Micki's Pink Diamond Fields

Wide Margins

2008-04-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

"If you look at your reflection in the bottom of a well,
What you see is only on the surface.
When you try to see the meaning, hidden underneath,
The measure of the depth can be deceiving.

And the bottom has a rocky reputation.

You can feel it in the distance the deeper down you stare.
From up above it's hard to see but you know when you're there.

On the bottom words are shallow.
The surface talk is cheap.

You can only judge the distance by the company you keep."

The Confessor - Joe Walsh

My confession today? I love anthropology! I needed to come out of the closet with you on this. Not the Indiana Jones stuff, but the old, dull, boring peer reviewed papers tucked away in safe little cubby holes at universities around the planet. I print them out, hole punch them, and organize them in three ring binders, get my highlighter and go through them looking for the salient tidbits that make me quiver. One of my all time favorites? Will Roscoe.

Will Roscoe describes the lives of what I consider to be transgender men and women, sometimes referred to as two-spirited. In many cultures, individuals whose expression of gender was not constrained by a binary system of gender were valued as “threshold persons”. They inhabited a social space at the threshold, the border, the margin, or outskirts of a certain place. Such threshold persons often served their communities as guardians of (and guides across) a threshold, often into the spiritual world. Their guidance empowered others to also experience a crossing between places that might otherwise be impossible.

Being a "threshold person" I feel the pull between the desire to assimilate into the security of the structured two gender world and the desire to affirm my own transgender nature by making my home in the margins. Am I forced there by a transphobic society? Hmmm? Early on in transition it did feel like the trajectory of my self actualization was headed straight into a cultural leper colony out on the furthest edge of the collective's fringe. Whether I felt called toward choosing the margin as a radical space of openness, or was just desperate for twelve square inches of solid ground under my feet that I could stand on in this world is a flip of the coin.

"There is pressure to silence our voices, and undermine them…Those of us who live, who “make it”, invent spaces of radical openness. Without such spaces we could not survive. Our living depends on our ability to conceptualize alternatives, often improvised. "

What has been helpful to me?

In our minds we do have total freedom, and that may be the thing about us that scares us the most.

If we become willing to see ourselves differently, we are free to accept new positions and new ways of thinking about ourselves, and our lives, and this space we share.

We have the power within us to heal ourselves at the deepest level.

Forgive, forgive, and then forgive some more...

"Just hold me close and tight while I cry...just for a little bit babe..."

"God I've missed you...so much....sooo, sooo much"

"Ohhh, I know babe..and I don't care about the tears ...just hold on"

"I can't believe we're actually here in each others arms...it's so nice..been sooo long..."

"well,... come on inside...you must be cold...come on in .....I've been missing you"

"..can you stay?"

I left gender in my rear view mirror and that kind of freedom can feel more uncomfortable than your latest prison. Is it simpler for you to just make me an icon, a mythical figure, to give yourself some distance from the uncertainties that I bring to relationship?

"I've missed your touch...so much..."

Taking off our social masks can be painful. If you're feeling the urge to adjust the margins on your pages, just go a little wider, and always feel free to reformat your binary code as needed.

I can walk with you to the threshold, we've done it for eons, and it's what I do. But....

The "us and them" is too isolating for me. We are you. Can't it just be "us?"

....truth is, I don't want to be an angel anymore...they're great, but lack the flesh-and-blood-mud-between-my-toes-hold-me-close dimensionality that I need to be real.

...truth is, even if you set your font to a single column just one space wide, if you hold the binary gender code...I feel the distance like a wound. I'll try to manage that as best I can.

Truth is..I'd like to tear down the borders, headers, and footers and scramble your fonts and my marginal spaces into a smeared mess of the most beautifully unreadable umber hues...

Sugar Water

2008-04-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

At 3:38 am the doctor looked down, slapped me on the behind, and said, "it's a boy." I burst into tears and screamed in protest. I'm not sure which of his gestures I took as the greater offense.

My gestation had been fairly comfy. I'd began it as female (as we all do,) but through some quirk of destiny, or genetics, or miscued hormonal washes, my body had differentiated towards male in the womb.

My brain stayed hard-wired girl. It happens.

It has happened in every time and culture all the way back to the earliest cuneiform stone tablets. In some cultures we have fared better than in others. We've served the collectives in many capacities over the course of history as mediators, negotiators, spiritual leaders, in positions of great trust under kings, and as shamans, healers, and teachers.

And though a Navajo family would have seen me as a great gift that would have brought financial success and status to the family, that was not my path.

I watched my TV with smiling Jackie waving as the motorcade drove by the book repository. The smokestacks from the steel mills overshadowing the landscape just outside my back door. Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, an escalating cold war, and the body counts of the soldiers killed that day in Viet Nam flashed across the screen while Jimi burned his sacrificial stratocaster at the dawn light's first gleaming.

I changed the channel so that I could watch Jacques Cousteau and dreamed about a life of underwater explorations.

The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic.

I wrapped my colorfully patterned Indian blanket around my waist to make myself a long pretty skirt and admired my form in the mirror. The bedroom door opened, and I could tell that Mom and Dad were not that happy...oh boy...not again.

Mom was the church secretary and at 4 years old I knew all 66 books of the bible (I.Q. - 171) both forwards and backwards. My first performances were to stun the adult church classes with this amazingly clever feat. I didn't care for the bow tie, but I soaked up the applause.

I spent much of my early childhood in that building exploring the expansive architecture and hidden passageways while Mom took care of business in the church office. There is a particular flavor of ambient silence that exists inside of a vast structure that can only be savored by experiencing it alone. I wrapped myself in that silence like that warm Indian blanket.

The sanctuary captivated my four year old imagination and the walls on both sides were made of stained glass in an abstract array of deeply rich hues. I would wander through the walkways and aisles in that prismatic opulence without breaking the silence by so much as an over pressed breath.

If gender existed in this world that I inhabited, I was not aware of it. I was in a gender category of one...my own.

I'm just a girl. (well, ...sort of???) My cousin spins Walmart in a positive framework for a profession. She's got a gift! Her take on me? I'm above average, have a high joy-to-stuff ratio, I'm a girl with a little something extra, and I simply have more accessory options - the best of both worlds.

Still, most days I'm just another girl.

I don't recall feeling particularly lonely, I was content. If the sanctuary was my center point, there were plenty of expeditions to go on. I could search for hidden treasures (usually in the form of Vanilla Wafers) tucked away in the teacher's cabinets to reward the over-achievers for competent mastery of their memory verse of the week. There was a hidden stairway that led up to a sound booth that seemed miles (safely) above the throngs. There were baptismal pools, and dark hidden stairwells that twisted downward into oblivion. And there were forests of pine and maple just outside the door.

And though my world was fertile ground for my imagination to run free in, there was also one interlude that broke the silence that I looked forward to with anticipation; Mr. Brown.

He was in his seventies, and came in to do janitorial work once a week. I made it my business to be his official assistant on cleaning day. Between the two of us we kept the place sparkling. And with all the square footage to cover, I learned well the art of vacuuming.

After we finished the sanctuary, he'd invite me down to the kitchen to take a break. He would put a small pan of water on the stove to heat up, and flip me up so that I was sitting on the counter where we could talk eye-to-eye. He would then explain to me that when he was a child, his grandmother would make him a very special treat...sugar water! And then he would ask me if I would like to try some of this highly prized delicacy for myself? (Umm..who wouldn't?)

I assured him that I would very much like to try this Sugar Water, and watched the master pour the hot water from the pan into two small styrofoam cups. He then took the sugar bowl and told me that the secret was to add two spoonfuls of sugar. (Aha! ..I had the secret recipe now for myself!)

He explained the importance of stirring for long enough to completely dissolve all the sugar, and then asked if I'd like to give it a try. Umm...Of course I would! I carefully watched as I stirred to see that all the granules had been absorbed into a super-saturated state of suspension.

He then took his cup, and handed me mine, an made a toast to us!

Some days I'm jut a girl that was dealt an odd twist of fate. Sending me into the boy's locker room felt cruel. I had many notes to excuse me from gym class.

When I went to my first rock concert and saw the guys in the band with flowing locks, sensuous clothes, make-up, and jewelry, I thought that there might be a place in their ranks that I could hide. I bailed hay that summer to earn enough to buy my first guitar and amp, taped a David Bowie poster on my wall, and shut the bedroom door behind me to practice with a determination that few could ever understand.

My guitar instructor was transgender. I looked forward to that bright spot on Tuesday nights that we shared with the same excitement and anticipation that I felt when I knew Mr. Brown would visit my sanctuary. Thanks for the little styrofoam cups Trent, and thanks for showing me how to make the harmonic mixtures you shared with me on my own.

So many story lines have threaded their way through my life. I carried that quiet sanctuary away from those early years in my heart. I still sit in the kneeling prayer stance centered in quiet anticipation. Tranquil spherical harmonics radiate outward from that point. Sometimes in complex arrays, and other times in simple standing resonant waves.

I toured as a sound engineer with everyone from ZZTopp to the Osmonds, created amazing architectural interiors for the Getty Museum of Decorative Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and even Bill Gates residence. I've been a single Mom and raised four kids.

Life expands or contracts in proportion to one's courage.

My gender transition was nothing more than the journey it took for me to get home to a body that made sense to me. The scars under my breasts, the hormone treatments, and all the other facets of transition - it's just me giving myself some TLC and doing the best I can to get home.

The guy I used to try to be? He loved me enough to lay down his life so that I could have my day in the sunlight unashamed. That is a powerful love story, and it motivates me to sparkle and shine. All I can do in the onslaught of that kind of love is accept it with joy, pleasure, a gratitude. There is no way to repay a debt like that, it was gift that was given freely. I know he believed in me and I hope I have made him proud.

The princess warrior stands partially cloaked in the shadows just off the path next to her horse. The morning light hasn't broken over the horizon yet, and she looks out across the plains in front of her at the funeral pyres burning. The sacrificial altars on which she laid the previous manifestations of herself smolder with embers against the deep indigo folds of a universe full of scattered suns. She runs her fingertips over the scars and considers the cost of gaining freedom from the prisons that held her captive for so long. Though yet unveiled, her kingdom has been restored. Her satchels are tightly sewn new leather filled with the jewels she's collected on her great journey. And the treasuries within her castle walls are already overflowing with the wealth that has been returned to it's rightful heiress.

Fifteen years of therapeutic sessions of Jungian analytical psychology? I bought myself some of the best fathering the universe had to offer. My work was done under a man who did his doctoral therapeutic work under a man, who did his work directly under Carl Jung. In that sense, I am a third generation grand daughter of the process. I feel a very close connection and a very deep sense of gratitude for all the cups that were passed my way. Thanks for showing me that Jacque's oceans were not the only ones that needed exploring.

So if our paths cross, and I flip up on the dock at sunset and lay a trinket at your feet, please know that it's just my latest find of the day, and also my best offer for us to share an exploration around together. I'm fine sitting over on the coral outcroppings with Ariel and Esmeralda, but I do enjoy the companionship for whatever stretch of our journeys we share.

I do not do well in confinement, so please do not try to ensnare me with a net. It is uncomfortable for me when others project onto me. You cannot gain what you need from me by attempting to possess me. If you are unable to rise above your own unconscious projections that you may have unknowingly misplaced on me, I will sever those tentacles with my sharpest sword. In that sense, I hold a large mirror, and sometimes the things you think you see in me are simply the things you need to take ownership of in yourself. Once all that messy process of untangling is done, perhaps we can be friends.

We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. Can I fix you something to drink?

One recent story line is having the gift of spending the past five years providing food and care for thousands of people who are living with HIV/AIDS. My role is to oversee providing groceries and meals for them. They come in once a week to shop (for free) at my little grocery store. I'm a much richer girl for having these people in my life. I do put my heart out there on the check out counter, and I get a whole lot of love in return. Some of the most courageous and beautiful human souls that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing have come through those doors.

The cost to me personally for the gift of having the space that I share with them in my life?

For whatever reasons, I walk with them down that one way street they are on to the end of the line. I've held their frail bodies in my arms while they cried, lifted up a cup of Ensure to their lips so they could take in something to sustain them, and listened to the stories they needed to share with someone about the important parts of their life's journey.

Does it cost me a bucket of tears when they are gone? Yes, it does. Mostly I miss the space in the day that we shared. I keep an old cell phone without any service to make my last calls to them when I hear that they have had to leave us.

Am I an angel of mercy? No, not at all. Please don't try and put me there, my shadow would only become your next demon, and neither is true. It's just one of the spaces that the universe provided for me in this life. I do trust the larger processes and story lines that are at work, and make myself available by accepting the space with joy, pleasure, and gratitude. In comparison, my former lives seem a bit more shallow to me, more like playing on the reefs than taking on the unexplored depths.

But while they are here, I do take the opportunity to enter in to the quiet isolation that the disease can bring into their life. And I remember how nice it was when Mr. Brown would come into my sanctuary, take me to the kitchen and share a little of his morning with me.

Some of my friends!

2007-09-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

These are screen captures from chats with some of my friends.

I really do love my friends! They are sooo fun!

I'll put more pics up once I have a chance to crop and resize them.

Kiss

2007-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

Kiss

by: MickiPacific Studios 9/2007

(Click on image for larger version)

Jungian Individuation

2007-08-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

I hope that by posting the ideas below that it will facilitate clarity in communication about these sometimes obscure, and easily misinterpreted concepts.

(The links didn't translate properly - apologies!)

Warmest wishes ~Micki~

Analytical psychology (or Jungian psychology) refers to the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition. It is distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis but also has a number of similarities. Its aim is the apprehension and integration of the deep forces and motivations underlying human behaviour by the practice of an accumulative phenomenology around the significance of dreams, folklore and mythology. Depth psychology and archetypal psychology are related in that they both employ the model of the unconscious mind as the source of healing and development in the individual.

Overview
Jung developed his own distinctive approach to the study of the human mind. In his early years when working in a Swiss hospital with schizophrenic patients and working with Sigmund Freud and the burgeoning psychoanalytic community, he took a closer look at the mysterious depths of the human unconscious. Fascinated by what he saw (and spurred on with even more passion by the experiences and questions of his personal life) he devoted his life to the exploration of the unconscious. Unlike many before him, Jung did not feel that experimenting using natural science was the best means to understand the soul. For him, an empirical investigation of the world of dream, myth, and soul represented the most promising road to deeper understanding.The overarching goal of Jungian psychology is the reconciliation of the life of the individual with the world of the supra-personal archetypes. Central to this process is the individual's encounter with the unconscious. The human experiences the unconscious through symbols encountered in all aspects of life: in dreams, art, religion, and the symbolic dramas we enact in our relationships and life pursuits. Essential to the encounter with the unconscious, and the reconciliation of the individual's consciousness with this broader world, is learning this symbolic language. Only through attention and openness to this world is the individual able to harmonize their life with these suprapersonal archetypal forces."Neurosis" results from a disharmony between the individual's consciousness and the greater archetypal world. The aim of psychotherapy is to assist the individual in reestablishing a healthy relationship to the unconscious (neither being swamped by it — a state characteristic of psychosis — nor completely shut off from it — a state that results in malaise, empty consumerism, narcissism, and a life cut off from deeper meaning). The encounter between consciousness and the symbols arising from the unconscious enriches life and promotes psychological development. Jung considered this process of psychological growth and maturation (which he called the process of individuation) to be of critical importance to the human being, and ultimately to modern society.In order to undergo the individuation process, the individual must be open to the parts of oneself beyond one's own ego. In order to do this, the modern individual must pay attention to dreams, explore the world of religion and spirituality, and question the assumptions of the operant societal worldview (rather than just blindly living life in accordance with dominant norms and assumptions).

The unconscious
The basic assumption is that the personal unconscious is a potent part — probably the more active part — of the normal human psyche. Reliable communication between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche is necessary for wholeness.Also crucial is the belief that dreams show ideas, beliefs, and feelings of which individuals are not readily aware, but need to be, and that such material is expressed in a personalized vocabulary of visual metaphors. Things "known but unknown" are contained in the unconscious, and dreams are one of the main vehicles for the unconscious to express them.Analytical psychology distinguishes between a personal and a collective unconscious. (see below)The collective unconscious contains archetypes common to all human beings. That is, individuation may bring to surface symbols that do not relate to the life experiences of a single person. This content is more easily viewed as answers to the more fundamental questions of humanity: life, death, meaning, happiness, fear. Among these more spiritual concepts may arise and be integrated into the personality.

The collective unconscious
Jung's concept of the collective unconscious has often been misunderstood. In order to understand this concept, it is essential to understand Jungian archetypes.The collective unconscious could be thought of as the DNA of the human psyche[citation needed]. Just as all humans share a common physical heritage and predisposition towards specific gross physical forms (like having two legs, a heart, etc.) so do all humans have innate psychological predispositions in the form of archetypes, which compose the collective unconscious.In contrast to the objective material world, the subjective realm of archetypes cannot be fully plumbed through quantitative modes of research. Instead it can be revealed more fully through an examination of the symbolic communications of the human psyche — in art, dreams, religion, myth, and the themes of human relational/behavioral patterns. Devoting his life to the task of exploring and understanding the collective unconscious, Jung theorized that certain symbolic themes exist across all cultures, all epochs, and in every individual.

The archetypes
The use of psychological archetypes was advanced by Jung in 1919 and generally adopted in the social sciences. In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological givens that arose through evolution.

Self-realization and neuroticism
An innate need for self-realization leads people to explore and integrate these rejected materials. This natural process is called individuation, or the process of becoming an individual.According to Jung, Self-realization can be divided into two distinct tiers. In the first half of our lives we separate from humanity. We attempt to create our own identities (I, myself). This is why there is such a need for young men to be destructive, and can be expressed as animosity from teens directed at their parents. Jung also said we have a sort of “second puberty” that occurs between 35-40- outlook shifts from emphasis on materialism, sexuality, and having children to concerns about community and spirituality.In the second half of our lives, we reunite with the human race. We become part of the collective once again. This is when adults start to contribute to humanity (volunteer time, build, garden, create art, etc.) rather than destroy. They are also more likely to pay attention to their unconscious and conscious feelings. How often do you hear a young man state, "I feel angry." or "I feel sad.”? This is because they have not rejoined the collective in their older, wiser years, according to Jung. A common theme is for young rebels to "search" for their true selves and realize that a contribution to humanity is essentially a necessity for a whole self.Jung proposes that the ultimate goal of the collective unconscious and self-realization is to pull us to the highest experience. This, of course, is spiritual.If a person does not proceed toward self-knowledge, neurotic symptoms may arise. Symptoms are widely defined, including, for instance, phobias, fetishism, depression.

The shadow
The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the conscious self.There are constructive and destructive types of shadow.On the destructive side, it often represents everything that the conscious person does not wish to acknowledge within themselves. For instance, someone who identifies as being kind has a shadow that is harsh or unkind. Conversely, an individual who is brutal has a kind shadow. The shadow of persons who are convinced that they are ugly appears to be beautiful.On the constructive side, the shadow may represent hidden positive influences. This has been referred to as "the gold in the shadow." Jung points to the story of Moses and Al-Khidr in the 18th Sura (Chapter) of the Koran as an example.Jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness, lest one project these attributes on others.The shadow in dreams is often represented by dark figures of the same gender as the dreamer.According to Jung the human being deals with the reality of the Shadow in four ways: denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation.

Anima and animus
Jung identified the anima as being the unconscious feminine component of men and the animus as the unconscious masculine component in women. However, this is rarely taken as a literal definition: many modern day Jungian practitioners believe that every person has both an anima and an animus. Jung stated that the anima and animus act as guides to the unconscious unified Self, and that forming an awareness and a connection with the anima or animus is one of the most difficult and rewarding steps in psychological growth. Jung reported that he identified his anima as she spoke to him, as an inner voice, unexpectedly one day.Often, when people ignore the anima or animus complexes, the anima or animus vies for attention by projecting itself on others. This explains, according to Jung, why we are sometimes immediately attracted to certain strangers: we see our anima or animus in them. Love at first sight is an example of anima and animus projection. Moreover, people who strongly identify with their gender role (e.g. a man who acts aggressively and never cries) have not actively recognized or engaged their anima or animus.Jung attributes human rational thought to be the male nature, while the irrational aspect is considered to be natural female. Consequently, irrationality is the male anima shadow and rationality is the female animus shadow.

Psychoanalysis
Analysis is a way to experience and integrate the unknown material. It is a search for the meaning of behaviors, symptoms, events. Many are the channels to reach this greater self-knowledge. The analysis of dreams is the most common. Others may include expressing feelings in art pieces, poetry or other expressions of creativity.Giving a complete description of the process of dream interpretation and individuation is complex. The nature of the complexity lies on the fact that the process is highly specific to the person who does it.While Freudian psychoanalysis assumes that the repressed material hidden in the unconscious is given by repressed sexual instincts, Analytical psychology has a more general approach. There is no preconceived assumption about the unconscious material. The unconscious, for Jungian analysts, may contain repressed sexual drives, but also aspirations, fears, etc.

The complex
Early in Jung's career he coined the term and described the concept of the "complex". Jung claims to have discovered the concept during his free association and galvanic skin response experiments. Freud obviously took up this concept in his Oedipus complex amongst others. Jung seemed to see complexes as quite autonomous parts of psychological life. It is almost as if Jung were describing separate personalities within what is considered a single individual, but to equate Jung's use of complexes with something along the lines of multiple personality disorder would be a step out of bounds.Jung saw an archetype as always being the central organizing structure of a complex. For instance, in a "negative mother complex," the archetype of the "negative mother" would be seen to be central to the identity of that complex. This is to say, our psychological lives are patterned on common human experiences. Interestingly, Jung saw the Ego (which Freud wrote about in German literally as the "I", one's conscious experience of oneself) as a complex. If the "I" is a complex, what might be the archetype that structures it? Jung, and many Jungians, might say "the hero," one who separates from the community to ultimately carry the community further.

Archetypal school
The archetypal school (sometimes called "the imaginal school"), with different views associated with the Mythopoeticists, such as James Hillman in his intellectual theoretical view of Archetypal psychology, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in her view that ethnic and aboriginal people are the originators of archetypal psychology and have long carried the maps to the journey of the soul in their songs, tales, dream-telling, art and rituals; Marion Woodman who proposes a feminist viewpoint regarding archetypal psychology, and other Jungians like Thomas Moore, as well. Most mythopoeticists/archetypal psychology innovators either imagine the Self not to be the main archetype of the collective unconscious as Jung thought, but rather assign each archetype equal value...Others, who are modern progenitors of archetypal psychology (such as Estés), think of the Self as that which contains and yet is suffused by all the other archetypes, each giving life to the other.Robert L. Moore, one of Jung's most dedicated followers, has explored the archetypal level of the human psyche in a series of five books co-authored with Douglas Gillette, which have played an important role in the men's movement in the United States. R. Moore likes to use computerese, so he likens the archetypal level of the human psyche to the hard wiring of a computer. Our personal experiences of course influence our accessing the archetypal level of the human psyche, but personalized ego consciousness can be likened to the software in a computer (e.g., Microsoft Word).

IMVU High Resolution Photos - MickiPacific

2007-06-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with the idea of creating higher resolution photo-art images from IMVU's Virtual World.

These photos are my first attempts. My thought is to take the best ones into a 3D renderer and develop them further.

Feel free to check back on the progress.

Click on photos below for larger image:

Composition in Focal Points

Processing

Cue

MickiPacific

Dangerous Love

2007-06-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

These are the lyrics to my song titled "Dangerous Love."

Ohh, I,
Oh I still believe in tomorrow
I still believe in love,
and I still believe
in You.

Ohh, I,
I believe in a thousand
new tomorrows,
and trust in a Love
that can heal
the darkest of nights,
the deepest of cuts,
the foulest of wounds,
and the most treacherous lies.

Our journey's may take us
through the Dark Night of the Soul,
through the deepest of waters,
and the most dreadful fears.

I have my reasons,
we've all had our share,
why I still believe....

(sigh)

See, while I stood there
I thought ...,
Yes, I heard someone say;

"Come close my child,
put your hand in these hands,
and then I can guide you
to this Dangerous Love,
that will change your whole life,
if you'll just surrender yourself
into these strong arms tonight."

Ohh, I
I believe in your dreams
and I will always stand by you
til the last curtain call.

And if you stand there,
You may hear me say;

Come close my child.
Put your hand in these hands
and then I can guide you
to this Dangerous Love,
that will change your whole life,
if you'll just surrender yourself
into these soft arms
here tonight.

by MickiPacific, Sept., 2002

Working in Virtual Worlds

2007-06-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

The graphs for the future of technological advancement are all headed toward somewhere just beyond all the known star charts. Virtual worlds are no exception, and it appears that some of us have crossed the threshold of spending more time in our Virtual Spaces than we do in what used to be called "reality." I make that distinction because I don't see VR as any less "real" than the existential universe we share, it's just a more recent evolutionary extension of ourselves into our technology. And it's bursting at the seams with unrealized potential (as well as problems and pitfalls!)

New VR worlds are coming online at an accelerating pace and just picking which space (or spaces) to begin to make a pioneering stand can be a complex decision with many factors to weigh out the pros and cons on.

Second Life, Entropia Universe, IMVU, There, HiPiHi, Areae are just a few of a very rapidly growing list of options we have to choose from. And we're learning as we go!

We've got a front row ticket to the show here, and if we can step back far enough, we're seeing an evolutionary process of humanity unfold within our pixels.

A multiverse full of questions is emerging from this primordial vat of churning goo!

Sociological issues, cultural issues, moral issues, philosophical issues, legal, political, and especially intriguing; economic issues.

The intent of this post is to try to organize my own thinking on the economic issues that I see emerging from my myopic and biased viewpoint of the VR multiverse.

Most of the VR worlds are corporate investments created for profit.

It's like Las Vegas, the odds are always tilted in favor of the house, and no matter what, the house always wins!

The dream that's being sold is a nice one, full of the promise of economic success, and there are some great success stories to point to already. Everything looks sparkly and pink to the casual citizens (though they may occasionally feel some mild tremors in the meshes beneath their feet.)

But if you put on a backstage pass, the view changes very abruptly!

Plenty of larger wars that have erupted, and the battlefronts may span some (or all) or the current worlds. Events that happen in Second Life can easily bleed over into IMVU, and to those developers caught unaware, it can feel like a three hour tour on the SS Minnow gone bad!

At the core of the larger multigalactic war the question of a truly free market economy vs. a synthetic corporate (for profit economic construction) appears to be heating up at an accelerating pace. And many of the issues that are brought to the table have very little legal precedence under international law, but that will have to undergo radical change in very short order.

The issue is being pressed.

How can someone in southern Egypt be held accountable for some bad business practices when they are operating on a Bangkok corporation's server that's being hosted in Lebanon, by a group of disgruntled customers who live in Swahili, Spain, Unganda, and the Ukrain?

I won't even begin to talk about the nightmare of policing tax, sales tax, and income. Let's just sidestep those issues and make it all about the "point" system. Then, if developers want to "cash out" they can create a black market point reselling system to get some real-world compensation for their efforts. Of course this will create a completely unstable economy with extremely undervalued exchange rates, but corporate met their quarterley goals.

The current option is to go to the corporation that is hosting the VR world and seek justice and compensation through them. They may try to establish the "rules", and they may even toss someone out who doesn't play by their rules, but they certainly don't have any international legal jurisdiction to prosecute should some deceptive practice by one constituent harm another one.

And I think one question for me is; Do I really want to invest my time, energy, efforts, resources, and capital into a synthetic economy that's created by a corporation, with the house rules tilted in their favor, with no international jurisdiction for accountability other than "you can't play in our world anymore because you were not nice?"

What happens to all my hard work, assets, catalogues, and customers if corporate decides to turn off the power switch?

And why would I be tempted? If I buy into the dream of creating a comfortable home-based business to get out of the 9 to 5 existential grind I'm going to need some "real" $$$ as compensation for my efforts. For those efforts I am compensated by worthless Developer Tokens, nonredeemable promo credits, and to pull any cash out of the fractional percentage of credits I've managed to gather, I have to sell them to a wholesaler at 30% of their value?

Hmmmmmm???

In Second Life the question of true capitalism has been an issue that has been forced, and some market freedom was gained, an exchange rate on an open many market exists (albeit a little bizarre,) and new terrain is available from entrepreneurs other than the Linden Corp. It was not a part of the corporations original business plan, but it is a step towards a more realistic free market economy and truly capitalistic co-operative venture. But that too is plagued with a wide array of mind-numbing issues that can be easily researched by Google-ing Second Life Economics.

The war that gained those steps forward has escalated. It will probably continue to do so over the short foreseeable future. There have been many casualties of that war and that is no surprise to anyone that has taken the time to do their homework.

Recently, some fallout from that war spilled over into IMVU. Some of the IMVU developers are in an uproar over the defensive strategy used by one of the larger constituents. Some of the fallout shook their stability these past few weeks. For the most part, they don't seem to realize in their posts just what hangs in the balance in the larger war that is rocking their worlds.

They appear to want someone to hang. They want the IMVU staff to be the judge, jury, and executors. They are clamoring for a stronger TOS (Terms Of Service) agreement, and are hoping that this will provide some security for them.

My personal thoughts right now are that those are only band-aids that they are hoping will stop the bleeding from a massive hemorrhaging wound.

With HiPiHi and Areae taking the lessons learned form Second Life and the other VR worlds and making it an absolute priority to bring in international economists, the international legal community, and integrating their input into the new worlds scheduled to come online very soon, we may see some changes coming that will help reduce the impact of these types of destabilizing fallout effects.

Remember, we have front row tickets to a massive new branch of human evolution that's unfolding at an exponential speed. That growth will not come without it's share of pain and conflict.

The question that I keep wondering is; Is there anything that IMVU can do to fix their economy and begin to bring a more realistic, workable model that rewards true capitalism?

Are they even at the table with the other VR world negotiations for stable multiverse economic reforms?

Let's start the discussion about a stable, VR multiverse economy, a cross-world currency with set currency exchange rates.

It seems that this is an inevitable set of negotiations that will have to take place in the very near future, or many of the current worlds will go the way of the dinosaurs.

The Starving Artists Paintbox and Canvas

2007-06-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

These are the tools that I currently use for my images:

Platform: Windows Vista

2 Computers: both dual core processors (3800 & 4600), 2 gigs ram each.

Software:

Autodesk Maya (Alias & Wavefront)
SoftImage XSI
Autodesk 3D Studio Max (versions 7 & 9)
Lightwave (I'm new to this)
Bryce 5
Cal3D Exporter
Sketch-Up (don't use much)
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premier
M-Grab (screen capture software)

I also have a music studio for recording with another computer, Fruit Loops, Ableton Live, etc., but that's another topic.

Background:

I studied art, music and architecture in college and started working with 3D Studio in the 90's while taking a few classes on 3d modeling and animation. It was still a DOS application then.

It's very exciting to see technology advance to the place it is today so that these tools can be used on the average home computer systems.

I also apprenticed for about 5 years under a very gifted expressionistic oil painter, and am transitioning from oil and canvas into virtual art.

Ostwald-Munsell Color System:

I think about color and color harmony in a 3 dimensional model based on hue, saturation, and tonal value:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colsys.html

I built some tools that I use in IMVU to generate color maps based on a 3D model of Ostwald-Munsell.

These "rooms" exist within a sphere, and all the surfaces are transparent, but have color (similar to stained glass.) It's a simple way for me to generate interesting .jpg images with complex color harmonies and use those as points of inspiration for applying color to my products.

(*note: You can set the options on your IMVU messenger to render the room in higher resolutions to get more solid colors.) It's also animated, so that you can change the intersecting color planes to get the effects desired:

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/product_info.php/Spacey-Futuristic-Scenes/Prism-World-by-MickiPacific/products_id/643941

Here are some products that I used the .jpg's as starting points for color maps:

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/product_info.php/Cinched-Waist-Minis/Colorful-Latex-Mini-by-MickiPacific/products_id/651894

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/product_info.php/Cinched-Waist-Minis/Sexy-Colorful-Dress-by-MickiPacific/products_id/653965

note: I love the 3D model systems for organizing information!

Not to get too sidetracked (metaphysical) here, this link is to a very intriguing 3D model for organizing theological worldviews found on Singularity.org's site:

http://www.singularity.org/

Spiritual Computation: The 'Religious Galaxy' Exploring the Phase Space of Religious Belief:

http://www.accelerationwatch.com/spiritualcomputation.html

Online e-art, HTML Tinker Toys:

SFMOMA:

Another little journey on generating interesting color maps led me to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's e-space:

http://sfmoma.org/espace/espace_overview.html

Mark Napier's "Feed 1.0":Mark Napier's "Feed1.0" captivated my interest. What this interface allows you to do is to put in a URL (I used IMVU) and then display the traffic through the URL in a variety of graphic images that you can adjust:

http://feed.projects.sfmoma.org/feedloader.html

Once I'd set up the feeds to generate some interesting graphics, I'd capture some screenshots using m-grab, and then bring those images into Photoshop to slice, dice, and create texture maps for the wire frames I was surfacing.

An example of that process can be found on the link below:

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/product_info.php/Floating-Furniture/Satellite-by-MickiPacific/products_id/662160

(to be continued...)

Emotional Bonding with Virtual Personas

2007-06-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Humans build emotional bonds.

We do it with pets, with each other, and with ourselves.

We also build emotional bonds inside of our virtual worlds.

We bond with other avatars, but the point of intrigue for me is the bond between our human counterparts and our VR avatars.

(to be continued)

Artistic Relationships in Accelerating Technology

2007-06-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

Exploring the relationship between human artistic expression and technological acceleration?

That is a massive interdisciplinary study.

This blog is a repository for my own journey to gain a little more consciousness about the body of work that's being done, and is NOT intended to be an all-encompassing overview, or "state of the union address." It's a path of my own personal trail of breadcrumbs, or a stack of postcards I send home to myself with short, narrative, experiential notes.

Where to begin?

Artificial Intelligence (AI), seamlessly transparent Conversational Interfaces (CI), Virtual Reality (VR), the Singularity, Emotional Machines, Interactive Art, Expressive AI, and the list goes on. And from that list many profound new questions arise that we haven't even begun to discuss.

It certainly provides fertile ground for artist's to begin to create symbolic questions around, and pose those questions to the collective consciousness for consideration.

Yet the artists are also conflicted due to the incredibly fast rate of technological acceleration that is taking place.

Perhaps this is the new Bohemia?

Artificial Intelligence:

The question is not what is the Singularity, the question is who. And the answer is "us."

Michael Mateas:

This link is to Michael Mateas hp, who is working on Artificial Intelligence-based Art. You might enjoy to trailer to Facade that's linked off of this page, I thought it was fun:

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/

One of his peer review documents had some interesting thoughts about the conversational dynamics of the relationship between the Artist, the AI art/gizmo, and the participant:

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/Leonardo2001.pdf

Ray Kurzweil:

Okay, this moved me! I did not expect to be brought to the point of tears by AI authored poetry.

To be emotionally seduced by AI? I have no framework to process that.

I want more, yet I want to run away...powerfully ambivalent! How could we resist the soft whisper of these machines in our ears who will know our own souls cravings better than a lover?There will be no need for a great struggle, we'll be a soft seduction:

.http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/

The Singularity:

To completely oversimplify, this is the point in time where AI surpasses human intelligence. This brings up all sorts of imaginative scenarios. As I have been exploring it, I feel very much like I'm in the movie *Contact" riding in the car past the throngs of revelers, advocates, and protesters on the day that they were scheduled to test the machine.

Hans Moravec:

website: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/

OPS (operations per second) forecast:

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/2004/Predictions.html

(to be continued...)