Penstemons: "Call for Chapters: Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay," Virtual Harbin chapter?, “Naked Harbin: Harbin Hot Springs' Actual/Virtual Ethnography ~ Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture & Clothing-Optional, Virtual Harbin," Second Harbin ethnographic book? Would like to explore building a virtual Harbin Hot Springs in something like OpenSim, and experienceable/viewable in the Oculus Rift, Might this please be possible? Actual Harbin, as well as the virtual Harbin to come, as kinds of alternate reality?

Dear Anero (and Grieg at Berkeley),

Thanks for this "Call for Chapters." I enjoyed your observations here about Gaming at about the 11:30 minute mark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwNjUnQr1Is (which I found here - http://www.theamericancrawl.com/?p=1425).

I'm writing to explore the possibility of writing a chapter for your edited volume. I've just completed writing a 400 page draft manuscript of my actual / virtual Harbin Hot Springs ethnographic book tentatively entitled something like “Naked Harbin: Harbin Hot Springs' Actual/Virtual Ethnography ~ Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture & Clothing-Optional, Virtual Harbin." My actual anthropological field site, Harbin Hot Springs, is in northern California - http://www.harbin.org/ - and, as part of my methodology for this first book, I come into conversation with Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human" (Princeton 2008); I'm planning to submit a book proposal to Yale University Press after receiving photo permissions from Harbin for this first book, hopefully soon.

For my second Harbin ethnographic book, I'm planning to build a virtual Harbin Hot Springs in something like OpenSim, and experienceable/viewable in the Oculus Rift - see, for example ... http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2014/06/hazel-how-generative-might-we-make.html - where the building will involve creating a field site for actual / virtual anthropological comparison, and even for something that I'm calling "ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy" as a new methodology (see, for example ... http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy). While actual Harbin emerges out of the 1960s and is kind of 'New Age California' in ethos, in my interpretation, I think Harbin's alternative culture emerges significantly from its clothing-optional warm pool and the effects of warm waters on both visitors and Harbin residents alike. I see a kind of far-reaching relaxation response meditation emerging from this, influencing all of Harbin, and possibly since 1972 when Harbin's founder Ishvara, who still lives on property, bought Harbin and soon thereafter turned it into Heart Consciousness Church, possibly partly as a hippie tax dodge, I would hazard. In building the virtual Harbin, I'd like to explore the possibility of generating such freedoms as those, which people find on-the-ground there digitally. I'd like the building of an eventually movie-realistic interactive virtual Harbin to dovetail with a similarly emergent virtual earth.

I see actual Harbin, as well as the virtual Harbin to come, as kinds of alternate reality.

Would it be possible to explore please writing a chapter for Sections 1 or 2 or 3 of your and Grieg's edited volume? From your current thinking, which section would likely be the best fit?

Thank you.

Friendly greetings,
Scott







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