The TED Talk:

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir – ‘Lux Aurumque’:

UPDATE: Eric Whitacre — Sleep (Virtual Choir 2.0):

When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?

The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”

In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.

Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:

Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”

The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?

When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:

• If you call people stupid, they’ll hate you.
• If you call people smart, they’ll love you.

This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.

Also see The North American House Hippo:

Respect the audience at all costs folks.

Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.

To me, that’s not the real question. The character of “Rachel Sequoia” is obviously not genuine and neither is the presentation. The real issue is whether:

1. This is an activist prank to comment on the constant quest of capitalism to make us pay for what we once got for free. (See The Yes Men for a good example.)
2. OR… is this some marketing group trying to create a viral video business?
3. OR… is it just some wacky kids having some fun?

I wonder… does it matter?

If so, why? How does that knowledge actually change the content?

Dubstep + Sheen’s megalomania + instant remix culture + celebrity culture = it must be 2011

To find anything close to Sheen’s recent antics you COULD refer to Tom Cruise’s couch-jumping on Oprah, but I think we’ve gone further then that. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, 25 seconds of Charles Manson.

See something familiar?

The Social Network is a movie based on the construction of Facebook.com. Its another story about a quirky genius who lives for his art, doesn’t care about money, and just wants to be loved. Just take that, mix in a bunch of standard “going into business movie” tropes, and you have this. In a sense the only thing that makes it unique is that most scenes are filmed in David Fincher’s preferred “dark-green-o-vision” to indicate the murky and manly depths of introspective turmoil, and lots of low-angled shots to force us to be impressed by everyone’s godliness.

It’s fine. A fair rating gives it 3 stars (of 5), or 4 stars if you really love this genre.

Most people don’t want to give it a fair rating though. They’re screaming “5 stars!” as loudly as they can with fingers in their ears to block out any dissenters, and telling everyone who will listen to get in to see this thing. The buzz has been unbelievable. People are even talking about Academy Awards for the leading actors, despite the lack of any moments in the movie dramatic enough to justify this.

Why?

1. People hope that this makes it cool to spend too much time on Facebook.
2. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fanboys want another hero, and hope that could be Zuckerberg.
3. Dreamers hope its true that if your girlfriend dumps you, you could get drunk, write some code, and make a billion dollars.

As of October 31st the movie had grossed $132.9 million at the box office. So, what have we learned? The same thing that we learned when those horrid Twilight movies hit it big: insecure people love to spend money. Pander to them.

Most recently, this error in judgment:

Tell you what, its been a few days since I hit the news reader. Let’s see what kind of highlights I can pull out:

Design goes digital in Second Life
Architecture & Design does a big writeup on the recent unveiling of the National Portrait Gallery’s virtual world rendering.

The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Massively (an AOL property) opens a new section specifically for “virtual environments”.

WV University Creates Virtual Campus on Second Life
Marshall University joins hundreds of other universities in creating a virtual campus.

Avatars of Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, McCain, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Dobson, DeMint, Perry, Steele, and Others Virtually Descending on U.S. Capitol
Haiti support via some tiny paper-doll avatars, demonstrating that it doesn’t matter how non-immersive the environment, avatars still matter…

EA Joins VanEdge Venture Fund
Fresh VC cash to be had for virtual world builders.

Phoenix NAP Launches Virtual Data Center Tour
Pheonix NAP takes a cue from IBM and creates a sales tour / orientation space to help people understand their product better. See video:

Telepresence: Tandberg & Polycom Shine as Mid-Market & Small Business Interests — Event Platforms Look to Integrate with Mid-Tier Vide
Teleconferencing integration with virtual worlds is proving to be a great success, according to analysts.

Tool places learners in virtual world
Language education via a virtual environment called “RendezVu” gets an award.

Prototyping Environment in SL for Dow Chemical: Three Questions with Robert Emory from Scott & Miller Group
Dow Chemical creates a prototype environment. See video below.

ISN Virtual Worlds Rolling Out Platform For Elderly, Disabled
The Oasis Foundation creates an environment aimed at the elderly and disabled to provide education and training.

Building a 3D workspace
Hypergrid Business summarizes the history of technology and interface design, various studies, and shows how it all points to a virtual environment exceeding the efficiency of a real-world environment.

AI Learning Center Being Built in Second Life
IEEE moves its critical training in AI to the virtual environment.

That’s just four random days, two of which were a Saturday and Sunday. Please please puh-lease can we stop loudly proclaiming “I haven’t been paying attention so it must not exist” in the press now?

Thank you.

Here are a few neat bits from 2009:

An interesting, if quite complex, ARG was launched as a promo for the new Star Trek movie. Not sure who was behind putting it together but it looks like they did a bang-up job:

Star Trek XI (2009) ARG Alternate Reality Game Summary

There’s also a pretty fancy looking one out right now for the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

Nine Inch Nails launched another ARG, this time for the Year Zero album: “An alternate reality game emerged parallel to the Year Zero concept, expanding upon its storyline. Clues hidden on tour merchandise initially led fans to discover a network of fictitious, in-game websites that describe an “Orwellian picture of the United States circa the year 2022″. Before Year Zero’s release, unreleased songs from the album were found on USB drives hidden at NIN concert venues in Lisbon and Barcelona, as part of the alternate reality game.”

*** VIDEO REMOVED ***

The only video I could find was… too disturbing for this blog.

And of course, let’s not forget the Alternate Reality Game for the Video Game:

Singularity ARG recap

This is a very… “polished” ARG. Go buy a Mazda, the future depends on it:

33 Keys Alternate Reality Game for 2010 Mazda3

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I looked into it and… yes… THEY are still out there, although I suspect their numbers have dwindled and their activities slowed for now considering… well anyhow, there was a big push in early 2009, but many abrupt changes have lead me to believe it has changed hands and they’re working out a new direction.

Anyone out there interested in creating a new reality, please get in touch.

Ask yourself: if the meeting is easier to attend, was the meeting just as worthwhile? More? Less?

Oddly enough, since most of us instinctively equate sacrifice with worth, many feel that spending four figures on a flight and blowing a few days of work off to attend a meeting will be more beneficial than saving ourselves the time and money and absorbing the same content in our office. This despite all survey and testing evidence that says online meetings are just as beneficial and enjoyable. Still, can you blame people for “going with their gut”?

This is why I think NMC is making the right move with their SL Pro! conference, to be held in Second Life February 23-25. They’re going ahead and charging $99 in real-world dollars to attend virtually. By charging a real-dollar amount to attend they’re creating a perception of value in the content.

I wouldn’t be surprised if paid attendance online events started to become a lot more common in 2010.