I was watching an interesting video recently about a new game that’s now just been released, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, made by The Chinese Room. Dan Pinchbeck, the Creative Director, and Jessica Curry, the Studio Head/Composer, talk in the video below about how players ‘discover story’ through finding electrical devices to interact with in […]
In cyberculture no one is middle-aged, which means that no one can be young either. I’m returning to this quote1 from 1999 to discuss life, age, and ageing, to follow on from ageing and death in the previous post. On the surface, this statement appears to remain true in Second Life; there are few avatars […]
Baby’s Ear is the latest creation from Neva Crystall. There are now only two days left to enjoy it before the fortnight window closes. I took the photos about 10 days ago, but real life has been so hectic. It is, in many ways, characteristic Neva. Cool, subdued colours, where land meets the sea. There’s […]
This is my contribution to the ‘What Second Life Means to Me’ video project being run for the virtual world’s 12th birthday celebrations. I was not sure about doing this project, but several things came together. It seems appropriate that this should be my 100th blog post. This will be my third video this year. […]
This week there was a story on Motherboard entitled ‘Avatar IRL’, by Cecilia D’Anastasio, about a transwoman, Veronica Sidwell. Following her experiences in Second Life, Veronica decided to transition in real life. Below the article lies the tagline: ‘Goodbye, Meatbags is a series on Motherboard about the waning relevance of the human physical form’. Why […]
The Rituals of Relationships, and the Ordinariness of being Online In this post, I’m looking at a couple of quotes that made me think about how relationships online and offline compare. The first is by the writer, Daniel Blythe: The problem for the contemporary writer is that virtual life is not set aside from the […]
Book of the Week a couple of weeks ago on Radio 4 was from Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, and Friday’s edition drew from the chapter on children. It told about Deb Wilenski’s experiences with children who were given the chance to freely explore the natural world. It struck me that the two predominant features that […]
