Paradise Lost

Good company

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to get the chance to see Paradise Lost, performed by the Basilique Dance Company, in SL. Whilst I'd seen some of Basilique's work at the MIAMAI BlackLabel fashion show in December, I hadn't seen anything like a full dance show, and I was really intrigued with the mechanics of the piece.

WARNING: this blog post contains spoilers. If you are going to see the show, I would strongly advise that you do not continue reading. It would be great if you'd come back later and let me know what you thought of it in the comments though :).

To continue:

I was rather pleasantly surprised. Using poses and animations embedded in our pew cushions and some controls similar to those of the Restrained Life Viewer, the audience were manipulated into interacting with the performance in a very immediate way and were, at a couple of points nearer the beginning of the performance, transformed from angels (a compulsory costume, sent to us before the show) into devils. For reasons I'm not wholly sure of, the company told us beforehand that this would happen, although knowing didn't take too much away from the spectacle of it actually happening. As devils, we danced and frolicked with the fallen Lucifer amongst the prim-fires of Hell. Watching your avatar get up and move and change into something else without your fingers anywhere near a keyboard or mouse creates a slightly bizarre out-of-virtual-body experience I hadn't even considered possible before.

Audience-devils and the prim-fires of Hell (the orange on the right there)

There was not an enormous cast, and a narrator with a beautiful reading voice told us pieces of the story at different intervals to help us to interpret the dance sequences and scenes. There was music to accompany the whole thing too - classical, and they seemed to repeat Lacrimosa a few times (unless I am mistaken, which is highly possible) which makes sense considering the subject matter of the show. 

 

The mechanics of the dance itself, I cannot describe because I don't know all the details. I don't know if the dancers make their own animations, or whether they scout pose and animations shops and create a collage of movements to make a bigger dance sequence. Does anybody reading this know? I'm not sure which of those methods would be more difficult. The amount of work undertaken to create a virtual show in which the cast dance for almost as hour must be insane.

 

The set was ingeniously set up so that alpha layers (think of them as invisibility cloaks) could be removed and replaced, effectively making whole vistas appear and disappear into thin air.  Little did we know that the pews (hidden in the above picture by an alpha) we had filed into at the start of the piece were hovering just a foot or so above a cloaked River Nile. 

 

The alphas made it quite difficult to move the camera around (imagine getting stuck pivoting a camera around an object you can't see - yup, it's as weird as it sounds) which I found I had to do on a number of occasions when the company's remote control of my camera stopped working. I think that small strangeness is worth it, though, for the spectacle of the scene revelation.

The Nile

There were some obvious issues with the performance. Despite the compulsory costuming and all of the tips Basilique gave us to improve our experience and decrease lag, the piece suffered immensely from lag. In places, it made the otherwise smooth dance moves seem stilted, and some of the more fantastical sets and costumes (like the prim fire in the picture further up, which seemed like an orange wall rather than flames for a little while) were slow to rez, leaving grey blocks in their place until they did. When there are this many avatars in one space with this much going on, however, lag is inevitable, and I think that each dance sequence lasted long enough for us to get the gist, even with lag interfering. There was always something to look at: the snowy winter world of Adam and Eve's exile and the wide River Nile were particularly impressive.

Adam and Eve are exiled. The audience, angels once more, look on

When you are performing in SL, you have the ability to bring in all these 'real' elements like grass and water and even weather systems of rain and snow, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of them. However, there's a reason we don't use actual grass and actual water and implement sprinkler systems in real life theatres, and that's because it's highly impractical for very little real gain. A theatre audience is usually willing to suspend disbelief and go with you if you tell them the bare space you are inhabiting is really a forest. This willful and happy desire to believe can be somewhat dampened, however, in the virtual world by lag, and thus I think there's a delicate balancing act in working out how much scenery is worth how much lag. Since lag in the first place is inevitable, the scenery provides a reinforcement, a back-up, to the stilted and sometimes slow-to-reveal-itself action, but it also works to increase that lag.

 

A question arose when Adam and Eve, enlightened with knowledge and feeling, for the first time, lust, decided to have sex. I expected the sex to be illustrated via a fiery, erotic dance, but in a surprise move Basilique decided to go for a more direct approach. What's more, they didn't use any vanilla missionary 'standard sex' or even especially loving and sensual kind of poses, but instead chose one that features Adam standing and sort of lifting Eve onto himself and bouncing her about like one of those little balls attached to a bat by a piece of elastic. Despite the seriousness of the moment (this is, after all, Adam and Eve sealing their fate as exiles from Eden and God's grace), I couldn't help but laugh, and I wonder why Basilique chose to make this departure from dance at that moment.

In terms of the story itself, Basilique introduced some really interesting aesthetics and ideas. God, appearing to watch Adam and Eve fall in love in the Garden of Eden, was green, and whilst this might seem to be a little pagan and hippie, it worked well with the earthy, natural feel of the Eden scene and the crowd of animals within it. Eden was organic, and that contrasted drastically with the dark rock red-and-black of Hell. The Archangel Michael looked seriously bad-ass, and wouldn't have been out of place if you'd popped him next to Ezio in Assassin's Creed.

The decision to make Lucifer female, and pointedly so, was also intriguing. It makes perfect sense, however, considering that the Blame For Everything Sinful falls to Eve, a woman, and that women are often considered in Biblical, mythological and historical contexts are being the origins or creatures of sin. That it is a woman who persuades Eve to eat the fruit, and a woman with whom God then wages war, opens up a whole can of gender worms. There were perhaps ways to explore this idea more, but they'd be dreams for another show, as I'm not sure they'd fit within this project as it is. 

 

I haven't read Paradise Lost, and I don't know whether any scripts exist for it and/or where Basilique drew the exact inspirations for the wording of their script. But the most interesting idea that arose from the way they told the story, for me, came with the description of Adam choosing to take a bite of the fruit. If I recall, the narrator told us that Adam, faced with Eve holding out to him the apple to bite, realised that Eve had betrayed God and knew she would be exiled. If Eve was exiled, Adam would be left alone in the Garden of Eden and, fearing loneliness, Adam took a bite of the apple too.

 

Eve offers Adam the apple

Whoa. Hold the phone. Back it up. In my interpretation of the narrator's words, Adam, surrounded by the love of God in the perfection of Eden, was lonely, and in the end chose companionship, love and sex with Eve over the safety, perfection and closeness of God. I do not claim to know whether Basilique intended for the audience to see it this way or not - this is strictly my understanding and imagination here. But I wonder how different the dance might be if Adam's loneliness, and Adam's decision to be with Eve rather than God were the focus of the story. Again, that's subject matter for a whole other show.

Witnessing this production was certainly an experience, and judging by the comments the audience were making as the dancers took their bows, it was enjoyed by the majority. With the limitations of SL and lag stacked against them, I applaud the ambition and the dedication of Basilique. I haven't heard of anyone else creating anything like this in SL, and a show of this magnitude is certainly an undertaking. To achieve so much and so well is fantastic. I think this is definitely a troupe to watch as they go forward and as SL and virtual technology gets cleverer and cleaner.

Drunk

It arrived - my new laptop! Once I'd set it all up and transferred my files across, I loaded Second Life to see how the graphics card was going to measure up. Boy oh boy, is it good! I am so thrilled. The difference is just...insane. 

For some of my more recent, pre-new laptop, screenshots, I had turned the graphics up and suffered incredible lag to take better quality pictures - before promptly crashing, or having to whack the settings right back down the bare minimum as soon as the picture was saved to avoid crashing. The screenshots I am using here for comparison, however, were taken with the graphics running at their normal running rate. They have not been edited in any way, and I have not changed the lighting settings.

Old laptop...

...new laptop

I know, right?! Ignore Kitti - she's wearing a different skin, and, obviously, different hair and clothes and stuff, so just ignore her here. 

Of course, this difference in vision and clarity can be seen in philosophical terms. It seems obvious to say that how we physically see the world affects the way we interact with it, but just how deep does that go? 

Along with a super shiny graphics card, my new laptop also offers more memory, and SL can run on higher graphics settings without even a hint of lag - but this doesn't only effect the world around Kitti. One of the first things I noticed was that Kitti's movements (courtesy of her animation override that governs how she stands and fidgets and walks and sits) were much smoother than I had ever known they could be. The smoothness gives her body language a cool kind of confidence that wasn't there in the jerkier lines delivered to me by my old laptop. Will this effect how I view Kitti from now on? 

And if other people are viewing her as moving jerkily, does that effect how they view her? What about those people who have always seen her movements as smooth and confident - have they found my writing of her in roleplay situations disconnected from her body language?

As ever, I have no answers. But it is certainly food for thought.

Now, because I am a little drunk on my new graphics:

Check Kitti's flickr to see some of these screenies in full size.

The Stick

It would appear that I've been memed. The rules of the meme are as follows:

1. Link the person that tossed the stick
2. Answer the questions
3. Toss the stick to five different people
4. Tell those people you threw a stick at them
5. Ask five new questions

So Sian Pearl, meanie that she is, threw a stick at me, and then demanded I answer her questions. Seems a little unconventional to me, but eh, why not? I handed in my last piece of university work ever (for the time being, anyway) yesterday. I've got some time.

At Matchbook Monday's lovely roof garden. I'm really pleased with these shots!
Check them out on flickr?

Here goes.

1. Why do you write an SL blog?

You've heard this story before. I started my SL blog out of a desire to extend an essay I wrote on SL for my degree course last year. The marker of my essay said he wanted more of it - which was a cruel comment, considering that I had a pretty strict word limit - and so I set about writing about all of the things I hadn't been able to put in my essay, and then some. As far as I am aware, this lecturer doesn't read my blog, though I believe he was told it exists. If he does...hi Tim! I'd like to think that I'm raising some important points, here, and if nothing else, starting debates about some of the issues that face us not only in Second Life, but in our first lives, too. And if my Theatre and Performance Studies angle slips sometimes...well, I guess that's okay.

2. Avatar underpants: yes or no?

When I started SL, I wore pants with every outfit. Every outfit. Sometimes, they could be seen because they went higher than my trousers, and that's when I started to question their necessity. Nowadays...I'm not telling! I am a big fan of the imagination. Though, I guess, you have all seen Kitti's underwear already - but that doesn't mean she wears it all the time!

3. Third Party Viewers: Classic or Dud?

Here's the deal. Upon a number of people's suggestions, I have tried all kinds of viewers, but all they really did was confuse me with a new interface. They might soften lag or, I dunno, make turning on shadows easier, but the point is that my laptop is so behind on the SL requirements that there is very very little that can be done to mediate my lag. And shadows? Pfft. Shadows are just a dream. So I'm sticking with the official Linden Labs viewer. I know my way around it, at least, and it's pretty clean and simple for an official viewer.

4. Who is your favourite person in SL?

That's a cruel question! I think Sian asked this because she hopes we'll all say her! Sian is one of my favourite people in SL, but I have also met a whole lot of other great people, like Salix Southpaw and Marls Vaughan, to name but two. I'd have got nowhere without the help of the charming and ever-patient Jaegen Fenris. There is also that wonderfully awkward moment when I see someone in world whose blog I follow, and then I have to run screaming back to Sian Pearl's house to fan-girl all about it. Like this one time, I saw Laverne Unit during the sale of the Gallactic Aphelion catsuits, and I nearly died. So yeah - that happens, too.

5. What is the most important piece of advice you'd give to someone concerning SL?

That's a tough one. There are quite a few things I would like to say, but I think maybe the one that encompasses them all is that no matter what the shops or the sims or other people might suggest, you are in control. You are in control of your Second Life, more surely than you are in control of your first. Sure, it might be difficult sometimes to get what you want, whether it be an AO that doesn't make you walk like a supermodel, or, I dunno...whatever...but it does exist, somewhere, and you can get it. And if it doesn't, you can build it - or you can refuse to engage.You don't have to do anything that you don't want to. You don't have to give it any more time than you want to. And you can log out when you want to. Don't let anybody convince you otherwise. How dramatic does that sound?!

There - done. I'm not going to 'throw the stick' at anybody else, but I would say that I actually kinda enjoyed answering those questions, and they are good questions, so if you're reading this and want to answer them yourself, please do so, and leave me a comment with the URL for your answers? Maybe (cheekily, I ask,) you could link back to me? That would be cool. Tres cool.

Virtual Philosophers

So, my internet problem seems to be fixed - yay! The past few weeks have aged me (literally), but now I'm back and can hopefully fall back into some vaguely regular pattern of posting. 

A few posts ago, I raised the issue of the necessity of shared time to a virtual world such as Second Life - you cannot interact "live" with other citizens of the virtual world if you are not together at the same time, and how time works seems to be one of the ways of defining whether or not something is a game, or a world, or...a glorified version of the Sims. There seems to be a lot of discourse out there on the subject (and a lot of it is written really neatly in Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life"). 

That is not to suggest, however, that there are not ways to interact with Second Life "residents", as Linden Labs calls them, when they are offline. The IM function allows messages to be stored until the user comes back online, and there is nothing stopping me making a new notecard (a notecard being like a WordPad file) and sending it to some of my offline friends, to be received and read when they come online. But that is much like sending emails, or using Windows Live Messenger, and I'm not sure that anybody would really consider either of those to be virtual worlds. Plains, maybe, but not worlds. 

That aside: the biggest enemy of any theory about shared time is lag. Lag is pretty much an accepted evil these days, it would seem, with it infecting almost everything that engages with the Internet. I seem to experience particularly high lag, since my laptop is not really up to running the Second Life Viewer, and my network connection is often under a lot of duress from my university housemates watching videos and probably using utorrent to download a whole bunch of stuff that they shouldn't. If I venture into a highly populated or intricately detailed area, it's highly unlikely that my laptop will be able to rez (load) the sim as it actually should be.  But that's pretty much "c'est la vie".

What does that mean for the concept of shared time? Can a virtual world be "declassified", so to speak, because it suffers with lag? Just within SL, it starts to raise a whole bunch of existential questions: if I change my hair from brown to red, but, because of lag, everyone around me can still see it as brown, is my hair really, in fact, brown? What colour does the Higher Being of the Linden Labs server really think my hair colour is? If, for example, Salix tries to take human form after being a dragon, but, on my screen I still see her as a dragon...which is she?! It is often things such as changing your hair, or your clothes, or your shape that offer the most obvious examples of lag. So is it how we see ourselves that matters, or how we are seen? How can we trust anything that we see? We are creating a generation of virtual philosophers over here!

We are also creating a generation of people who really, really cannot afford to take their (virtual) selves seriously - not when you are aware that, at times, you look like this:

I entered a new sim, and it couldn't load my clothes properly. How attractive.

Ah! My inner-clown is showing

Space seems to have leaked through the walls, and I got tango-d

You know I've got a whole folder of images like these. You just know it.