Upgrade Boston in SL - Eric Gordon's Lecture...

In this pic, the nametags have been provided. The place was so laggy that Beavis had to give us a running commentary from time to time as to whether or not anything could be seen on the movie screen. One interesting development, however was that the host known as JC Fremont has finally shown to us the proof-of-concept that wearable video-screens (in this case attached to his nose) can actually exist in Second Life...performances with wearable video is something that Second Front have been wanting to perform with since its inception in November 2006. The only other time I have seen wearable or portable video of any kind was at Ian Ah's lounge a few weeks ago.

Hey performance art and academic lecture fans,

I got invited on very short notice to this lecture for Upgrade Boston that was streamed into SL from RL (Emerson College, Boston). I was not able to enter SL until half-way through the lecture so I had no idea what the talk and the context was all about although from what I heard in those last few minutes, it seemed to be a general talk about the potentials of SL aimed at a target demographic of nOObs in RL who have not yet crossed the line from theory into practice (I am talking about the audience and not the lecturer named Eric Gordon who apparently has an avatar somewhere in SL). I had to leave before Show'N'Tell did their presentation...I though at the time it was just some show and tell routine but it turned out to be an actual group of sorts... Well, RL was getting really busy for me at that time so I had to pass...sigh!

Live video-conference feeds/streams are a great idea but I think the RL acoustics need to be groomed in order for the transmissions to be audible in SL. There was way too much reverb to determine what the lecturer was trying to say...the extreme lag did not help either...sigh!

The good news was that many avatars had some tubs of hot buttered popcorn to spare so at the very least, we had something to munch on while trying to focus on the content behind the reverberated words....

Oh well...I was unable to figure out what questions to ask due to these technical difficulties (and my own RL lag since I arrived late) so here is at least the official press release for the event...

Upgrade Boston Eric Gordon and Show n Tell March 22 at 7:00 pm EST (4:00 pm. Linden Time) @ Art Interactive: 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge. Emerson College Island, Emerson Island (182, 112, 23)

...and here is some more visual proof that I made a genuine effort to listen and participate...

Here is what Eric Gordon looked like in RL...His avatar in SL was nowhere to be seen on the premesis. For awhile, only Beavis could even confirm Eric actually existed live on the screen ;-)

Here is probably how Eric Gordon saw us as he looked into the fishbowl known as Second Life ;-) The green guy standing up in the far right was Bryan Dix reporting for the SL Newspaper. You can see more clearly in this pic that JC's face was obscured by the very nifty and desirable wearable video-cube...wow! I am surprised this wearble video was able to consistently stream in realtime because the rest of the space (especially the walls and windows) were super laggy and gray...

...and one more side angle for those who cannot get enough of Eric Gordon's profile ;-)

Update from the Future - On March 31, 2007 - Plurabelle Posthorn blogged this event as well... check it out by clicking here.

Here is the video that Plurabelle recorded and edited:



If you cannot see this embedded video, click here.