FotoRio 2007 in Second Life

I was hired by Senac Rio to develop some virtual environments for them inside Second Life – the open source virtual world. At that time I haven't even heard of Second Life, but I accepted the challenge, at least to see how it was. Eva Kaufman, who was then director at Senac, decided that we – me, Theo Carvalho and Bruna Lombardo – would be the team responsable for designing their first experiment inside Second Life, a virtual version of a photograph exhibition called FotoRio. Me and Theo used to work together at Tecnopop, and he would be a part-time designer on this project. Bruna was our programmer.

At beginning I remember being impressed by the way this virtual world was constructed by their own “residents”. There was two aspects about this that called my attention: first, the unimaginable horizons opened by a technology that is auto-developed as the users programm according to their own necessities, and second, how was difficult for those same users to think outside the usual parameters of the reality of the “first life”, and, consequently to identificate the real potencial of a 3D informantion environment. Somehow the most common buildings and sets inside Second Life follow the rules proper to other reality, and so they become strange and comic, losing the chance to explore a new world throught new thinking.

The tools for constructing (how strange this word sounds without gravity...) inside Second Life are pretty much intuitive, and I could in one week understand the basic needed to delevop the most bizarre forms – much, of course, due to Bruna's help. But I was not interessed in “changing the world”. Instead I turned much of my energy thinking how I would offer the best navegation throught the exhibition and the best photograph's visualization inside the software. With that in mind I started to get rid off the unnecessary “objetcs” that innundate this virtual environment, like walls for example, while testing image resolutions at the same time.

“It all become a 2D image at the end!” I used to say then to people, knocking on the screen. “It's not a matter of walking, climbing, jumping or flying, it's about visuality, and the way the user can control the moving image on his screen throught the keyboard and mouse.” This idea guided me along the project and decide about the most fundamental aspects of this small exhibition. Theo Carvalho agreed with me, and we both defended a more “immediate” construction instead of just putting obstacles in the users’ path.

So I elevated the exhibition “floor” in the “air” without any support; why should I build columns to maintain something that can natural and impressively “float”? Considering that we would present the work of two photographers, we set two different plataforms, without any connection between them but the teletransportation coordinates of each one written on the sphere's script on the other floor; so if you were on Reinaldo's show, you could go to the Pablo's “room” just clicking on the sphere by your side, you didn't need to “walk”. We also used teletransportation scripts for the pedestrian who wanted to get into the “rooms”.

However we did not get rid off the walls completely. They had a crucial role in the exhibition: as backgrounds for the photographs, taking in account that Second Life's ambients usually are completely polluted visually due to its open source nature. So, if the walls would work only as images, why they would obstacle anyone's movement? Go ahead throught them, no problem. As images they had no thickness, only to different sides: one gray (like Photoshop's background), and other a SenacRio's pattern. This pattern wasn't all opaque, so the walls were half transparent and anyone outside could see what was inside throught the pattern, but the ones inside could only see the photographs and the gray background.

Other resources were used, like a invisible but untransponible bar that circulated the plataform's perimeter avoiding visitors to fall from it as they try to walk (it may sound funny but your ability to move inside Second Life depends on your web connection). Sutitles and exhibition text were also scripts activated by user's click on the images.

The Exhibition was opened in middle of July and stayed online for about two weeks or more (I can't remember exactly). I'm not sure how many visitors we received, but maybe Bruna does. I don't believe we had many althought the exhibition was very well received and critized inside SenacRio, most because of its peculiar set – a direct consequence of its process of thinking.

Moments before the “opening” I decided to add some light to that dark place, even though each user can control their own environment light. So of course the light didn't had any functional role, but rather a visually one, as we could reinforce Senac Rio's identity for this project with a magenta ambient. The spotlights, as you cannot see, were naturally invisible, as the light came from nowhere.