Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

Curiza as the owner of the sim and PAL, AmyLee as the head of design, Shaggy and Xavier as the
co-designers along with several other contributors.
Curiza is a Danish music librarian, who specializes in networking and distribution of music
archives to various libraries in Denmark. Curiza is not a builder, but he has been active in the ideageneration
stage. He also provides the main content, which is the four streaming genres of music
that he selects and organizes from his archive. Since Curiza’s professional affiliation is with a media
company, he mentions how they support PAL in terms of equipment and music. He says “I just
recycle the research I use from 8 to 4. And extract the best of it into this environment.” Curiza also
describes himself as a ‘gamer for a long time’, and a SL resident for less than a year. His first
introduction to SL was during what he calls “the hype”, through co-worker’ recommendations. On
the other hand, he describes the reason behind his interest in SL with a reference to his personal
life. Curiza says SL was a place for him to go for socializing, meeting friends and other Danish
parents after his children go to sleep, which is the only time he could spend some quiet time and
have fun without leaving them alone at home. By using his networking skills, Curiza built a wide
archive of creative social resources (i.e. designers, programmers, artists, musicians), and he
believes he is successful at managing these various resources in working together while having fun.
Curiza also mentions his particular interest in exploring the creative aspect and user-generated
content in SL.
The project was managed by AmyLee, who is a student in Britain 2 . AmyLee contributed to the
project both by content-generation and decision-making. Her decisions were the final according to
the team’ hierarchy. AmyLee has been in SL for three years, and she has been generating content
for the last two years. She explains how becoming a content generator affected her SL experience
as: “that totally changed my interest in SL and the way I live in it now.” She mentions SL as the
“only tool” for her in generating content. Although she is and has been involved in professional
projects in SL, she describes herself as “not a pro” as her designs can only pay for her “fashion
addiction.” AmyLee has tried to run a furniture business in SL, after which she decided to work on
custom builds such as PAL, or the international Mamachinema film festival. She is the only
member of the current PAL team who has been paid for her work. However, she says she would
have done such a project for free as long as she has fun doing it. AmyLee is deaf . She describes her
interest in SL as a way to "rebuild" herself when she turned deaf, and “as a way of having a place
where [she is] not impaired” because at that time, there was no voice-chat in SL. AmyLee has not
been deaf since she was born, which means she can “still imagine how it is for people to listen to
2
Since I have never met AmyLee in real-life, our communication was through our avatars, text-chat and e-mail. The type
and amount of personal information that is discussed during the interviews were left to the participants’ own choosing,
and I inquired such issues further only if they are relevant to the design process. AmyLee preferred not to share more of
her personal information about her offline identity during our interviews, including her nationality.
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