Virtual Gitmo Featured on PBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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