<nettime> My First Synthetic Porn Shoot

["second loop" <secondloop@gmail.com>]

http://secondloop.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/my-first-synthetic-porn-shoot/

See the pics here, photos by Bunny Brickworks!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azdelslade/sets/72157606151696345/

Ok, I think that the term virtual doesn't apply to Second Life, and
I'd like to stop using it. Virtual, as I understand it in the way that
Deleuze and Guattari use it, would mean not actual, existing as only
potential. Manuel Delanda explains Deleuze's definition of the virtual
as follows:

"Deleuze speaks not of 'realization' but of actualization, and
introduces a novel ontological category to refer to the status of
multiplicities themselves: virtuality. This term does not refer, of
course, to the virtual reality which digital simulations have made so
familiar, but to a real virtuality forming a vital component of the
objective world. As he writes [in Difference and Repetition]:

The virtual is not opposed to the real but to the actual. The virtual
is fully real in so far as it is virtual… Indeed, the vitual must be
defined as strictly part of the real object– as though the object has
one part of itself in the virtual into which it plunged as through
into an objective dimension… The reality of the virtual consists of
the differential elements and relations along with the singular points
which correspond to them. The reality of the virtual is structure."
(Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p.30)

The term Synthetic Worlds, as opposed to Virtual Worlds, that
Augmentology uses, seems a lot more accurate to me. So, the title for
this post was going to be "My First Virtual Porn Shoot", but its not.
Perhaps synthetic is useful also in its relation to synthetic biology,
if we think about synthetic worlds and synthetic limbs as both forms
of augmentation. The world of Second Life is actualized in many forms:
as bits on hard drives, as visually rendered images, as our
experiences of it. It is not virtual, just synthetic or digital.

I got the message from Bunny, the photographer, yesterday in a
notecard saying that Post 6 is not just about pretty pixels, that
models have to have brains too, and that I should submit my written
application as a notecard back to her. I immediately opened a new
notecard and started writing.

I love the Post 6 series. Yes, its porn, and yes, it doesn't really
arouse me often, but I really love the wide variety of avatars. Its so
interesting to me to see so many different expressions of sexuality,
from transformer cyborg girl, to futanari, to neo-goth Tokyo
Amazon.The comments, while mostly just flames and insults, also often
include discussion about gender that I actually find interesting. Such
as on the futanari post where there is an argument as to whether the
post should be called grrrl or guy. Or on the robot post where one
commenter thanks the photographer for nonhuman models! Post 6 does a
good job of actually capturing the wide diversity of sexual expression
that there is in SL.

I wanted to be a Post 6 Grrrl. I think I have some interesting outfits
and looks, and that I can tell some good tough grrrl stories from my
time in Midian City, which I think people should read more of. So, I
emailed the herald. And heard nothing. And emailed again, and heard
nothing. Finally, this week, I commented on a post basically saying
"What does a girl have to do to get naked on this blog?! I'll show you
more than my tits, thats for sure…" Which was true. Then I kept
reading other recent Post 6 posts, including one saying that you won't
get into Post 6 by asking "what does a girl have to do to get naked
here?!" Hah. I was sure, then, that I wouldn't hear back. Well, I
guess they read comments more than email, because I actually got a
reply. I was so happy this morning to see that they had already read
my story and wanted to do a shoot this weekend!

I jumped in world and started working on a script I've been tinkering
with and some building. After a while, I got a message from Bunny
asking when I'm free. I told her that I was free then, so we both
teleported over to Midian City to do the shoot there.

Really, kind of strangely, it was so much fun. As we began, I was a
little bit nervous. I could feel my heart beating a little stronger,
but I wasn't full on nervous. I walked around Midian with Bunny,
showing her some of my favorite spots. She gave me some poses to use
with my gun, as I wanted to do a few gun photos. Posing in Second Life
is still very rudimentary. While some people are working on new
interfaces for movement, now all you can do is have a library of
animations and play them back on command. You can map animations to
keys and Heads Up Displays (HUD's) are used to make particular
gestures like walking and sitting and tail movement easier to get
access to. When you buy a complex avatar, like a neko or a dragon, you
get a HUD to control the additional movements.

So I posed by the casino with my gun. Then we moved to another scene
and did some shots with graffiti in the background. I didn't walk
around with my gun so as not to attract attention from the MPD. When
we were walking around in the alleys, I was actually a bit nervous.
Here are two beautiful women, one very wearing very little clothing,
walking around in the darkest alleys of Midian. I was concerned that
someone might attack us, and interrupt the shoot. We walked past some
poseballs. Poseballs are another common way that people in Second Life
access gestures. Whenever you go to a dance club, there's a poseball
that you can touch to get a dancing animation. When people have sex in
SL, they usually use a poseball with animations in it, although beds
come with sex animations too. Walking around the alleys we passed a
poseball called "forced her" and "forced him", as well as ones for
"Wall M" and "Wall F". I tried these, but neither looked good for
photos. Definitely one of the more disturbing things about Midian, but
interesting, are these kinds of poseballs where people can
consensually roleplay being assaulted. In the stores here, you can
also buy a "mug me" bag, that includes mugging animations. This Second
Life Herald story explores this kind of roleplay in much more detail.

As I stood in front of some graffiti, looking at Bunny so that my face
would be towards the camera, I thought I should buy a better gun,
since we were across the street from the gun shop, Twisted Desires. I
told her this and she laughed. A male neko walked past and stopped to
look for a minute, but he continued on down the street.

I changed clothes and hair a few times so we could get a number of
different shots. When I showed her my boots that have glowing red
parts that match my vision enhancement visor she laughed again.

For the last few shots, which in Post 6 are usually nudes, we went
into the Peep Show. The Peep Show is an elaborate scene, with photos
on the walls, a bar, places to sit and a stage. There are also small
booths with curtains, one of which we used. The booths have a small
stage and once you sit on the chair on the stage, you are immediately
animated into an elaborate erotic dance. This was perfect, so I
changed out of my clothes, into just boots, stockings and a garter
belt. "Avies in SL have weird looking feet", Bunny reminded me, so it
was good that I wanted to keep the boots on. I can't wait to see the
pictures. I had thought about doing some shots iwth my dragon avie
too, but I was satisfied with the ones we shot. I can't wait to see
the pictures.

Second Life is seducing me. I'm really enjoying my exploration there.
This morning I started my first building project, and it was really
interesting. Then, this photo shoot was so much fun. It took around 2
hours. The shots took a while because Bunny had to wait for everything
to rez. Rezzing is Second Life slang for a few things: dropping an
object from your inventory and seeing it, downloading textures and
waiting for them to draw. So, if you want to get really good
snapshots, you often have to stand around and wait for things to rez
completely. My synthetic latex stockings and my detailed Sour Grapes
hair from Deviant Kitties took a some time to rez, and I kept
switching things to try to get the best looks. Linden Labs has a lot
of work to do to improve the speed of their resource servers, or
better yet, we've all got a lot of work to do setting up our own
distributed virtual worlds servers… Bunny told me that since it was a
busy Saturday, the rezzing was taking extra long. My sense hair
wouldn't rez properly for her at all, so I couldn't use it. Which
reminds me that I want ot thank Hern Worsley of AVZ for his amazing
clothes! They were a big part of this shoot. And of course thanks to
everyone in Midian for creating an amazing, inspiring environment…

Again, this was one of the most interesting and fun things I've done
in SL yet. Actually, I'm looking forward to doing this again some
time.


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