Last Wednesday the 7th, I had the privilege of co-presenting Brooklyn is Watching at the prestigious Technology/Art meetup dorkbot-nyc.

From their website:

“dorkbot-nyc is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties from the new york area who are involved in the creative use of electricity.”

Artist Jay van Buren, my partner on the Brooklyn is Watching project, and I gave a visual and conceptual tour of the project.

Jay described what Brooklyn is Watching is, and then I riffed on the value of the project to Popcha! as a sponsor. To summarize: Popcha! worked with Jay to realize Brooklyn is Watching in order to illustrate the depth of engagement possible in Virtual Worlds. Given an opportunity to have their creativity appreciated, people will flock to that opportunity. Many SL projects underperformed in the past because they did not put enough emphasis on engaging people in a discourse that genuinely values their contribution, I wanted to be sure that Popcha! had a very visible project that stood out in this regard, one that demonstrated the unique engagement opportunity that exists in Second Life. In the last 10 months we have had over 6k visitors to the sim with an average engagement time of nearly 1.25 hours. Our presentation was very well recieved by the full house in attendance.

We were honored to share the evening with interactive art pioneer Zach Lieberman whose idea of Doing It With Others (DIWO) summarized not just the projects on display that night, but indeed may be the credo of all social media.

Also presenting was Di Mainstone, whose incredible techno couture was the most masterful blending of textile craft and technology that I have seen to date.

I recommend that everyone reading this blog get on the dorkbot mailing list and attend a meeting in your area.