Just came across a beautiful night-shot of RMB City by the venerable Bettina Tizzy, founder of Not Possible in Real Life and long-term friend and advisor to RMB City project… We were honored to also have Bettina’s presence (in a beautiful Eshi Otawara dress) at the Mayor’s speech this morning!
On April 18, 2009, RMB City inaugurated its second Mayor, AlanLau Nirvana (RL: Alan Lau), in a ceremony featuring RMB City founder China Tracy, and historic first Mayor UliSigg Cisse (RL: Uli Sigg).
While UCCA was still installing Navin Rawanchaikul’s new exhibition “Super China!”last week, I was strolling through the lobby and caught a quick glimpse of the large sculptural piece in progress in the main hall. Also entitled “Super China!,” it’s a Monopoly-like game that can be played in real-life by visitors throughout the exhibition’s run. It’s described as “an interactive board game where visitors can choose from a number of roles and win in the high-stakes field of contemporary art. Medals and trophies will be awarded to the winners at the end of the show.”
Each of the little squares represent notable figures, events, or phenomena in the world of Chinese contemporary art. Imagine our surprise when we spotted this one…
Inauguration of RMB City’s second mayor: AlanLau Nirvana
Date: 18th April, 2009, 11am (Beijing Time)
17th April, 2009, 8pm (Second Life Time)
Venue: People’s Bank, RMB City
(Address) http://slurl.com/secondlife/RMB%20City%203/119/174/29/
Ladies and Gentlemen,
AlanLau Nirvana (RL: Alan Lau) is going to be RMB City’s second mayor after UliSigg Cisse (RL: Uli Sigg)—the first mayor of RMB City. RMB City will have a Mayor inauguration and handover ceremony at People’s Bank in RMB City at 11am, 18th April 2009 (Beijing Time) to give a warm welcome to the new mayor and express RMB City’s gratitude to our wonderful first mayor UliSigg Cisse.
In the past three months, our first mayor UliSigg Cisse experimented the reciprocal “becoming” process between human and a virtual city through his values. As RMB City’s soon-to-be new mayor, what will AlanLau Nirvana bring to the virtual city which involves sampling of various Chinese cities and whose urban plans are “planning without plans” ? AlanLau Nirvana, who works in the financial sector in reality, when encountering Second Life—a virtual platform partially overlaps with the real economic system through its currency (Linden Dollars)¬¬—what new interpretations will come up?
We sincerely invite EVERYBODY to join us at this special event.
See you there.
RMB City Team
AlanLau Nirvana (RL: Alan Lau)
Born in 1974 in Hong Kong, Alan Lau lived in Canada and studied in the UK, he is currently a partner with an international consulting firm. For the past 10+years, Alan Lau has lived out of a suitcase and he uses economics and art as his portals to see and understand the world around him.
Blog: http://alanlau999.blogspot.com/
As Mayor UliSigg Cisse is about to finish his three-month term as Mayor of RMB City, he has been kind enough to give us one more value for RMB Citizens…
“Do not commit but intelligent mistakes!”
We invite all RMB Citizens to share their favorite intelligent mistakes in the comments, or provide your own alternate value slogan… More details coming soon about our next Mayor and the upcoming inauguration!
It seems that feng shui is more controversial than ever…
In late March, China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and TV released new regulations about prohibited content in online videos. Point #6 reads: “Promotion of palm-reading, fortune-telling, fengshui, divination, exorcism, and other feudal superstitious activity.”
And just a few days ago, there was a heated debate on an English-language news program on CCTV 9, regarding the cancellation of a feng shui-related class at a university. Video here.Blissfully oblivious to this, Huang He’s feng shui swans just keep flying in RMB City… Video here.
Qi of RMB City from rmbcity on Vimeo.
This upcoming event looks quite interesting – a mixed-reality event during a music conference in Taiwan that features a tour of a digital Guqin (traditional Chinese instrument) museum in Second Life.
SL: Swann Jie is involved; RMB Citizens may remember her from her participation in Mian Mian’s “Love Letter to an Avatar” project.
It seems like some part of the digital space is up already?
More information here – maybe we’ll carpool from RMB City to check it out?
Virtual World @Taiwan guqin conf 『古 琴、音 樂 美 學 與 人 文 精 神 』 」 跨 領 域 、跨 文 化 」國 際 學術 研 討 會, 2009, April 25th 14h30-16h30; rl music :: Chine-France
A tour of the Digital Guqin Museum will be presented infront of real life Master guqin players and scholars from around the world at “Intercultural International Conference on Guqin, Aesthetics and Humanism, 『古 琴、音 樂 美學 與 人 文 精 神 』 」 跨 領 域 、跨 文 化 」國 際 學 術 研 討 會”, TaiChung, Taiwan. DGM live demo and tour, April 24-25, 14h30-16h30, 2009
Swannjie will be sent to do the live demo and maybe with a special guest doing live performance. The time will be from 14h30 to 16h30 Taiwan time, April 25th 2009.
The New York Times has previously covered RMB City (“Flying Avatars Admire the Artwork,” Mar 12, 2008), but a few weeks back, they published another foray into the strange territory where “Second Life” and “art” overlap.
In “Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar,” writer Sara Corbett profiles Filthy Fluno (RL: Jeff Lipsky), a painter who uses Second Life to sell his Real Life canvases. The article is admirable for its depth of research into its subject, and for sketching out a picture of how at least some SL art could work in a somewhat traditional “commercial” model.
I was curious to learn more about the avatar Filthy Fluno, but was unfortunately a bit disappointed with the conventional style of most of his paintings. However, in his SIM/museum I did spot something of particular, funny interest to me — there is a sign prominently announcing that one sculpture/mannequin was “Facilitated by Taralyn Gravois”. The only other place I’ve seen that Facilitator role; besides our own city, which lists its beloved Mayor UliSigg Cisse as a Facilitator…
Hans Ulrich Obrist (SL: HansUlrichObrist Magic) and Julia Peyton-Jones (SL: JuliaPeytonJones Popstar), photographed hard at work interviewing China Tracy (RL: ?) during the RMB City Interview Marathon on Friday, March 20. Here they are in the new RMB City installation in Serpentine Gallery, in Real Life. If only we could sip HansUlrichObrist Magic’s coffee via wireless virtual worlds, I wonder what it would taste like?
It’s a glorious occasion whenever Mayor UliSigg Cisse contributes a new value to RMB City – his latest is:
“In all endeavors, search for the quantum leap!”
Please take this to heart, dear RMB Citizens – we hope to all be quantum-leaping soon. Also, don’t forget to add your own “citizen values” in the comments, or by emailing to: info@rmbcity.com…
For the experimental Interview Marathon in RMB City on March 20, the avatar of China Tracy jogged, walked, and flew alongside HansUlrichObrist Magic and JuliaPeytonJones Popstar… but who was China Tracy, really? It’s finally time to reveal the truth.
The original interview concept:
To fully utilize the possibilities of an interview in Second Life, and to touch on the issues of virtual representation vs. reality that RMB City project seeks to explore, the concept is a sort of “Interview Marathon” — or rather a “relay race”. The avatars HansUlrichObrist Magic and JuliaPeytonJones Popstar will be chatting with the avatar China Tracy, but who knows who is really behind the keyboard? For this event, China Tracy will temporarily become “the People’s Avatar”, a psychic medium channeling multiple voices and visions. In the space of 1 hour, several participants will be “playing” China Tracy (the full list will be revealed after the performance), passing the digital mask of her avatar on just as an Olympic Torch is passed from one runner’s hand to the next. The resulting dialogue may form a sort of exquisite corpse, with China Tracy the literal (virtual?) body, and challenge conceptions of identity, performance, and narrative. The event will be documented as an episode of RMB-TV, a new conceptual platform to examine RMB City as theatrical stage. In a world where nothing is real, isn’t everyone an imposter?
So, without further ado, the speakers channeled by China Tracy’s avatar were…
Hu Fang (SL: HuFang Scribe, creative advisor to RMB City)
Uli Sigg (SL: UliSigg Cisse, 1st Mayor of RMB City)
Alan Lau (friend of RMB City, may hold “high office” in RMB City soon…)
Mian Mian (SL: MianMian Sorbet, writer and artist of the “Love Letter to an Avatar” project)
Huang He (SL: queenshoe Voom, aka “Master Q,” RMB City’s own Feng Shui Master)
It was a bit of a crazy experience, juggling phones, keyboards, and timezones from Paris to Hong Kong, but in the end, an amazing interaction. Many many thanks to all the participants — it wouldn’t have been such a fantastic, surreal dialogue without you!
Full interview transcript coming soon…
One evening in Real Life Bangkok, a Thai filmmaker friend of mine mentioned this project, a short, mixed-reality documentary about contemporary Congolese politics and human connection. It’s called “Kinshasa 2.0” and was directed by Teboho Edkins as part of a project investigating concepts of democracy. Since I’ve been working on several projects relating obliquely to Africa in First Life, and my official job is in Second Life, I couldn’t wait to watch it…
(Photo by “Youin3D”, shooting album)
I just discovered there is some band right now in America called “Miniature Tigers“…
Obviously in real-life, we don’t assume our names are completely unique (depending on how common they are, we may share them with literally millions of other people). But in Second Life, with names as outlandish as Tuna Oddfellow and Gazira Babeli (it really feels like a Charles Dickens novel sometimes), it seems more likely that our SL names might be one in a million.
When I first created my avatar, choosing the name seemed such a very important step, especially because the last names Linden allows you to pick from are so limited. But in some ways, that made it a bit easier, as certain last names do set a course for the first. The moment I spotted “Tigerpaw,” I knew I wanted to be a “Miniature Tigerpaw.”
Of course in real life, I just realized, we don’t get to pick our last names either… Linden is just doing what our parents have for us already, narrowing the field of our possible name-based identities.
Our chief engineers Avatrian have posted some lovely snapshots of RMB City at night — our “urban illumination scheme” is still being worked out, but feel free to visit our SIM during SL-nighttime hours and get a taste of RMB AfterDark…
