Die Like Marat: Turning David's masterpiece into an interactive experience

AM Radio's SL recreation, with David's original as a painting set inside it

In 1793, a French journalist named Jean-Paul Marat was taking a cold bath to alleviate his skin disease when a woman allied with his political enemies managed to wheedle her way into the washroom, and knife him in the chest.  As immortalized in the painting by Jacques-Louis David, the place and moment of his death seems essential, and arrested in time. 

Until, that is, a guy named AM Radio (left) decided to convert it into an interactive experience.  In recent months, AM has astounded Residents with builds of stunning depth and elegance, but so far it's his recreation of David's "Death of Marat" that's impressed me most.  Especially after he added a poseball animation in the tub, so anyone who sits on it instantly recreates Marat's final sprawl.  For awhile, though, AM Radio's installation sat unused on a platform high in the sky, but Bettina Tizzy, the energetic founder of the SL art maven group Not Possible in Real Life found it a better home, in her public park of Chaykin Forest.  Thus making it possible for any Resident to die like Marat.  (Direct teleport at this link.)

So that's where I went to expire like my fellow journalist, deep in Bettina's woods; feeling lonely, I called her and the merry NPIRL band over, to join me in a collective die-in.  There we all gathered, clowns and babes and creatures of indeterminate category, joining Marat's eternally frozen ghost in the tub.  See them all after the break.

AM Radio tries out his own creation

Bettina Tizzy, undone in her own forest

Daruma Picnic

Devo Pedro

Eladon Galsworth

Gwen Carillon

Pavig Lok

Poid Mahovlich

Fau Ferdinand

Osprey Therian

Tooter Claxton

Comments

[Mike@]

Brilliant !

Anyone knows if it's there anything like that, but based on Munch's "The Scream" ?

[Hamlet Au]

Yeah, someone did that for a Burning Life site a few years ago; I should dig through my archive and repost that here.

[Osprey Therian]

"Anyone knows if it's there anything like that, but based on Munch's "The Scream" ?"

Siggy Romulus had a walk-into-and-pose The Scream (with anim etc.) at a Burning Life a couple of years ago. It was when a The Scream had been art-jacked. It was a very nice build.

[Osprey Therian]

The exterior was a museum - one walked in through an empty frame. It was memorable. Yes, maybe that was three years ago.

[Tenshi Vielle]

OMG finding Tooter is like finding an easter egg!

HI TOOTER!!

[Tooter Claxton]

Hi Tenshi! Yes it's me, martyr of the revolution. I should have never trusted that harlot Charlotte. :)

[Frankie Rockett]

ART BOX
Art Box has a fully immersive 'The Scream', as well as 'American Gothic', 'Christina's World', 'Nighthawks', and around 40 other iconic paintings and photographs rendered in 3D for you to become both the art and the artist with. We add a new artwork every week, so the whole gallery is a constantly evolving work in progress.

Art Box is in Showcase (under Art and Culture). You can also get there directly from this SLURL -
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Klaw/28/19/35