Avatars reading Proust

INVITATION “AVATARS Reading PROUST”
with the FRENCH LIBRARY (in Second Life TM)
WEDNESDAY 8 OCTOBER 08 17:00 GMT (19H00 PARIS)

19:00> 21:00 CET
* in RL: room blanche
** in SL: Bibliothèque Francophone
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ebeoplex/37/212/779
Web-turning read Proust by the avatars of the French Library of Second Life and presentation of the library by Hugobiwan Zolnir.
With the Paris-Villette avatars Coulaut Menges and Betty Renoir.

* RL: Real Life
** SL: Second Life

19:00> 21:00 CET
Great Hall
The Kiss of the Matrix (Proust Lu on the Internet)
Spectators, you can watch the film, installed in spaces built specially for the occasion.
Readers players, webcams are available to register and participate in the film.

The Matrix is a computer program that manages real-time distribution of texts, information dissemination to capture new readers, the timeline of the film, and consulting it at any time. The ambition of this project is to create a successful company whose time is governed by the Matrix.

> Bar

Paris-Villette • Parc de la Villette
211 avenue Jean Jaurès 75019 Paris
Porte de Pantin vélib
Reservation 01 40 03 72 23
http://www.theatre-paris-villette.com
x-network is a program of the Paris-Villette, supported by the City of Paris, the Ile-de-France, DICREAM (Ministry of Culture and Communication) and the NLC as part of Read Day. With the support of the DRAC Ile-de-France workshops for “Les Enfants du Net.”

Walking in a vain

When we start about virtual worlds such as Second Life™ and the ways to use this environment for teaching, the possibilities are presumed endless. As far as I can see, only the first few steps are being taken now and as long as inspired people like Namro Orman are exploring the ways, the (near future) is promising.

Namro Orman, who is in daily life occupied being Coordinator of electronic Services of the Central Medical Library of the University Medical Center in Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands, has invited me to meet him at the Info Health Island in Second Life™ and to show me his latest idea.

In the loan is a huge red tube, bend in some places and as Namro asks me, I walk into the tube. The tube turns out to be a giant model of a human blood-vessel and after a few meters I am stopped by a door that is meant to figure a blood-valve. I have to answer two questions about "strokes" - A misfunctioning that includes the rapidly developing loss of brain functions due to a disturbance in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain.

When I have finally answered both questions correctly, which is not too easy for a medical nOOb like me, the blood-valve opens and lets me walk to the next. After passing three valves like these, a nice present awaits me! And, more important, I have learned a bit about strokes.
In case you would like to see me stumbling, watch the video here!

In this way, learning becomes enjoyable and very attractive. It gives many opportunities to use a vain like this in class, where the students can actally walk through a vessel, but also in other 'parts' of a human body and really see what it looks like. I can imagine, as also building in an environment like Second Life™ becomes more and more 'like real', the use of the Metaverse in teaching will become very valuable and we might have generations in our near future who will actually find it very common to learn within virtual worlds.

In case you would like to check out the place and do the strokes-quiz yourself, visit: Healthinfo Island (110, 152, 22) in Second Life™

Reading Marcel Proust

Looking for the lost times... The time of Marcel Proust is a century ago, but seems to be more alive than ever, and very metaverse resistant. Proust had started to work on "A la Recherche du temps perdu" in 1909 and he had finished it in 1922, only just before he died of a cold. The seven parts of the work count 3000 pages altogether.

As I wrote today in my other weblog; in the Bibliothèque Francophone of Second Life (TM) are two events about Marcel Proust sceduled in the next 5 weeks.

The first event is going to take place on Thursday 4 September 2008 in the space called "Fraonesque", high in the skies of the island Ebeoplex, where the Bibliothèque Francophone has its grounds. Here, Véronique Aubouy will tell all who is interested about her lifetime project.

Since 1993 she has started to film people, who are reading aloud a page of the huge work of Marcel Proust "A la Recherche du temps perdu". Films are made with video and at several places like festivals and events. But also by webcams while people read a page in front of their computers.

The second event about Marcel Proust, that will take place in the Bibliothèque Francophone in SL on Wednesday 8 October 2008, is an actual contribution to the lifesize project of Véronique, and that is also where the centuries meet.
One hundred years after Marcel Proust was actually writing his major work, people will read aloud, a page each, while they actually sit at their computers, connected by internet to the metaverse world of Second Life, using a headset so they can speak with and listen to other people at their own desks somewhere else on planet Earth. They will each have an avatar that represents themselves in Second Life, so that they can be seen and filmed inside the world of Second Life, while they read their page aloud in their headsets' microphone and while their avatar is animated like they are reading a book.

The project was meant to run until 2050 in order to be able to film 3000 people reading one page each. This is acceptable, considering technical possibilities back in 1993, only 15 years ago. Considering the current time and the near future in which so many new ways of communication and multi-media options are open and available for everyone, I would rather expect this filming to be done much faster. It would even more exciting, if you allow me a bit of a daydream, that this very long film (about one week!) could be released in 2022, when it is 100 years ago that Proust died, and of course at the Film Festival of Cannes.

If developments in the next 15 years will be in the same rush as the last 15 years, I have all faith that this daydream could become reality.

More info (in french) also if you are interested to actually join the reading and to be one of the 3000 in the "Kiss of the Matrix".
http://www.lebaiserdelamatrice.fr/ Main website about the "Kiss of the Matrix"
http://sldirect.blogspot.com/ The official website of the Bibliothèque Francophone of Second Life (TM) and the Metaverse

A short introduction

As I am invited to contribute to this blog, I feel very honoured to be able to share my experiences and knowledge about virtual worlds and subjects related to them.

As I have stated in my Second Life profile: There is no such thing as a virtual world or a second life, as if it is only imagination. Virtual reality and the tools to enter that, are the new ways of communication. These are the ways that we will use to explore and learn and exchange.

Communication without borders, without language restrictions -as translating devices are in development too- we can speak, write, exchange ideas, knowledge and considerations with anyone we want in any place of the world. We are connected and we find more and more ways to use and explore our connections and color our lives with them.

I am sorry if I am going too fast here and now. I just hope to say hello, pleased to meet you and I will try to contribute some interesting blogs each now and then.

We speak!