A look at where half of the 26th's "mesh" event will be taking place. Man, I've still got a lot of work to do.

As regular readers know, for several months now I've been talking of my desire to start holding what I call "mesh" events, as a way to promote both ITG and my real-life arts center; that is, events that take place simultaneously in Second Life and in Chicago where I live, with two different audiences interacting in real time via the usual audio and text options, and with that night's artistic performers culled from both groups at once. As much as I love the various live events that are taking place in the grid these days, it feels sad to me when a performer is all by themselves in real life, and ends each song or poem with silence and a small cough into the microphone; this is my attempt to improve on such a situation, and to add a small live audience with the RL performer so that all the sounds that audiences make (applause, small talk, clinking bottles) will be heard by the virtual audience as well.

Okay, so I've finally picked a date for the first one! It's coming up in just a couple of weeks, in fact, on Friday, January 26th, and will also count as the official release party for both issues 3 and 4 of ITG's monthly magazine. And the theme for this particular live event? Why, performance poetry, of course! This is an area, after all, where I have some experience in the past; for those who don't know, I was both a performer and administrator in the national network of "poetry slams" here in the US, from 1996 to 2001 (in fact, as a performer I placed second at the '97 national competition, as part of the Chicago-Green Mill team), and of course my new arts center will be producing and sponsoring a weekly poetry slam in Chicago as well, starting this coming September. I still have lots of friends here in the city who are active writers and performers; that's why I picked this as our first theme instead of music, in that I knew I could gather up a number of poets on short notice.

Much cooler, though, I'll have my Skype "internet phone" account running throughout the party as well; so not only will Chicago attendees be able to perform for both audiences, but Second Life performers as well, by calling in from wherever in the world they are. The entire signal, then, simply gets routed to what's called a "streaming media server" (much like a website server, but capable of a lot more bandwidth); that can then be married to a piece of land in Second Life, so that anyone standing on that land can hear the stream as well. The plan, then, if I can get enough participants, is to hopefully hop back and forth between performers; first a physical performer in my Chicago apartment, then a virtual one coming in via Skype, and of course with both the SL and RL audiences hearing the unified show at the same time, and with the ability to communicate with the other group. Cool, yeah? Stupid? Eh? I think it's going to be a pretty interesting little experiment, to tell you the truth, and something that I hope works out successfully.

So speaking of which, there are a number of ways for you to both attend and get involved, if you want...

1) Obviously, all current residents are encouraged to attend, and will be no more difficult than simply teleporting to a certain location when the time comes. I'm still working out where that location is going to be, by the way; I'll have the updated info up here as soon as I know myself.

2) More importantly, though, if you are a player of Second Life and live in the Chicago area, I would really love for you to attend the RL half of the event, and also bring your SL-equipped computer with you. I'm going to have my hands full that night, frankly, just making the technology itself work, while dealing with an apartment full of drunk poets at the same time; to tell you the plain truth, I could really use a couple of people who know what they're doing grid-wise, who could come over with their computers and help run the SL side of things, get RL partygoers on the computer so they can interact, etc. For those who are interested, I'm in the Uptown/Buena Park neighborhood of the city; that's one block north of the Sheridan red-line el stop, or five blocks due north of Wrigley Field if that helps. There are lots of options, too, for getting to my place from elsewhere; I'm within walking distance of the Broadway bus, the Irving Park, the Montrose and the Clark, not to mention six blocks west of Lakeshore Drive if you prefer getting there by car or taxi. Anyway, just drop me a line at inthegrid [at] gmail.com if you're interested, and I can give you the specific street address; don't forget that I live in a studio apartment (see above photo), and can only accommodate maybe 10 people at the very most. Oh, and bring your own liquor, cheap-o!

3) And if you want to perform via Skype, by all means let me know, and I'd be happy to go in and test out the entire connection with you in these weeks leading up to the party. The more testing I can do of all this beforehand, frankly, the happier I'll be, and of course would love to have an advance idea of how many performers I'm going to have. I encourage you to drop me a line, if you're interested in performing a piece or two on the 26th.

So, that's it for now, and of course with a lot more information coming as soon as possible. I do hope you'll get a chance to join us for what will hopefully be a fun and disaster-free event, whether that's in Second Life or Chicago or both. See you then!