Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Virtual / Real

This was a pretty strange shoot for Fast Company that got me really confused. This woman Joni West (human version, center, avatar version in foreground) has created a marketing company within Second Life. She works on behalf of Colgate to give away smiles, among other things for other large companies. The avatars in this image belong to (or represent) other people that she knows through Second Life.

So, she had to pay them real money to send their virtual avatar to her virtual photo studio to do a virtual photo shoot with a virtual camera. It's crazy -- they have virtual lights, and you can move the camera around and shoot different angles and focal lengths. She then sent me the real digital images, and we put them into the real image, that I shot at a real art gallery with a real camera.

Joni (who used to work for Irving Penn a long time ago - !!!!) is and artist and also very involved in Second Life and believes that in the next five years, everything will happen there -- business transactions, social encounters, real estate, education -- everything.

The virtual photo shoot alone was weird enough -- when I try to imagine what that would be like it just makes my head hurt.

1 comment:

Rob Prideaux said...

Man, it's a lot easier to be fit in the virtual world. I could transform this pony keg into a sixpack just like that.

Maybe it's because I've been immersed in internet stuff/mmo games/technology for so long, but I'm underwhelmed. Why, exactly, would I want to do any or all of this stuff virtually?

Probably I have my head in the sand somehow. "Why, exactly, would I want to travel in this wheezing, trembling motorized buggy, when I have this perfectly charming horse?".