It seems that Pop Art Lab region (SLURL)will be closing in November 2012 in Second Life, according to the Pop Art Lab Blog. After 5 years of having a Second Life presence it seems the Pop Art Lab group will be taking a break from regular activities. It’s sad to hear about the closure of the sim and i’m sure it will be missed alot.
Snapshot of inside of Pop Art Lab.
The main reasons….
- Streaming can in most cases be made using services like Spotify
- Mass adoption of virtual worlds lacks significant growth
- Barely no RL musicians or brands are willing to invest in SL
- Focus on Real Life and Real Life clients
What happens next?
- PAL will continue building up Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. and focus entirely on posting news about music and shiny new tech in social media (games, virtual worlds included).
- PAL’s inworld group will continue though most updates will be linked to above networks.
- Inworld streaming will stop but will be used on special occasions via above networks.
- Sim will be gone in November (unless we receive unexpected interest from new partners).
Snapshot from above of Pop Art Lab in Second Life looking really futuristic.
On the Pop Art Blog post mentions the following details about the break and closure of the sim below…
The time has come to step away for a while from virtual worlds. After spending 5 years testing and playing with Second Life and Virtual Worlds platforms, I have decided to take hiatus. It has been a fantastic ride but I don’t think we can push it much further without significant changes in the technologies surrounding these environments.
This is not a permanent farewell to Second Life from Pop Art Lab, more of an extended break of our activities and a chance for us to reflect on our past successes and future projects but without the day to day responsibility of changing streams, worrying about tier payments and constant promotion of our services.
We already accomplished more than I ever dreamt about (brief Google search list 490 unique hits: “pop art lab”= 204.000!).
Over the years Pop Art Lab have accomplished a lot of awesome things…
- Created the very first fully immersive music jukebox worldwide enabling avatars to meet in virtual environments and walk around exploring 4 separate music streaming channels
- 75.000-100.000 visitors
- 15-20 virtual TV shows/concerts
- 2000 new full length albums streamed
- Mentioned in Los Angeles Times (for creating designs for Craig Lyons RL/SL concert)
- Mentioned at The Swedish Internet Days conference 2011 (in Robin Teigland‘s speech, with huge viewership nationwide)
- Hosted 50+ digital events
- Creating influential designs (Torley Linden visited Pop Art Lab prior to opening his PAL “cube” inspired sim – see last pic in above slides)
- Met various RL music celebrities avatars praising our work
- Held presentations in San Francisco, Dublin (Ireland), Lahti (Finland) plus many more in Denmark
- Participated in various Linden Lab developer programs
- Participated in VW Sense-making and Innovation: A strategic research project at Roskilde University, Copenhagen Business School and partners project 2008-2012
- Helped translate the official Linden Lab viewer into Danish
- Set new standards for rolling out compelling machinima contests/eventscreating music videos for RL artists
- RL meetings with a variety of influential RL music tech developers incl.Alexander Ljung (co-founder of Soundcloud)
- Fronted secondlife.com Destination Guide numerous times and as first ever Scandinavian company
- Stayed in Destination Guide’s music section throughout 4-5 years
- Maintained and grown a huge network of valuable RL connections from across the globe
- Held RL seminar day with Henrik Bennetsen (Sirikata/Katalabs) on using virtual worlds in Danish public library sector
- Build a close relationship to national Danish/Scandinavian copyright institutions KODA, Gramex and NCB
- Build a close relationship to local music business and entrepreneurs
- Build an army of music lovers in a community with no physical border including 600 members from Bangkok to Aruba!
- Supervised and tech setup of mixed reality Metanomics TV-show held in Denmark 2010
- Supervised and designed the 4 sim complex for MMIF Machinima Festival 2010
- Received praise and kudos by Mark D. Kingdon (M Linden), ex Linden Lab CEO during above MMIF (see blogpost).
What do you think of the closure of the Pop Art Lab sim & the team taking a break from Second Life?
Daniel Voyager 
bummer but not surprising =(
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😦
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Wow, the list of PAL achievements is impressive! I am sorry the Labs are closing and really hope they might return one day. Personally, I loved the early PAL set ups. These were simple, more ‘intimate’ settings and we could travel from one ‘sound stage’ to another with ease. I hope Claus will come back one day and set up something based on this early approach. I wish PAL and Claus the best!
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I hope that Pop Art Lab sim will return someday cause it would be sad if nothing happened.
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Thanks Dan as always for your support and for highlighting PAL activities. The decision to step back from SL as a platform for our work was taken after a lot of thought, a couple of sleepless nights, a few beers and after facing some hard facts…but hopefully we won’t be gone forever!
This hiatus is due for a few reasons but mainly (as described by Claus Uriza on our website), for us to concentrate on real life activities, alternative methods of virtual music promotion and to explore new technologies.
There’s always a sense of sadness at the end of anything, but the whole PAL team in both lives intend to stay in SL in some form and we have some exciting plans as a music business to come in the near future.
Sincere thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past five years and we plan on closing our sim with a massive party very soon-we intend to go out in rock n roll style!
Persia Bravin
PAL Media Manager RL/SL
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Thanks very much for your kind comment, Persia. I understand what you are saying and I’ll look forward to the sim closing party announcement soon.
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