Word: virtual
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About a year ago in my first visit to Second Life, the popular online virtual world, I spent half an hour trying to make my avatar, or online character, look like a hotter version of myself - which isn't easy when you don't know how to use the tools. When I finally made it onto Money Island to mingle, a stranger approached me and said, "Hello there, Devon." I froze. Then I tried to run. I was desperately searching for the teleport tool when my sister walked into the room, peered over my shoulder at the computer screen...
...didn't realize how instructive my sister's question was until recently, when I discovered research being done at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL). Jeremy Bailenson, head of the lab and an assistant professor of communication at Stanford, studies the way self-perception affects behavior. No surprise that what we think about ourselves affects the confidence with which we approach the world. What is a surprise is that this applies in the virtual world too. With my plain=Jane avatar and my inexperience in Second Life, I did what most people would want...
...Movies like Polar Express and Sin City proffered seductive experiments in digital cinema and green screen, but Speed Racer announces the arrival of the virtual movie. If you watch the film overwhelmed by the assault of seductive visual information and wonder what you're seeing, here's the happy answer: the future of movies. And the people who made it? They're the industry's can-do-anything superheroes. Not Spider-Men, not Hulks or X-Men. No: Speed Demons...
TELEVISION Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey Cinemax; May 15, 8 p.m. E.T. The joke about Second Life is that it's for people without first ones. But during six months of "filming" in the virtual realm, Douglas Gayeton finds fellow seekers asking questions about identity, authenticity and whether anyone can create a better world. Also running on YouTube, iTunes and, yes, Second Life, this is a digital life well examined...
Movies like Polar Express and Sin City proffered seductive experiments in digital cinema and green screen, but Speed Racer brings the virtual movie to full maturity--the, for now, ultimate blending of man and machine. If you watch the film, are overwhelmed by the assault of seductive visual information and wonder what you're seeing, here's the happy answer: the future of movies. We sing the movie electric...