Here’s another competition in Second Life a group member shared with me tonight.
I think these competitions are great, but I’m really looking forward to awards that exceed ‘publication’ or book awards as the grand prize. Don’t get me wrong, publication and competitions are great, but I struggle with the idea that we should all be feeding our hard earned ideas, architectural concepts and imagery to these competitions with no other compensation.
Besides, don’t we need new media for this new world? Are ‘books’ really the way we’re going to disseminate our ideas? What about all of the people who open source their ideas about virtual architecture, sharing screenshots and machinima with the existing community in an attempt to spread ideas and concepts as quickly as possible? Surely books have a long tail, but won’t they become essentially obsolete almost as quickly as they leave the press? Honestly, if the state of cutting edge virtual architecture is at the same status 1 or 2 or 10 years from now, I’ll be very, very disappointed.
If what we really want to do is gain social currency as thought leaders through publication, or share our ideas, to reach people, to spread these concepts quickly – I think we should agree to share them with each other openly. Many members of the Architecture Group have already spent a great deal of their time and energy posting ideas, essays and screenshots here on The Arch, and I sincerely hope that more of you will consider the same. If the goal of these publications really is to disseminate knowledge and improve the quality of virtual worlds, it seems to me that it would be in their best interest if the content were presented as openly and in as many formats as possible. The immediacy of the blogosphere, combined with the long tail and increased exposure of a physical book might be just the right combination to have the greatest impact. At the very least, we need to do both.
Having said all of this, I would like to announce with great enthusiasm (tongue in cheeck), the first annual ‘Arch’ Virtual Architecture and Essay Competition!!! There is NO deadline for submissions – they’re accepted anytime! There is absolutely no requirement for formatting (screenshots, SLurls, essays are all accepted)!!!
The prize is… *drum-roll please* publication on The Arch!!!
