xoros

Second Life! Well, complex thing it is. First off, it can be first person, but also third person. Kind of an MMORG, in that you can find people playing MMORG type games or war games, role playing and the like, but that is not what it is itself. Best to think of it as a platform, with no point or aim other than to carry whatever people choose to make or do on it. Which is a lot, almost anything really. There is a large amount of purely social and entertainment activity, low quality fluff, incredibly beautiful builds, serious emerging art and artists, people living out fashionista fantasies, live music and DJs, a few companies and a lot of universities. So.. wide ranging! And everyone is meant to be over 18. Actually the average age is meant to be around 40, and gender balance around 50/50*, making it unlike most other online spaces! It’s a lot of fun. Most of my work is for educational/training use, which is the key area it has become a proven media for so far. Everything else apart from social activity is still being worked out. Oh and it has an internal economy worth over over 1.5 million USD per day at present O.o That’s just the virtual goods, my kind of work isn’t included in that figure.

Mostly it’s like this bizarre mixture of fantasy, middle class apsiration, Temptation Island, ArchiCAD and being a student at university whilst simultaneously taking part in a really inventive and utterly incomprehensible piece of Situationist theatre in a very unusual and exciting art gallery containing both sublime and mundane works, all whilst wearing pyjamas.

Kinda <.<

* on a binary assumption

One of the things I’m thinking about at the moment is what I might do in the future as a career. An odd thing to think about you might think for someone already in their mid thirties. Not really though, I’ve already started one career as an architect, I found that the reality of the job didn’t live up to the expectations created by the training – which I loved. The job itself, not so much. All the things that made the learning so engaging and interesting were stripped away in the day to day work and I saw that because of my competances I would end up a only being offered a career as a technical architect rather than a design architect. Technical architects are rare, since we go into the job all wanting to be designers, so any one who shows an apptitude for the technical side is steered towards it regardless of whether they want to and how good they might be as a designer.

So I took my skills and remade my job as a consultant working in Second Life, providing expertise to universities that want a professionally made project. I enjoy it a great deal. However I think it has a shelf life. Not because I feel that Second Life has a short future, but because I think that the role of a self employed consultant in this field does. I think that once virtual worlds really take off the role of professional designer will become something dominated by larger companies, able to provide staff with training in a variety of professional three dimensional visualisation packages. These are skills I can’t afford to develop using programs I can’t afford to buy. So I think that some time in the next few years I will need to change what I do, either to become more of a theoretical consultant or to find a role within a university as an expert in virtual worlds. This would certainly be a possibility in the UK, but in Belgium where I live, not so much. Universities here have little interest in virtual worlds so far.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that one of the things I am considering is taking another degree, in particular a combination of gender studies and psychology. At least I was until I discovered that the only academic centre for women’s and gender studies in Flanders was closed completely in 2006. It was jointly funded by all the Flemish universities, who apparently decided that it was unnecessary, perhaps they felt that studying sexism and gender in society was a luxury extra. Whatever the reason, and I have found no clear explanation from the universities, they pulled the plug despite a petition signed by over two thousand academics, students and concerned supporters, mainly women. So now Belgium, a rich western european country, has nothing more than single semester add on courses in gender studies available in only one university, no bachelor degrees, no post graduate masters, for more than half it’s population.

Sadly I’m not entirely surprised. Belgium seems to pride itself on being incredibly open and inclusive and lacking prejudice. However as a resident foreignor I find it no better than the UK and in some aspects, particularly racism, worse. The attitude towards trans people is, on a daily basis reasonable, but on an institutional and medical level atrociously old fashioned and cliched. Sexism is as rife as in neighbouring countries but an idea of their society being “post feminist” has lead to a strange blindness to it’s presence amongst most women and the ability for men to play up the idea that they are now no longer privileged. That the need for academic study of discrimination and how society creates and perpetuates it should be so completely undervalued to the point of non existence is a sad reflection of this state of affairs.

Well that was a very busy week. After last week’s lack of internet I had to spend a bit of time focusing on work and catching up. Then the weekend hit and was packed with doing things in the real world, like going shopping, sleeping and yesterday a party for our nephew so all and sundry could say hello to him and give presents. We had to get up awfully early for a Sunday as we had happily volunteered to help set everything up. After a morning spent making salads and setting up tables in a barn we just had time to sit down and relax briefly and guests started to arrive. All told it was a lovely afternoon, the sun finally made an appearance to replace the downpours and everyone was happy to be there. Got to talk to lots of people I hadn’t seen for a while and generally had a good time. I was glad when it finished though! A day spent speaking only Dutch can be quite tiring, you have to do a lot more thinking and paying attention when using a foreign language. We got home and kind of passed out in front of the television. Early to bed too. And already it’s another week with a project deadline tomorrow and a new one to start on Wednesday!

Back from a really lovely weekend away. We went to stay in a kind of minimalist holiday camp type thing with all my partner’s immediate family, various hangers on and small children. The park thing was in the Netherlands so I can now add another country to my imaginary list of “Countries I Have Slept In”. Sleeping in the Netherlands seems to be no different to anywhere else I’m happy to report. The weather was beautiful and the place we stayed was in some lovely woodland, lots of dappled sunlight and gentle breezes.

I think I really needed a break. No work, no internet, no computer, just sunshine, a book, family and looking after kids. One of the lovely things for kids in this family is that they get to have eight parents when we are all together, plus grandparents, everyone takes part and not only helps but enjoys doing so.

So anyway, got back yesterday with a feeling of being properly relaxed, reconnected with people, oh and a minor cold!

Sometimes words and ideas just pour out of me. I can barely hold them in. Other times I find myself in a fog of thought from which I can pick no single strand, no one thing I can clearly express. They approach and recede before I can get a grip on them. It’s like being attacked by a cloud of midges. Just annoying enough to make it really hard to ignore but they are too small and indistinct to combat one by one. I try to let them drop until they are ready to be seen and handled individually, to give up their feel and taste. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.

When the cloud is less intense it turns into a rainbow storm of thoughts, ideas and creativity. Then I revel in it, letting the ideas and concepts tumble out so I can use and learn from them. As a designer this is a wonderful experience when in full flow and focussed on a piece of work.

I guess I could learn to always let the thought cloud storm drop when it happens, but then I’d be giving up the good along with the bad. I don’t think I want to so I’ll put up with the midges

One of the tricky things about being self employed, for me anyway, is keeping a good sleep rhythm between projects. I’m not that good at getting up early anyway and I easily slide into a pattern of working later, staying up late and getting up late. I guess it doesn’t do much harm… I could probably do with a bit of will power excercising, but the thing is… I like my bed too much and getting out of it is such a chore.

Damn I can be such a lazy bitch!