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.
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.
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
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.
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…
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…
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