1. I don't think you should underestimate the psychological effects of "realistic" builds... for example, from a very early age, your average human being is groomed to know what a real-world shop looks like, and to expect to be able to buy stuff there. I'm convinced that the more an SL store taps into the "pattern" of a real-life store, the more likely it is that some lizard-brain instinct is going to kick in for a visitor and make them think "I should buy stuff here" (I keep promising myself that one of these days I'm going to get around to putting a faux front-desk and cash register in my LapGirl store, just to see how that affects sales!)

Similarly, a fairly conservative lecture hall build is going to tap into a student's conditioning of how to behave in _that_ environment - sit down, listen, and don't heckle. Would they be pre-conditioned in the same way if you sat them down in a space station, or a tree house?

Environments can convey lots of hidden "rules"... I think it's only sensible for SL architects to exploit this fact.

(P.S. no trackbacks here? Booo!)

Posted at 5:59AM on Oct 22nd 2006 by Shep Korvin

2. Ah but it is that freedom from restriction on behaviour, that lack of conditioning that is so wonderful in SL. I wonder if any of them is brave enough to see how much more they get out of students if they throw away the rigidity which is the norm in RL.

I am afraid I don't know what a trackback is, but if we don't have them and you want them, try Iming Akela an asked for them.

Posted at 6:03AM on Oct 22nd 2006 by Caliandris

3. > Maybe I am being completely unfair, and potential clients
> would look at a crazy treehouse conference area and make
> unwelcome judgements about a company.
Probably.

> Or maybe the overwhelming preponderence of suburban houses
> complete with bathrooms and kitchens mean that people do
> like the familiar things.
Exactly. :) This IS an indication of most people's attitudes. Or isn't it?

Posted at 8:30AM on Oct 22nd 2006 by Pham Neutra

4. Perhaps Pham. But then most of us live in ordinary houses, although the people who really fire the imagination in architecture -- Gaudi or Hundertwasser, or even Frank Lloyd Wright -- most certainly didn't build ordinary houses.

I have great trouble buying certain items of clothing in RL, and the brand I buy has the tagline "world bestseller" on it. Now if I had the chance I would buy something completely different from the design I am stuck with, but I can't because these are the only one which fit me. It isn't any wonder to me that it is a best-seller, because people like me are stuck with it.

There is a capitalist myth that if the demand is there people will supply it, but I don't think that's necessarily true.

I don't know whether far-out offices and lecture halls will catch on in SL. Time will tell!

Posted at 8:37AM on Oct 22nd 2006 by Caliandris

5. Hear hear! I like "normal" looking buildings as much as the next person, but creativity, imagination, inspiration make the world go 'round.

We have a beautiful place here to think & create outside normal boundaries.

Posted at 2:05PM on Oct 22nd 2006 by Roenik Newell

6. Welcome to the world of freelance art, hehe. I sympathize greatly with how you feel because it's something I've been dealing with in my RL profession since my first gig. It's the rare client who will let you have free reign to do something truly imaginative, and usually it's not worth the trouble to try and talk them into something other than what their preconceptions tell them they want. Usually the most pragmatic approach is to find the most direct line from a signed contract to a paycheck and a satisfied client, and that line rarely stops in fantasy land, alas.

Posted at 4:25AM on Oct 23rd 2006 by Chip Midnight

7. Hi Caliandris, please don't get me wrong but your answer makes me question the intent of your initial post. You were lamenting a certain inflexibility of clients in the original post. But your comments (answers to comments) were more about them not giving you freedom for artistic expression.

A client is rarely interested in financing your artistic ideas - and its quite a different relationship between an artist and his patron than that between a client and a contractor.

The examples you mentioned for "artistic architects" are interesting, btw. I know buildings of two of them from personal experience. I am a huge fan of the third one and ... eeehmmm .... I would not want to live/work in any of their houses. These are works of art, not results of a directed process leading to an efficient solution for the needs of some person, family or corporate client.

I agree with your assessment of clients who sometimes come around with very conservative ideas. It is a hard job trying to persuade them to try some more creative, unconvential ideas (as someone working in the professional service industry I know, how hard). This job is nearly impossible, when you are working through a middle man (another agency). So you have my sympathies.

It is a big difference, though, between asking for some flexibility and openness to innovation and asking for artistic freedom. And as long as you don't prove to the customer that his (business) intents are better served with a "cave, greenhouse or a spacestation" you are simply asking for artistic freedom. There are some clients who might even allow you that freedom; but rarely in the first job they do with you. This is a matter of trust. And trust builds up slowly.

Posted at 4:25AM on Oct 23rd 2006 by Pham Neutra

8. Oh nooo, Pham, I don't expect them to finance my artistic freedom of expression, I expect Oclee to do that, lol. Nemesis is a constantly changing landscape of half finished ideas - currently a gallery after I lamented the lack of interesting gallery spaces.

I am genuinely interested in doing what is best for the client, what will work best for them. The difference of opinion is whether you think that people want what they are given - lots of conference rooms and lecture halls and classroom type builds - or might respond better to something more imaginative.

When makes me think the latter may be true, is the way that people respond to Numbakulla and Lost Gardens, and how they come back again and again just to be in the environment, not necessarily for any specific purpose. I honestly think that people can cope with more imagination and like it, they like things that are a bit unusual, which are more than just what you can see too.

But I can't honestly say that I know whether these impressions I have - that people enjoy and welcome more interesting things - are right for businesses and serious academics... I just would love to have a go and see if - as I think - they might work even better.

I am thinking it rather depends upon whether you want to keep them in the boxes they inhabit in RL, or give them a little bit of a surprise.

Posted at 4:43AM on Oct 23rd 2006 by Caliandris

9. It's always funny to me that the folks in the Platformers or Augmentationist camp with Aimee Weber as their leader/editor turn out to be worse nativists than the Worlders or Immersionists. And it goes to show you that there are many more nuances and variations in these two broad tendencies than people realize.

The idea that the corporate world is going to subsidize your fragile pretty aesthetic is misfounded. No one has to pay for you; this isn't the utopian socialist state of Soviet art where the state will fund you to make revolutionary art (before it turns to classicism and kitsch and murders some of you).

It's just a business, and the businesses and huge charities and educational institutions like Harvard are just corporations. Why are they suddenly going to turn into fairies in the rushy glen? They aren't getting second lives; they're using Second Life.

I found it humorous that Harvard would do this big cutting edge new thing...and then merely tediously replicate their old moss-dripping stone buildings that looked like a goth dream.

But let them, they're paying for it.First of all, there's nothing inherently pedestrian about people who want a comfort level related to their second life and want familiar bricks-and-mortar buildings. Why not? I certainly don't want to spend time in SL for long periods perched on a flower petal and trying to maneuver the camera angles in a giant cactus, as fun as they are. Whimsy can really start to get on your nerves after awhile.

If you don't have the tier and time to sustain a venture involving your artistic vision, then don't impose it on the rest of us by either trying to get the state to subsidy use in fixed building contests or castigate RL business for not understanding your precious vision.

I personally have worked hard to preserve the kinds of builds you are talking about; I've even once commissioned this very giant cactus I mentioned and one of my communities is next door to giant flowers which I really appreciate. The reality of virtuality is such, however, that everyone talks a good game about sustaining innovative virtual architecture but few people want to work for free or pay the tier under it for very long. If they did, Svarga wouldn't be for sale; or it would have ready buyers.

Posted at 9:00AM on Oct 23rd 2006 by Prokofy Neva

10. @Caliandris (8)
> But I can't honestly say that I know whether these
> impressions I have - that people enjoy and welcome more
> interesting things - are right for businesses and serious
> academics... I just would love to have a go and see if -
> as I think - they might work even better.
Thats what I meant, when I was talking about "trust", Cali. You "can't say" (if it is better for the clients needs). You "would love to have a go". You think it "might" work better.

Nobody is questioning you good intentions, but before a client trusts your feelings and beliefs, he must know you - and maybe must experience at least once that those "different" ideas you present are beneficial to his business interests.

When you talk about "keep them in the boxes they inhabit in RL, or give them a little bit of a surprise" you imply that clients want it boring snd uninspired. I am not sure about that. In my RL experience it does not matter that much to a client, if his projects are "in the boxes" or "surprising". What matters is, if they are effective. And many a client will accept "surprising" (I AM talking from personal experience), when you can convince him (with arguments not beliefs) that "surprising" will be good for his bottom line.

Posted at 1:05AM on Oct 24th 2006 by Pham Neutra