Ready, Set, ACTION: Machinima Contest Starts This Tuesday

Calling all Machinima artists!

Pop Art Lab (PAL) has secured an opportunity for Second Life’s video artists to work with one of Scandinavia’s most promising real world bands, Giana Factory, to create a full music video shot entirely within Second Life.

We want to show the real world the creativity and talents of machinima artists working within virtual worlds. Finally the time is up to show the real world music industry the powers of making videos inside virtual worlds.

Launching February 1st., PAL is conducting a machinima contest aimed at partnering a talented Second Life video artist with real world musical group, Giana Factory. Submissions are due March 5th. The winner of the judged context will not only see their work in real world use; they will also receive an incentive prize of $50,000 Lindens.

About Giana Factory:
Danish band ‘Giana Factory’ are a musical trio who have already gained critical and public acclaim for their distinctive sound which fuses edgy pop with ethereal electronica. The band recently consented to let ‘POP ART LAB’ use their song ‘Pixelated Truth’ for this contest. The tune can be heard and downloaded via Soundcloud

03 Pixelated Truth 1 by GianaFactory

For more information on Giana Factory, visit their website

Contest Rules:
The theme and story of your music video is entirely open with avatar likenesses to Giana Factory musicians both allowed and encouraged.
More than 75% of the footage must be recorded inside Second Life.
Please keep in mind you have to ask sim owners in Second Life for accept to film on their land. Feel free to record in the Pop Art Lab sim.

Run of Show:

Filming
The PAL sim will be open 4 weeks prior to submission deadline so everyone have the time to come record.
We kindly ask all of you to act appropriately and show respect and understanding so everyone will be able to record in peace and ensure a fair play.
Each participant who wants to rezz must join the Pop Art Lab group and leave a notecard to Claus Uriza with names to be added. Please remove objects after filming. Scripts will be enabled.

Submission
Submit via Youtube
To submit one or more films you need to upload them to YouTube and then send the appropriate link to clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com along with your film title, name and contact info.
Please add “Pop Art Lab Music Video Entry” to your film title on YouTube.
We will collect entries as favorites on our contest channel and embed finalist films on blogs as well (Films with highly inappropriate content will be excluded).

Judging
Giana Factory will have the final decision in selecting the winning video. However several movie experts from both real world and Second Life will be part of the jury. Names will be posted during February.

Important Dates:
Submission deadline – 12 AM PDT/SLT March 5, 2011
Recording period – Feb. 1, 2011 through March 5, 2011
Winner will be announced at a huge event ‐ March TBA, 2011

Format Guidelines:
Widescreen: Minimum 480p up to 1080p
Frame rate: Minimum 24 fps (frames per second)
Size: < 1 Gb

IMPORTANT: Titles and Credits
All titles or credits must be sent to clausuriza@gmail.com when you submit the video.
Please do NOT include title and credits before or during but make it appear at least 5 seconds AFTER in a complete cut to black/white.
Note: These rules are made to make it easier for media outlets who might want to play the winning video afterwards. Of course, you are welcome to put titles, credits etc. in text field on YouTube.

TERMS OF USE – WHO OWNS THE VIDEO AFTER I SUBMIT IT?
You retain all of your ownership rights to your film submission. However, by submitting you also grant us Giana Factory and Pop Art Lab a license to use, reproduce and distribute your film. When you upload the video to YouTube you’re granting us an exclusive license for the duration of the competition. After the competition finishes it automatically reverts to a non-exclusive license for all videos except the winning video. We retain the exclusive license so the band can use it as their official music video if they want to do so.

Additional Information About Giana Factory:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWjZ624WmIg
Pictures: http://www.musicfordreams.net/gianafactory/
Tune: http://soundcloud.com/gianafactory or http://bit.ly/hK7zIp

About Pop Art Lab:
Pop Art Lab was founded start of 2008 in the virtual world of Second Life. It provides a dynamic immersive environment within which avatars can gather together to share their interest in music, movies & machinima, and attend live concerts and events occurring both entirely within the virtual environment and in mixed realities that merge reality with the metaverse. For more information, visit http://popartlab.com

Any questions please IM Claus Uriza inworld or send an email to clausuriza(at)gmail(dot)com
Press enquiries please email Persia Bravin at persia.bravin(at)yahoo(dot)com
Real Life press release available as Google Doc

Brief update from the Lab!

We have two cool events coming up coming weeks. The first one is our Pop Vox TV show November 1st featuring the newly formed Soleil. Originally this showdate should’ve featured Canadian Peace Partner project and artist Kevin Thompson. Due to sudden real life implications among our Canadian crew this show will be rescheduled. We are very pleased to announce Soleil will fill out the slot with short time notice. Soleil is one of the most interesting bands right now and an obvious choice for Pop Vox. More on this show coming week.
Nextly we have a 6 hour dubz electro house event Friday November 5th. This event have been on our “in the making” section for long and we are glad we finally ready to announce and showcase some of the most skilled dubstep artists/DJs on the grid. We are tweaking this programme and will update here as well soon.

As other companies (no names need to be mentioned) we have been through tough restructuring to make the PAL team more forcefull and focused. These changes are an ongoing process and we hope you all will see more events and magic entertainment provided by PAL during the coming virtual worlds peak season (the coming months usually brings way more people into virtuality due to the cold winter).

Our Art Breaker exhibition have been very succssfull and will be removed Sunday November the 7th. We are sad to see these amazing installatons disappear but we will guarantee you soon will see other eyeballs of highest quality! We are planning a new area that’ll showcase temporary art exhibitions which will add an extra immersive quality to our visitors.

Good news. Our PAL group have reached the magic 600 members and see a slow but constant growth. Thanks to all who have joined and who have stayed as loyal members for long!

On the radar we can air increased forcus on the Danish contemporary music scene. We are currently in touch with major music organizations and we hope these initiatives will help make them aware of the opportunities Pop Art Lab have to offer and help labels and artists to reach a global audience by using our PR services.

Lastly we passed a fantastic tour in Finland where I presented PAL. I met so many nice people there and hope these new networks will give birth to further new collaborations inside virtuality.

Oh I forgot to mention I was interviewed by Nazz Lane author of Lane’s List and you can read the full post here

Art Breaker Launch + Pop Art Lab Anniversary!

We are pleased to announce our new partners in Art Breaker The Nordic Virtual Worlds Network (NVWN).
Currently we enhanch the 12 hour event programme for our Art Breaker launch. Also this happens to be exact same date as we had our official Pop Art Lab opening back in September 2008. Not only will this event open our 2 months and 4.000 prims exhibit of some of the very best inter-/reactive art and sound installations seen in SL but also we’ll celebrate our 2 years birthday. Therefore, expect a big bang! The event programme listed below is not final changes might occur.

Info on Art Breaker.
After merely 1 month of recieving proposals the following artists been selected due to some highly impressive showcases.

Bryn Oh
Abstract Baroque
Misprint Thursday
Miso Susanowa
Sunn Thunders
Binary Quandry (install project cordinator)
Sabrinaa Nightfire
Sledge Roffo

FULL PROGRAMME!

The Summer Sessions

Saturday June 26th from 11AM-4PM SLT

The temperature is rising and the long summer nights are finally here. To celebrate summer and before we all take a well earned break for vacations, POP ART LAB, SL’s premier music sim, welcomes you to a spectacular live music event on Saturday June 26th.

As part of this event, PAL CEO, Claus Uriza, will be giving a talk on the subject of ‘Unexpected Collaborations’ as a guest speaker for the SLB7 celebrations.

We are proud collaborators at PAL and the past year has seen us work with RL media companies, record labels, educational establishments, machinima makers, artists, online television companies and of course-musicians and live performers too.

It’s been a nonstop year and one which has seen PAL grow in new directions to become the world’s leading virtual music platform.

Wishing you all a very happy summer from the RL/SL POP ART LAB team!

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Schedule of events

11 AM: Claus Uriza to give talk at SLB7 auditorium on ‘Unexpected Collaborations’ and the impact of partnership working in virtual music.

SLURL

12 PM: Lance Rembrandt-Live music from one of the USA’s most talked about performers

1PM: Engrama-The finest indie pop from Argentina

2 PM-Starflower Orbit-California based Starflower sings laid back, dreamy, summer soaked tunes

3 PM-DJ BRB spinning a mix of the latest pop/dubstep/techno tracks

SLURL

/Persia Bravin

PAL goes New Market Dynamics mode!

I am working behind the bars and sounddesk on this upcoming event. And how did I end there? Well just a cool collaboration between nice friends at Treet.TV, Metanomics and a Danish RL university project.

Mark your calender!

Metanomics Mixed Reality Broadcast on New Market Dynamics

When: Tuesday, June 8th, 11:00-12:00 am SLT

Where: Copenhagen/Second Life

Avatars for sale, gold-farming in WoW (World of Warcraft), purchase of virtual islands, leasing of towns, recruiting avatar employees, VW (virtual world) stock exchanges and banks, exchanging WoW gold to USD – it’s just some of the new designations for commercial agencies and business which have emerged in the wake of the development of virtual worlds. But what are the characteristics of these emerging economies? Who are they, the entrepreneurs of VWs? Are the many small agencies of user-driven innovations the driving force of the economies of VWs? Or, is it Big Business that survives and benefits from the new market dynamics? How has the user-driven content creation of Second Life contributed to the development of new business areas and market dynamics?
This Metanomics Mixed Reality Broadcast, hosted by Robert Bloomfield, will comprise a panel discussion between Robin Teigland, Edward Castronova, Tom Boellstorff and include streaming from the RL research workshop ‘Making Sense of Virtual Worlds and User Driven Innovation” in Copenhagen comprising 40 international participants and co-hosted RL by Sisse Siggaard Jensen.

More info on workshop, participants and sessions/papers at RL venue

The Pop Explosion!

Friday 16^th April 12.00PM-12.00AM SLT

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pop%20Art%20Lab/151/162/28

Are you ready for the biggest live music and machinima event of 2010? Pop Art Lab invites you to experience a 12 hour trip through the very best music, art, film and television in SL.

To celebrate the launch of our brand new and super futuristic music sim, we have asked guest speakers including Jeska Linden and Wiz Nordberg, musicians such as Lance Rembrandt and Skye Galaxy and a plethora of artists, DJs and machinima makers to collaborate. We will be announcing the winner of our spectacular L$100,000 machinima winner too!

Visit our new sim and travel through a new world of wonderment, exploration and innovation or catch the live streaming on Treet.TV.

Full schedule:

April 16th- European Opening

Host: Persia Bravin

12:00 PM PST/SLT: Opening Ceremony presenting the new sim designs and creators: Claus Uriza CEO and guest speakers Dusan Writer CEO of Remedy/Metanomics and Wiz Nordberg CEO of Treet TV.

Particle show from Abstract Baroque

12:30 PM: Live screening of machinima entries in L$100,000 contest.

1:30 PM: Winning machinima announced by Chantal Harvey plus guest DJ Fine Caliber

2:00 PM: Redzone –Live Music

3:00 PM: MommaLuv Skytower-Live Music

4:00 PM: Lance Rembrandt –Live Music

5:00 PM: Sim exploration and chilled out music.

April 16th US Opening (webcasted live by Treet.TV)

Host: Persia Bravin

7:00 PM/SLT: Opening Ceremony presenting the new sim designs and creators: Claus Uriza CEO and guest speakers Draxtor Despres and Wiz Nordberg CEO of Treet TV.

7:30 PM: Live screening of machinima entries in L$100,000 contest

8:15 PM: Winning machinima announced by Jeska Linden

8:30 PM: Skye Galaxy-Live Music

9:30: PM: Starflower Orbit-Live Music

10:30 PM: MoShang Zhao-Live Music

11:30 PM: DJ Fine Caliber

Representing POP ART LAB

Claus Uriza CEO

Emily Hifeng, Xray Haller, Laggy Homewood and Rico Willis-Sim design and build

Persia Bravin-Press Manager

Guest Speakers

Jeska Linden –Director of Community Linden Labs

Draxtor Drespres-The Drax Files

Dusan Writer -Remedy/Metanomics

Wiz Nordberg -CEO, Treet.tv)

Chantal Harvey- Director of Mamachinima.eu

Television Production and streaming: Treet.TV http://treet.tv/live

Machinima Judges

Jeska Linden, Chantal Harvey, Lisbeth Frølunde (Roskilde University  RL), Claus Uriza

Machinima Contest Partner: Virtual Worlds Research Project – A strategic research project at Roskilde University and Copenhagen Business School  (Denmark).

Machinima Entrants

Rysan Fall, Toxic Menges, Glasz DeCuir, Binary Quandry, Larkworthy Antfarm, Ormand Lionheart, Mindblind Setsuko, Iono Allen, Pickles Karu, Delgado Cinquetti, Michelle Leckrone, Ketk Petrov, Al Peretz, Aaron Ishelwood, Tutsy Navarathna.

Musical Talent

Redzone, Starflower Orbit, MommaLuv Skytower, Skye Galaxy, MoShang Zhao, Lance Rembrandt and DJ Fine Caliber

Contributing Artists

Art Exhibition: Julie Kaye (RL)

Art Installation: Misprint Thursday

Marketing Design-Sabrinaa Nightfire

Visuals: Abstract Baroque

Press Information

Claus Uriza CEO of ‘POP AT LAB’ says of this event:

“We have made lots of progress at PAL over the past year so to celebrate our new sim launch I wanted to involve a lot of live musicians. Then came the idea of documenting the old sim design through a machinima contest, inspired by the recent MMIF. I met so many talented people through the MMIF I wanted their input at PAL too. The addition of some very experienced and cool speakers will add value and diversity to this event and help to connect with the audience. In the future, I hope PAL will grow alongside Second Life and we plan on expanding our presence on the web in general including our new website.”

Persia Bravin-Press Manager says:

*POP ART LAB is a fully immersive environment exploring the viability of virtual worlds as alternative music performance venues. We work with media companies, record labels and educational institutions around the globe. Weekly streaming 10-20 new CDs full length across our social and dynamic sim, POP ART LAB brings together music lovers from across the world.*

http://www.popartlab.com

FASTBREAK! – Delgado Cinquetti – Second Life Machinima

TheDeliWolf/Delgado Cinquetti: This film features a popping animation filmed entirely at Pop Art Labs in the virtual world of SecondLife. The nostalgic film effects tied in with some really great sounds adds for an entertaining experience! Enjoy!

Please take a moment to view their videos, and share your feedback with them in the comments section.

Pop Art Lab Machinima Contest 2010 : Contest rules

Pop Art Lab will launch brand new sim design mid April and therefore decided to set up a machinima contest at our “old” sim design as it looks now. By doing this we capture the memories more than 25.000 visitors have seen and quite a few praised since our opening back in 2008.  Pop Art Lab is a music sim streaming each weeks best new albums in pop, rock, electronica and r&b/hiphop.  At the grand opening of our new sim the old one will be completely removed and we will host a huge weekend party where we announce the winner of the machinima contest, screen the best films and have lots of live artists, DJs etc.

CONTEST RULES
The maximum film length is 5 minutes. The theme of your film is entirely open. The only requirements are 90-100% of scenes take place in the Pop Art Lab sim

Each participant who wants to rezz must join the Pop Art Lab group and leave a notecard to Claus Uriza with names. Please remove objects after filming. Scripts will be enabled.
The sim will be open 4 weeks prior to submission deadline so everyone have the time to come record. We kindly ask all of you to act appropriately and show respect and understanding so everyone will be able to record in peace and ensure a fair play.

Send us your machinima by April 9th 2010 and enter the contest for the award of 100.000 Linden dollars.

SUBMIT VIA YOUTUBE
To submit one or more films you need to upload them to YouTube and then send the appropriate link to clausuriza@gmail.com along with your film title, name and contact info. Please add “(Pop Art Lab Contest Entry)” to your film title on YouTube. We will collect entries as favorites on our contest channel and embed finalist films on our blog ‐ http://popartlab.com (Films with highly inappropriate content will be excluded).

PRIZE
$100.000 Lindens. Pop Art Lab Machinima will award cash prize according to the jurys best choice. There is only one winner.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline – 12 AM PDT/SLT April 9 , 2010
• Recording period – March 9, 2010 through April 9, 2010
• Winner will be announced ‐ April 16, 2010 at our new Pop Art Lab sim launch.

TERMS OF USE

• You retain all of your ownership rights to your film submission. However, by submitting you also grant us (Pop Art Lab) a license to use, reproduce and distribute your film for promotional and documentary use only.

SUGGESTED FORMAT GUIDELINES

• Resolution: Minimum of 320×240, maximum of 800×600.
• Widescreen: 720p (fine too).
• Frame rate: Minimum 20 frames per second.
• Audio: Minimum 22khz 16‐bit audio.
• Size: 100 Mb

JURY

• Chantal Harvey, Lisbeth Frølunde, Jeska Linden, Claus Uriza

ORGANIZERS

• Pop Art Lab was founded start of 2008 in the virtual world of Second Life. It provides a dynamic immersive environment within which avatars can gather together to share their interest in music, movies & machinima, and attend live concerts and events occurring both entirely within the virtual environment and in mixed realities that merge reality with the metaverse.

Information about Pop Art Lab

PARTNERSHIP

• The contest is co-sponsored by the Virtual Worlds Research Project. This large collaborative project, running from 2008‐2011, joins university researchers at two Danish universities (Roskilde University and Copenhagen Business School) and a range of different partners. The project is funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council, KINO and explores sense‐making and user‐driven innovation in virtual worlds.

Information about the research project: Virtual Worlds Research Project

LANDMARKS:

• Pop Art Lab has lots of exciting “hidden” locations. Here is a list of some charming spots.
• Pop Art Lab Landing Point
  • Red grammophone
  • Microphone
  • Green Radio
  • InterG Spaceship
  • Spaceage Funpark
  • SSY Spaceship
  • Sky Stage
  • Sky Home

Any questions please IM Claus Uriza or Emily Hifeng inworld or send us an email at clausuriza@gmail.com
Print or read above info as Google doc

Welcome to our new site + M Linden @ MMIF

Warm welcome to Pop Art Labs new domain. Finally we managed to move all our content and can begin PALs next level of growth here.

In many ways I have enjoyed Linden Labs moves lately. Yesterday they beta released their new 2.0 viewer and to me it’s plain eyecandy. Especially the new media app that allows html on a prim – will have significant impact on how we adopt and develop virtual worlds in the future. As a collaborative tool in organizations, edu and libraries it has a huge, yet unseen, potential.

And yes, there are issues in new viewer. I would like see further integration of events from secondlife.com event calender into the viewer. When a new user enters there should be an easy pop-up window at the right sidebar that showcases the most important events going on right now – as it does on secondlife.com. This feature would allow new users to find all the cool stuff in just a few clicks.


[Mark Kingdon aka M Linden enter the MMIF festival theater (and yes I am no good as a photographer).]

Ok next the lab also aired new initiative Supporting the Arts in Second Life. Which makes me think few days back when the MMIF Festival took place (MaMachinima International Festival). This event was infact indirectly supported by the lab since they sponsored the event with 4 sims allowing MMIF to host a 200+ audience for the 7 hours screenings of best machinima.

Chantal Harvey who headed the festival informed me more than 800 avatars attended the festival. Add the Malburns Writer live webstreaming to at least 3-4 websites must have generated thousands of views and the event was even set up as mixed reality live in Amsterdam RL too. All to say I hope we’ll see more lab supported events like this in the future and maybe it can grow out of the new Supporting the Arts initiative. I hope so. It is a cool (and cheap) way for the lab to showcase how wonderful creativity can be fostered inworld and the huge value such events have.

Next, the Lab recently opened Linden homes to premium accounts. Very nice move again although I never have enough time for the housey stuff due to too much work but still I enjoy my new Linden home since I haven’t rezzed my old house since I opened Pop Art Lab and dedicated all the prims there to music related activities. Now I have a home when I need peace!

Lastly, I will end this post by telling how wonderful it was to see Mark Kingdon aka M Linden show up last Saturday during the MMIF festival. Not only the pleasure I had by seeing head of the lab in “person” (well I met him for real in San Francisco once) but also the fact he stood right there surrounded by the beautiful Pop Art Lab designed theatre. And I couldn’t stop bidding him welcome in IM and we even had a short chat! Ty Mark was wonderful and so glad you showed up and liked what you saw.

So yet again warm welcome to the brand new Pop Art Lab site and all the wonderful stuff Linden Lab currently set up. We can’t wait to bring more eyecandy and music into Second Life. Now we have passed MMIF, launched this new site and next step is the grand opening of our new PAL sim plus new episodes of Pop Vox music TV.

See you soon!

Merry Christmas! 2009-2010 Round Up

Pop Art Lab would like to wish all our friends and supporters a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Last few weeks we’ve been taking a break simply due to a very busy year.

To look back highlights been some very cool Pop Vox TV shows think we up at 8 shows till now and we will soon start filling up slots for 2010. Also a Pop Vox website is under construction.

We don’t keep track of events but guess it’s been 10 bigger ones during 2010. The climax surely was our 1 year anniversary b-day event.
Also of note we managed to get our own sim back in June and it’s been wonderful with full powers and more freedom. We are still building a brand new design and PAL as you know it by now will soon be history! Ofcourse we will keep a copy in case we need to put back someday but we can ensure you the new PAL is completely different. We expect to open new PAL in February.
Another lovely moment was our attendence at SLCC09 The Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco back in August. So nice to hook up with Dusan, Hamlet, Starr, Beyers, Pathfinder etc. and to shake hands with Cory Ondrejka, Mark Kingdon, Tom Hale and even Amanda Linden shortly in Battery Street at Linden Labs HQ.
Few months ago PAL managed to be part of Second Lifes Solution Provider programme and we was invited in to try out the new SLE, Second Life Enterprise. Madhavi Linden been a great contact in this process and we are looking forward to support Linden Lab further to promote Second Life as well as the PAL platform.
Guess this was the most important points in 2009.

2010 is coming and looks like it will be a great virtual year. So far I been booked for a speech in Finland and as consult at another RL workshop about virtual worlds.
2010 might well be the tipping year for Second Life! Lately Metaplace and Forterra announced what looks like a disclosure. This let me to the conclusion that Second Life is still the most solid and and fully functional virtual world. The Open Sims still lacks stability and users to become really interesting. Blue Mars have a long way to go and maybe Second Life graphics will be up there when they finally get fully functional.

Therefore Pop Art Lab will continue to operate in SL and expand our position. First step will be the openning and continuing developement of our new sim(ulator). To face such nice creative process is simply wonderful. Centered in the magic mix of a wide range of real life inspiration we’ve found some 5 codes to enrich the final immersive experience. Deadlines constantly delayed but who cares it will arrive timely!

To sum up we can’t wait to show you all our new designs and builds!

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!