The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden features numerous major works of art history. Therefore, it belongs to the world’s most renowned art collections. Its possession of top-class masterworks originated from the 15th to the 18th century causes the worldwide fame of the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden.

Among the primary focuses of its holdings are Italian paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque as well as Dutch and Flemish painting originated mainly from the 17th century. A remarkable number of outstanding art works of famous German, French and Spanish painters is also presented in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Furthermore, panels and canvases of the early Renaissance are shown – for example the recently restored Saint Sebastian of Antonello da Messina. I was able to find one of my favorite artists: Canaletto.

Visitors will be impressed by the spatial atmosphere given from over 700 paintings and their nearby arrangement in ancient golden frames (although one can find the space overcrowded with numerous paintings). Italian artwork is exhibited in rooms with deep red colored walls in comparison to Dutch and Flemish paintings which are shown in green surroundings.

In May 2007 the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden became the first virtual museum in Second Life, which is modeled on its antitype in real life true to scale. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections) cooperated with the Berlin-based company Second Interest AG – Virtual Business Solutions to launch this project with its extremely realistic character of representation.

The visitor has the possibility to get basic information on every painting just by clicking on it. Like in the real museum, he can also avail himself of an audio guide, sign the visitors’ book or buy something in the shop of the museum.

The virtual Dresden gallery is one of the most successful projects in Second Life. Daily about 100 or 150 visits are registered, and a community of friends of Dresden Gallery already has been established. Unfortunately the Dresden Gallery Sim experiences some heavy lag, so it is almost impossible to enjoy paintings smoothly.

A very well thought concept of novel immersive workspace for various dislocated collaborative activities. By using Second Life platform backed up with other web services, this vision sketches new ways of thinking and working in future business objectives. It can be useful, as claimed by authors, not only for corporations and service firms, but for education as well.

The connection between web and virtual worlds is a definitely a scenario for the future. It saves resources and time, makes fun for the collaborators and the audience can be reached in more creative and engaging ways. This opens new possibilities, since there is no limit to its extension. The show case of the company River Runs Red at Sim Avalon, which develops the project Immersive Workspace, lacks of proof though for many statements they have made if we look at it in more critical way what has been presented, but it is still important and inspiring step to bring this issue further on. The whole concept is basically based on communication, but what I have found was an empty sim – no avatars in sight. Do the company use it by themselves? Which web technologies they use – xmlrpc? Never then less let us take a closer look to their web presentation and additional material they have provided.

The immersive workspace should enable people in disparate physical locations to come together and in one place to collaborate and communicate. This way is definitely more enjoyable and visually immediate then using e-mails, repositories or CMS for example. The co-workers are represented through their avatars, so this embeds also a certain personification even beyond video-conferencing. It offers also possibilities for various simulations during the product development, which are using less resources then in real life and extend psychical boundaries. Of course this is a complementary work space, supported by the web applications as a backbone. The obvious reduction of travel costs and use of broadband access through mobile devices, this innovation shapes the corporate culture, where employees collaborate with one another regardless of time and space gaps.

But from their list of benefits I would not agree with all of them. At least not in the presented model. Yes, there is reduction in unnecessary travel, it makes work more fun, it gives an option to simulate and use platform for product development, but in terms of effective knowledge transfer I don’t see a clear concept of product life-cycle management system or strategy, which leave us to the conclusion that this is a very impressive visualization of communication and exchange of power point presentations, with maybe some consulting on certain topics. Yes, it supports non-linear events (provides space for exhibitions, lectures, conferences, enabling pre and post-event knowledge transfer) and of course sync events (even live streams, although with some small delay of about 15 secs), but I doubt the increased productivity, since the creative process is not explained and it is not clear how project management is supported through this immersive workspace, without going back to old very well known systems such CMS and data repositories are. What I also miss is a lack of vision for integration in real work environments in the present time of post-desktop era and augmented realities.

So, who are potential clients for immersive workspace? The agencies seeking to engage their teams in a rich, immersive environment, to develop an internal network that they can then extend to clients to produce relevant ideas driven via collaboration and brand immersion. Immersive workspace delivers increased flexibility and drives innovation for agencies looking to reach deeper understanding of consumers and build strategic brand experience. The corporations can collaborate in one central, virtual location 24/7, without the disconnect of teleconferencing and lag time of emails and phone calls (this is something I seriously doubt in this explanation). Educators can provide students with latest in collaboration and visualization technology: an environment where all participants can create communities engaging in a more immersive exchange of knowledge, by distance and flexible education, presentation, panels and discussions, data visualization and simulations, libraries, art galleries and museums.

All in all this project tackles the newest trends considering virtual world making: strong growth and interest in 3D virtual worlds, open systems and increasing realism. By the way that would be my main critic — lack of ideas and scenarios for thinking in open systems and structures, especially because of recent rapid development of open simulator. With still unsolved issues of interoperability (connected virtual worlds) and embedding in real environments, the applications will stay limited to: meetings, 3D visualization & simulation, education and training, public relationship and marketing (which seems to be a failure as last year has shown us).

I found the work of this artist by coincidence. By exploring the NMC Sim (NMC Arts Lab, NMC Arts Lab (44, 127, 706)), I flew down from 700m to the ground and found a big scale land installation which intrigued me. After finding more in profile about this artist I have visited all of his works, and I liked very much.

Even if those works are very nostalgic and romanticize abandoned waste areas of middle-west of the USA, I have to admit it strokes me how the artist deals with emptiness and scale in overcrowded world as such Second Life definitely is. His projects should be a landmark in everybody’s inventory, since they are inspiring not only in artistic, but also in technical terms.

When we talk about creativity and art, even in Second Life, the famous 80/20 Pareto principle may be applied. 80% of all contest in Second Life is just junk. Poorly designed, not very thoughtful replicas of the same boring environments as in real life. Tasteless and odd. Based on quick profit idea or just a lack of creative abilities (mostly when only programmers are involved), are the reasons. There are 80% of chances they you will spend your entire Second Life activity bumping into such places. As William Gibson puts it: “it was like (referring to his Second Life experience) a cross between being in some suburban shopping mall on the outskirts of Edmonton in the middle of winter and the worst day you ever spent in high school.” Well, sure, if you spend a couple of hours within Second Life as he did, even a couple of days, it is exactly what happens – it is pure probability.

It is alway an endless discussion what is art either in real and as well in second life. Especially when it comes to virtual worlds, the question is: “is something which is created based on possibilities and rules of virtual world making art per se?”. Are the endless galleries showing kitschy air brush paintings across Second Life dealing with art? In case of artist AM Radio we can talk about SL art. Very intelligent conceptualized and from technical point of view perfectly done, those projects make a huge impact on the observer. Even if I don’t know much about author’s background, except the rumor that he is an IBM programmer, I admire the highest quality, from the overall approach to the smallest detail. This works are involving and enjoyable even with a total lack of interaction, which would be one of the major premises considering the ideal and one of the Second Life’s most important feature. It thematized an issue of being alone in a waste landscape, in a very poetic sense.

If you want to see more images on art by AM Radio, follow this link.

On the very beginning of the exploration of SL avatars end up with shopping areas. Since everybody feels an almost a obligation to sell something. The American users have this attitude saved in their gene code, but everybody else can’t avoid to put something on sale. At end everybody has to make living and pay the rent. Most of the shopping architecture is pretty ugly. One ask himself why would someone reconstruct RL shopping malls from the surbs in even more disgusting and stupid way, but that is an other discussion. However there a many well designed, intriguing and still commercially successful places around. Here are 3 examples.

In the first example author put a huge effort in designing futuristic, atmospheric and almost apocalyptic Sim. Based on its actual size, the shop seems to be a spin-off of another project. The Abyss is concentrating mainly on skins, make-ups and eyes in factory-like loft, which combines easy purchase with spatial sci-fi  experience. On the other hand, AVZ Cyberpunk main store is more role-based orientated. Only one space-ship like building is occupying the Sim and the choice of products are strongly connected to the topic. Although held in black the inner space plays very good with darkness and lightness, and it is intelligently organized. The central arrival point provides good overlook of the items. I can imagine Case would enjoy shopping here. The third one: LLP is actually mimicking the classic shopping mall in terms of organization. The architecture is more generic and has nothing to do with the topic (as in two previous examples): steam punk, punk, cyber doll. However, it relays on experience from real-life shopping. Good overview, easy access, customer friendly environment, focus on items. The main object on rather empty Sim is a floating box, an container full of cleverly arranged products. The design is done with great understanding of industrial architecture, with use of mostly metal as material. Everything is brought to perfection in its simplicity, by paying attention even to the smallest details. The inner space is atrium with second floor as a gallery. A rather neat detail are the light reflectors used in shopping malls to provide optimal artificial lighting. All three examples are dealing with issue shopping in a very successful manner and can be seen as reference projects for one of the main activities in Second Life.

This is a very nicely designed and textured multi-functional glass shower. Its innovative and modern design will provide comfortable space for two persons and any activity inside you can imagine. It has a built-in shower animation, but of course you can add your own. This low prim realistic steam shower is one most appealing model in Second Life. It would probably perfectly fits your home or any environment where design matters, if you of course need to have a shower in Second life.

Main features as listed by the producer:

• 19 prims only
• In-built high quality shower animation without ugly poseballs
• In-built Radio with 10 stations (you have to be land owner to use it)
• Steam in white/blue/red color
• Sliding round glass doors
• 2 plastic seats with built-in animations
• White/Color mood lighting
• Simple usage through control panel
• Realistic water with sound

This shower can be acquired trough xstreetsl.com, and can be seen in action here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ORTLOS/199/94/22/

For a long period of time we are interested in virtual world-making and virtual enterprises, and its impact on our daily life. But to start writing about it was never a right moment. More then 10 years ago, as we have developed first concepts it was to soon – simple there would be no audience to read. A couple years after it was too late since millions of blogs and on-line publications emerged and flood the web. But now where everybody has enough of web 2.0 and hobby-writing about everything, seems to be a right time. Let us introduce to you the crew behind this one.

The members of ORTLOS Enterprise 2.0 are:

• Ivan Guardian – as artist, curator and author, he is responsible for artistic concepts and theories.
• Nora Violet – is in charge of PR, organization, administration and all business/legal related matters.
• Ivan Arizona – as hybrid between architect and programer, he is responsible for overall design and realization of all projects.
• Miss Folland – architect, society lady and teacher, takes care of link between virtual and real, as well of education and work with students.
• Ortlos Proto – design ninja, to go guy and fast accurate builder of anything you can imagine.
• Emil Blinker – as a talented photographer, always in motion, a successor of Henri Cartier-Bresson.