“Stadtplandienst vs. Me” is a video based on a court trial about a copyright violation that “Stadtplandienst“, an online map service, accused me of. On Wednesday, September 17 (20h / 22h) there will be a screening at the YOUin3D.com Headquarters, Hannoverscher Str. 3, 10115 Berlin.
After the premiere on Wednesday I will post the video here.
At a party this weekend I had a conversation about Second Life. A bit more than a year ago that would not have been worth mentioning, because the media was enthusiastic about SL and I was working on a documentary about SL residents. Meanwhile Second Life has been declared dead by the media inside the traditionally narrow world of advertising. The discussion I had was with two people who had obviously worked for corporate clients on SL projects and were disappointed that things had not been working out the way they had expected. They thought the major problem was that there can only be some 60 visitors on one island simultaniously. “For web application we think in millions” one of them exclaimed. Apparently it had never occurred to him that millions of avatars on a 256×256 metre piece of land would literally step on each others feet and that for reaching large audiences like that the place metaphor was maybe not the right approach anyway.
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Last night we organized a screening of “Mein wunderbares Ich”, a documentary about Second Life Residents by Susanne Jäger that initiated and conceived together with the director. The film was aired on Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) at the same time. Parallely there was a screening at Alexanderplatz in New Berlin / Second Life.
For both screenings, the one in RL and the one in SL we came close to the max amount of visitors that the location / server can welcome. In the RL screening we projected the image on the shop window of the galerie space, so it was visible from inside and outside the gallery.
Some of the photos above were taken by Tobias Neisecke of YOUseeMEin3D, the creators of New Berlin.
You can watch / download the whole film in MP4 format here. Unfortunately it is in German and has no English suptitles (yet).
On Wednesday, August 29, we will organize a screening of “Mein wunderbares Ich” (My Marvellous Self) at Gallery 35, Simon-Dach-Str. 35, Berlin Friedrichshain.
“My Marvelous Self” is a documentary film about a Second Life residents. I initiated the project and conceived the film together with Susanne Jäger, who is an experienced documentary film maker. By the time we had managed to find a TV station that was interested (October 2006), I had almost given up and thought that Second Life was not even interesting anymore, because there had been much media coverage. I did not expect that the Hype was just about to take off.
Now the hype is over and mainstream media switched to Second Life bashing instead. That’s the way it goes and of course we anticipated that.
Our film does not deal with SL’s potential in advertisement, we never thought that this was the most interesting part or even an interesting part at all. If anything, the interesting part is that it is not at all easy to use Second Life successfully for advertising. In many ways it is almost absurd to use it for advertising unless you want to reach a very specific group and unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money per contact.
However, we focused on the emotional and psychological side of Second Life. Even though the way Second Life is experienced does probably not differ so much from other (even text based) role playing games, it can be said that it is more accessible and attracts a much wider variety of players. The ability to design your content and environment also adds a new layer of communication and defines a new field of “knowledge production”. This is certainly one reason why Second Life feels so real for many residents. At the same time it is probably also what makes it less attractive for players who want to be entertained or who want to compete with other players in a more defined environment.
I’m very happy that the film is finished and that it will be aired soon. Unfortunately it is not decided yet, if there will be a version with English subtitles. The rules and norms of public TV stations in Germany can be surprising. It looks like not failing with television ratings is more important for them than marketing a film internationally.
I am working on an art project that consists of a service: I will run a temporary agency that offers personalized training programs for clients to achieve a body that resembles their Second Life avatar (furries excluded :)).
For the project I am looking for models with athletic bodies. They will be photographed for posters and artwork that is part of the interior design of the temporary agency “Ãœbermensch - Become Your Avatar”.
If you know someone who fulfills the physical requirements and would like to be part of such a project, please let me know: joaoflux at gmail dot com
Unfortunately I do not have a budget, but of course models get copies of their photos and a poster.
Wonderland by Johannes von Matuschka and Daniel Michelis is an experimental theater piece, based on Alice in Wonderland. It premiered at Café Schaubühne on Frideay (June 8, 2007).
Wonderland and it’s residents are represented by 4 live projections of Second Life while Alice is performed by a real actress (Ina Tempel) and an avatar (Alize). In the first scene Alice is horrified because her size of her body changes multiple times, but never back to normal. The scene is illustrated with the “Edit Appearance” dialog of Second Life. It’s such an obvious choice, that it is bit embarrassing to watch (Obvious choices in art insult the audience’s intelligence!). It also reminds of a Second Life demo. With her screaming and over-acting Ina Tempel does everything to increase the embarrassment. I don’t want to go too much into real theater critique here. One could criticize many of the formal choices of Wonderland, especially when it comes to how the text chat is used (the actress often repeats the text in the chat). The multiple Second Life projections could be used for breaking up the narrative and for parallel storytelling. And of course the Second Life stage design should have had more of a surrealistic quality (it lookes like the designers concentrated mostly on the avatars). All that said, one must admit that the combination of a theater and live projections of performances inside computer games worked. Computer games and online worlds in theater can be more than just a cheap effect. As machinima film productions have shown, computer games allow for designing scenes with comparatively small budgets and much artistic freedom. Theater can be more a more experimental art form than film and it would be quite strange, if we wouldn’t see interesting productions in the near future. Computer games and especially online games seem a more natural choice in theater than video projections (which are quite usual in contemporary theater). Computer games allow real improvisation and in online worlds it is even possible to integrate interaction with residents who have no idea that they are in a theater play with 150 people watching them.
