Lion and Man in Water: Multiple kinds of narrativity emerge in virtual Harbin in Second Life influenced by the ability to make anything one conceives

Harbin ethnography:

... warm water comes to extend and re-define aspects of defining 'immersion' vis-a-vis digital environments).

Narrativity refers to “aesthetic and formal strategies that derive from the above concepts, and which result in nonlinear story forms and media presentation” (Packer and Jordan 2001: xxxi). Multiple new kinds of narrativity emerge in virtual Harbin in Second Life influenced by the ability to make anything one conceives of out of virtual geometric shapes, thus reshaping possibilities for nonlinear story forms and media presentations. In actual Harbin, both in the pools and in the Harbin valley itself, this milieu and retreat center, emerging from the 1960s and early 1970s as a kind of alternative haven, itself leads to nonlinear story forms and media presentation, from New Age thinking to hippy-mindedness, for example, Full Moon Ceremonies in the warm pool, to Beltane celebrations in the labyrinth, to unconditional dances in the Harbin temple. Counterculture also gives form to various aspects of virtual reality (Packer and Jordan), which involve the above 5 aspects of multimedia. In virtual Harbin, all of this takes place as well, and yet different possibilities also emerge due to these technologies, for example, the ability to shape a floating bubble, to hop inside it, to drag and drop a video of the Grateful Dead playing a beautiful ballad, as your avatar is dancing with a avatar friend. The aesthetic and formal strategies in virtual Harbin include the coding involved, the stylization of the Second Life virtual environment, which is a little cartoon-esque at this point in history, and the ways in which avatar builders plan and build their virtual islands, from story lines in their minds.









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(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/06/lion-and-man-in-water-multiple-kinds-of.html - June 1, 2010)