There are two basic approaches to this. One is to develop a character that more or less mimics your real life persona. The purpose of this is to represent yourself in 3pointd space for often pragmatic reasons: the journalist or entrepreneur that needs to maintain a level of transparency and develop trusted relationships that transcend a particular virtual world.

The other approach – one which I find much more compelling – is to develop an alternate persona. The could-have-been or the wish-I could or simply a doppelganger with better hair and fewer skin imperfections.

In my case I am fancying the idea of developing an avatar or two that represent a set of ideas particular to the virtual world. Unfortunately most of the ideas in virtual worlds are shovelware – ideas shoveled from the real world into virtual space. Some have argued this is jut what we should do – create virtual version of real world people, events, and transactions. Certainly there is a role for this, but I’m more interested in the imaginative possibilities of
these spaces.

There are two areas that are of interest. One is architecture and the other is religion. On the architecture front Blake Wake is, er, I am working on a “theory of virtual architecture.” Or maybe it is a theory of place making. Either way, someone needs to do something. Most of the building going on in Second Life mimics real life structures. Now much of this is due to the fact that SL has modeled itself on the real world, even down to the problematic land ownership structure. Yes there is still an up and a down, and avatars look like humans, but you can fly and teleport yourself anywhere instantly. Your buildings can float. Right now coming up with a “theory” is basically ridiculous considering the size of SL. But this is an early adopter playground and at some point in the near future there will be a metaverse and people will build places. The question is what to take from thousands of years of place making and what to jettison and develop new ideas appropriate for the varying rules of virtual spaces. Stay tuned for Blake Wake’s ideas.

The other area of interest is religion, and many of the comments above apply here as well. If you think that SL and the metaverse should mostly be a place that RE-presents (read presents again) the real world, then having churches and praying to Jesus makes some kind of sense – even though there are so many layers of mediation going on it is befuddling. On the other hand – and its way to early for this – there amy be a kind of religious experience that can only be mediated through virtual space. If not only, then substantially. A virtual church is no more abstract and no less symbolic than a real one. More on this later as well.

Of course the contrast I present here is in many cases much more of a blur. The typical MySpace or Facebook profile is in some sense an avatar, and a selective, online version of the person. The question is whether avatars like Blake Wake, insofar as I decide to distinguish him from my real life person, are substantial, meaningful entities. Right now they are attached to games and worlds like Second Life, but this will change.

It’s follows the theme of community building from Subdivided into the online space. My contention is that in the near future immersive, shared online spaces will no longer be restricted to games, or even to private spaces like Second Life, but will be legitimate spaces for culture and commerce. We will move in and out of them the same way we move from web page to web page. The film asks the question: what lessons can we learn from what’s going on now in spaces like WOW, Everquest, and the social networking sites? What does it mean to have an avatar?

So… We went to our first event at Fan Faire in Atlanta over the weekend. It’s the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) Fan Event for Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies and other properties. And apart from a truly crappy hotel – one rated four stars on Travelocity but which in reality was a two star hotel – the experience was immersive, exhausting, and very satisfying from a documentary experience.

After a day of making our presence known and getting folks comfortable with the fact that there were two guys running around sticking giant cameras in their faces, we felt like we were part of the crowd. The SOE folks were particularly helpful accommodated our numerous requests for interviews, space, light, etc.

I felt like I was there for a week, and it was just over two days.

Creative Notes.
We are sacrificing image quality and, less often, sound quality, in order to get personal, authentic interviews. Melting ordinary people who do not ordinarily talk on camera with giant lights does not work. We tried a combination of impromptu interviews where we used whatever lighting was right there and interviews where we set up a minimal lighting arrangement in s side conference room that SOE kindly let us use. There were times when I was nearly overwhelmed with empathy for certain characters in the event and genuinely felt a sense of community.

Tech notes.
I’m a minimalist and use as little gear as possible for the dual reasons of efficiency and discretion with participants. We used the new Sony HDV cameras for the first time. I haven’t looked at the footage full resolution yet but for the most part they performed well. Not sure about the noise level on the higher gain settings – we had to pump it up often because of the dim, yellowish hotel lighting. This was a situation that, with the Panasonic DVX100 that I was using would have been impossible. That camera had a problem with low light and white balance, and with blooming (overexposed spots) outdoors. And though I would have liked to use the new Panasonic HDV camera, the issue with the P2 cards is just not practical at this time – maybe the next project. We lost several accessories and broke one or two things, but overall the gear worked well. There was a distortion problem with the on camera Sony wireless mic set. Hopefully some of this can be fixed in post. Makes me want to use the heavier Sennheiser set more often. Major gear included one Sony FX1, one ZX1, one HC1, two Lowell Pro lights and a tiny softbox, and two Sennheiser boom mics.