In February 2008, Dancing Ink Productions’ Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King were invited by the Brookings Institution to be speakers at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. Dancing Ink Productions produced a mixed media event live from Doha and in the virtual world of Second Life. The event, which was entitled, “The Transfer of Cultural Energy,” featured Nashwa Al Ruwaini, host of the two top-rated television shows in the Middle East, “Nashwa” and “Poet of Millions”; Howard Gordon, executive producer of the Fox television show, “24″; and Ambassador Cynthia P. Schneider.

(A portion of this work is also featured in the findings of the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project, which was released January 2009.)

The event also featured two hip-hop artists, Palestinian Muhammed Mughrabi of the Jerusalem-based hip-hop group, G-Town, and Iranian Yas, who is the first hip-hop artist whose work is sanctioned by the Iranian government. The two sang a spontaneous Arabic-Farsi hip-hop performance, which can be viewed in its entirety here.

Proceedings of the U.S.-Islamic World Forum can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Dancing Ink Productions’ participation in the U.S.-Islamic World Forum so inspired us that we penned the following vision statement about the foundational aspects of our work, “Our Vision for Sustainable Culture in the Imagination Age.”

Dancing Ink Productions produced the below machinima video as part of their participation.

In Ambassador Cynthia P. Schneider’s forthcoming report about cultural diplomacy, “Mightier than the Sword: Arts and Culture in the U.S.-Muslim World Relationship,” includes the following recommendations:

Virtual Worlds: Although participation in virtual worlds is minimal at present in the Muslim world, the technology off ers the possibility over the long term of lectures, dialogues, discussions, concerts, screenings and other performances that could break down barriers of geography and incorporate “audiences” from diff erent parts of the world. Contests, such as the remix contest with Salman Ahmed’s music, increase distribution and engagement with diverse types of music. At the 2008 U.S.-Islamic World Forum, the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with Dancing Ink Productions, held a virtual world panel discussion featuring Howard Gordon (executive producer of 24) and Nashwa al Ruwaini (CEO, Pyramedia) and attended by people (via their avatars) from the U.S., South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Th e session concluded with a freestyle hip-hop concert featuring top Iranian rapper YAS in Farsi and, in Arabic, Palestinian Muhammed Mughrabi, the leader and co-founder of the G-Town the Palestinian Hip-Hop Makers group in Jerusalem that had all the participants’ avatars dancing.

The Imagination Age: 1000 Inches in Loveland is an augmented reality neighborhood created by Rita J. King as part of Jerry Paffendorf’s Loveland project. Rita J. King is the largest “inchvestor” in Loveland and its first colony, which is named “Plymouth.” For background on Rita’s interest, inspiration and involvement in the project, see her essay below.

Rita J. King was recently interviewed on NPR about her involvement in Loveland. Read more about that here.

Download the PDF detailing the project here.

We are profiling other community members of Plymouth on the blog 1000 Inches in Loveland.

Background on 1000 Inches in Loveland:

By Rita J. King

Several months ago, I was commissioned by PROBOSCIS to create an installation on 27 cubes: “Transformation: How We Become Who We Are.” While working on the cubes (some of which are shown above) I first heard about the LOVELAND project in Detroit.

Perhaps because I was working daily with cubes and my imagination, the idea of a city of a million square inches that fits in a warehouse in Detroit and yet relies on technology and creativity to amplify the size of each inch made perfect sense.

The installation was immediately influenced by the LOVELAND project. “Transformation” (which will launch soon) expanded first into virtual and augmented realities and then evolved into a game that marks the first developed parcel in 1000 INCHES IN LOVELAND.

Stories have a tendency to get lost if they aren’t shared right away, so here’s how the 1000 INCHES IN LOVELAND deal went down:

CHELSEA (on a rainy night during the height of NYC’s new monsoon season)—

My collaborator, Joshua Fouts, wears round black glasses. We’d been invited to the event by David Green and Liz Dreyer with a pink lotus and two shining orange fish inked on her calf. We’d met at White Oak Plantation near Jacksonville, Florida, where we drove past rhinos and zebras on the way to the lodge to meet in groups and discuss the consequences of the economic downturn on the arts and how this might be overcome through meaningful participation in the digital culture. We promised we’d meet again in New York. I invited GG, who now stands in front of me, having run late from Brooklyn but committed to keeping his word.

There he is, all six-feet-six-and change of him, wearing a shirt that says, “I’ve got twelve inches in Detroit,” in neat capital letters that could only have been ironed in place by the man himself. He goes by Jerry because he’s not crazy about George Gerald Paffendorf III, but he doesn’t seem like a Jerry to me, so I call him GG.

“What’s going on in Detroit?” I ask. GG lifts his eyebrows because the answer to that question is going to take some time, but he’s excited for the chance to tell, and I can’t wait to hear.

The room has been set up as a bar for the night, so people come and go. Josh, GG and I sequester ourselves in a corner overlooking the amber rectangles of light spangling the wet slate street-scape. Josh had met GG in Singapore in 2007. I met them both on the same day in San Jose a few months later.

GG is 27 years old and he’s already an admired futurist, which may explain why he has an air of time travel about him, as if you could set the dial to any time or place in which humans have interacted and he would find a way to improve life through his imagination and capacity for catalyzing collaboration. For over two years I’ve been waiting for his Big Idea, but I had no idea it would end up being so tiny.

“Detroit,” he says. “Okay. Loveland, is what the project is called–a million square inches that I’m going to sell for $1 each. Anyone from around the world can buy one, or more than one, and be a part of the community. The inches are just a jumping point for people, and they can be as big as the minds of the community. Loveland is a platform to connect people. People will come together to build this new land. Every inch will exist in the physical world and in the digital realm at the same time. What’s going to happen? There’s no way to know in advance, and that’s the fun of it. But you know something will happen. Reality will…be…augmented!”

He stopped to eat a cheese cracker and a few grapes and then went on to explain why he’d chosen to tie a virtual project with the physical world by placing it in Detroit, a story I know all too well from my work in the Gulf Coast: economic decline, mass exodus of the jobless population, widespread systemic change and the absence of a clear path for transformation.

“Detroit was the most futuristic city that existed for a time,” he says, “an engineer’s dream of tinkering coming together with a possible vision of reality, like the automobile moving at sixty miles in an hour move a person to another place. The universe is like a seed. So it’s just how big can you make your inches? What can you do with an inch if the only thing stopping you from making it as big as you can imagine is your ability to imagine it? Think about all the things people can do with it.”

To GG, confusion isn’t an obstacle. If some people don’t get it, that won’t stop him from reaching those who do. Around us, people listen and gather, and someone asks for more information on the Loveland project. What can people do with an inch, really? Is this a real inch, or an imaginary inch that some guy from New Jersey will sell you for $1 because he has a million of them?

“The inch markers are just something that give a human feeling,” GG said. “They act as a connector for the sense of ownership. An inch sounds stupid until suddenly you have something that can be connected to other people, and then you see how big and important that is. I know it’s funny. I know it makes people smile. It’s game-like, but it’s a city that will fit into a warehouse.”

The population of Loveland, if all million inches are sold, might end up being higher than the current population of Detroit: 800,000.

“Dancing Ink Productions will take 1000 INCHES IN LOVELAND,” I say. “For economic and cultural development. Loveland is a new city and I’m going to create a neighborhood and document its development. The neighborhood will be known as the Imagination Age.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” said GG. “Right on.”

I grab a stack of paper and start to sketch out the grid.

“You already know where you want your inches to be?” he asks. “Look at that! It’s real!”

It *is* real. Starting next week, space within 1000 INCHES IN LOVELAND: The Imagination Age,” will be available.

Follow on Twitter: @1000Inches.

In 2008, Rita J. King began collaborating with Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life in telling the story about how brick-and-mortar companies were using Second Life very creatively and successfully. The collaboration has resulted in a series of Case Studies written by Rita J. King. A sampling of those essays are below.

• Children’s Memorial Museum of Chicago
• CIGNA-vielife
• IBM
• Intel
• Metanomics
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Northrop Grumman
• Tuev-Nord

On July 14, 2008 Dancing Ink Productions produced a major event for Fortune 500 company Manpower, Inc., called the “Power of Collaboration: Manpower’s First Anniversary in Second Life.”  The event included a report by the same name (downloadable as a PDF file here or by clicking on the above picture) exploring the influence and impact of virtual worlds, which Manpower considers to be an emerging labor market, on the world of work. (Read the Manpower, Inc. press release here.)

The event included three pieces of machinima by DIP in collaboration with machinimist  Draxtor Despres. You can watch the videoshere (1, 2 and 3) in the order in which they were shown during today’s event.

This celebration would not have taken place without the visionary leadership of Manpower Inc. Senior Vice President Global Workforce Strategy Tammy Johns, whose thoughtfulness and expertise formed the basis of the tone of the event, which was reflective of the company’s significant global presence. Our conversations during the writing of this report were rigorous and full of energetic momentum.  Dancing Ink Productions would also like to thank Dan Darrow (Horatio Decosta in Second Life), who leads Manpower’s Second Life presence, and Jessica Qin, IBM’s Chief Virtual Architect, who first introduced Rita J. King (as her avatar Eureka Dejavu) while working on a report for IBM, “From the Fire Pit to the Forbidden City: An Outsider’s Inside Look at the Evolution of the VUC.” Jessica, at the time, was working to build Manpower Island.

The July 14, 2008 event, which celebrated Manpower’s first year in Second Life with a roundtable of thoughtful individuals including Manpower Inc. Chairman and CEO Jeff Joerres (who shone when he spontaneously took on the challenge of discussing existential issues) and Philip Rosedale in a world that he created.  Other speakers included Lynda M. Applegate, Professor, Harvard Business School, Dr. Jonathan Joseph Orr, co-founder of the Orr Institute, Dominique Turcq, President, Boostzone Institute, and Second Life’s Gentle Heron who runs an organization for people with disabilities called Virtual Ability, Inc (her Second Life efforts were profiled in “The Story of the Heron Sanctuary,” a January 2008 article in DIP’s Dispatches from the Imagination Age) .

The event was covered live on Second Life public affairs program Metanomics and streamed live on Second Life’s SLCN TV. An archive of the video can be found here.

Rita J. King blogged about the event on Dispatches from the Imagination Age:

One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in the work of virtual work, it was revealed at the roundtable, is the fact that some people are sleeping while others go about their lives half a world away, and therefore cannot collaborate by dint of the fact that they are simply not conscious at the same time.

Philip Rosedale expressed an intriguing idea about a global work flow in which people will pass off work to one another. It’s an exciting idea, because it will lead to greater productivity and improved cultural understanding throughcollaborative energy, which would accelerate the rate at which difficult problems are solved. My prediction is thatanother model will be overlaid on the global work flow–people’s rhythms will change and the cycles of sleep and waking will adjust for those who find themselves collaborating on complex projects. I first heard of this phenomenon whiledocumenting IBM’s Virtual Universe Community, when scientists in multiple continents discussed their method for working together on protein folding experiments. I just experienced it myself while working with a global DIP team consisting of, among others, a Scot (Toran Cult), an Austalian (Starr Sonic), a German living in California (Draxtor Despres) and Americans from both coasts and in between. It never really felt like we were dealing with time zones, even when I counted the hours on my fingers to see when we might all be in-world again, but tonight, I’m feeling the jetlag of virtual work, even though we always met in the Metaverse.

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