Destroy TV reaches far and wide - one frame at a time (updated)
(Updated 6/23/07 to include Annie Ok's contribution to project) For those of you keeping tabs on the Machinima frontier, pay close attention to Jerry Paffendorf and Christian Westbrook, if you aren't already. The duo are explorers into the virtual playground of Second Life - and they've become extremely adept at finding the world's edges and figure out ways to stretch them further.
Their latest endeavour is Destroy TV - a multiuser avatar in SL that catalogs its existence to Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. Recently Jerry and Christian collaborated with curator/artist Annie Ok to bring Destroy TV to the public, with an interactive installation of DTV run over the course of 10 days at the Fuse Gallery here in NYC and Art Center in SL. During this time Annie/Destroy explored large parts of Second Life, and was even married during the week-plus event (to Walker Spaight of 3pointD no less!). Annie describes it as one of the most intense and immersive experiences she's ever had - living as Destroy in SL for 10 days straight.
The fascinating part of the installation for me was the time-lapse of the virtual life, now released in its Director's Cut edition (in multiple gigs of MPEGs). Lifelogging, as Jerry describes it, is a unique look at the click-to-click moments of a virtual entity. With a stream of nearly 100,000 screen caps compiled together, the film becomes the Machinima equivalent of Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. Yet one more way Machinima embraces old practices using new technology.
Destroy TV's life begun under the sink of Jerry and Christian's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they placed the DTV Macbook and cam software so that it was out of harm's way (save any leaky pipes). With a start there, I look forward to seeing what other projects spring forth from their kitchen.
Update: For giggles, I mashed some DTV footage (and sped up quite a bit) with a sampling of Phillip Glass' "The Grid."
I give you, ahem, Destroyaanisqatsi.
Labels: Christian Westbrook, Destroy TV, Jerry Paffendorf, Machinima, Second Life





2 Comments:
Bruce Sterling's Artificial Kid springs to mind.
I'll second the Stirling idea. Some pretty strange and interesting stuff. I'm a little late to the party, but appreciate the heads up on this.
Ricky
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