The Metaverse Cultural Series is a set of events featuring performances and lectures that highlight unique aspects of metaverse culture, taking place in multiple virtual world spaces.  The series showcases innovative artists, thinkers, performers, and academics whose work is on the forefront of exploring what it means to work, play, and live in the emerging metaverse.
Theme: Global Impact of the Metaverse – Now & Future
One of the most compelling and alluring aspects of the metaverse is its infinite potential and global reach. While many places in our physical world are convulsed with revolutions, uprisings, border conflicts, and wars, the metaverse is borderless, stateless, and infinite. Â In the physical world, resources are limited, hoarded, and fought over, but in the virtual world, pixels are unlimited and the only finite resources are time and our own creativity and imaginations. Â Still in its nascent form, the metaverse is only just emerging as a site to develop a truly global community, and we wonder how the nexus of physical and virtual may transform our worlds on a broader scale.
As part of the Metaverse Cultural Series, we ask what impact may the metaverse be having on our world now, and how might it impact the global community in the future?
Stay tuned for upcoming future Metaverse Cultural Series events!
2014 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
July 19, 2014 - The Making of the Rockstar Avatar
The Making of the Rockstar Avatar
Avatar BellaLuna Xigalia will present her Mixed-Reality collaboration with RL “Reality-TV” Producer, Roz Taylor Jordan who will be joining us in-world for the very first time. Videos of their work together in the past two years will shown, which include testing for life-size Holographic Projection for Avatars and BellaLuna’s new work titled “Quantum Superpositioning for Performance” using advanced Multisensory and Neurogaming technology.
Roz Taylor Jordan has been a Casting Producer for the biggest Emmy winning shows in Reality Television. There is no genre, age range or subject matter she hasn’t tackled working on shows like, Survivor, America’s Got Talent, The Amazing Race, Outback Jack, Who Wants To Marry My Dad, The Dr. Phil Show, Average Joe, The Bachelor, Kid’s Say The Darndes’t Things, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Patty Rangel (RL) / BellaLuna Xigalia (SL) has been a former guest speaker at the National Second Life Community Conference (2011). It was there that she co-presented her research completed at NASA Ames that same summer for “Brain-Computer Interface for Avatars”, in addition to previous R&D completed in 2010 in New York City and San Diego for “Holographic Telepresence for Avatars”(which was a proof of concept where two Second Life Avatars performed as life-size holograms on-stage with a live musician) and “Markerless Motion Capture for Avatars”.
Grid: Â Second Life -Â http://secondlife.com
Location: Â Vesuvius
SLurl:Â Â http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vesuvius/99/174/25
Ustream Viewing:Â Â http://www.ustream.tv/channel/metaverseculturalseries
February 4, 2014 - Senses Places: a Mixed-Reality Performance
Senses Places
Senses Places is a playful mixed-reality performance and participatory environment; an ongoing somatics dance-technology international collaboration witnessing the emergence of complex embodied interactions and environments. The surfacing expression arises out of the intricate enmeshment of embodied and environment trans-modal interfacings amongst performers and participants across the world, their avatars, and video mediations.
Isabel Valverde aka Butler2 Eveyn is a transdisciplinary performer, choreographer and scholar from Portugal. Isabel has been developing experimental solo and collaborative work since 1986 and she graduated in Dance Theory and History (UCR), Interdisciplinary Arts (SFSU), New Dance (SNDD/AHK) and Dance (FMH/UTL). Isabel’s doctoral thesis, “Interfacing Dance and Technology: a theoretical framework for performance in the digital domain”, was translated into Portuguese (FCG/FCT, 2010). After completing a postdoctoral (BPD/FCT) she continues research in Dances and Technologies at GAIPS/INESC-ID, and coordinating the Center for Arts and Technologies/Institute for Human Studies and Intelligent Sciences, including performance practice-theory, cross-disciplinary and cultural collaboration, participatory performance environments, somatic based choreography, and experience design.
http://isabelcvalverde.blogspot.com/
Grid: Â Second Life – http://secondlife.com
Location: Â Odyssey Simulator
SLurl:Â http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Odyssey/27/162/655
Public Physical Location:Â ARTCASA, Rua Marechal de Saldanha, 28, 1200 Lisbon, Portugal (23:00 hour local time)
Ustream Viewing:Â http://www.ustream.tv/channel/metaverseculturalseries
2013 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
May 11, 2013 - Armchair Author with Adele Ward
Armchair Author
Armchair Author host Adele Ward will interview author Patricia Averbach, whose debut novel Painting Bridges was released recently. Patricia workshopped this novel in Second Life, so virtual worlds have played an important part in her success as a writer. In November her debut poetry collection will be published as a prize for winning the International Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition judged by acclaimed American poet Anne Stevenson, and she will read an extract from the novel and also the winning poem on the show.
Painting Bridges: Â Amazon.com
Adele Ward (Avatar: Jilly Kidd)Â has been running the Written Word group with writing events almost daily for nearly six years. In real life she is an author and publisher with a long career in journalism. On Second Life she created and ran the Meet an Author show which was broadcast on Treet.TV for nearly three years, interviewing a published author every two weeks, from bestselling authors to debut novelists.
Grid: Â SpotOn3D -Â https://spoton3d.com/
Location:  SpotON3D Theater, Italian Village
URL: Â http://3Durl.com/map/spoton3d/
June 29, 2013 - RPG Storytelling in the Metaverse with Alcibides Zemenis
RPG Storytelling in the Metaverse
While online MMORPG and computer games have often made great strides towards being open ended, they do not offer the possibilities that the metaverse can. In virtual worlds, gamers with a vision can create their own version of a favorite universe or story and friends can join in. This presentation will review role playing and story telling in virtual worlds and discuss the various methods and approaches that the metaverse provides to make your dreams and adventures a virtual reality.
Alcibides Zemenis has been lecturing on RPG story telling for several years in Second Life, along with reading from his published work and poetry. The second edition of his novel “The Goddess of Pigland†will soon be released on Amazon Kindle. Al also runs the Alemzi Art gallery in Second Life.
Grid: Second Life – http://secondlife.com
Region: Â Vesuvius
SLurl: Â http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vesuvius/99/174/25
October 19, 2013 - MineOpticon - Minecraft Ensemble Performance
MineOpticon
Saturday, October 19, 2013 – 2PM ET (11AM PT)
MineOpticon is an ensemble performance project and choreographic intervention into the MineCraft world. Situated on the CADRE Laboratory for New Media server “Orwell”, The MineOpticon stage is a conceptually inverted Panopticon populated by 8 performers who execute choreographic maneuvers using native resources in absurd and unexpected ways.
In addition to their choreographic roles, MineOpticon performers are subject to all the same game mechanics as any MineCraft player on a server set to survival mode. Performers must remain well fed, during their rehearsals and performances or their avatar will literally die from starvation. Performers also run the risk of being attacked by Creepers, Endermen, Skeletons and other “mobs” while they are in the performance environment.
Maneuvers include choreographed water drops, ensemble sound block performance, the synchronized release of fireworks and many other Minecraft native possibilities incorporated into a 30 minute spectacle with an original musical score by Yagiz Mungin.
The performance also includes the spontaneous emergence of multigenerational participation that may be the subject of academic papers in the future.
Join us for the next event in the Metaverse Cultural Series!
This event will take place in the virtual world of MineCraft, with a live viewing audience in the virtual world of Second Life as well as directly viewable online via the Metaverse Cultural Series Ustream channel.
Grid: Second Life – http://secondlife.com
Region:Â Vesuvius
SLurl:Â http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vesuvius/99/174/25
Ustream viewing: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/metaverseculturalseries
Hashtag: #MCS13
Metaverse Cultural Series: MineOpticon Credits
Produced and Directed by: DC Spensley AKA DanCoyote
Silicon Valley based artist DC Spensley’s groundbreaking work in virtual reality art, augmented reality intervention, performance and participatory gaming has been exhibited internationally at venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Ars Electronica in Linz Austria, The Dutch Electronic Arts Festival in the Netherlands, Boston\’s Cyber Arts Festival and San Jose’s ZERO1 Biennial. DC received a Masters of Fine Arts from the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at the School of Art and Art History at San Jose State University and his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute on full merit scholarship.
Performed by the “Diamond Boots Ensemble”:
- Jenene Castle
- Sara Gevurtz
- Ben Unterman
- Peter Spangler
- Oberon Onmura
- Michael Amundsen
- Laurence Motibia
- Marek Kapolka
- Jeremy Owen Turner
- Anhinga Chaika
Technical Director: Bill “Wabbs” Cruickshank
Original Score: Yağız Mungan
MineCraft InWorld catering by Ama
MineOpticon is a 30 minute theatrical intervention into the virtual world of MineCraft staged at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media “Orwell” Server. Special thanks to curator James Morgan for his support.
Second Life Venue Courtesy of: The Vesuvius Group
December 7, 2013 - Improvisations: Composers, Artists, and YOU!
Improvisations: Composers, Artists, and YOU!
Creative explorations in virtual world in real time! Come watch and listen as instrumentalists improvise to spontaneous builds by artists and vice versa. Participate by sharing your poetic images and associations in the chatbar. Enjoy the magic of spontaneous improvisation!
Marly Milena, M.S. Ed (Avatar:  Niela Miller), has been in Second Life since 2007. She has a background which combines many arts, group facilitation, humanistic psychology and education. Her business, People Systems Potential, has been devoted to a wide range of services for enhancing creativity, self-expression, personal and professional development and organizational innovation. She has been applying her skills and experience to new frontiers of virtuality.
Grid:  Second Life  Venue Name:  Octagon:Creative Exploration
SLURL: Â http://slurl.com/secondlife/Prism%20Lila/33/213/23