On October 9 at 7am SL time (4pm Stockholm time, 10am New York Time) we’ll be having another installment of our series of free Swedish lessons for beginners. They’ll be held at the auditorium of the Second House of Sweden on the Swedish Institute sim in Second Life. Join instructor Kvint Larsson for a half hour of basic Swedish followed by a period of free-form discussion - for example for questions from people who may already know some Swedish.
Second Life is not a physical place but a virtual world that anyone with a computer and a broadband internet connection can reach. To take part in the lessons if you have never been in Second Life before, start here. You will be asked to download some software, open a (free) account, and then begin with a tutorial. If you want to attend the lessons, give yourself at least half an hour to download, install and familiarize yourself with the controls.
Last week’s lesson provided us with some valuable feedback as to what works and what doesn’t. This next lesson will be a lot more structured, as requested by those who attended. See you there!
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
September 28, 2007 · 5 Comments
Sweden: Open Skies, Open Minds is a new 4-minute film released this week that encapsulates a little bit of everything that makes Sweden, well, Sweden.
And you can now watch it in Second Life, at the auditorium of Second House of Sweden:
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
What: Free Swedish lessons for beginners
When: Four courses, starting Tuesday, October 2, 7am SL time (4pm Stockholm time, 10am New York time)
Where: Second House of Sweden auditorium, Swedish Institute sim.
Ever wish you spoke just enough Swedish to break the ice with the cute Swedish boy/girl/furry you’ve been spying at the other end of the dance floor? The Swedish Institute can help.
Starting Tuesday, October 2, at 7am SL time (4pm Stockholm time), we’ll be giving a series of free Swedish lessons in Second Life for beginners. You’ll find that you in fact understand quite a lot, even if you have never have heard spoken Swedish before. You don’t need to prepare beforehand or know any Swedish — just show up, hang out and have fun learning.
Instructor Lasse will be conducting four courses in total, using Second Life’s voice chat technology and a video screen. Expected dates for the subsequent courses are October 9, 22 and November 5, all at 7am SL time. Attend one, some, or all.
See you there!
Note: Please be sure to have voice-chat enabled (to hear Lasse and others) and Quicktime installed (to view the live video).
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
What: Gallery Talk by Nationalmuseum at Second House of Sweden
When: Tuesday, September 25, 15:30 Stockholm time (06:30 Second Life time)
Where: Second House of Sweden, Swedish Institute, Second Life
Who: Helén Hallgren Archer, Nationalmuseum’s curator for art education
How: Using Second Life’s new voice technology
Nationalmuseum’s gallery talk in August got great reviews and feedback, and we are happy to host another one this week. Helén will be talking about four of the artworks from Nationalmuseum that are on display at the Second House of Sweden, exploring how nature inspired these Swedish artists in different ways.
The four art pieces are by these artists:
Ernst Josephson (1851-1906), “The Water Sprite”, painted 1882;
Anders Zorn (1860-1920), “Midsummer Dance”, painted 1897;
Prince Eugen (1856-1949), “The Cloud”, painted 1896;
Märta Måås Fjetterström (1873-1941), “Unicorn in the forest”, textile from 1920.
During the last gallery talk, we were testing to see if Second Life’s voice technology really works when used with a lot of people. It did. This time round, we hope to have ironed out some of the kinks, so the whole experience should be a lot smoother. See you there!
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
Invasão Sueca (”Swedish Invasion”) brings Swedish pop music to Brazil, and now also to Second Life. This whole week, Swedish bands such as Love Is All, Hello Saferide, Maia Hirasawa and Suburban Kids With Biblical Names are playing in Recife, Porto Alegre and Sao Paolo — on September 21st, the performance is also being broadcast live via streaming video to the Second House of Sweden, Sweden’s virtual embassy in Second Life.
The concert starts at 23.00 Sao Paolo time (Sept 21), 22.00 New York time, (Sept 21), 19.00 Second Life time (Sept 21), 04:00 Stockholm time (Sept 22). On stage will be Suburban Kids With Biblical Names and Maia Hirasawa. See you at the Second House of Sweden on the Swedish Institute sim.
About Invasão Sueca: Invasão Sueca is a project by the Swedish Institute and Export Music Sweden to promote Swedish music in Brazil. In 2006 Jens Lekman, El Perro Del Mar and Hell On Wheels toured Brazil, which resulted in front-page news on the culture pages of Sao Paolo’s largest daily papers. In June 2007 José Gonzales toured Brazil with Invasão Sueca.
About the live video broadcast in Second Life: As with everything we do in Second Life, we approach this project as a playful experiment. We will do live but informal testing on September 20th (same times, but 24 hours earlier, so do drop by Second House of Sweden then and help us stress test:-) What’s the technology involved? On stage, a video camera and microphones relay the concert to a computer connected to the internet, running Wirecast. Wirecast encodes the video and sends it to Qbrick in Sweden, which in turn broadcasts the video to all those who visit the auditorium at the Second House of Sweden.
[UPDATE: Due to technical difficulties -- a bad internet connection in Brazil -- we weren't able to bring this live. Apologies all round, that is the way it is new technology:-)]
Categories: Announcement · Second Life
To paraphrase a famous New Yorker cartoon, In Second Life, nobody knows you’re Newt Gingrich. Apparently, he’s visited the Second House of Sweden, and namedrops the virtual embassy as an inspiration for a stronger US push into virtual worlds:
Second Life is a more sophisticated extranet, representing the next wave of collaboration using a 3D Internet virtual world. It is so compelling that people actually spend real money to buy real estate in this online reality. The Swedish government actually has an embassy in Second Life.
Newt may not have invented the internet, but he’s certainly pushing the 3D web:-) (Via The Escapist, which adds a nice take on the news)
Categories: Second House of Sweden · Trend watch
Another Swedish univertsity is venturing into Second Life. Umeå University’s HUMlab, “a vibrant and diverse meeting place for the humanities, culture and information technology”, has just bought part of a sim and is beginning to explore the space. The HUMlab Blog is documenting progress — you can read more about it here and here.
Categories: Second Life · Trend watch
Nationalmuseum had their first gallery talk at the Second House of Sweden today, and quite a few people showed up — I haven’t seen the statistics yet, but it looks just from counting that we nearly had a full house as “Uggla Fredriksson”, aka Helén Hallgren Archer, Nationalmuseum’s curator for art education, gave her presentation on four different works of art hanging i the lobby.
The talk itself took around half an hour, which felt like the perfect length, and the voice technology that Helén used to speak worked well. There were a couple of issues with sound levels, but this was mainly people figuring out how to use the new controls: Remember that you can choose to hear the loudest voices from where you are standing, or else from where you are looking at. I haven’t decided myself which is more natural. Additionally, you can set the loudness of individual voices.
The feedback we’ve gotten was very positive, so I think this means we’ll be doing more of these soon. If you want to find out about future events at the Second House of Sweden, subscribe to this blog or join the “Second House of Sweden” group in Second Life.
Categories: Second House of Sweden · Update
Andy Nyman’s Polarbear Podcast, a weekly radio show about all things Swedish in English, is now being piped into the Swedish Orientation sim. Press play on the music player while walking around there, going for a swim or while sitting in the Sauna to listen to the latest edition.
Andy’s show joins Radio Sweden’s daily English language podcast, which is broadcast daily from the Second House of Sweden on the main sim.
The only tricky bit — moving from one sim to the other interrupts what you’re listening to. That, alas, is the limit of Second Life technology today:-) Best to stay put in the sauna then.
Categories: Announcement · Second House of Sweden
