Pop Art Lab closes its SL sim

Pop Art Lab closes its SL sim in November 2012 – but keeps the train rolling!

The time has come to step away for a while from virtual worlds. After spending 5 years testing and playing with Second Life and Virtual Worlds platforms, I have decided to take hiatus. It has been a fantastic ride but I don’t think we can push it much further without significant changes in the technologies surrounding these environments.

This is not a permanent farewell to Second Life from Pop Art Lab, more of an extended break of our activities and a chance for us to reflect on our past successes and future projects but without the day to day responsibility of changing streams, worrying about tier payments and constant promotion of our services.

We already accomplished more than I ever dreamt about (brief Google search list 490 unique hits: “pop art lab”= 204.000!).

Allow me to list some highlights:

• Created the very first fully immersive music jukebox worldwide enabling avatars to meet in virtual environments and walk around exploring 4 separate music streaming channels
• 75.000-100.000 visitors
• 15-20 virtual TV shows/concerts
• 2000 new full length albums streamed
• Mentioned in Los Angeles Times (for creating designs for Craig Lyons RL/SL concert)
• Mentioned at The Swedish Internet Days conference 2011 (in Robin Teigland‘s speech, with huge viewership nationwide)
• Hosted 50+ digital events
• Creating influential designs (Torley Linden visited Pop Art Lab prior to opening his PAL “cube” inspired sim – see last pic in above slides)
• Met various RL music celebrities avatars praising our work
• Held presentations in San Francisco, Dublin (Ireland), Lahti (Finland) plus many more in Denmark
• Participated in various Linden Lab developer programs
• Participated in VW Sense-making and Innovation: A strategic research project at Roskilde University, Copenhagen Business School and partners project 2008-2012
• Helped translate the official Linden Lab viewer into Danish
• Set new standards for rolling out compelling machinima contests/events creating music videos for RL artists
• RL meetings with a variety of influential RL music tech developers incl. Alexander Ljung (co-founder of Soundcloud)
• Fronted secondlife.com Destination Guide numerous times and as first ever Scandinavian company
• Stayed in Destination Guide’s music section throughout 4-5 years
• Maintained and grown a huge network of valuable RL connections from across the globe
• Held RL seminar day with Henrik Bennetsen (Sirikata/Katalabs) on using virtual worlds in Danish public library sector
• Build a close relationship to national Danish/Scandinavian copyright institutions KODA, Gramex and NCB
• Build a close relationship to local music business and entrepreneurs
• Build an army of music lovers in a community with no physical border including 600 members from Bangkok to Aruba!
• Supervised and tech setup of mixed reality Metanomics TV-show held in Denmark 2010
• Supervised and designed the 4 sim complex for MMIF Machinima Festival 2010
• Received praise and kudos by Mark D. Kingdon (M Linden), ex Linden Lab CEO during above MMIF (see blogpost).

And finally… met thousands of creative open minded lovely people, heard their stories, talked about music, cultures, politics and life from countries all around the world.

Here’s what will happen:

1. PAL will continue building up Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. and focus entirely on posting news about music and shiny new tech in social media (games, virtual worlds included).
2. PAL’s inworld group will continue though most updates will be linked to above networks.
3. Inworld streaming will stop but will be used on special occasions via above networks.
4. Sim will be gone in November (unless we receive unexpected interest from new partners).

Of specific note:

• PAL’s Facebook Page (community) is no longer related to SL (subtitle removed)
• PAL’s new Google+ and our Twitter will serve non Facebook users
• PAL will focus on migrate cool stuff we learned in SL into above networks
• PAL will continue its efforts in creating machinima/real music video contests and work with upcoming musicians and games
• PAL will continue to make PR/management/social media setup for RL artists
• PAL will continue observing the development of social gaming/virtual worlds
• PAL will be available for specific customized tasks inworld whether it’s governance or design

The reason is:

1. Streaming can in most cases be made using services like Spotify
2. Mass adoption of virtual worlds lacks significant growth
3. Barely no RL musicians or brands are willing to invest in SL
4. Focus on Real Life and Real Life clients

We look forward to host inworld farewell activities and sincerely hope to keep up contact with all of you (we have a fairly new sim full of new designs! Navigation tip: Jump, explore, swim, explore!).

As a final note, I would like to assure that Pop Art Lab loves the Second Life platform, Linden Lab and the people who create the magic in there. During the years, there have been many issues in the way Linden Lab handle Second Life.

I want to point out it’s a wonderful platform they have created: especially the unique democratic tools that give everyone without specific skills a golden opportunity to create and visualize their culture, history and lives.

I sincerely hope all who have helped and still help create wonderful experiences inside virtual environments will flourish in the years to come.

Lastly, thanks so much to my team behind Pop Art Lab, because without you none of above would ever have happened!

Any questions or comments gladly received, please just shoot: clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com, leave comment below or join the following networks for direct contact.

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

Heartfelt thanks,

Claus Uriza

Edited by Persia Bravin

Photo Contest Winners!

The winners in our photo contest are:

1. Corcosman Voom
2. Fae Varriale
3. Shamus Jefferson

Many thanks to ALL who entered! The jury consisting of four PAL team members had a tough time finding the best. We had almost 10 pictures in the final heat.
Above gallery shows those of which all jury members liked! Please consider all as winners!

Also thanks to all who joined event. Roughly 150-200 stepped by during the 5 hours making it one more historic and successfull PAL event!

A lot can and have been said about virtual worlds but I have to say one of the most fascinating observations is to have the opportunity to meet, dance, chat and share a lot of good music with a global bunch of like-minded. Love it!!

We’ll take a short break here on blog. Meanwhile stay up to date via our Facebook, Twitter or inworld group.

Next event is scheduled in December and themed IDM glitchy tech down in club!

We are currently puzzling with our next music project and if everything works out we’ll launch a project of yet unseen proportions related to music marketing in Virtual Worlds!

Stay tuned!

Pop Art Lab Photo Event!

Pop Art Lab Photo Event!

November 12. – 12:00-05:00pm SLT/PDT – 21:00-02:00 CET

Time is up! We’ll be announcing the top three winning photos in our contest!

After much thinking, a few arguments, and lots of beers consumed, the judges made from the RL/SL Pop Art Lab team have finally reached a decision. Who will the winner be? Join us to find out.

As always, Pop Art Lab can’t produce an event without having a huge party-and we have the best DJs and live music lined up for you.

A huge thank you to all the participants, to all our friends and business colleagues in both lives and to the whole PAL in world group for your continued support.

Programme!

12:00 pm DJ BRB aka Claus Uriza (DK) Tech DubHop Indie
01:30 pm Winning Annoucements w. Hosts Persia Bravin/Claus Uriza (Pop Art Lab)
02:00 pm Live Music: Engrama (Arg/Esp) Indie
03:00 pm DJ Unknown aka Evil Laa (US) Dubstep
04:00 pm DJ Denard Henry aka Sonic Architect (US) Minimal Tech
05:00 pm Departure – Afterparty

Access: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pop%20Art%20Lab/173/78/21

Photo Entries can be viewed here

Pop Art Lab on Facebook:

Contacts:
Claus Uriza: CEO RL & SL Pop Art Lab
clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com

Persia Bravin: Marketing Manager RL & SL Pop Art Lab
Persia(dot)bravin(at)yahoo(dot)com

About Pop Art Lab

Pop Art Lab is a real world music research company that is exploring the use of virtual words such as Second Life as alternative music performance venues. Each week, we stream up to twenty new CD releases from world famous recording artists full length and 24/7 from our class 5 sim, so SL residents can listen to fresh music releases from all genres of music.

We also invite real life musicians, DJs and record labels into SL to encourage creative collaboration; we produce a TV music series in partnership with Treet.TV, and work with machinima makers, virtual artists and many other content creators for mutual benefit.

With a full range of services available, and a team of professional staff, Pop Art Lab is blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual. One recent music video contest gathered over one million hits and as we move into the future, our plans are to expand our activities and services in both worlds.

Above all, our mission is to make music social: by using virtual worlds such as Second Life, people can enjoy music with others from across the globe-and all in real time.

Pop Art Lab in Pictures

Pop Art Lab presents its first ever photography contest in Second Life™

17th- 31st October 2011

Music and photography have always been natural artistic partners. Think of all the seminal musical moments in history captured through a lens: the concert performances, candid shots of rock stars behaving badly and behind the scenes images that show rock n roll history in all its gritty glory.

Now in its third year in Second Life, Pop Art Lab is inviting photographers from across SL to unleash their artistic vision as part of our anniversary celebrations. If you love taking photographs and like music- we want you to enter!

It’s up to you to decide what is in your shot, but the Pop Art Lab sim must be shown in some way. Apart from this, the creativity is all yours!
The top three winning images will all receive a cash prize, plus they will be seen by real life global record labels, recording artists and media companies who we work with in both worlds.

Prizes
The prizes are as follows:
1st Prize Winner: L$15,000
2nd Prize Winner: L$10,000
3rd Prize Winner: L$5,000

How to enter
1) First join our group in Second Life by searching for: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Lab (this is where all notices and information on this contest will be posted).

2) Visit our sim to find inspiration and a good location to take your shot:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pop%20Art%20Lab/152/163/28

3) Take any type of image you like. There is no restriction on themes and you can include avatars, props etc. The only thing we ask is that some part of the Pop Art Lab sim is featured in your work and is clearly visible

4) Upload your shot to the Pop Art Lab flickr group, with your name and any other information in the description box.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/popartlab/

Contest Requirements
1) All entrants must join our SL group and flickr group to complete their entries
2) Shots MUST feature the Pop Art Lab sim in some way
3) There is no restriction on themes: you have complete freedom to choose composition-anything goes!
4) If you need rezz rights at our sim, contact Claus Uriza
5) Post processing such as Photoshop is allowed
6) By submitting your entry, you give permission for Pop Art Lab to use your images in SL, on its website and for real life promotional purposes

Contact:
Claus Uriza: CEO RL & SL Pop Art Lab
clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com
Persia Bravin: Marketing Manager RL & SL Pop Art Lab
Persia.bravin(at)yahoo(dot)com

About Pop Art Lab
Pop Art Lab is a real world music research company that is exploring the use of virtual words such as Second Life as alternative music performance venues. Each week, we stream up to twenty new CD releases from world famous recording artists full length and 24/7 from our class 5 sim, so SL residents can listen to fresh music releases from all genres of music.
We also invite real life musicians, DJs and record labels into SL to encourage creative collaboration; we produce a TV music series in partnership with Treet.TV, and work with machinima makers, virtual artists and many other content creators for mutual benefit.
With a full range of services available, and a team of professional staff, Pop Art Lab is blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual. One recent music video contest gathered over one million hits and as we move into the future, our plans are to expand our activities and services in both worlds.
Above all, our mission is to make music social: by using virtual worlds such as Second Life, people can enjoy music with others from across the globe-and all in real time.

Music Shared Real Time in 3D – Forever Changes!

Been a while since we posted on the PAL blog, but the team have all been busy in real life! But we are back and have some great new things happening at PAL we have to share.

From this week, we have expanded our streams at PAL which means that now, each dome (listening booth) will have a weekly selection rotating 2-4 new albums (not just one!) making it now possible to hear 8-16 instantly compared with our previous static 4. Truth is we have been meaning to do this for some time now but as autumn sets in and everyone stays indoor real life more – this season seemed the perfect time to launch this new service.

We hope you enjoy it. By doing this, we are also able to promote even more music from real life musicians and we hope that after listening to the new streams with us that you are inspired to go out and buy new releases – please don’t forget to support the hard working musicians! This new model of streaming at PAL will be more flexible – just expect the unexpected: so bring your friends, partners, lovers, mothers, pets and neighbours to PAL, and enjoy music shared in real time. [visit recent streams in our music section currently under construction]

To quote Mark Zuckerberg at the recent FB8 Developer Conference on Facebook Music announcements: “Here is how it works: Spotify users who connect to Facebook can now automatically share the songs they’re listening to through Facebook’s new news ticker. Their friends can then click on any of those song links, which will launch the Spotify client in the background and play the very same song in a synchronized fashion. “You discover a huge amount of new music this way,” said Zuckerberg.

In other words: Facebook/Spotify launch a service allowing multiple [connected] users to listen to the same tune real time. This set bells ringing with us at PAL because we have been running “shared real time streaming” for 3 years (without all the “let the data do the work” cool shared social media features FB offers). We really should rezz some data mining inside the lab … someday.

PAL also got a great mention in the October issue of the ‘Best of Second Life’ Magazine where the society reporter, Sonicity Fitzroy, was kind enough to attend our third anniversary event – thanks to BOSL!

Also, in the next week or so look out for other new PAL activities coming up such as more live gigs, our new photography contest, details of Artbreaker 2 plus how PAL and the world of SL fashion will be working together…

Please shoot feedback here or inworld. Thank You!

Persia Bravin/Claus Uriza

Emma Acs Machinima Event – Final Video Documentary!

We are pleased to present our latest Pop Vox this time featuring pre- and post edited recordings from our latest Emma Acs machinima musicvideo contest/event.

Our previous Pop Vox shows have all been done entirely live recorded by Treet.TV but we are moving towards more independent and flexible productions.

Thanks a lot to our productioncrew Al Peretz and Yesikita Coppola.

We are Back! Upside Down

2011-The Story So Far…….

It’s been a while since we gave a full update on all PAL activities, but even though we have been quiet, the whole PAL team has been working behind the scenes gearing up for the much busier autumn/winter season in Second Life.

So in-between taking long beach holidays (Claus) surviving the London riots (Persia) and debating the future of the metaverse (Ryan)-what’s been happening? Read more →

Updates from the Lab (or lack of!)

Wish we could air more details on our upcoming Emma Acs Machinima event but by now there’s too many unsolved ends!

First of all we are trying to mingle out a date. It ain’t easy as June is full of cool events. We have Chantal Harveys MMIF Int. Machinima Festival, MetaMeets Confrence in Amsterdam, SL8B (the official Second Life 8 years birthday) just to mention a few.

Read more →

We Make (additional) Sense!

We Make Sense by gunforhire

• To get mp3 please email clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com
• Further info, pics, vids etc. please visit Emma Acs officiel site
• For full guidelines how to enter machinima contest please visit previous post Read more →

Feedback on Giana Factory musicvideo entries!

Here is selected feedback from jury as well as prolific machinina makers and experts. We hope you enjoyed the contest and looks forward to launch next!
Jury members was asked to send their Top 3 and you can see their votes below each video of those they selected. To read more about the jury please see previous post.
I hope I have included most important quotes but might add more as these appears on numereous sites and I haven’t got the time right now to run all through.
Thank you so much to all who participated! We hope this feedback will be useful!
If you missed the full broadcast of event it is now available at Treet TVs archive.

Director: Ian Pahute
Adam Hashemi, jury: No. 2 “For its simplicity. Even though it’s a bit boring, it’s the only one with a shred of esthetic quality (according to my taste)”
Claus Uriza: “I love it, nice graphics and maybe the most “accesseble” video for people who are not familiar with machinima. One of my winners!”

Director: Ormand Lionheart
Rhett Linden, jury: No. 1
Adam Hashemi, jury: No. 1 “Has some good dancing moves”
Toxic Menges, jury: No. 2 “Has created a masterful mix of colour and motion that really works well, it’s definite mastery of machinima is evident and the vibrancy works good with the song”
Giana Factory, artist: No. 1 Loui Foo, singer “… Amazingly abstract! It pictures an absurdity and a parallel universe, we could not even imagine existed. We find the colors and the playfulness and creativity in the universe very attractive. It’s unpredictable and avant garde and still pure eye candy, and has an almost burlesque feel to it. Besides that, we think it goes well with the tune and keeps the story untold, and it’s up to the viewer to create their own.”
Claus Uriza: “I don’t think visuals inside Second Life can be made much better right now. Extremely well edited. One of my winners”

Director: Al Peretz
Hamlet Au, New World Notes: No. 2 “Heavy on the cyberpunk action”
Claus Uriza: “Probably the biggest production and very compelling graphics. Very clever editing as well. Maybe too many ideas thrown in the mix”
IcechickenSr, YouTube: “I have no idea what you guys are are all competing in or what the contest is all about. But after looking at a bunch of these done by others I really keep finding myself attracted to this one. I think it has more of a theme or story line happening in the video which naturaly attracts the human eye to it. It’s really a very cool contest and project I like it, the song is very cool too. Good work! Cheers, IC”

Director: Lara Larix
Rhett Linden, jury: No. 3
Claus Uriza: “Love the dark interpretation of the story which at some point fits the lyrics very well”

Director: Kira Madrigal
Claus Uriza: “The script of story is absolutely fantastic and to me maybe the best interpretation of the lyrics of all entries”
Michelle Leckrone, director: “Like the images good look”
Dandilyon Fluff, blogger: “My personal favorite remains the submission by Kira Madrigal, due in a large part to the focus on telling a story visually” … The story plays out well, elicits genuine emotional involvement and fits with the lyrics”

Director: MommaLuv Skytower
Adam Hashemi, jury: No. 3 “Has some great characters, love the weirdness”
Toxic Menges, jury: No. 3 “MommaLuv has made some fantastic images for this – Iove the concept and look”
Claus Uriza: “Knowing this is MommaLuvs debut machinima I have to say: Please make more films this is so talented and full of cool screwed impressions”
Arbit Delacroix, director: “Fantastic! It has such a cool crazy feel and it doesn’t even look like it was shot in SL, which is no small feat in itself! I loved the whole vibe and the RL video hybrid stuff was excellent too”
Mozy Pera, director: “Amazing creativity! I love how you mixed the RL and SL videos together!”

Director: Arbit Delacroix
Toxic Menges, jury: No. 1 “Arbit has used Windlight, depth of field, and beautiful effects and given the piece a narrative edge. It’s visually stunning. I Wish I had made it”
Rhett Linden, jury: No. 2
Adam Hashemi, jury: No. 4 “I guess it’s because I judge from a story aspect, more than a technical one. It bothers me that they try to tell a story but it doesn’t really work for me. It’s nice looking though, and it does get the music through well”
Giana Factory, band: No. 2
Iono Allen, director: No. 1
Hamlet Au, New World Notes: No. 1
Ormand Lionheart, director: “Well I see this as the winner. Awesome job overall. Beautiful scenes, awesome camera work, no lag, amazing attention to detail. Amazing looking avatar”
Claus Uriza: “Absolutely stunning video and seen from my perspective a true classic musicvideo. If I should point out one tricky part it’s the storyline. I had to watch few times before I really got it. One of my winners”

Director: Abdullah Yazimoto
Claus Uriza: “Unfortunately this fantastic video have been withdrawn by director”