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The Long Now Foundation Brings 77 Million Paintings to Second Life

Thu, Jun 28, 2007

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Cyrus Huffhines of blueair.tv interviewed Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose,Wednesday, bringing yet another dimension to the global creative context of Second Life. Alexander Rose, is deep into the production of the new Eno piece, 77 Million Paintings, in San Francisco. Also, he is known for pioneering Rosetta and Long Server, the Long Now 10,000 Year Clock and prototypes. (See blog.longnow.org for more!) Cyrus Huffines of blueair.tv, a member of Long Now for ten years, is instrumental in bringing The Long Now Foundation to Second Life.

And, as Mark Wallace says so well, Long Now, “has to be one of the coolest organizations on the face of the planet.”

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This Friday the 29th, at 8 PM PDT (Second Life Time), The Long Now Foundation will begin the Second Life premiere of Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings, (pdf is here). This will occur alongside its North American premiere in San Francisco, in partnership with blueair.tv. Each installation of 77 Million will be unique to its location (see here for full list of locations).

I have been very busy working on a post today about a ground breaking project on Second Life that I think has many potentially Long Now qualities. The post will be up late tomorrow before the 8pm Premier 77 Million in Second Life on Kula 1 Sim at The Commons amphitheater (intersecting Kula 1 through Kula 4 and by Joi Ito). The opening will include an interview with Second Life artist Angrybeth Shortbread (Annabeth Robinson, creative partner of blueair.tv). Angrybeth developed the 77 Million Paintings remix in Second Life through blueair.tv. I will attend come what may!

If you have been reading Aleister Kronos’s blog Ambling in Second Life you will have noticed that he left me with a lot of responsibility when he flew off to Japan! But, many of the underlying themes of Long Now have been in my mind, as I work on a very exciting story. Particularly, this little exchange between Cyrus Huffhines and Alexander Rose.

Alexander Rose: Something as simple as throwing down some acorns, solving a truly unsolvable problem if leveraged correctly. So problems with the environment, hunger, education all have this feeling of being unsolvable now. But in fact if you look at them much longer term they can become tractable. Anyway that was the basic inspiration around the Foundation.

Cyrus Huffhines: Because Long Now views issues in terms of centuries: what do you see as the most tractable problems over the coming century?

Alexander Rose: Well I would not say they are tractable in the current mind set but,

Cyrus Huffhines: or least. what in the long term for human beings seem to be the greatest cultural or natural concerns

Alexander Rose: I would say the largest long term challenges we have are clearly going to be around climate and, to a large extent religious issues that have back stories going back millennia that are just now coming to head as globalization flattens the world.

I also got an opportunity to ask Alexander Rose a question.

Tara5 Oh: I would love to know what Alexander Rose thinks about the role of virtual worlds in positive global development?

Alexander Rose: I would say that at least for me I see them as a excellent sand box a place where things can be tested both visually and socially. I think its very important to have an environment like this to do that.

The complete interview between Cyrus and Alexander Rose is very profound. But these excerpts turned out to have even more resonance than I imagined at the time. And, yes that is for the next post. See you, Friday 8pm, on the Kula 1 Sim at The Commons Amphitheater.

categories: Metarati, Metaverse, Second Life, Virtual Citizenship, Virtual Worlds, World 2.0
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  1. Cyrus Interviews Alexander Rose « Duc N. Ly Says:

    [...] ugotrade.com/2007/06/28/the-long-now-foundation-brings-77-million-paintings-to-second-life/ [...]

  2. Brian Eno, 77 Million Paintings, Second Life « welcome to blueair.tv Says:

    [...] first live event in Second Life with Long Now (aside from the big party the night before, oh and this interview with Alexander). Here is Brian logging on as himself. The event was very well-received and was an [...]