monster at munich university

    ↑Monster is a manga by Naoki Urasawa which has been very faithfully adapted to a 74-episode anime series by Masayuki Kojima. The series aired from 2004 to 2005 in Japan. The story, a psychological thriller centred around the main protagonist Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese MD and brain surgeon, takes place in a Germany of the 1980s and 1990s. It is not a cyberpunk anime, but hardboiled for sure. Locations are several German cities, Munich among them, in particular my university here. The whole story is thrilling and filled with suspense—besides that, for the German audience it is … Continue reading

Share

postigo on mods and modders

After his brilliant “From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-industrial transitions from leisure to work” (↵2003) ↑Hector Postigo has published an already promised piece plus has yet another one on the topic in the pipeline:  POSTIGO, HECTOR. 2007. Of mods and modders: Chasing down the value of fan-based digital game modifications. Games and Culture 2(4): 300-313.  This article is concerned with the role that fan-programmers (generally known as “modders”) play in the success of the PC digital game industry. The fan culture for digital games is deeply embedded in shared practices and experiences among fan communities, and their active consumption contributes … Continue reading

Share

virtual ethnography

Vol. 8, No. 3 of Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research is dedicated to the topic of “↑Virtuelle Ethnographie / Virtual Ethnography“. The whole content is online for free, most of the texts in German, English, and Spanish versions.  via entry at ethno::log … Continue reading

Share

amazing ant

  When they were announced and the first demonstration specimen were shown, they were the big hope. When they got available they led to frustration and were a big disappointment. Meanwhile a lot has been done and they seem to be even more amazing and more worthwhile than when first shown off. The talk is about the ↑sculpted prims (“sculpties”) for “↑Second Life“ (SL). I will go into details when it is time for making shoes, collar, and tie ↵for Fantomas, but now I just can not withhold what I glanced upon during the last days.  Sculpties are a way … Continue reading

Share

creating fantomas 01

a study in second life avatar customization—part 1  True, my first duty these days should be writing up all the stuff of the last six years into a neat volume. But in order not to loose the immersion into modding culture while doing so—and as a fair compensation to university labour—, I revived my ↑first project within “↑Second Life“ (SL) and decided to piece by piece realize all the steps described in ↑painting the avatar.    The task is the metamorphosis from the crappy thing to the left into the cool guy to the right. The left side of the … Continue reading

Share

painting the avatar

advanced second life avatar customization  This is a kind of follow-up to ↵second life creation, dealing a bit more in-depth with customizing avatars for “↑Second Life“ (SL). Basically there are four dimensions of manipulating the avatar’s visual appearance: shape, skin & clothes, attachments, and animations. In order to realize a complex vision of a custom avatar you have to tinker within all four dimensions. Here is an extreme example, one of Detect Surface’s masterpieces, the “Cyver:Refract”—available for purchase at (SLurl:) ↑D&D Creative Labs in the (SLurl:) ↑City of Abaddon:  looks by animation    The complete avatar is covered with attachments … Continue reading

Share

android orchestra

It is eerie like hell, in my humble opinion. On 06 December 2007 ↑Toyota revealed two new “Toyota Partner Robots”, one of them able to ↑play the violin. At the World Expo 2005 they already had a couple of robots playing trumpets and horns ↑doing the welcome ceremony—it was a spark of genius to have them play “When the Saints are marching in” while entering the arena. Astounding how the automata of the 19th Century are perfected. But yet another thing strikes me as eerie. Today everybody wonders and cheers at the androids’ abilities to play musical instruments, but nobody … Continue reading

Share