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:
- 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).
- PAL’s inworld group will continue though most updates will be linked to above networks.
- Inworld streaming will stop but will be used on special occasions via above networks.
- 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:
- Streaming can in most cases be made using services like Spotify
- Mass adoption of virtual worlds lacks significant growth
- Barely no RL musicians or brands are willing to invest in SL
- 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.
Heartfelt thanks,
Claus Uriza
Edited by Persia Bravin
