June 26, 2006

Watch Avatars Dancing in SecondLife

On June 9th, I wrote a post, "Dancing in the Second Life Virtual World." In this post, I wrote about Rik Panganiban's thoughts about the limitations of avatar dancing in such virtual environments. He followed-up with a comment where he provided a link to a few video clips that show you exactly what it looks like to dance in SL - I encourage you to watch these clips.

Even though these animated dance videos are rudimentary at this point, I think that SL and other virtual worlds should be taken seriously by dancers. As Phoenix Psaltery, who also posted a comment to my post about dancing in SL, wrote:

Yes, Second Life has shortcomings when it comes to things like dance and other activities that use a lot of personal expression, but please understand that SL is really in its infancy as far as what will someday be possible. It's come a long way in just three years; imagine what it will be like in three more, or ten more.

Already SL is a real cash economy where users are buying products with the virtual world's Linden Dollars that can be exchange for real money. In addition, a post in B2Day blog links to story about how Amazon is exploring how to link the SL virtual world to its web services so that physical products can be sold from within SecondLife.

Imagine visiting a dance clothing boutique in SL, trying on shoes and clothing and then purchasing the real merchandise from within this store? Or watching a SL-based performance by a dance company and being able to purchase video clips of the "real world" performance by the same group.

There are many possibilities and as the ability to control dancing avatars continues to improve in this parallel universe, many new doors will be opened for dancers.

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