Lame and Obvious Multimedia Art or Novel Ecommerce Prototype?

I have mixed feelings about posting this video, and WordPress won’t let me paste the object/embed code–not sure what’s up with that, so here’s a link instead:

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/ifc/2008/01/23/sundance_newfrontier/index.html

It is supposedly a work of “multimedia art” (in the words of the usually hip Salon.com), shown at the usually hip Sundance, which shows how virtual sweatshop workers can design jean styles in Second Life and then print them into clothes in real life. This is disappointing as “art,” because I expect art to push conceptual limits, to stretch my thinking, and not merely to play catch-up to concepts that are passé to anyone who isn’t a complete noob in virtual worlds.

But it is not as disappointing as experimental e-commerce. Set aside the facile pedantry about sweatshops, and instead imagine these machines not as “virtual sweatshops” but rather as self-service clothing design and purchase portals: now the consumer gets to style and construct, in a social virtual space, the pants that they buy. This design carries on the logic of those build-a-bear stores into virtual reality, and it is reasonable to speculate that the engagement offered by those build-a-bear stores just might translate into everyday RL fashion shopping.

File this under “right idea, but for the wrong reason.”

Wearable Computing: Automation and Fashion in Second Life

Holy transcoding, Lev! One of the interesting recent developments in Second Life fashion is the increasing extent to which programming and automation are a part of virtual dress-up. An interesting example of this is a line of clothing from one of Second Life’s greatest and oldest design houses: PixelDolls. What initially caught my attention was the following ad:

As I research Second Life fashion, one feature I’m always on the watch for is the language or even cultural logic of technology showing up in unexpected ways, and this sign really grabbed my attention. In plain English, it says that the skirt comes with an HUD (heads-up-display) that enables the user to change the color and fabric of her clothing while she is wearing it. According to the Universal Font of All Knowledge, an HUD is an interface or data display that doesn’t obstruct a user’s view; HUDs were originally developed for military aircraft and later became a common metaphor for first-person shooter video games. Here’s how it works: