Reality Crowd

We’ll explore this subject more in depth at a later date, but I thought that this clip from the This American Life TV series is really interesting food for thought about how cameras change things. We act differently when we know we are being filmed. How does that change our society when suddenly we are being filmed all the time? That article is for another day… for now enjoy this clip:

What do you think? Do cameras change people’s behavior?

A new film premiering at the South By South West (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin this March will explore virtual worlds and the real people who inhabit them. Second Skin explores several different Massively Multiplayer online games (such as World of Warcraft and Everquest) as well as virtual spaces such as Second Life. As these worlds become more and more realistic people are choosing to spend more time in them than in the “real” world. The film examines this phenomenon and what it means for society at large. The questions asked in the film will only become more and more important as our technology advances and the line between real and unreal, virtual and reality becomes increasingly blurred.

The filmmakers sum up the movie nicely on their site www.secondskinfilm.com

Second Skin takes an intimate look at computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by the emerging genre of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Everquest allow millions of users to simultaneously interact in virtual spaces. Second Skin introduces us to couples who have fallen in love without meeting, disabled players who have found new purpose, addicts, Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers, wealthy online entrepreneurs and legendary guild leaders - all living in a world that doesn’t quite exist.

and here is the trailer for the film:

Links:

Second Skin Site
Boing Boing Story
BBC Story
Second Skin Blog

Anyone that missed “A Scanner Darkly” when it came out in 2006 would be well served to check out the film. It’s the perfect combination of Richard Linklater’s Rotoscope animation style (developed on “Waking Life“) and Phillip K. Dick’s paranoid tale of drug hallucinations in a society obsessed with surveillance. The film is both highly entertaining and extremely thought provoking.

Hit the jump to see more clips from the film:
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