Machinima Report

Friday, November 16, 2007

Friday, October 12, 2007

Challenges

Our installation on IML island isn’t secure – I return one day to find a huge hole in our installation, the transport plane is missing, half of our habeas commons is gone...

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

and...Machinima!

Bernard Drax (aka Draxtor Depres) makes a surpurb machinima about the site and experience.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Rikomatic Blog Post

Rik Riel, a member of NPC, does a terrific job describing the experience in his blogpost.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Seton Hall Law School Constitution Day Event

Constitution Day Event Announcement
Constitution Day Event Schedule of Speakers
A huge team of people worked to make the simulcast work technically and it functioned without a hitch for the four hour conference. Our feed was broadcast within the conference in Seton Hall so that the speakers were able to view the avatars. We realize that we need to put a mechanism in place for the speakers to respond to avatar comments. Next time.
I marvel that I can participate in the conference, from home, in my kitchen. The conference begins with Professor Darius Rejali from Reed College, speaking on Torture and Crimimal Justice. He introduces himself by saying (and I am paraphrasing) that his uncle in Iran "never refrained from the use of torture" and thus he'd made a career of studying it, joking that his publisher referred to his 900 page book on the subject, Torture and Demcracy, as an object of torture. I'm riveted, a tear rolling down my face when I'm startled by the cats tearing into the kitchen with a bird. As Prof. Rejali delivers a comprehensive history of the subject, I witness my cats' expertise in the subject before intervening.

Friday, August 17, 2007

MOVING

We know we need land, a conference would require expansion and we’d promised a short stay on KULA2 (who have been beyond generous...and patient) I know that my colleagues at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML) at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts have just procured an island and I approach them about installing Gitmo, and the upcoming conference/simulcast there. Professor Steve Anderson and Director of the IML, Professor Holly Willis give us permission and we begin the process of porting Camp X-Ray to IML Island.

Now, IML Island isn’t like other islands because Professors Anderson and Willis have done their homework on classrooms in Second Life and have observed that conventional, brick and mortar, rows of desks types of classrooms don’t really make sense in an environment where students can, say, fly. They vow to invent a classroom for the disembodied by making it reconfigurable, and since this is a school of cinema(tic arts) the island becomes a mecca of immersive cinema; in fact it is constructed not of (virtual) “land” but projection screens. Thus, the entire IML island takes the form of a cube formed of screens. The better to drown/immerse you my dear...

Nonny and I meet IML’s builder, Bjorn Ziggy Littlefield-Palmer to coordinate the move with Buhbuhcuh. We decide on the roof – the interior is too cramped, and for the prison installation to be effective, it helps to be desolate, out of the sight of neighboring buildings. I’m there when Buhbuhcuh starts porting the Camp. It is an odd process – he raises his hands and gestures, and.....the buildings appear. It is strangely beautiful.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

From doldrums to deadline

It’s the summer doldrums in LA, Nonny has just moved back to her home town, I’m in the process of leaving it. Everything is in flux and our project is going nowhere. We’ve been interviewed by New Scientist and Der Spiegel, but our “Letters of Inquiry” to get funding are coming back empty.

I’d discovered the Seton Hall Law School October 2006 Guantánamo Teach-In, a conference involving over 200 law schools and decide to contact them. I make a cold call to Professor Mark Denbeaux who chaired the earlier conference. He calls back almost immediately. I ask whether Seton Hall Law School would be interested in holding their conference, if they were having one this year, in our virtual Guantánamo in Second Life. He replies, “I’m 64 years old, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about but it sounds good,” and then informs us that this year’s event isn’t in October, but on Constitution Day, September 17th which is......we start calculating.....less than a month away.

We take a deep breath and say, We’ve got a deadline, we’ll do it!

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Second Life Community

In the meantime, I've been to G4C - Games for Change conference (to show the Redistricting Game) in NYC and am able to meet Susan Tenby of TechSoup. Nonny and I begin attending Friday (8am!) meetings at NPC (Non Profit Commons) in Second Life. We meet an incredible community of like-minded avatars devoted to developing non-profit causes in Second Life. We're beginning to get a sense of the possibilities in this space.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

WE WILL NOT TORTURE YOUR AVATAR

Our plans for the site are far broader than what we can accomplish during these few days. We have plans for Camp Delta, including two more “avatar experiences” to portray an interrogation chamber and a solitary confinement cell. We design both experiences, the layout and reference for Camp Delta as well as ambient sound and imagery for the entire camp. We need soldiers, dogs, iguanas...

We have extensive talks, throughout the nights and days and weeks afterwards about how to handle these experiences. No, we will not trivialize torture or imprisonment by torturing an avatar, we recognize that kidnapping and imprisoning an avatar is not the same experience as the real thing.

And yet, with this sensitivity in mind, we work at designing experiences to expose prison practices to visitors. It’s been documented that many of the detainees were “purchased” with ransom offers in poor countries. We discuss the possibility of a day-long event to offer Linden dollars (the currency of Second Life) for bringing in an avatar. We take a “hands off” approach to torture: there are audio transcripts of interrogation sessions – we can recreate them in audio and offer them for listening and contemplation. We finally come back full circle to a “game” – while in a solitary cell you try to question your situation: How long will I be here? Can I call a lawyer? Can I call my family? What am I accused of? In the absence of habeas corpus rights, the answer will always be negative.

Insertion of Documentary Video and Film Clips

A critical component of the experience is to augment the 3D computer graphics with video. The film clips serve to authenticate our depiction, and as moving, rather than still, images, they serve to immerse the viewer in a cinematic experience. There is the orange jump-suited detainee, gaunt, unable to support himself, dragged by guards past cages. My youthful, blue haired avatar, piloted by my well-fed self, is aghast.
We place several clips in different orientations. This, after all, is a prototype, a proof of concept and the concept of 3D spatial cinema, ie, experiencing a sense of place within a 3D virtual environment with the addition of filmed components, is relatively new. We experimented with different triggers for the films: as you stand up and exit your cage, you immediately view an image of a detainee in a similar cage; as you walk between the cages, an image appears on the ground of a detainee walking between cages – to evoke a strangely effective “mirror” effect.

At the end of the walkway Ben built a large screen for interview footage. The enormous projection of Mozaam Begg’s father’s face, broken with emotion, reading from his son’s letters, is a compelling example of a new place for cinema: instead of the dark, sequestered theaters of the real world, here is the drive-in of the virtual world: a large “outdoor” place to gather and watch a communal screen.

Arrival

Unlike prisoners in U.S. prisons who presumably know how and why they are incarcerated and the nature of the charges against them, detainees in Guantánamo prison arrived there with minimal, if any, information

Nonny wanted a visitor to our site to be similarly stripped of rights and orientation and to experience a sense of the violence and despair of being hooded and herded into a cage. This posed a challenge for Second Life, a virtual world as opposed to a MMORG, avatars are not accustomed to role playing. However, we could around this by offering a visitor a HUD (Heads Up Display) which, when accepted, gave us the power to control their avatar.

Nonny scripted the experience cinematically: first the hood would come down, accompanied by audio of the C-17 transport plan landing, shouts and kicks to get moving, arriving, shackled and kneeling in a cage in Camp X-Ray.

BAVC made its extraordinary video and audio resources available to us and we grabbed a camera. In order to simulate a hood under the bright Cuban sun we put my black sweater over the lens, shot at the pavement and hoped it would look like sunlight percolating through wool. Nonny worked in BAVC’s audio suite to mix the audio track and Ben did the programming to attach the experience to the HUD and thus, the user.

We contract with a contact of Ben’s to make an orange jumpsuit, It feels strange to be “wearing” an orange jumpsuit.

Trapped!

The next morning at BAVC, Nonny signs on to Second Life. She’s set up her account to enter Second Life where she last signed off and she last signed off from inside a cage. In the meantime, Ben has begun work again on the site and sealed up all of the cages. When she signs on, she is trapped! Although rationally she knows it’s virtual, she’s more than virtually frantic trying to get out and, once again, we get a sense of what this experience might offer.

(posted by ndlp)
I log onto Second Life to learn that Ben has finished the Camp X-Ray cage – and I am trapped inside! Ben had no way of knowing that I had logged off while still standing inside the cage. The software just put me back where I had last been, except now I am looked in and I don’t know how to get out.

Ben, our builder, had been up late working on the project and is nowhere to be found. When at last he shows up, we have the inevitable discussion about how real and unreal the whole thing is. How “I” felt imprisoned. How such feelings were nonsense especially given the truth of the prison. But it was effective – and maybe it can work as a teaching tool and help raise awareness about it what means to lose habeas corpus rights.

Friday, June 8, 2007

More than Make Believe

It is evening, Nonny, Ben and I are in different rooms at the same San Francisco Hotel. It is after 11PM but I can’t resist going online and checking the site. I wander by the half completed cages and start to enter one. It’s on a computer screen, it’s virtual, it isn’t even completed, but, I feel twinges holding me back. I don’t WANT to enter the cage, even a virtual one. I begin to get an inkling of the impact this has viscerally, it’s more than make-believe.

Insomnia

(posted by ndlp)
I haven’t been sleeping well. We only have a couple of days to pull this together and I want to see it done in a way that maybe, just maybe, it can help make a difference. The tools are new and I wish I could learn them faster, better. I can’t stop thinking about the project, so even though I am tired and it is late, I go back in world and run into Peggy.

Flying blind

I log onto Second Life to learn that Ben has finished the Camp X-Ray cage – and I am trapped inside! Ben had no way of knowing that I had logged off while still standing inside the cage. The software just put me back where I had last been, except now I am looked in and I don’t know how to get out.

Ben, our builder, had been up late working on the project and is nowhere to be found. When at last he shows up, we have the inevitable discussion about how real and unreal the whole thing is. How “I” felt imprisoned. How such feelings were nonsense especially given the truth of the prison. But it was effective – and maybe it can work as a teaching tool and help raise awareness about it what means to lose habeas corpus rights.

Ben puts in a “script” to allow users to open the door. We begin our discussion about how to incorporate mixed media into the site – what sort of material I could shoot, audio I could record to enhance what we want to do. I feel like I’m flying blind – this part is new to everyone, even our master scripter/builder.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Can't sleep

I haven’t been sleeping well. We only have a couple of days to pull this together and I want to see it done in a way that maybe, just maybe, it can help make a difference. The tools are new and I wish I could learn them faster, better. I can’t stop thinking about the project, so even though I am tired and it is late, I go back in world and run into Peggy.

Building Cages

The fundamental building block for Camp X-Ray is a unit of razor wire. Thanks to google image, we can replicate it virtually. The first object Bubbuhcuh makes is a cylinder. In no time at all we have a cage, no a bank of cages. It’s starting to come to life.


Sunday, June 3, 2007

BAVC Producers Institue for New Media Technologies

We are thrilled to be included with an amazing group of grantees at BAVC's Producers Institute for New Media Technologies with extraordinary documentary projects and Wendy Levy, Director of Media Arts and Education, has set up a program of panels and workshops on new media practice. We are mentored by Ben-Batstone Cunningham (aka Buhbuhcuh Fairchild) who will help us build the prototype. Where do we start? What are the fundamentals?

We start with the basics:
1. Camp X-Ray
2. Arrival
3. Insertion of Documentary Video Clips

Our list is much longer, but we do triage and plan to complete what we can in the remaining four days of the residency.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

A real wake up call

Feb 12

It is one of those mornings when I really hate Guantanamo Bay Prison. In fact, it is anger I feel. How did the government get away with destroying habeas corpus rights in this country… in MY country? In 2003, when I was working on the documentary about civil liberties issues post 9/11, Unconstitutional, there were few stories in the American press about the prison. I had a good friend who would regularly call up reporters at NPR and say, “Hey, I really liked that story about Guantanamo Bay today.” The sur prised reporter would reply, “What story?” And he would shout back, “EXACTLY!” It was the kind of phone call I wanted to make to everyone in the nation. Instead, I dialed my good friend and creative collaborator Peggy Weil. There was this grant I just found that I was thinking we ought to apply for…

Learning to Navigate Second Life

(posted by ndlp)
One of my favorite moments occurs in a sort of newbie location called Japan Resort hanging out in a hot tub with a raw but effective translation program attached to my avatar. Joining me in the “bubbling water” are avatars controlled by someone in Japan, three people in Brazil and someone from Italy. We actually have a conversation through the translator program. I am having fun, but man, oh, man I can see the possibilities for interaction and diplomacy without the hindrances of geography, culture or language.

Now how to apply all of these experiences to our project…

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Hanging in a hot tub

Learning to navigate Second Life. One of my favorite moments occurs in a sort of newbie location called Japan Resort hanging out in a hot tub with a raw but effective translation program attached to my avatar. Joining me in the “bubbling water” are avatars controlled by someone in Japan, three people in Brazil and someone from Italy. We actually have a conversation through the translator program. I am having fun, but man, oh, man I can see the possibilities for interaction and diplomacy without the hindrances of geography, culture or language.

Now how to apply all of these experiences to our project…

Monday, March 12, 2007

A Virtual ACCESSIBLE version of a Real but INACCESSIBLE Destination

I’d had minimal experience with Second Life (hey, I have a very full first life!), and although I had an account, somewhere, I wasn’t sure of my avatar name, let alone password. I’d first signed on when a student of mine in 2003 required me to log on in order to view a virtual book he’d built as an assignment for my class. But the exposure proved fruitful because here was an interesting application for a virtual space: Second Life offered the possibility of building a virtual but accessible version of the real but inaccessible (to all but the most dedicated attorneys, NGO workers and military) prison situated on an American base in Cuba.

We identify three key goals:
Raise Awareness
Our government is denying the basic right of habeas corpus to
prisoners detained in Guantánamo Prison.

Expose the conditions and practices that occur in Guantánamo Prison to a new audience.

Engage Visitors in social policy dialogue and connect them with efforts to close Guantánamo.

We worked madly on the proposal and ultimately won a residency at the BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, June 1-10. We begin preparations. Nonny became proficient at Second Life, I give up on my old account and avatar and make a new one – Ping Rau, and start exploring.

I realize we are going to need land and start searching. Joi Ito, (with thanks to Scott Fisher) kindly offers us use of his island, KULA. We’ve got land! 10384 Square Meters on Kula2 and Nonny has her first in-world meeting with Jeremy Hunsiger, steward of the Kula islands.

We are reading, drawing, sketching, collecting imagery, video and transcripts. We want to arrive ready to build.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Existing Signficant Documentary Project Seeks Transformation

The phone rings, It’s Nonny. I’m up, I’m at my computer, but I don’t expect anyone else to expect that. “Non, do you know what time it is?” Yes, but she’s calling from EST. She has two small children and morning is prime time so she doesn’t waste any and proceeds to tell me that she’s uncovered a grant opportunity on the MacArthur site for “existing significant documentary projects” to be translated into digital media. “I have the documentary,” (her film, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, about the abuses of the Patriot Act) and you can design a game, the Guantánamo Game!

Not a game! But, OK, something digital, OK. Even though I work at one of the centers of the so-called Serious Games Movement at the Interactive Media Division of USC's School of Cinematic Arts and am currently working on an Annenberg sponsored game on political redistricting The Redistricting Game the word ‘game’ still chafes.

I start to probe: I know what is wrong with Guantánamo but there is so much that is wrong – where do we start? I ask her “What is the fundamental concept you’d like to get across? Nonny’s answer was immediate, “Habeas Corpus. Our nation is denying the basic right of habeas corpus to detainees.” I ask her to drop any ideas of using the computer and envision how it would work. She tells me that she’d love to have a kit to give to teachers and let kids inhabit a prison cell and fell what it is like to be stripped of their habeas corpus rights. Build the prison, inhabit it and then, tear it down!

Eureka! I’ve got it: a virtual Guantánamo! We can build it in Second Life? “What is Second Life?” Non asked, I gave a brief explanation – we can build an experiential, virtual Guantánamo Prison which students, whole classrooms, people from around the world, can visit. “And they can tear it down!” she said.

"And just one more thing," she added, “the grant is due Wednesday afternoon by 5PM!”

What Story?

(posted by ndlp)
It is one of those mornings when I really hate Guantánamo Bay Prison. In fact, it is anger I feel. How did the government get away with destroying habeas corpus rights in this country… in MY country? In 2003, when I was working on the documentary about civil liberties issues post 9/11, Unconstitutional, there were few stories in the American press about the prison. I had a good friend who would regularly call up reporters at NPR and say, “Hey, I really liked that story about Guantánamo Bay today.” The surprised reporter would reply, “What story?” And he would shout back, “EXACTLY!” It was the kind of phone call I wanted to make to everyone in the nation. Instead, I dialed my good friend and creative collaborator Peggy Weil. There was this grant I just found that I was thinking we ought to apply for…