Willy Nilly's Surf Shack offers a cure for the idealized virtual world of Second Life. The online shop, a project of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers, endow otherwise flawless avatars with real-world foils like clumsiness. A project allowing avatars to visibly age over time is in the works. The shop is one of several projects uses to explore humanity in technology. Researchers see the dialogue between perfection and mortality as an important influence in the growing world of games and simulation. While the sell behind technology is often about achieving perfection (with a smart phone all the answers are at hand, with GPS we never lose our way, in Second Life we are beautiful), the risk is a loss of humanity.
That dialogue and tension leads researchers to believe that the nascent world of gaming and simulation could become a new cultural form as great as literature, art, music, and theater. Other recent projects include ‘Becoming’, a computer-driven video installation in which the attributes of two animated figures -- each inhabiting their own space -- are interchanged. Over time, this causes each figure to take on the attributes of the other, distorted by the structure of their digital information. In ‘Insecurity Camera’, an installation shown at art exhibits around the country, a ‘shy’ security camera turns away at the approach of subjects.
More information:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110419151057.htm
More information:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110419151057.htm