When wounded warriors return home, they face long term care and recovery, often isolated from their family.

TATRC is now developing the Amputee Virtual Environment Support Space on the Second Life Enterprise platform as a virtual clinic where amputees, their families and healthcare providers connect to supplement care and improve the quality of life of patients.

Currently available inworld as a test proof-of-concept, DOD requirements will put the official version in the SL Enterprise space (behind DOD firewalls and security controls). Overall, it looks amazing and powerful, if it catches on.

[Source]

Peter Bagge’s latest graphic novel, Other Lives, proves to be a brilliantly original and thoroughly surprising read. Although I’m still unsure of what I found to be more surprising—the story’s clever deconstruction of modern identity issues or the fact that it was published by DC’s Vertigo line of comics. In the past I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve read that bore the Vertigo logo (Sandman, Books of Magic, Fables, Hell-blazer, and many many others) yet I still find myself refreshingly surprised by the ever-widening scope of stories that are being released under this imprint.

I had been aware of Bagge’s prior work (his name is frequently brought up by my fellow panelists when I speak on the comics industry at science fiction conventions) but I had never gotten around to browsing any of his work. It takes no more than a quick glance at his artwork to see that he is clearly a product of the 1970’s underground comics movement; there’s an unmistakable boldly inked R. Crumb-style mixed with the elastic loopiness of the old Leon Schlesinger cartoons to Bagge’s artwork. However, his work has clearly evolved beyond his influences—he’s been published by all of the major comic companies and Hate, his satirical look at the alternative culture of the nineties, ran for nearly the entire decade and won the Harvey Award for Best New Series.

In Other Lives Bagge gives us the story of four Dragon Con-going gamer geeks, each struggling in some way with defining who they are. The main plot line follows Vladimir Rostov (pen name, Vader Ryderbeck), an investigative journalist who is researching an article on how people use the internet to assume new identities. The main focus of his story is Javier Ortiz (cover identity, Otis Boyd), a terrorist-obsessed conspiracy theory junkie who may or may not be an agent for the Department of Homeland Securities but is definitely known to be good with computers. Rostov’s investigation frequently takes a back seat to his personal life which is complicated by his own insecurities derived from unresolved issues with his dead father and by his sudden engagement to his girlfriend Ivy Chin (online persona, Shi’a Electra). Rounding out the foursome is Vlad and Javier’s old gaming buddy Woodrow Wooley (poker ID, The Poker King; online persona, Lord Burlington), who serves to reconnect Vlad and Javy and introduces Ivy to the online community of Second World. Plot threads for all four (nine if you count their other lives) characters twist amongst each other in a cleverly plotted study about how much we are influenced by the lies that we tell to others and, more importantly, the lies we tell ourselves.

I briefly mentioned Second World; it plays a large part in the story. Second World is, as the name suggests, Peter Bagge’s version of the online phenomenon Second Life. As in Second Life, Second World allows users to create virtual avatars that exist in a simulated 3D online environment. All four of the main characters in Other Lives interact with Second World in one form or another. Some play nicely, some don’t.

While Second World may be the most visible manifestation of alternate identities, there are plenty of other identity issues at play. Vlad has near-crippling insecurities because he still thinks of himself as the fat, unpopular teenager that he used to be. That, coupled with some serious daddy issues, has left him questioning the value of his life and career. His girlfriend Ivy, however, finds Vlad’s reinvention of himself as a thin (but weight-obsessed) journalist who has cut ties with his past to be a rebellious act that she respects because it is so alien to her conservative Chinese upbringing. Clearly trying to establish her own identity, apart from her family, Ivy leaps headfirst into becoming The Bride and also experiments with a more sexually playful version of herself in Second World. Second World is, of course, a perfect outlet for escapism. Woodrow spends all of his free time in online identities in Second World and on poker sites as an escape from the painful reality of his divorce and financial troubles. The line between separate identities is most blurred for Javy. Diagnosed as a bipolar individual with schizoid tendencies his identity depends primarily on whether or not he’s taking his meds—on them he’s the quiet and shy Javier Ortiz; off his meds he’s the paranoid braggart Otis Boyd.

Complicating matters, Vlad discovers that much of what his hyper-critical father had told him about his own family was untrue. When he tells his uncle about his engagement Vlad discovers that his father had led a secret life of his own. All along Vlad had been led to believe that his father was a restaurant owner whose business had burned down, leading to hard financial times. In truth the restaurant was a struggling but fancy night club that had been torched because Vlad’s father wouldn’t hire minorities and Vlad’s grandfather had left the family with sizable trust funds.

As a whole, the narrative of the story focuses on how each character incorporates their separate identities into their real life. Will the fantasy win out? How much immersion into a second (or third, or fourth) identity is too much? And where and when do you draw the line?

Overall, there’s a universality to the dilemma that Bagge’s characters face: Who are we? We each have our own work, personal, relationship, social, and on-line identities—is any one of these more valid than another? It’s a question that Bagge addresses quite nicely, giving us an entertaining and thought-provoking good read along the way. But don’t let my professional reviewer identity influence you too much—go read Other Lives for yourself.

[Source]

The topical story and strong leads in David Verbeek’s “R U There” feel like a great short stretched into a feature that cannot sustain the tension for which it so earnestly strives.

The best target audience for this “R U There” film about a young gaming champ should be the enormous gaming/”Second Life” community. Yet gamers, for one, inhabit virtual worlds that are far faster and far more action-filled than the slow-paced, moody “R U There.” Ominous music throughout sets up a thriller, but it’s actually a “boy meets girl but does better with her avatar” story.

Professional gamer Jitze (Stijn Koomen) is in Taipei for a tournament. A terrible accident he witnesses and a sore muscle take their toll on his psyche and body and he’s forced to withdraw from the tournament for a few days. While resting, he meets Min Min (Ke Huan-Ru), a beautiful, older woman who sidelines as a prostitute and, in Jitze’s case, a masseuse.

Wanting to spend more time with Min Min, Jitze even pays her to take him with her for a weekend in the country with her family. Ke’s Min Min is intriguingly vague and although she seems attracted to Jitze, she acts maternal and standoffish. Only when their avatars meet in the virtual world of “Second Life” is she openly flirty and physical with him.

Lennert Hillege’s camera sticks tight to Koomen, who offers an assured, nuanced performance: he is both hard to read and vulnerable. Whether Jitze is alone or wandering through the gray, bleak streets of Taipei, Verbeek drives home the point that gamers, like most of us who are glued to our computers, even when playing or communicating with others are always cut off from actual human contact. In fact, Jitze, a prize-winning master soldier in game life is paralyzed before real suffering, the accident victim, and cannot even offer help.

The serenity that pervades their “Second Life” environments — rarely if ever yet seen on the big screen — wonderfully renders yet another way we can suspend time and even life nowadays. To boot, while Jitze’s avatar is his gaming soldier self, Min Min’s is a silver-haired, bright-eyed knockout with Western features. Again, life is easier/better in a fake world you create than in the real one.

What is novel, though, is seeing gaming competitions for those unfamiliar with them. Surrounded by screaming fans, the teams strategize their plays beforehand, dress in matching running suits and are even treated for sports injuries like real athletes. Yet once the match begins, they could just as easily be playing alone at home, over the Internet.

Related Post with Movie Trailer
["R U There" review via]

The juxtaposition of the real and “imaginary” lives of four heavy Second Life users was fascinating. Watching the film was like taking an imaginary vacation to some other planet, with a complete society including beaches and dance clubs, fashion and real estate, friends and strangers. The graphics were very utopian, with clean lines and computer generated images. It was basically a binge of collective imaginations.

Life is much easier in Second Life than it is in the physical world. For instance, while dating in Second Life, a woman gets upset because the private beach won’t allow them to fly.

Second Life resident Caitsu Manga flies a kite in th fields outside of Zero Style Hair. Second Life is a virtual world where users can create a persona all their own while interacting with other players. JESSICA LUTHI / THE GUARDSMAN

After this couple failed to make a real-life relationship work, the man speculated that if they hadn’t ventured out of Second Life, they would “have a nice house in Second Life somewhere with lots of friends,” and would probably be still together, emotionally if not physically.

One of the subjects in the film is the fashionable avatar, Asri Falcone, who designs high-end skin, fashion, and housing products for Second Life denizens.

In stark contrast to her avatar, the camera pulls back to reveal the real-life Falcone, snoring in her unkempt bed before her alarm goes off at 6 p.m. All of the subjects in the documentary seem to spend most of their nights staring into a computer.

Living your life as an avatar is like the ultimate in plastic surgery.

In reality Asri Falcone is pretty, but she’s overweight, lives in her pajamas and chain-smokes. She also lives in her parents’ Detroit basement.

Falcone says she earns well into “six figures” by selling her products, but I wonder if that includes decimal points or is in game dollars, since about 250 Second Life dollars is equal to one US dollar. She lives with her parents because they’ve all had some health problems and her mother is an excellent cook specializing in soul food and fried chicken.

Filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff also follows a young man strangely obsessed with building a Second Life persona of an 11-year-old girl. At one point this avatar spends time as a suicide bomber and eventually plans her own death.

The documentary doesn’t judge whether ultimately Second Life, is healthy or non-healthy but it definitely has the power to take over people’s lives. For all of the individuals profiled, their Second Life experience was almost more important and more “real” than their physical surroundings.

One of the founders of Linden Labs, the San Francisco-based company that created Second Life, said one of the biggest differences between the virtual world and first life is that you can’t physically hurt someone or be hurt.

The film is not an encyclopedic expose of how to use the tools in Second Life. For me, the virtual experience of the movie was enough to know about what goes on in this “new reality.” And I’m satisfied that I’m not missing out on anything.

By Angela Penny/The Guardsman

“Chatroom”, the first of a trio of cyberspace thrillers chilling the film festival, sees a dysfunctional youngster (upcoming British star Aaron Johnson) obsessively watching Japanese suicide videos in a dark locked bedroom.

He sets up a chatroom with four other troubled teenagers, but seems only to want to mess with their heads.

Directed by Japanese master of horror Hideo Nakata, but panned by many Cannes critics, the British movie brings a note of caution to fans of the virtual world both on the Internet and in video games.

“The Internet has been increasingly amplifying negative emotions: anxieties, fear, envy, hatred and anger,” said Nakata, whose movie was screened at the festival’s “Un Certain Regard” section.

“It is now proven that this can result in the most extreme acts, either of killing yourself or other people,” he said in production notes.

In “Black Heaven”, by France’s Gilles Marchand, a teenager is attracted to a beautiful but deranged young woman who lives a double life in an online game called “Black Hole”, where she seduces avatars into committing real-life suicide.

Marchand said he came up with the idea of making a film mingling real life with virtual worlds after watching a teenager, oblivious to shoppers in a department store, playing a videogame in which his avatar had just committed murder.

His movie is set in sunny southern France, counterposing the light and colours of the Mediterranean coast with the dark, highly stylised world of the online game.

Dutch offering “R U There“, also screening in “Un Certain Regard”, is director David Verbeek’s tale of a professional gamer forced to pull out of a wargame tournament in Taipei — where the watchword is “kill!” — for several days due to muscle strain.

Normally locked up in virtual worlds he suddenly comes face to face with the real world where he is drawn to a local woman, Min Min.

A Taiwanese doctor suggests “he lives too much in his mind and needs to live with his body” but Min Min instead convinces him to follow her example by relaxing as an avatar on Second life.

“What he surrenders in the end is his need to always control his environment,” said Verbeek.

But while the pair have a common need to feel free from the constraints of life “they cannot accomplish this in real life,” the director said.

“Only virtual reality enriches their experience, despite being an imaginary world.”

Trailer here

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Following on the heels of Chatroom comes another movie with a foot in the virtual world. Here, though, the realms of cyberspace are represented literally rather than metaphorically. The movie features a sprinkling of scenes from Dutch gamer Jitze (Stijn Koomen)’s exploits in a war sim contest and another handful from the artificial reality of Second Life. However, in this case, the fact of computer-based worlds and their effect on our essential being is the message of this movie, rather than a device for a more plot-driven tale.

Jitze is competing in a gaming tournament in Taiwan and is the star of his team, which is easing through the early rounds. His split from his surroundings evokes that of Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation – only Jitze isn’t really a stranger in a strange land. As his response to witnessing a motorbike accent shows, his disconnect is in fact with other people and himself. A (psychosomatic?) shoulder injury then pushes him to the sidelines, and towards Min Min (Ke Huan-Ru), who he attaches himself to in what seems like a desire to feel. She urges him to join her on Second Life, but it’s the time they spend together and the reality of her physical touch which arguably reconnects him with the world and himself.

The film is evenly-paced but languidly so. Long, dialogue-free scenes are spread throughout, which does tend to drag despite the brisk 87 minute runtime. You do get a fair sense of Jitze’s isolation, but the ideas in the movie sometimes feel lost in its self-consciously arty direction. Despite that, R U There is just about thought-provoking enough to keep things interesting.

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JAG had to make an appearance at Izzabella’s wedding. So here we go, a few pictures from the wedding.

Proudest avatar or proudest woman? I have to say it is a little bit of both.  Actually it is: LOADS of both!!! lol But the funny part is that still after 3 months of being partners Jag & I, people are still surprised by us getting married…  Understandable most of them don’t know the whole JAG & Pris story… but I would have thought by now everybody would have swallowed the “old” news…  so just in case some people still have not heard, let me spell it out for you:

PRISQUA NEWALL IS ENGAGED TO JAG TREMOR AND WE ARE GETTING MARRIED AND WE ARE BOTH VERY HAPPY TOGETHER

And I must say, it is a great privilege to have the man I absolutely adore and love in both RL & SL!

I have only been to one SL wedding and it was a very simple, straight forward wedding, no fuss but I have seen pictures of very elaborated ones…  some people really put a lot of effort into their SL wedding…  I dont think ours will be huge but we will still be following the traditions lol

We hired a Second Life wedding minister… and we have to write our vows – that JAG has already written – and chose the music… I already bought my wedding dress and chose the dresses for the Maid of Honor and my 3-4 bridesmaids.  All we need now is a date…

I never got the chance to actually show off my engagement ring but i could not get close enough though i can show off the silver heart necklace JAG got me….

And then he got me another necklace…

His little love notes….

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But now I had another Second Life job:  Agina Island Estate Manager!  I don’t think JAG & I realised how much work there would be owning a sim… So we found ourselves a bit challenged and with a few disagreements on top of it, JAG was even ready to re-sell Agina Island.  But we also have some very supportive friends like Saki…. and it helped so much.  And we are now seriously considering expanding Agina by buying a second sim…

The joy of managing a sim…
Besides fixing doors and sand, looking for objects residents lose lol we sometimes also have to put up with “angry” residents who leave their rubbish on our doorstep….

Sometimes we realize there is too many collisions on the sim so we have to find out the cause to avoid lag or even the sim crashing…. and we find it is just some llamas lying under the sea left by our residents….

Sometimes we all have to put in and help the boss get home when he is a bit drunk… (thanks Kahlan)

We do take the time to meet our new residents and we enjoy the get-together…

But best of all, how often do you go home to find the sim owner wearing a rubber duck floaty in your pool??? Priceless!!!

]]> http://www.slexandthecity.com/life-work/great-owning-sim/feed 0 http://www.slexandthecity.com/second-life/life-agina-island http://www.slexandthecity.com/second-life/life-agina-island#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:41:35 +0000 Prisqua http://www.slexandthecity.com/?p=77 Like in real life, people come and go on Second Life.
The club was keeping both Saki and I very busy. Saki and I were hosting parties everyday at the club with different djs and that did not leave us time to do much of anything else. But it was also also a good opportunity to meet new people and for new friendships like Ninoo and his girlfriend Meea. Ninoo was a dj and started dj’ing at the club on New Years day. Life on Second Life is pretty much the same as in real life… lots of disappointments, bitching, cheating, people breaking up and moving on to something -or someone else…

Depending on how you play the game and some people do not like to call Second Life a game, but this is a world that can be emotionally draining. Some people sees SL as just a bunch of pixels and could not care less about anyone or anything, others have a real second life on there which can affect their real life.
JAG sees SL as just a game and a bunch of pixels. I am attached to my avatar and the other avatars sharing my Second Life.
JAG is in the USA and I am in Australia. Though we talk on the phone everyday nearly 24/7, it was quite interesting to be together on Second Life.
But our biggest disagreement happened on Second Life and he decided to move out the house leaving me hurt. We could not resolve the issue and I decided that I did not want him in my Second Life at all so banned him from the club and the house to which most people could not understand and hated me for it too.
Real life is real life and Second Life is Second Life so try to keep the two separated sometimes is complicated. And people were judging my and could not understand why i would do that but they had no idea what was really going on between JAG and I.
Anyway, Saki and I were offered a better deal for land and decided to settle for a new home behind the club. So I put my land on Costa Rica for sale L$27,000.
On Costa Rica, tiers are due and payable on the first. If you are late, you get charged a late payment fee of L$1000!!! And it is all automatic, you cant avoid it! Tiers are also non-refundable and i had just paid my tier. I put a higher price because first I wanted to get my money back – bought the land for L24,000 and a bit of the tier I already paid. There is no freebie on Costa Rica. and i thought putting it higher was better just in case I had to negotiate the price. Within 48hrs it was sold and without having to negotiate anything.
The weird part was JAG and I finally talked on Second Life on that now empty lot just a few hours before it was sold. My first land, my first home, my first friends…