Gone Gitmo

Keep Gitmo Open campaign on Spot.us fully funded!

2011-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

We are thrilled to announce that our pitch, KEEP GITMO OPEN on the community funded supporting site, Spot.us, was a success!

In fact, it went way beyond our modest goal of funding the SL maintenance fee for a year, as among the 33 supporters (thank you!) was an angel: EDGE Lab at Ryerson University in Toronto has agreed to host the site.

Along with Jason Nolan, the director of the Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) Lab, we hope that opportunities arise to not just archive the project, but find people to help make it thrive in the EDGE research environment. Many thanks to Jeremy Hunsinger for making the match! Watch this space for announcements of the move and future activity.

KEEP GITMO OPEN!

2010-12-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

Spot.us has featured our pitch to KEEP GITMO OPEN (our virtual installation, that is). Please visit the site, take their survey and help us to raise funds to KEEP GITMO OPEN for another year!

Images from Culture Project Event

2010-06-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

Streaming Live to SL Gone Gitmo

2010-04-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Culture Project Presents:
BLUEPRINT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
Culture Project presents the second installment of its groundbreaking "Blueprint for Accountability" series at NYU Skirball Center to engage the public in constructing a "blueprint" for a more just and democratic future - An event at NYU Skirball Center directed by Fisher Stevens with panelists including Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, Valery Plame Wilson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Live Event Stream to Gone Gitmo: June 7th, 2010 7:30 EDT/ 4:30 SLT
CULTURE PROJECT URL
GONE GITMO SLURL

Gone Gitmo at LABoral FEEDFORWARD Exhibition in Gijon, Spain

2009-11-04T18:32:00.001-08:00

We created an avatar for the exhibition, LABoralAvatar Zuta who is unable to leave the SIM. When he tries to leave, this notification appears: "no esta autorizado en el destino."

Gone Gitmo at PICNIC '09 Reality Continuum Panel

2009-11-04T18:24:00.001-08:00

Also on the panel: Antonio Camara and moderator, Suzanne Stefanic

IPSRESS Experience in Barcelona

2009-08-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Nonny de la Peña and Peggy Weil went to Barcelona to create a VR Gitmo demo at the Event Lab with Mel Slater and Maria Sanchez-Vives -- using none other than Mark Bolas's FAKESPACE system.
We presented it at a conference on the Art & Science, The Science of Perception in Benasque, Spain.
El Pais covered it here: Presos de un Guantánamo virtual
A short video of the experience we made is here: Towards Immersive Journalism: The IPSRESS Experience

ENDZ Dextor visits GONE GITMO

2009-04-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

ENDZ2ENDZ visits GITMO

MIPTV Photos

2009-04-14T20:57:00.001-07:00

On the Cover of DOCUMENTARY MAGAZINE

2009-03-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

Gone Gitmo was featured alongside amazing films like Waltz With Bashir in latest cover story for the International Documentary Association's magazine Documentary.

In an article titled When Docs Get Graphic: Animation Meets Actuality by Beige Luciano-Adams in IDA, the journal focused on work redrawing the boundaries of documentary:

"Some methods take more liberty than others. For filmmaker Nonny de la Peña, Second Life technology allowed her to expnd on issues treated in her prior documentary, Unconstitutional (2004). With USC Interactive Media adjunct professor Peggy Weil, De al Peña created a virtual Guantánamo Bay Prison, called Gone Gitmo. Here, users can experience first-hand - through their personal avatar-what it might feel like to don the orange jupsuit and have your rights indefinitely suspended. Using writings and testimonials of actual detainees to shape the virtual world, the project aims at new means of connecting viewers to the issues."

Full .pdf forthcoming.

MIPDOC & MIPTV Speaking Schedules

2009-03-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

MIPDOC Cannes, Sunday 29 March
15:00 Grand Salon, Carlton Hotel
COLLABORATIVE DOCUENTARY MAKING
This session will discuss on how interactivity can be used differently to engage new audiences as well as to influence the development of the documentary storytelling itself.

Moderator:
Heather Croall, festival director, Sheffield Docfest
Speakers:
Patrice Barrat, Producer, ARTICLE Z
Daniel Cross, Producer / Director, EyeSteelFilm
Nonny De La Pena, Documentary and Transmedia Producer, Pyedog Productions
Adrienne Van Eeden, Producer and Project Manager, Doxa Productions
Peggy Weil, Professor, USC SCA Interactive Media Division

MIPTV Cannes. Tuesday 31 March
16:30 Auditorium A, Level 3
IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING IN VIRTUAL WORLDS
Virtual environments provide new opportunities for immersive storytelling. This uniquely innovative session, led by two award winning interactive media and documentary producers will explore new forms of scripted cinematic events, integration of video within virtual environments and how avatars can create deep emotional engagement, and viewer identity. Projects include: Gone Gitmo and Wall Jumpers, installations in Second Life.

Moderator: Ferhan Cook, President, Any Screen Productions Ltd.
Speakers:
Nonny De La Pena, Documentary and Transmedia Producer, Pyedog Productions
Peggy Weil, Professor, USC SCA Interactive Media Division

A visit from UC Irvine

2009-03-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Losh, behind the blog virtualpolitik, brought her UC Irvine Humanities Core Class for a tour of Gone Gitmo.

Virtual Gitmo Featured on PBS

2009-02-13T09:53:00.001-08:00

Frontline Video interviews Bernhard Drax on Virtual Gitmo

Video blogger Bernhard Drax talks about the "Gone Gitmo" project, a re-creation of Guantanamo Bay in the virtual world Second Life. Bernhard Drax, better known as Draxtor Despres in SL, has carved out a niche as a virtual reporter specializing in international issues and human rights. Looking like a caricature of a curious NPR reporter, Draxtor showed up at a recent protest in SL's Virtual Israel where Palestinians and Israelis debated who was at fault for the bloodshed in Gaza. Draxtor talked with iWitness about his work and in particular a report he did on the "Gone Gitmo" SL site that has drawn international attention.

Gone Gitmo presented at UNLV Hank Greenspun School of Journalism

2009-02-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Virtual Worlds and Interpretive Communities: Opportunties for Global Dialogue
Online religion, Cyberspace law and order, Avatar mediated cinema and virtual games will be among the topics discussed at an international conference, slated for February 16-17 in UNLV’s Greenspun Hall. Hosted by the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies and the Sammy Ofer School of Communication.
Las Vegas Sun article about the conference.

CANNES! GONE GITMO at MIP-TV 2009

2009-01-05T09:52:00.001-08:00

Ferhan Cook has invited us to speak at MIPTV 2009 We will be presenting Tuesday, March 31st on Ferhan's panel: Reinventing StoryTelling

ACM/ACE in Yokohama

2009-01-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

We presented a short paper titled "Avatar Mediated Cinema" describing our work integrating cinematic techniques within a virtual environment at ACM/ACE 2008 (Advances in Computer Entertainment) in Yokohama this December.

Gone Gitmo Fall Events

2008-10-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Gone Gitmo is being featured in several fall events:

Upcoming: We will be presenting Gone Gitmo at the American Film Institute's Digifest on November 7. Time to be announced. Hope to see you there!

Recent:
On October 24th, Rik Panganiban from Global Kids invited us to speak at an event at the Global Kids International Justice Center. Rik asked us to talk about Using Virtual Art for Political Expression. A blog post of the event is here, a flickr stream is here.

FACE IT-TORTURE in the 21st Century at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica October 19 and 20th at 7:30 pm. Click on the poster at left or link above for details.

CLOSE GITMO Gallery w/RSS Feed

2008-05-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

All three presidental candidates, five ex-Secretaries of state, the current Secretary of State, the Secretary for Defense, the former Sec. Gen of the U.N. and the Sec. Gen of the U.N. have all called to Close Guantánamo - so we've built a gallery for them. There's an RSS feed in the room, so if it should happen, your avatar will be the first to know.

Gallery for "DIRTY WARS" audio

2008-05-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

On April 26th, 2007, PEN American Center and the ACLU co-sponsored "Dirty Wars," an evening of readings at Joe's Pub during the PEN World Voices Festival. We've posted them in our gallery space.

Actors Daoud Heidami (left) and Daniel Oreskes and author Mark Danner reenacted the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) of one of Guantánamo's "high-value" detainees, Mustafa Ait Idr. Francine Prose, President of PEN American Center, read from emails released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, containing correspondence from FBI agents visiting the prison at Guántanamo Bay.

The full set of readings are available as mp3 or podcasts on the following websites:

PEN American Center
Dirty Wars: Readings Against Torture, Arbitrary Detention, Kidnapping, and Rendition

ACLU and PEN American Center: "Dirty Wars" Readings

Poems from Guantánamo

2008-05-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Poems from Guantánamo, The Detainees Speak was edited by Marc Falkoff, who graciously has allowed us to post several of them (with audio) in our gallery.

You are in a Legal Black Hole

2008-05-02T18:39:00.001-07:00

Camp Delta

2008-05-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Under construction:

Gandhi in Gitmo

2008-04-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Another image from artist Joseph DeLappe: Gandhi’s “Salt March to Dandi” in Second Life:

His entire project is documented in his blog.

C-17, Camp Delta and a visit from Gandhi

2008-04-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cinco Pizzicato and Fleef Fimicoloud aka machinima genius Frank Fox (FlingFilms.com), some crucial elements have been added to the build. Cinco built a C-17 Transport Plane to house the interior of the plane built by Buhbuhcuh Fairchild. Fleef created the prototype for Camp Delta and Saliant Infinity aka Matt Lee has given it shape and script. Cinco also brought Gandhi to the Camp X-Ray as part of Joseph DeLappe's performance piece as shown:

Poems from Guantánamo

2008-04-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

We've been able to install excerpts from Poems from Guantánamo, ed. by Marc Falkoff in our latest build.

Thanks to Marc Falkoff for permission and Salient Infinity for design and installation.

Gone Gitmo at Conferences

2008-03-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

To date, Gone Gitmo has been presented at the following conferences:

Women in Film and Television International 2007 Conference in Toronto
Latino International Film Festival and Media Conference 2007 in Los Angeles
National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture 2007 Conference in Austin
National Black Programming Consortium 2007 New Media Institute in Jackson
National 2007 PBS Content Summit in San Francisco
Sundance 2008 New Frontiers Panel - as part of Alternative Storytelling for New Media Platforms
2008 National Association of Latino Independent Producers Conference in Dana Point (NALIP) 2008 SilverDocs in Washington, DC

2008 ACLU CLOSE GUANTANAMO EVENT
Ported Gone Gitmo to ACLUs Progressive Island for ACLU Second Life event, January 11th, 2008

2007 Seton Hall Law School Constitution Day Event
Built Habeas Commons within Gone Gitmo installation to simulcast conference on interrogation practices. September 17th, 2007

LAND HO

2008-03-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

By the graciousness of Annenberg, we now have eight acres to call a permanent home. We expect the build to be done this week and can officially host events again.

IML was so kind to give us a rooftop but our growing pains have been alleviated by the extra territory. Expect the Doha (built for the Brookings Institute!!) to become our torture contemplation area.

Mother Jones has an incredible story that is worth reading on the bungling of the way detainees have been handled at Gitmo:
Exclusive: Inside Gitmo with Detainee 061

Also, William Safire has written on the etymology of the term "water boarding."
It seems he might agree with the rest of us that water boarding constitutes torture.

Surveying!

2008-02-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

Nonny and I visited the Annenberg Estate this morning to assess potential sites for an expansion of Gone Gitmo. The experience, and the language we used to describe it, was reminiscent of another century. The last frontier?

From SL to RL

2008-01-12T15:11:00.001-08:00

After the Second Life event I decided to go downtown and join RL activists. I found them in front of the Court House in orange jumpsuits, some with hoods. It was a reminder that the fundamental purpose of this project has nothing to do with virtual worlds or second life or technology, but instead aims to remind citizens, wherever they live their lives, that Guantanamo Prison is a disgrace to our nation.

Photos From ACLU Event

2008-01-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

ACLU Blog post

2008-01-11T14:48:00.000-08:00

We post on the ACLU blog:
MULTIMEDIA ENGAGES ACTIVISTS

Nonny de la Peña is the producer and director of the 2004 documentary Unconstitutional, and Peggy Weil is a professor at the University of Southern California. Both are the creators of Gone Gitmo, a virtual Guantánamo in Second Life.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the day the first prisoners were brought to Guantánamo. We are pleased to be able to participate in this event with the ACLU on Progressive Island with the common goal to Close Guantánamo.

Our purpose is to raise awareness, initiate discussion and educate on habeas corpus issues by making a virtual but accessible Guantánamo Bay Prison in contrast to the real, but inaccessible, U.S. prison camp. We are using Second Life to expose a substantially new audience to these issues by extending the methods and images from documentary filmmaking into new online, participatory environments.

Gone Gitmo was incubated during a residency at the Bay Area Video Coalition Producers Institute for New Media Technologies funded by The MacArthur Foundation. We answered the call to translate an “existing, significant, documentary work” into digital media. Our intention was to translate the Guantánamo portion of Nonny de la Peña’s 2004 film, Unconstitutional, into a virtual, cinematic experience. On September 17, we were able to simulcast Seton Hall Law School’s Constitution Day Event from our event stage, Habeas Commons.

Our overriding philosophical challenge is to communicate a gravely serious matter in a medium known for games and entertainment. This is changing as use of the medium has evolved: Second Life has a growing nonprofit community including several noteworthy activist sites. As artists, we confront how to portray the practices in Guantánamo effectively and design an experience that does not trivialize torture (we will not torture your avatar) but will provoke thought and insight into the complicated issues surrounding detainees' rights.

— Peggy Weil and Nonny de la Peña

ACLU Calls

2008-01-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

We receive an invitation from the ACLU to join their campaign to Close Guantánamo. It’s Tuesday morning, it needs to be up and working by Friday. We have a deadline, we can do it! We’re thrilled to be part of the ACLU’s outreach into Second Life for this campaign and begin the move to Progressive Island.

NPC's Top Ten List!

2007-11-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

GG made NPC's "Why Second Life is Worthwhile for Nonprofits" List
Thank you Penguin Kuhn!

Challenges

2007-10-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

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...

and...Machinima!

2007-09-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

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

Rikomatic Blog Post

2007-09-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

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

Seton Hall Law School Constitution Day Event

2007-09-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-09-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

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.

MOVING

2007-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

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.

From doldrums to deadline

2007-08-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

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!

Second Life Community

2007-07-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

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.

WE WILL NOT TORTURE YOUR AVATAR

2007-06-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-09T08:00:00.001-07:00

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!

2007-06-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

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.

More than Make Believe

2007-06-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

(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

2007-06-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Can't sleep

2007-06-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

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.

BAVC Producers Institue for New Media Technologies

2007-06-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

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.

A real wake up call

2007-04-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

(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…

Hanging in a hot tub

2007-03-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

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…

A Virtual ACCESSIBLE version of a Real but INACCESSIBLE Destination

2007-03-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Existing Signficant Documentary Project Seeks Transformation

2007-02-12T07:30:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-02-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

(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…