Music meets floating squid - CC/SL concert both weird and wonderful
Over a hundred avatars flooded the Second Life (SL) concert venue, Menorca, at the start of the Jonathan Coulton’s (aka Yonathan Coulcliff) live performance on 14 September. Popular Science and Creative Commons joined efforts to present the in-world concert, which featured other known SL musicians including Melvin Took, Cylindrian Rutabaga, Kourosh Eusebio, Etherian Kamaboko, Jaycatt Nico and Frogg Marlowe. Audio streaming, provided by Mad Muse Radio, gave access to listeners who couldn’t enter the full sim.
In addition to hosting the concert on her sim, Slim Warrior was also gracious enough to perform despite the eight-hour time difference in the UK. Talents ranged from melodious vocals with acoustic guitar and/or piano accompaniment, folk rock, and ambient piano. Jonathan energized the crowd with hiswitty lyrics about celebrity hilarity, Ikea furniture, office monotony, and becoming a parent. Appearances of a half pony-half monkey monster, a floating giant squid, and a zombie stage attack added to the humor of the music.
We were lucky enough to have an amazing team of concert coordinators, Scott Schram (aka Zenigma Suntzu) and Adri Haik (aka Saarinen). They enlisted technical and design know-how from other SL residents: Trinity Cole, kaia Ennui, and Joseph Montagne. With their help, concert-goers came away with free PopSci/CC t-shirts and jackets, virtual copies of Professor Lessig’s book, ‘Free Culture’, and Cory Doctorow’s new sci-fi novel, ‘Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town‘.
Several Lindeners (Second Life staff) and residents have expressed interest in seeing Creative Commons licenses made more easily available in-world. SL allows creators to own their digital IP rights. Currently, users can find a CC license ‘machine’ to place their favorite type of license with their works. Just a few locations have such a license generator available. We hope that in the near future, the CC license options will be listed in the actual building & editing windows. The only permissions provided, at this time, are whether people can copy, modify, or resell/give away an item. Items can be anything from avatars’ clothing, hair, household products, or even buildings. SL creators have been requesting ways to designate a non-commercial use for their objects. As a result, Lindeners are in the process of determining how to implement the CC license terms in the building menu.
In the meantime, free culture advocates will be happy to hear that the concert recordings and machinima are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. More pictures from the event can be found here and here. Next month’s ‘CC in SL’ event will feature winners of the best CC licensed photos and machinima of the event. For more details about the contest, please visit the Creative Commons wiki.