Paradata

I open the second blog post with a quote of the London Charter from the glossary of terms:

The Charter defines “paradata” as information about human processes of understanding and interpretation of data objects. (Paradata is thus constantly being created, irrespective of whether they are systematically recorded or disseminated.) Example of paradata include a note recording method in a laboratory report, descriptions stored within a structured dataset of how evidence was used to interpret an artefact, or a comment on methodological premises within a research publication. It is closely related, but somewhat different in emphasis, to “contextual metadata”.

This is kind of an odd thing for the QuickStop. One is always trying make things more perfect or editing things slightly. I'll talk a bit about the people who dropped by in the project and the feedback I received plus my thoughts in the development. As it is so close metadata I'll talk and think about mental side of things, the constantly created aspect and talk about the metadata another post.

I found the most influential aspects of "mental" paradata, the stuff that is constantly being created in one's mind, to be the decisions about what to do and what materials to use or create. The plan was to make the QS and a space. It's kind of taken on a life (a second life?).

The changes that were made to this were based on user demand. People said "Where's RST Video?" So that was built. Then the shops were deserted, so clerks were put in. Then I wanted sound to be in compliance with the project plan, so dialogue that was technically suitable was chosen.

So many things happened that I didn't see coming as I lacked experience with Second Life. Items as the walls which were originally using the concrete texture from Second Life. Relying on Second Life wasn't going to work, upon completion I had uploaded 130 textures in total. Each one added as something came up, some accidentally uploaded twice in the wee hours.

Other odd things came up like doing different languages for the note cards. I felt this was a bit of a stretch in regards to the context of the project. No effort was made to exclude others. English was the supported language because the message boards, the vast majority of wiki content and the DVD commentaries are in English. I do not expect a free translator would have done very well.

Adam Rosmer, hahaRepublic King and Betta Palen often came by during development and gave me suggestions. These were users I had not seen in Second Life before and were very interested in the project overall. They formed an unofficial beta user group of fans. Betta Palen and I collaberated on the Dante avatar. Melancholy Graves (Drew) also made several appearences and taught me a few things about how scripting worked. He donated the script which made the clerks always face in your direction. His help was very valuable as I had contemplated making a side and back for the clerks. This was a much more sophisticated and apt solution.

Interpretation of the project was mostly done in the planning phase but as I made things and became more experienced I got new ideas, such as the dump out the back and putting in references to the X-Files and Cloverfield. Things like the products inside the store came down to qualities such as mise en scene and screen accuracy on the metadata table. Things like the Koala Mutant Bear is a direct line from the film as a befuddled customer reads out a headline thus it is screen accuracy, just like the world's fattest man weds world's tiniest woman paper which featured prominently in shots. This differs, for example to things like the Get Fat Pack cereal box which was mise en scene, setting the scene, of the a convenience store.

That brings to mind the aspect of the limits and new areas Second Life gave the project. SL is limited in ways such as the prim count (the building block of all objects are prims) and thus having a massive amount of detail, will slow down the client computer and the network. So a builder is limited to having a sensible/low amount of prims. This prevents one from creating a picture perfect QuickStop. 

Navigation is another problem. I don't know why you can't walk around as if you are in a first person shooter. Being able to move around with precision is important inside the virtual realm. I found it terribly frustrating not to be able to have a first person view when building something and when you are in first person you cannot interact with things except for left click.

Other aspects of the project which, in an ideal world, would be different would be linking up the QuickStop with Eden Prairie mall, the setting of Smith's second film, Mallrats. In an cut scene the lead actors drive past the QuickStop. This is where the road leading past the shops would have been going on an infinite time/budget basis. But what would you do there? In Second Life so many people earn a living from selling virtual objects and the Linden dollar is an actual traded currency. A user could make a virtual shopping mall and sell virtual goods or real goods in an Amazon kind of way as an extension of the Internet/brick and mortar shops that Smith runs, called Jay and Silent Bob's secret stash. This would start treading into a Metaverse as in Snowcrash, a brilliant book, or Ghost In The Shell. There are other elements that could be added such as a film RPG type element such as the I Am Legend publicity campaign module that sprung up in Second Life. Elements like these may simply replicate the film in a new medium, which would ultimately be pointless. Some aspects of items originally made for screen are may be converted into a digital paradigm but the purest and most compelling form will likely remain within the film itself.

Next up, metadata.