A Better World in Second Life? is the first machinima documentary film about the social and political uses of Second Life. It takes place almost entirely in Second Life, and documents my experience as I discover Camp Darfur, Virtual Capitol Hill, RootsCampSL, the Peace and Justice Center, and the Center for Water Studies. The film explores current critiques of Second Life related to the use of networked sociality and virtual worlds for activism.
The film is broken up into five chapters, each focusing on a different activist and location and narrated by myself and starring my avatar. All five chapters are featured on the project’s web site, which also includes written journal entries documenting the process of making the film and links from around the web related to Second Life and activism, and will be posted to YouTube and other video-sharing sites.
The project consists not only of the film, which can be watched traditionally (offline), but also the journal and video installments, which will offer a process-oriented view. This is an alternative notion of documentary filmmaking in which the actual video coexists in a media environment alongside my own text and the comments of the public. In addition, sending the chapters out to various video-sharing sites invites the broader online audience to view and participate in the project.
The film is directed at members of social advocacy, political campaigning, and educational communities who are discovering Second Life as an alternative tool for teaching, outreach, and organizing. My goal is to summarize the positive and negative potential of using Second Life for these purposes; it’s an exciting new tool for collaboration and organizing, but life there can also be frighteningly isolating and can provide a false sense of social engagement.
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