Natalie’s Blog

Exploring the world a Secondlife, and forming individual group businesses are an integral part of the IPC 411 class. One may say that it is the basis for the course and all of the coursework involved. The group I am in is working on creating a clothing store. Thus far my group has done very well – we have found a location in which to build, constructed staircases to make our building accessible, and creating clothing to sell. However our own hypothesizing and experimenting needs facilitation in order for us to be successful. Many questions that I have during a particular class period go unanswered because I lack the guidance necessary. It would be more helpful to me, personally, if the questions that I have while I am engaged in a certain task could be answered by the professor immediately rather than having to wait until Monday and having to remember what issues I encountered. I believe it would be helpful to both myself and other members of the class if the instructor were present during workdays to help facilitate our learning.  As a visual learner without this guidance I feel my learning and success is stifled.

On Wednesday I spent the majority of my time in class working on creating clothing for my groups store. Kyle sent me a link to the template for the t-shirt and using this template in Photoshop I was able to create a white t-shirt. On this shirt I wrote “Newbs Rule” in black print. Although this shirt was simple it allowed me to refresh my memory using Secondlife and contribute to my group. I have yet to upload this shirt to Secondlife since I have no linden dollars, however I believe Kyle does and I will send my shirt to him.

I wasn’t able to get one Secondlife today but I did print out the link that Kyle sent me about making clothes so I was able to productively contribute to my group in that way.

Just out of curiosity…does anyone really read these posts on a regular basis?  thanks!

I learned how to build a spiral staircase in Secondlife!!! I am in the group which is working particularly with makign a clothing store and there are only four of us but we are moving along at a fairly productive rate. When our group first started out we were a bit disorganized and didn’t really assign jobs right off the bat. Instead we decided to all search for freebies and ideas to share with the group. I began searching for locations in particular and was able to find several houses and building which would suit our purpose (I believe I wrote about this in a previous post). The building that the group liked had a second level to it and therefore I knew that we needed a staircase so that became my new mission.

After searching and searching for “freebie” staircases – with no avail – I decided to just build my own. I was fortunate enough to find step-by-step instruction for building a spiral staircase in Secondlife and spent the remainder of the class on Friday building and rebuilding staircases using a half cylinder prim. I still have some work to do to perfect my staircase but it seems as though building one for our clothing store will not be as challenging as I originally thought. With some practice, I’m confident that I’ll be able to build one that  will work well for our purposes and look nice too!

I am officially declaring today, October 2nd a holiday because it was the day that I finally went on Secondlife outside of class. In the past my computer hasn’t been able to download Secondlife properly and so it made it very hard for me to to try to do any work outside of class since I live off campus.  Tonight, however, I was finally able to download Secondlife properly and spend some time in the warehouse that I found on Wednesday and gather some more supplies for our clothing store.

While I was traveling around Secondlife looking for various freebies I was messaged by another avatar (unfortuanately I completely forgot to save that conversation) who greeted me in English and then wrote a paragraph or so of dialogue in German. I remembered that there was a translator setting but before I could he or she told me that they wanted to give me a small gift and then said that he / she had to return to work. Out of curiosity I opened the message they send me and it was a rose. I took pictures while I was wandering around and plan to post those on Flicker soon.

On Monday I joined the group that is working on building a clothing store for the class project. We made a list in class of what we would need to make our business a success – from types of clothing to shelves to a building. When we all go to class on Wednesday there was so much that needed to be done that we really didn’t know which way to run first, but the group decided that we would each set out to see what types of freebie items we could locate that would be useful in forming our business.

I was able to find a warehouse using the ‘search’ option that advertised over 5,000 freebies. There I found buildings and houses pre-assembled that my group could use to set up our shop. At first I was confused about what to do with the box labeled “hut” but after some help I was able to transform any of the freebie houses I got into full scale living areas. Finally, I felt like I was actively contributing to the project. Other members of my group found the same warehouse and collected some of the other supplies available. I mostly focused on the building and decorations on Wednesday.

Performing interviews and research in the actual world can be difficult. There is a plethora of paperwork which needs to be filled out, subjects must be obtained, and the process of conducting one interview could potentially take hours to arrange and execute. That being said, I was somewhat pleased that the research I had to do for the class was through Secondlife. Although I’m not very comfortable using the Secondlife program I figured it would be far easier in comparison to performing researching in the actual world. I was wrong. Perhaps it’s because I am not yet familiar with the proper protocol of the virtual world or Secondlife, or maybe it’s that I can’t be comfortable with the uncertainty of who I’m speaking with. Whatever the case, finding people to interview and trying to carry out a proper interview became “virtually” impossible for me during my first attempt.

The hardest part of trying to interview another avatar was approaching them. I found myself bringing ascribing norms of the actual world to that of Secondlife. For example, I wasn’t sure how to initially start a conversation with another avatar that would eventually lead in a scholarly direction. My avatar would approach other avatars but then I would feel self-conscious as if I was staring at them and them-me. As far as I am aware avatars don’t blink and therefore also likely lack the ability to stare another avatar down but I couldn’t help but feel as though it was unavoidable. Although the initial interview didn’t go as well as I would have liked I’m not too concerned about the future research, with more practice interviewing in Secondlife I’m sure it will become easier.

Hair, clothes, tattoos, jewlery:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nemnem/243/167/31

Clothes: 

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wien/29/213/27

To my utter shock and amazement I actually understood what was going on yesterday in Secondlife. Not only could I understand how to find freebies and select new outfits but I was good at it! My avatar now has tons of clothes and hair style to choose from and I have to say that being able to really alter the way that my avatar looked helped me to get comfortably engaged in Secondlife for the first time. I have also become more able to problem solve. While trying to change my avatar’s top, I accidentally clicked on her hair and hit “discard”. Suddenly my poor virtual person was bald. However, I was quickly able to find a shop with various wigs and changed her hairstyle to something completely different.

I had to laugh, though, at the way in which my personal sentiments came though as I was shopping with my avatar. Several times in the Secondlife world I picked up a dress or a shirt which I thought was cute and then when I put it on my avatar I didn’t like it anymore. This may seem trivial but I observed it as a way in which I had already bonded to my virtual counterpart. In my eyes I was no longer dressing some random virtual person, I was dressing me – and I wanted to look as cute as possible.

I have said in various post and pages that when I began Secondlife I was one of the people asking, “what’s the point?”.  Although I have played my fair share of video games, I’ve never interacted online in a gaming situation, nor have I ever participated in anything like Secondlife. Therefore, it was difficult for me, as it was for many of those in the class, to comprehend why anyone would choose to spend time in a virtual reality instead of just going to a bar and fostering relationships in the physical world.

However, then I began to think about my area of interest in my IPC minor. As I have also mentioned in other posts, I enjoy focusing on social constructions and the way in which social norms are constructed and challenged. Also, I enjoy analyzing how people construct their identities, keeping these social confines in mind. From that context, I began to think that Secondlife would be an ideal place in which to conduct ethnographic studies. It would be far easier for me, as a researcher, to study a group of people in Secondlife than in the physical world.

Also, in Secondlife a researcher would be able to create a separate identity for himself or herself. I commented in class that I can never, in the physical world, stop being a white woman (without extensive surgery). However, in Secondlife, I am free to take on a new identity and through that identity explore my new found place on the social hierarchy and the way in which the social norms act on me differently. I suppose that the primary justification I would make for a Secondlife account is the possibility for research that may be utilized within this constructed world.