crazyskillsbloginitiative

Here’s what I want to do: I want to have a screensaver which displays the spirit world. Sometimes it is just lights; sometimes they blink. Sometimes th lights have more definition to them. The lifeforce of people could be seen (hell - maybe even the life of the othert people in the office, club, or perhaps even my testchamber here in beautiful greenhills. It’s a step past a photograph of what is behind the display monitors used as a desktop image.. it is a viewport to the spirit world. Right now, I’m just thihnking about it - I haven’t been in this place for a good while, where I feel as though I am tapping the spirit world, but I am, partially through drugs (perscribed and taken appropriately) and mostly through my spiritual awakedness, and I’m in tune.

Another good screensaver would be a demonstration, video, of what makes your monitor work - sort of lighting up the different components within - but all displayed on the screen of course. Yeah I think that one would be cool too.

But yeah, the bay window to the introverse. But even more so, the spirit world. OOh or how about a spiritworld MMO? (Massively Multiplayer Online (Game) for those out of the loop…) It would be something like Twitter and Facebook and EvE in some ways. Probably more of a sandbox than anything else. I wouldn’t want to impose a class / level system.. It would be interesting if it were truly open-ended enough that people could do what they want within it you know? make items, sell them, have a shop set up but rather than dealing in game-world Nike’s or buying things with real-world cash, we set up a distribution network for self-published books and other information which trades in a game world currency. It’s not so difficult to imagine. I write a book. I determine I’d like to see if I can sell a copy for 2 gold pieces (with no ties to a value in meatspace dollars and cents) and then see what I can buy for the 2 gold I earned by selling that copy. Maybe pick up an issue of an underground zine which gives me more ideas to progressing with my art. Because that is what this is. It is art. But it’s not art like - paintings. Let me explain. This is art that costs virtually nothing to create another copy of. That’s the stuff this world will be about.

So an experience into this alternate world could play out much like this: Pixie from Meatspace 3D gets a computer, connects to the Ether via her favorite internet browser. After she creates her character, she signs into the world only to see many people gathering, people with little shops set up where they can sell their works (books, code (more on code later), urls, xyz coordinates, passcodes…) but alas, she has zero gold pieces. I want the game to be conducive to what her next move is. She decides she can draw cool little black and white figurines, but them in a book along with a link to someone who can take these drawings and put them on mousepads, t-shirt and beverage coasters, and sell the drawings for 50 silver each.

Backing up for a second, part of my inspiration for this project came from an experience I remember to this day, though I may be hazy on what year it was and who all were involved, but here was the story. Everyone brought something to class that day and we held an auction (no cash allowed - it was in the 3rd grade or something.) People brought in erasers and pencils. Smart people brought cookies. And each team was given $x in some imaginary currency. Each item then went up for auction.

The point is that in the end, everybody ended up with something different from what they brought in with them, and no real cash money was exchanged, nor were there any expectations of my imaginary dollars having any real-world value, or value at all after this exercise was over.

So. The idea is not Second Life. Where RL time and effort will indeed be part of this world, RL cash will not. It would be people communicating through their avatars, spending and receiving digital gold pieces buying other players’ renewable items, which brings me to my next point. The items should be renewable, i.e. they should be digital copies which cost basically nothing to produce other than the time and effort. I think that short stories, books, web page templates, mp3s could all have a positive experience in this world.

It opens up questions:
Will it be free?
What happens when someone tries to sell someone else’s art (a copy of an mp3 they don’t have distribution rights to?)

More to come. It’s late..