I am dying to write in-depth about the Forbidden City virtual world project I’ve been helming for the last few years. Alas, that must wait for the launch itself.* But. We can talk about it obliquely, no?

There’s a scene** in the Virtual Forbidden City in which a painter sits in a garden with the imperial family, painting away. It’s a simple thing, really, but I find it immensely thought-provoking. As a visitor you’re an unseen spectator of the painted depiction of a moment in a world which is itself the depiction of a moment of daily life in a virtual milieu. A snapshot (which your avatar can take) would reveal a recursive scene-within-a-scene or, in the lingo of the art world, a mise en abyme — a technique used for centuries in all manner of paintings, woodcuts, and tapestries.

This got me wondering if there is any historical analog to the depiction of artists themselves inside the frame of the same scene they are painting. Cursory searching and lazytweeting yielded no actual term for such a composition, but in fact there are precedents.

Maybe the most famous is Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. The work shows the painter (on the left holding a brush, duh) but also situates the viewer (that’d be you) as the object of his gaze. In other words, just looking at the painting you’re role-playing royalty.

Even more interesting is the mirror in the back of the room which reflects the royal couple (the true subjects of the painting-within-a-painting) — or which may simply reflect the canvas itself. In either case the viewer, while unseen, is a participant in the space.

So there it is folks. Diego Velázquez pretty much nailed the lure of virtual worlds in a painting 352 years ago.

• Transcend viewing; embrace participation. (Even if, in this case, it is implied.)
• Fictionalize the first-person. (Nerdspeak: permit the possibility of role-playing.)
• Engage the viewer/participant by telling stories mid-story. (What the hell is that guy doing in the doorway? And why is that kid’s foot on the dog? And, the midgets?)

Scrolling forward a few centuries we have Mark Tansey, an artist smitten with the contrast between the static moment and the dynamic (lengthy) process of painting itself. Tansey’s Action Painting I and II place the artist in a position that only a photographer could capture, depicting a moment of catastrophic energy as if it were just another still life of fruit.

See also the first Action Painting.

In the Virtual Forbidden City the painting scene is, essentially, a still life of the imperial family, but the fact that your viewing position is unlimited — you can walk around it, into it, or stick your nose right down onto the painting — speaks to both Velázquez’s and Tansey’s focus on the observer rather than the observed. This, to me, is the promise of virtual worlds. And something I hope we at least approach, if not achieve, with the VFC.

Of course the piece-de-resistance (artspeak, yes!) in this vein has got to be Robbie Dingo’s unbelievable recreation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I remember when we were building the prototype of the VFC in Second Life. SL, like many virtual worlds, is built from within, by avatars, moving primitive shapes like sorcerers. It was a striking scene being inside the world watching as walls were moved around, tweaked, textured and placed. Truly living inside the process of a painting.

If you’ve not seen Dingo’s video, do yourself this favor.

Phew, I made it. That was oblique enough, yes?

* And it must wait even a bit longer now. Eagle-eyed viewers of the site may have noticed I slyly changed the date of the project launch in the sidebar from “spring” until “fall” of this year, rounding out my involvement at a cool 4.5 years. Egads that’s a long time to work on a project.

* * Scenes in the VFC are basically looping historical tableaux that a visitor can approach on the grounds of the palace. Distinct from an activity which permits interaction.

The idea: use red wine to make a watercolor painting.

Why is this concept art?

A) Because what I tried to paint was the town seal of Barile, my great-grandparents’ home town in Italy
B) Because the wine is Aglianico del Vulture, grown in and around Barile, from the winery of the Paternosters, our distant relatives
C) Because the paper is from Amalfi, Italy, waypoint on our trip this summer
D) Because I am an awful painter, but the concept is quite good
E) All of the above

It can be done well — as this site, where I got the idea, shows.

The thing is, wine is a tough medium. Each time you put the brush to the paper, which in this case was 100% cotton, the wine dab pooled momentarily and then chose the rivulet of least resistance and poured into it. More topographical analysis and fluid dynamics than art, really.

Kinda makes a nice Rorschach though. Do you see an iPod?

So the annual holiday mix is about ready to go out. Shortly I’ll post the specifics on this year’s compendium, but for now a few tips having spent so much time in the Jewelboxing system putting it all together.

Warning, this is niche advice. Meaning, this might apply to one of my two readers. Really I’m posting this as Google fodder for future readers. A time capsule of advice, if you will.

If you use the Jewelboxing system you’re no doubt a fan of the simplicity and flexibility of the templates and the DIY construction of the cases themselves. Having made several hundred of the cases over the years I’ve come to the following conclusions.

• It is much easier to label the CD’s once you’ve set them in the case on the spindle. This holds them still while you apply.
• When ripping the perforations on the STtray sheet it is much easier to rip it latitudinally (the long side) first, then longitudinally.
• Those crazy tiny diagonal perforations near the hinge? Cut them with a small pair of scissors. Much easier than ripping them.
• Once you’ve printed the booklet inserts it is best to put stack them into 10 or 15 or so and weigh them down overnight with something heavy. This flattens them out so they sit in the tray better.
• When folding the edges of the STtray sheet (the parts that are at 90 degree angles to the tray itself) it is best to fold them at an angle greater than 90 degrees so that on inserting them into the tray there is resistance against the case wall. This makes for a tight fit and usually prevents the spindle tray from ripping the paper.
• Lastly, if you are putting anything in the hinge chamber don’t forget to rip off the little rectangle of paper that would normally be the spine. If you don’t, you won’t be able to see into the chamber edge-on.

And now to confirm the obvious: yes, I have spent too much time putting these suckers together. I need to go play in the snow.

Clever.

But this is cleverer.

I’ve been looking for a good desktop background. But not just anything. Over the years I’ve formed fairly strict requirements.

1. Usable. Not sure who first said “wallpaper makes bad stationery,” but it was my guiding principle. Backgrounds need to be easy to work against, contrasting highly with the folders and files that live on it. Photos of children, hot rods, and (sigh) rocket ships generally don’t offer this.
2. Widescreen. 1680 x 1050.
3. Constrained variation. I wanted the ability to change the background periodically but with some consistency from image to image.
4. Cool-looking. Understated references to various aspects of my geekiness score highly.

Well, I found the source material in this amazing collection of images from A Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson published in 1822. The last point was satisified first. These pages are beautiful, simultaneously astronomical and mythological, information design and storybook. But the best part is that they are a calendar sequence tracing the motion of the starry sky over the course of a year — perfect for changing desktops. In order to satisfy requirements one and two I had to do some modification. Inverting the colors immediately produced a pleasant white on blue that blueprintized the prints satisfactorily. Then I reduced opacity to 15% to make contrast with desktop elements generous.

It’s probably no coincidence that I am captivated by these images given my immersion in Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence right now. He makes a great case for the multi-layered beauty of astromonical graphics.

You can download the modified images here. (All 1680 x 1050.)

♈ Aries
♉ Taurus
♊ Gemini
♋ Cancer
♌ Leo
♍ Virgo
♎ – ♏ Libra – Scorpio
♐ Sagittarius
♑ – ♒ Capricorn- Aquarius
♓ Pisces

Also, all in a single zip (8 MB).

There’s always room for improvement of course. I have five displays on my desktop. Ideally they’d all share similar backgrounds that stretch horizontally from one to the next. You could do this with the astronomy prints (stitching the ecliptic into a continuous Mercator armillary across the displays), though only one machine would ever be correct to the current month.

Also, does anyone know if there is a way to have iCal.app schedule desktop image changes?

The annual Museums and the Web conference held its opening reception at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque two nights ago. The dinosaur exhibit — which is to say, most of the museum — featured a cellphone-based tour in two flavors, keypad-activated and voice-response. All you had to do was say the number or name of the exhibit and voila! But here’s the key point: the tour itself was put together only hours earlier in a conference workshop by museum professionals, podcast-style. This is really quite revolutionary since it shows a real speed-to-market (so to speak) and flexibility of audio tours that previously had not existed. Guerrilla museum tour creation. Yet another example of the web experience for content creators and visitors infiltrating the physical museum space. Wonderful!

And don’t forget to say “Gigantism.” Not only because it triggers the audio, but because it is a lovely word.