artistic building co-op experiment

I am interested in knowing who would want to participate in the following:

A group dedicated to an ongoing collaborative and dynamic building project. The goal would be to jointly own an environment (land) where we could collaborate -- sort of an ongoing 3D artistic space.

People could create things at will, and would also need to be able to delete things at will.

To enter into this, you will need to:
1. have a desire to collaborate and create things that go beyond your control (because other people will be building with you, intertwining and evolving the builds)
2. be able to control artistic over-sensitivity (i.e. have a thick skin, so that you don't get upset if a prim gets removed or if someone does something you don't like as much as your original idea).
3. be ok with a little mess, since the land would be a mix of projects being started, worked upon, and taken down


I have done this in the past with painting (passing canvases back and forth) and it is challenging, but can also be very intriguing and mind-opening. Things evolve and flow in unexpected and interesting directions. Sometimes it works, sometimes you have to throw a build away and start over.

I am trying to think how this could be designed under the current tools:

1. pool tier, buy a block of land and set to group
2. we would have to decide if:
2.a everyone is an officer (so they can delete prims) or -- because the risk
of land sale by any officer is so dangerous:
2.b. we elect a few trustworthy officer/janitors who will delete prims marked for
deletion (colored or textured a certain way)
3. agree upon basic guidelines to prevent upsetting other participants: for example, determining how many prims one person can delete in a short period of time, and what percentage of total group prims any one member can utilize
4. agree to set every prim to group

Everyone involved would need to contribute some level of tier, and also contribute to the purchasing of the land.

I am interested in hearing if anyone else would like to participate, and how others think a living experiment like this should be designed.

Feel free to post here or IM me in world if you prefer to talk privately.

This sounds interesting, but complicated, and the sort of thing where people might sit around for hours trying to figure it out and never do the simple thing which is just get started trying it out and learn as you go.

I am advertising an experimental building community in Furness. It's like 11k in size, on the hill looking out to sea. There are a few tenants but I basically emptied out a lot of areas there to start an experiment in pay-per-prim.

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, you come, you build anywhere on the lot after joining the group, once a week you pay $1/prim for what's out there (review of prims will probably happen on a staggered schedule).

If you get people together, or even just yourself, you could simply get started here by paying just $50 and putting out 50 prims. You have to start somewhere.

You have many misconceived and nutty notions of me from the forums, but I think you'll find that the forums are tripe and it is easier to understand someone and what they are doing in the game if you just right-click a box and pay them once a week and maybe ask to have the music URL changed.

Of course, if you'd rather just go find all the kewl uber architects in the game and suck up to them and be in their little group off somewhere on a closed private island, do that. It might work a lot better for you.

But if you are exactly interested in trying to gather even people you don't know, for an open-ended project, not knowing the outcome in advance, you could start it here. After a week or two, you could have just all saved up stipends to go buy land somewhere or something.

If forseti goes for cool people that are easy and fun to work with (meaning everybody in SL but you prok)...would that still make him a suck up?

i agree that it is complicated... and it may not be possible without the better group tools we are all clamoring for. That said, it's not rocket science either... and once it was started people would figure it out no problem. If they don't have the brains to deal with the complexity, well, I probably wouldn't want them involved. Yes, I'm a snob. That's one thing you can safely accuse me of.

At this stage, I may just go ahead and do it, but i thought i would ping for interest, and maybe meet some new people interested in artistic building.



Prok, i do indeed have notions of you. I am willing to believe the notion that you are different in-game, but I also believe an intelligent person (like you) chooses how they write, what their tone is, and how they construct their points. You have enough control over the english language that you know *exactly* what you are doing. And your version of satire, if that's what you are truly trying to do, tends to run to the poisonous. You CAN write reasoned, civil posts -- I've read them. You just indulge in the opposite quite often.



"all the kewl uber architects" could be a lot of people. Please don't take this as an opportunity to slag off a whole new group of SL-ers. I've seen a lot of interesting builds within SL, and have become friends with many good builders -- yes, some of them you might consider "kewl uber" and some even you might accuse of being FIC (which i don't give a damn about). To me they are just other creative people. But yes, something like this does require as a prerequisite for participation that you have a certain level of sophistication in terms of artistic/texturing skill and building technique.



I appreciate the offer, and wish you luck with the venture, but I think the structure you lay out wouldn't foster the kind of freewheeling building I have in mind -- in particular, *intertwined* building. And money isn't the issue, it's the shared sense of responsibility for the land, and well as the trust involved that we are all using each others prims, that could bond the group.

But don't think I am naive about a new-age "bonded" group here. This type of artistic project always fluctuates as some people get offended that someone altered their "vision", or lose the vibe, or simply get bored. But art tends to be such a solo endeavor (i hear a rumor that you are a writer, so you know this well), so the occasional collaborative venture can be quite rewarding if it works...

Trying to figure out what you mean by intertwined, Forseti



I tend to construct buildings with substantial structural elements and large voids. This is very different from construction of an enclosure, whether a box house, a box+pod building or a gracious residence with glass windows and access via doors. The rationale has always been twofold: to encourage free flight as the primary access mode, and to open spacious interiors to views of sky, ocean and foliage.

I'm currently happiest parking a building in the ocean. The latest Nexcom headquarters building (this time in the new continent sim of Alope) is on a water lot. The first image shows the mysterious Nexcom building in the distance, looming over a waterfall two lots away in the sim. The second image contains an avatar to show the scale of the prototype for that builidng, currently in my private sandbox in Windermere. The third image shows a steeply pitched roof with coved ceiling and architectural detail. It floats over a platform which in turn floats over the forest and ocean.

That sandbox has enough water to display the prototype for the central block of Ferren Xia's massive Brownlee/Nestor telehub residence. You can sail your boat into the core of the building, drop off passengers, then sail out the other side.

Adapting that kind of architectural construct to float in the sky would allow ingress by other types of builds.

For example, let's get rid of the boat, and substitute a migrating horde of giant moths. Unlike the churlish moths near the temple in the new continent, these ones consider a hand-held light just as attractive as a stationary light on a walkway. So anyone with an aircraft or avatar holding a lantern can fly through, and try to lead the migrating horde astray.

Hopefully this example touches on what you mean by intertwined. The architectural construct doesn't need an endless stream of moths, but is more interesting with them. Similarly the moths and their shepherds could follow the same paths through empty air, but an architectural construct with soaring arches and wide recurved stairways might be more interesting.

I understand that, and you'll find your level and your partners in this snobbish project. If it is really good art, it may then survive your snobbishness and other character flaws to be appreciated both the discriminating public and "the masses".



I'll go on posting exactly in the manner as I do because I do not wish to live in a society hammerlocked by an old-boy's network, and deal with an economy fashioned by snobs. Snobs are really a problem in this game.



There is a great deal of talen in SL. What's impressive to me are those who find a venue for their talent and improve this world without the kind of stepping on others that some in this class indulge in. Those shine most for me who aren't arrogantly attempting to take over the society and the economy along with their superior artistic schools. Those who really real shine are those who are actually humble about both their own gifts and the need to ensure the freedom of others for creativity.



If money isn't the issue, just buy the private sim or get your friends together and do it. I think a pay-per-prim scheme on that particular sim, or other sims where I have low rents or sale offers for experimental building, can produce just the kind of intertwining and collaborative group building you imagine.

The usual mode for people who want to make artists' enclaves isn't even to post on the forums, but to find each other through the elaborate networking and apprenticing and reinforcing features of the old-boy's network. The network of "artists" has an additional burdensome feature about its clique: a keen sense of inferiority and fear based on the fact that in RL, many of them aren't RL-acknowledged artists, architects, designers, etc. and they are forced to gain their recognition through an often ellusive and insecurity virtual world.



The New Age bonded group thingie is actualy the usual dull and repetitive formula that people have had for getting the kewl sims going. And the results are banal and predictive even though they, and often the Lindens, celebrate them to death. The output isn't that impressive. Maybe because they aren't really artists, if we accept RL standards? Although I'm for enhancing the virtual world by giving non-RL artists their due because they've found this dimension in which to shine.

I think it's important sometimes to just get started. So I offer the general public a chance to get started for not very much money, even less than what tier costs sometimes. I'm actually a believer in the theory of trying to sponsor the class of 40 required to get the genius, rather than having a few self-appointed and self-described geniuses hole up in a secluded sim somewhere and apprentice a few other self-described would-be geniuses.

No, Traxx, what he meant by intertwined was a group of people working together, each working on an object together, adding, subtracting, collaborating, talking about things...you know, interactive? With other people?

You know....kind of like the difference between greening up at the pool table with your own alts, or greening up with another live person behind an avatar? Some sims might suggest that it's preferable to green with other live human beings rather than alts, just as a simple human value...others might get annoyed at the intrusion of "the other" just when they had all their alts set up so nicely, and conceive of it as "controlling" when it is just about...intertwining and interactivity! Big difference!

What you're talking about with your interwining of space and volume is just about an ego inflating itself up further in space and time an adding architectural embellishments, all the while, heedless of anything else except the inanimate NPC moths.

Hmmm....Nexcom....and more Nexcom...and still more Nexcom!!! Maybe this thinly-disguised Nexcom infomercial inappropriately put in "Building" should go over in "Shopping" LOL?


But since it was put in "Building" and not "Shopping" let's *do* discuss corporations and their support of art! (Corporations just pay architects a lot more than their self-selected group of friends on a sim who don't even muster tier often in the scheme Forseti is suggesting.) Glad to see they don't technically have you on the board any more which might improve the overall SL public stance of architects who wish to preserve independence of their art from big corporations.

I'm begininng to understand these issues of Giant Impressive Architecture and Nexcom kind of like the way I understand the problem of Wagner and Hitler. People (including you) go on admiring Wagner's music to this day, and some claim that beauty in art, like music, can excuse support to a totalitarian and murderous despot.

Whatever the grandness of Nexcom's towers, there is an inherent fallacy here: they serve to cover up and distract from the really evil practices of Nexcom, which include, as you know: support for slandering of another person and dissemination of false information about them in the game; harassing of their clients and attempts to drive their clients away from them; faking of contracts to coerce behaviour; forgery of signatures on contracts; and malicious and aggressive fake officer-recalls in another group where the CEO's alt had been a member for only 30 seconds, and not a paying tenant.

These really aggressive and odious practices really detract from the luster of these towers.

What these artistic tombstones cry out for is life! Life of the bustling, colourful variety! Movement and interaction of live human beings, not just moth drones swarming around a big architect! Let's hope neighbours can supply that necessary counterpoint.

Well, I did hand you that opening, but what you fail to acknowledge in your taste for class warfare is that most people are snobs. You are a snob. You deprecate anyone that doesn't fit your narrow definition of proper behavior, proper commerce, proper attitude.

Most people determine the qualities they like and respect in other people and self-segregate themselves into smaller groups, whether it be other artists or someone who really appreciates a good hip-hop bling item. In social endeavors, I tend to cross a lot of groupings, but when it comes to art, yes I demand a certain level of proficiency and attention to detail that fits my subjective filter.



There is more than enough room for all of us. Opportunity is there for the taking in SL if you have the creativity, intelligence, drive and talent to take advantage of it. I don't care how old you are in RL, or how long you have been in SL. Leave your "I speak for the proletariat" crap in the garbage can.



In a competitive commercial system, there will always be some winners and losers. But this post wasn't about any of that, nor about taking over the world. Who gives a damn about taking over SL? (well some people do, but not me) This post was about meeting some other folks who were interested in collaborative, artistic building.



you may be right



I grant you that many artists can be insecure and oversensitive.

I don't have that problem, because I'm not trying to compete. I long ago decided I liked the business of business, and the art of art, not the business of art. So I do it purely for fun.

Hey traxx, I did that floating roof over floating platform. Nice work btw

I realize that a great deal of mathematical genius and architectural skill went into producing this effect.

I know that I am not alone, and that the impression is shared by others, of similar scenes involving cats nursing kittens, cows being milked, etc., that is, of a multi-teated breast, yet a multi-teated breast in cold, chilling hues. LOL. Well, since we're in "build" and discussing architecture, I thought I'd share.

No, I deprecate those whose snobbishness blocks the way for others. I find my definition of what is "proper," whatever its inherent snobbishness and exclusivity which is the property of all human grouping, still provides for a larger space and more freedoms for more people. Surely second-hand resales isn't a "proper" or "snobbish" attitude but a more democratic and free attitude that allow more goods to change hands at the "just in time" price that more people need it as.

we both have the goal of freedoms for more people, then. But while you see restrictions, I see opportunity. And I gather that both you and I, who are relatively new members of SL, have taken advantage of that opportunity in our own ways. There are challenges yes, both in terms of market incumbants and structural issues (SL functionality), but there are always challenges in entrepreneurial ventures.

You can't legislate those challenges away, and you can't change human tendencies towards brand appreciation. Look, if I really saw an older class of players somehow blocking new members from creating skins, clothing, houses, art, etc. I'd be there storming the gates with you.

But instead I find myself constantly fighting you because I refuse to let you convince new members of SL that second life is a bastion of oppression.

You continue to lambaste a class of participants without really properly guaging popular opinion. For example, that second-hand resale issue -- in that thread MANY of the creators who posted were NOT opposed to it. Many wanted to be asked first, but this is natural human hesitation -- dipping the toe into a new commercial dynamic within SL.

I appreciate that you have your perceptions of this issue. It may not be based on any real experiences, however, I just don't know. I, however, can bring to the table a list of actual experiences showing that indeed there is a phenomenon of other older players attempting to destroy competition in business in particular, but also attempting to set up complicated apprenticing/approval networks. There is a definite system of rewards and harsh punishments meted out by the FIC elite. You just haven't experienced it. You're going to face the issue of whether to play along with them soon, or not.

It's not like it's an evil cliche conspiracy nutter thing either, replete with references to the Trilateral Commission lol. It's subtle, it's not consistent, and it's often unconscious. That doesn't mean I"m not right to take it on.

It doesn't take me to convince people that SL indeed has this feature of oppression. Why, just go read all the threads about the events changes -- hobbling of clubs and businesses due to a few persnickety types who can't bear to see Tringo clutter on a list. Just read the threads like "what about the poor people with no talent".

Honestly, I could make a sport of gathering up all the posts of people who actually espouse these very view I contain, but who have nothing to do with me, and just couch their complaints in a much more local and specific way. I try to analyze it as a system.

While many people weighed in as FOR second-hand resale, the fact of the matter is, the game tools were created to hobble resell/give away by putting in that option to toggle at the behest of those allergenic to second-hand commerce. So they prevailed over the game devs, and continue to prevail, so that every single person in this game who buys something, is hobbled in commerce, because they cannot resell something they buy, as they could on ebay in the real world, due to the overreach of creaters toggling "no resell".

That's a pretty awesome effect of people in the minority with their allergy to any commerce or any commerce except their own, wouldn't you say?

I'm confident that if you stay with this, you'll see the contours emerge soon, Forseti. Meanwhile, don't rent my prims for $1, it's fine, move on to prims that cost more, but have more select company you can bond with, if nothing else, on your shared mutual hatred of Prok and his posts.

Bravo! Yet another thread successfully hijacked by The Prok.

Your input on the forums, amazingly, always seems to bring out the worst in people, Prok, did you realize that? Oh dear, silly me, I'm sure you do as I can only imagine that is part of your MO.

I know you're an intelligent individual and I'm guessing you're well-versed in socio-political affairs and theories. You do have some valuable input and indeed some constructive words, alas, it is systematically lost because people take offense to your delivery. Yes, this is *thier* problem, not yours, but when your efforts and words end up cast aside for a bitch fest, it becomes a problem for everyone, including yourself. How? Becuase your message is lost.

One day, hopefully, you can see that noone is asking you to silence yourself or bury your ideas - they just want constructive, open dialogue free from snarky, classist, divisive comments.

Juro Kothari:


seconded.
The other effect is that constructive people who are pressed for time look at a hijacked thread, and say, 'why bother posting here?'. I've seen it. It's not fair to the thread-starter.

Juro, I gave forseti an honest answer and offered him land for a very cheap price to get started, as well as support. I commented that he should just get over the forums and just try to really do something for a change and then discuss what was done instead of pontificating. I was offering to help.

Your notion of "constructive" isn't mine. And so often people paying this phony role of Mr. Constructive Community Helper are responsible for some really, really, heinous things in the game.

I think there are some real issues here, and that are: can you just have exclusive, closed, special building communities that are feted by each other, the Lindens, the FIC, whatever? What is their merit? Do they have architectural merit?

Or...do you have to tolerate less excellence to preserve freedom and creativity?

I saw that at the beginning you were trying to be helpful, Prok, and for that I give you 5-stars. However, the thread took on its usual course and degraded into yet another snark-fest.

I gave an honest response to the outcome of your post.


We have differing views, that I'm sure. I don't 'play' any role. I like this community and all the differing voices in it, including yours. I don't appreciate certain aspects of yours, but hey... what can you do.



Interesting concept. I think you're definately onto a good discussion here. When you talk about it having merit, are you speaking of its worth and purpose to the community at large?

The answer is yes, you can have closed communities, just as much as you can have completely open communities. They can have merit, or they can be without merit. It doesn't matter. It's actually not an issue at all. You just have a hang up about "uber architects".

lol

Prok, yes, we do not know each other in world. I make and sell quite a few things and indeed do compete against many older players. Not once have I felt that there was a challenge that was not part of the normal course of doing business and competing in a marketplace. Not once have I faced a structural problem (and you and I tend to agree on a lot of what those problems are), that I decided was due to monstrous attitudes on behalf of either LL or older players.

I enjoy being in the forums, and I love a good debate, which is one of the reasons why I indulge in responding to you (and yes, indulge is the right word there because it is certainly not the most effective action), but if you are wondering if all I do is talktalktalk and take no action, well that's not the case (hell, I've already given you plenty of hints of what I do and have done for a living).

There are always people who complain, and always people who do not have what it takes to compete. In business, there are winners and losers. Sometimes the losers fail because of bad luck. Sometimes because they simply weren't fast/ flexible /smart/ hardworking/ creative/ etc enough.

I appreciate the freedom to compete and succeed or fail. I don't want a society whose progress is dictated by the lowest common denominator. I don't want a society that is turned on its head when its laziest member screams "I WANT" and complains of the injustice of it all.

Freedom and fairness. Give everyone the same damn tools. Well, that's what we have.

Forseti,

I'm glad you make and sell stuff and don't find any of the obstacles that I see, and see not in my way, because I walk around the robots, but often in other people's way, especially newer people.

While you make and sell stuff, you didn't make and sell an artistic community yet, you proposed to make one, so I'm just saying, rather than getting it *just right* especially if you have income from sales to pay a modet $1 a prim, come and rent my land and put out stuff and try it LOL. Or don't, it's all good.



Juro, I'm not going to get into a utilitarian attitude toward architecture, whether it "serves" the community, because I'd have to accept some definition of what "the community" is first -- and we're going to disagree on this -- and I'd have to understand whether it is always right to press architecture into the service of commerce or the social justice cause of "the people". I don't think it always is. It can stand on its own and be of value without "service".

"Merit" is the concept of having some high degree of excellence in aesthetic terms, I guess. But then again, how will we define these? In conventional RL terms? In SL terms? So often the best builders in SL to me seem to be people who have worked with the realities of this virtuality, that is, that people are avian creatures, and who have used their imagination to build with the Linden-created nature.

But other people think that textures cardboard cutouts that remind them of RL is better. There is mass taste and there is high aesthetics. And frankly even high aesthetics can be about one school vs. another, classic or modern, or whatever.

There are a number of people who push the limits of the tools and the world to get good architecture. I cannot help feeling though at a certain point it's like the critique of the vehicles and the FPS games: they make good screenshots, but they aren't as immersive and as functional and as live and fast as everyone would like. (I'm referring to the common critique of SL in the mor-peg game media where the promises of the physics and the reality of the lag have always been cited as reasons for SL's poor performance on these scores.)

That is, some really good architecture in SL makes a really cool screenshot but you can't live in it or shop in it and you can't even wander around in it and chill in it.

In that sense Juro's gallery mall is great in creating a good experience both aesthetically and functionally.

Thanks for clarifying Prok.. wasn't sure what you meant by 'merit'.

It's interesting trying to put a thumb on 'good' design (with regard to builds) in SL. There are many factors to consider that just don't exist IRL. We fly, we have zoom capabilities with our vision, we have camera angles to worry about.. the list could go on.

Gah.. I was going to go off on a tangent about this, but maybe it merits its own thread.

the thread topic was interesting? can we get back on that?

Alex Lumiere:


Yes, it looks like we have more than one location converting to experimental theme/zone/project use. : ) I'm extremely pleased with the in-game discussion on this topic. The range of creative interested people may not all fit into one project, but that's to be expected. There's more than one residential sim out there, Boardman and Taber being my favorite examples. More than one experimental sim is to be expected given the number of creative people who want to make this work.

And what happens at the junction of experimental and suburban? Maxx -- there's something up there looking at your house!

That's Barnesworth's Valencia house, i.e. I think Barnes designed it for Maxx. I know, because I bought an earlier and smaller version and put it in Stump, where it was ragefully criticized by people who either thought it wasn't suburban enough, or too suburban, or whatever. People get very, very touchy about taste.



Oh...maybe...two? Three? Wow. I think the range might fit into...one...if you figure you can get 40 avs comfortably on a sim. Or...maybe 2, just to have a little more breathing room. Wow, Taber AND Boardman...Boardman has been successfully apprenticed by Miramare and Taber and can now be declared..."in"!

More than one...three maybe!!! Wow!! I guess I've seen dozens in this game, including some I've worked on. And I expect to see 50-100-3000 if the group tools are fixed and better land rights protections are built in.

For the life of me, I can't get how Taber and Boardman continue to be held up as examples of creativity, especially by an architect who makes odd buildings that look like Islamic Slamic Asian Fusion On Crack. Boardman has swimming pools...overhang, slanted beam roofs like Coloradan tract houses...*sprinklers* for God's sake. I guess some people's RL origins just shine through. I respect that. I have Toast's sprinkler deployed in Brown, too, but it remains Brown and never gets any Greener.

Taber...and utterly predictable cookie-cutter Alpine Christmas Tudor homes? Huh? Again...what am I missing?

The work I've seen of Foolish Frost in Ravenglass or sandyha2 patel in Arcata or Shack Dougall in Alviso or Lusk or Gypsy Moon or Satu Moreau in various islands sims or...Lumiere Noir...Jai Nomad in Magenta...I could list dozens more who build in the fantasy/elvin/immersive exotic world vein. Could it be you are saying that slavish geometrical and mathematical precision with RL, with a pinch of wry caricature just to let us know you are kewl, is what is "excellence" in architecture, what is "experimental"? Huh?
How pedestrian! I'm not getting this!

Honestly, I just don't get this fascination and fetishing and FIC-izing of Taber and Boardman. But I guess the recipe is this: whatever your little friends do, especially from TSO, especially your new apprentices, is what is good and correct.

Let's see how many time you can fit Barnesworth Anubis' name into every single one of your posts. You're on a roll.