals and helping our panel through the process of picking their top five, I recognized that listening is essential to community building.  If there’s one secret ingredient to success from events to metaverse productions it’s deep engaged receptivity, not only to words but to actions and creations expressing the ideas that proposals sometimes struggle to capture.  Once you listen to what others say and do you are able to connect them with new ideas and resources to help them grow, which helps the whole community in turn.

During our event on Monday 11/17 I sat with our awardees and discussed the real world impacts that their communities have created in the last few months.  The awardees shared many triumphs including new sims and groups now hosting events along with challenges such as responsible research management in the nebulous terrain of virtual worlds.  Some tested the strength of virtual bonds as dynamic personalities make conversation a complex game about identity; one sim away excited groups at the Nonprofit Commons shared about the strength of their alliances built effectively in these networked spaces.

As avatars learning to work remotely for the first time our panelists for the challenge tested new tools including a graphic consensus-building device that allows groups to map themselves and see statistically significant data made by Alpine EMS. We relied on the talents of the Vesuvius Group to help us produce podcasts and content for USC Network Culture Project and many content creators throughout Second Life who brought their best to the table as artists and activists.  Global Kids, our virtual worlds collaborators for many events including the mini-conference this week, detailed their birds of a feather sessions and RezEd talks on their blog Holy Meatballs for youth audiences (and in the podcast below!).

Together we witness blooming artistic communities, machinima that tells stories of good created in virtual spaces that echoes into our daily lives.  Amazing storytellers like Draxtor Despres are now being recognized for machinima works; Draxtor is accepting an international humanitarian award for his work with the Virtual Guantanamo team who also brought us Wallsickness, a memorial to the walls that divide us and how we have systematically built them up and torn them down.  How do these virtual teams evolve over time as relationships extend beyond the platform?  The Wallsickness team is one example of a solid partnership sustained over years while other groups find their footing as new 501(c)3 organizations.

There are a few rare leaders who can gather a group of people and enjoy that space together over a long period of time, enriching each others lives in ways that we rarely reach in the real world.  Collaborations are more common, requiring great glue and gumption to form a sustainable community that grows and evolves with the people involved. Enrichment can take so many forms, like the support spaces created by the Ability Commons or the International Health Challenge created by the Texas Obesity Research Center.  The people behind these groups are just as fascinating as the beautiful places they create together; a conversation with Nany Kayo of Native Lands or Eme and Gentle of Ability Commons reinforced my belief in these spaces as viable for true social change.

The new Foundations sim brings avatars new life in a handful of ways, providing an encyclopedic museum of the various lifeforms we know and understand now while offering maps of conservation areas and local community building efforts throughout Chicago.  The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been a unique presence in Second Life over the last few years as leaders in philanthropic exploration into virtual worlds, choosing not only to build their own presence but to give to other leaders to grow and explore what we can do together.  Few institutions have the foresight to allocate resources to these brave new worlds and it has been a joy to learn and grow with the Digital Media and Learning staff at the MacArthur Foundation this year.

Craig MacFound welcomed attendees at Monday’s event, speaking about Doctor Ludovico (Douglas Thomas) and his definition of Network Imagination as it relates to the freedom and agency of invention shared with copresence available in virtual worlds such as the new Foundations sim.  “This notion of community and imagination and the way they intersect motivates our presence here”, Craig MacFound noted as he expressed gratitude for the work of Aimee Weber studios bringing “beauty, imagination and playfulness” to the new Foundations sim.

In Draxtor’s video seen above he hits on four key affordances as outlined by Thomas’ upcoming paper from the USC Network Culture Project.  The communities we work with in Second Life embody 1) Awareness 2) Desemination 3) Organization and Action and 4) Intercultural Dialogue that breaks through traditional media resources into the daily lives of their members.  Each of our communities has learned to leverage at least one of these affordances very well to grow a community of likeminded avatars who care about political advocacy, health or engagement with their tribal brethren like the Native Lands project has provided in these photos of their Veterans Day honoring dedication and drum circle.

We share a desire to connect people and resources with our friends at Global Kids who have created RezEd and the Justice Commons.  Barry Joseph and Rik Riel hosted a discussion at Monday’s mini-conference that speaks to the future of these platforms for community building; listen to their podcast below and stay tuned for links to the USC Network Culture podcast of Monday’s panel with these amazing community leaders.

Wisdom and silences broken

Sent to me by a spiritual sister, Krupa:

“Where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibilities to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them… there are so many silences to be broken…”-Audre Lorde

This image I created a few years back when we first discussed the Beijing Olympics and human rights around the world.  It still rings true now.  I ask you, in your comments, to please help us break new silences, not people.

Alt Energy Part 2

Satire and animation are two of our best tools for showing the truth in bold statements made in the industrial/governmental sphere. When complex times call for multilayered answers, bring in the mashups and videoblogs!

The recent propaganda around the Pickens Plan was discussed in this blog along with other alternatives like solar microgeneration (putting some panels into your life!). Now TapRoot has dug deeper into the history of this plan and why we should be wary of single-sided solutions.

Truth About The Pickens Plan | ZapRoot

Over the next few days we will be talking more about our new websites going up this week to grow sustainability, energy and love in everything we do.
Stay tuned.