Ripple

 I was hoping to write about Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield's build "Ripple" a few months ago, but got bogged down in a variety of things which kept delaying it.  Fortunately I am not a blogger who is expected to post  the story as it happens.  I sometimes post well after it has happened and people are on the verge of forgetting about it, they say "WTF you are so way behind strange person! now we must fight to the death!".  A kind of second wave reminder blogging.  A very crappy form of twitter, but with videos!
Blitter or Twogger.  I made up the part about fighting to the death btw.  Oh here is a tidbit of info about me which is mildly interesting.  I have a black belt in Shotokan karate.  My parents put me in karate at a young age and well speaking of fighting to the death reminded me that I like to punch people in the guts sometimes.
I am in a fairly random mood today much like a flock of startled pigeons, so I will get back to Ripple.
Vaneeesa Blaylock wrote a great article about them on her blog I Rez, Therefore I Am.  So I won't expand on this teams  history building together in Second Life, but yes they have worked together for years now and this is merely their latest work in a line of compelling builds.

Ripple fits in a bit with the post I did a little while back about Thoth Janzen's Simplexity.  It has that borderline connection to Demoscene without being intentionally connected to it.  Rather they could step over the line into making demoscene work if it were something they were interested in.

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What I particularly like about Ripple is the scripting.  When you touch somewhere on the wall it will trigger an outward ripple effect from that point, with each layer of prims hosting video on them to change and twirl depending on how you have set them up to react.  Its great scripting work and the entire build revolves around that effect.  The way I almost see Ripple is as a demonstration of technology they as a team have created.  Where they essentially say that this is a taste of what you can do now take it and fill a sim.  Make a flock of birds like this or use it for business.  Its the type of wow factor that would be perfect to impress non slers who come into sl for business meetings.  Too many companies that come here recreate their office building with that large boring meeting room avec glass table.  If a person comes into SL to meet with someone from another city to speak on a future project, its true they have saved on plane fare and hotel accommodations, but they have not really progressed to a better tool than video conferencing.  I think part of the strength of sl for business is of course the 3D environment but also the ability to conduct business where once that other person logs off their head is spinning a bit from being in a completely foreign environment than what they are used to.  Make them step back into reality and realize that the company they just dealt with just blew them away with something completely new to their senses.  Naturally you would have to balance between distracting the person from what you are saying, but that is all about building composition within the experience.  Peter Greenaway said something I found interesting the other day while he spoke here in SL.  He started off by saying that Cinema is dead and that he was disappointed in the machinima he came to see, I absolutely loved his non pandering style. But what he said that I found interesting was that artists often work around 2-3 main ideas over their entire life and that the vast majority of people have no ideas at all.  Look at the businesses in SL who have come from RL and you will see that most really don't have any creativity.  They come to SL and build garbage then look at what they have created and base the possibilities of SL off of their own trash.  Pay the experts to build your product in this virtual world, people like Desdemona and Douglas and many many others.

Its the change of seasons that makes me hyper I think, also a giant coffee.  I am going to stop typing now because I was just about to start chatting on my caterpillar who I filmed over the last few weeks turning into a monarch butterfly.    I think I need to run around for a bit.






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