Animating virtual worlds: Emergence and ecological animation of Ryzom’s living world of Atys

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Manning
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Living World ◽  
Organic World ◽  
Game World ◽  
Mutual Care ◽  
Media Form ◽  
Science Fantasy ◽  
The Way

Ryzom is a long-running (from 2004–present) science fantasy MMORPG (henceforth MMO) set in the science fantasy game world of the planet Atys, an entirely organic “rootball” teeming with alien life forms. The most oft-cited distinctive properties of Ryzom in the MMO world is the way creates not only an immersive sense of “worldness”, but a living, breathing, organic world. The game world is not only a richly animated “world” like all MMOs, but the aggregate of these animations also produce a sense of life, a “living world”. Following Silvio (2010) in particular, I ask how and when the properties of animation — understood in the narrow sense as a medium or media form — can produce a broader sense of “animacy” (Chen, 2012), a lively affect of “animatedness”: how and when animation (movement) is read as life; how an animated world becomes a living world. Specifically, why is it that in the animated world of Ryzom, as in animated cartoons, the animation of animality is central to this transition from animation to life: why the reading of animated “movement-as-life tends to settle on cartoon animals”. The “immersive” feeling of Atys as a ‘living world’ is displayed in the “emergent” animation of animals, particularly the ways that animals interact via “ecological” algorithms of predation and mutual care. animations which players explore as part of the emergent living worldness of Atys.

Courtesan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Chaplin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
General Sense ◽  
High Class ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
French Art ◽  
The Way

La Parisienne is frequently associated with prostitution, whether in the narrow sense of the streetwalker or courtesan or the general sense of the object and subject of consumption. Tracing her development in nineteenth-century art and literature, this chapter examines the way the Parisienne as courtesan is re-presented in cinema in Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), Alain Cavalier’s La Chamade (1968), and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001). Cinematic courtesans have their prefigurations in both real life courtesans of the Second Empire, as well as in representations in French art, literature, and visual culture (Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Balzac, Zola, Dumas fils). Motifs associated with the Parisienne courtesan include the familiar tropes associated with Paris as a demimonde: desire, pleasure, and consumption. Alongside these tropes are the visual and narrative motifs on which the iconography of the Parisienne courtesan is based: fashion or style (often conceived to denote luxury and leisure), transformation (usually from provincial to high class), ambiguity (insofar as her class origins, motivations, and emotional allegiances are generally obscure), and the ménage à trois (films featuring Parisienne courtesans often involve the choice between an earnest but poor lover and a rich benefactor).

Creating a Framework to Analyse the Perception of Selfhood in Artistic Practice within Second Life

2015 ◽  
pp. 90-117
Author(s):  
Pete Wardle
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
The Way

This chapter draws upon existing identity theories to create a framework with which to examine the expression of self via avatars within Second Life. The framework is then applied to the practice of a number of artists working with themes relating to identity using avatars within Second Life, by drawing upon the author's own experience of these works and the artists comments taken from their writings and from discussions and correspondence with them, to examine the role their work plays in changing our understanding of the way that identity is expressed and perceived within virtual worlds.

The Trajectivity of Virtual Worlds

2018 ◽  
pp. 4296-4305
Author(s):  
Christophe Duret
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Way

This chapter will propose an ontology of virtual environments that calls into question the dichotomy between the real and the virtual. This will draw on the concepts of trajectivity and ‘médiance' in order to describe the way virtual environments, with their technological and symbolic features, take part in the construction of human environments. This theoretical proposition will be illustrated with the analysis of Arcadia, a virtual environment built in Second Life. Finally, a mesocriticism will be proposed as a new approach for the study of virtual environments.

Collective Building Projects in Second Life

2011 ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Bjarke Liboriussen
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Vernacular Building ◽  
Collective Building ◽  
Architectural Perspective ◽  
User Motivation ◽  
The Way

Users of “Second Life” invest considerable amounts of time, money, and creativity in collective building projects. Informed by a 14-month ethnography, this chapter explains why and how from an architectural perspective. User motivation is explained with recourse to the concept of dwelling, and special attention is given to use of the architectural devices boundary and image. The user strategy employing such devices is summed up as a pop vernacular building strategy characterised by eclecticism but not by irony. Special attention is given to the way in which the avatar allows a sense of place to be bodily grounded in agency. Through its architectural focus on concepts such as place and dwelling, the chapter demonstrates the relevance of “old”, i.e., pre-digital, experiences in virtual worlds.

Historical Origins

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-45
Author(s):  
J. Arvid Ågren
Keyword(s):  
Population Genetics ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Living World ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
The Way

This chapter traces the origins of the gene’s-eye view through three sections of evolutionary biology. The first is adaptationism, the tradition that takes the appearance of design in living world to be the cardinal problem a theory of evolution needs to explain. The chapter shows how this view has been especially prominent in British biology, owing the strong standing of natural theology and the writings of William Paley. The second is the emergence of population genetics during the modern synthesis. Here, the work of R.A. Fisher was particularly important. The third and final section was the levels selection debate and the rejection of group selection. G.C. Williams led the way the way and the origin of the gene’s-eye view culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene.

Virtual Worlds, Standards and Interoperability

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livingstone ◽  
Paul Hollins
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Training And Education ◽  
Business Meetings ◽  
Learning Contexts ◽  
Simulation And Training ◽  
And Training ◽  
The Way

It is well documented that virtual worlds today are applied in both educational and commercial teaching and learning contexts. Where virtual worlds were once the reserve of entertainment, they have now taken on a variety of roles as platforms for business meetings, simulation, and training and education. In this context, the integration and interoperability with both online and offline resources and technologies is important. In this paper, the authors review progress toward increased integration and interoperability from the first virtual world games to today’s virtual world platforms. This paper highlights opportunities that will arise from further improvements in the ability to create virtual world platforms, content and activities that are truly interoperable, as well as more significant challenges along the way.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Research Group ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Group Project ◽  
The Way

This afterword reflects on how the Matsutake Worlds Research Group project can be considered as ontological. The multispecies ethnographic engagements presented in this special issue manifest not only the concepts inherent in the worlds of others that defy the categories of Western metaphysical thought (e.g., life forms seen as ‘events’ rather than mere things), but also the way in which non-human life forms themselves can demand that we practice another kind of thought and embrace another vision of our own selves. By succumbing to the allure of the matsutake fungus, the Matsutake Worlds Research Group has begun one of the most suggestive and original conceptual enterprises today, a practice that perhaps could be named ‘heeding headless thoughts’.

The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, this principle also becomes operative within settler colonial logics of life and land. Recently, however, Indigenous scholars and writers have mobilized relationality in its formative characteristic for Indigenous polities and politics as strategy to disrupt biopolitical logics and denaturalize settler colonial rule, which I want to show through engaging Daniel Heath Justice’s Indigenous fantasy trilogy The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles as a site of disruptive relationality and political knowledge production.

scholarly journals On Writing and Reading Artistic Computational Ecosystems

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Filipe Antunes ◽  
Frederic Fol Leymarie ◽  
William Latham
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Call System ◽  
And Behaviors

We study the use of the generative systems known as computational ecosystems to convey artistic and narrative aims. These are virtual worlds running on computers, composed of agents that trade units of energy and emulate cycles of life and behaviors adapted from biological life forms. In this article we propose a conceptual framework in order to understand these systems, which are involved in processes of authorship and interpretation that this investigation analyzes in order to identify critical instruments for artistic exploration. We formulate a model of narrative that we call system stories (after Mitchell Whitelaw), characterized by the dynamic network of material and conceptual processes that define these artefacts. They account for narrative constellations with multiple agencies from which meaning and messages emerge. Finally, we present three case studies to explore the potential of this model within an artistic and generative domain, arguing that this understanding expands and enriches the palette of the language of these systems.

scholarly journals The Way Soil Organisms Look Can Help Us Understand Their Importance

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Ganault ◽  
Léa Beaumelle ◽  
Apolline Auclerc
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Soil Organisms ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
The Way

There is a multitude of life forms on our planet. This is especially true under our feet, in the soil. Earthworms, spiders, and millipedes are only a few examples of the vast number of soil organisms. Once you look what lives in soils, you realize the tremendous diversity of shapes and colors. But what if we take the time to describe all their characteristics: color, size, shape, number of legs, type of wings, lifespan, and climate preferences? All these characteristics, called traits, help us to understand what types of organisms can be found in a particular ecosystem, what they feed on, and how far they can travel. Scientists use this information to understand the different roles of organisms in soils, and to restore degraded soils. Analyzing traits can reveal the importance of soil organisms and the fundamental roles they play for human societies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document