The Story of Douglas Story, Co-Creator of Interactive Second Life Art Installation Called Ripple

One day a successful Los Angeles filmmaker currently on assignment with NBC was called for jury duty, and met a juror who was a professor with a strange teaching tool. From that chance meeting, the filmmaker made an avatar and named him Douglas Story. The avatar became an artist, and the artist ultimately collaborated with another avatar artist named Desdemona Enfield, and created installations like this one, which recently opened in SL: Ripple, a vast landscape (and soundscape) which responds to a visitor's touch:

[SLurl teleport to "Ripple" here]

"I discovered Second Life in the summer of 2006 while serving on a jury in downtown Los Angeles," Mr. Story tells me. "A college professor who was on the same jury was using SL as an aid in teaching his classes, and told me about it." From there, Douglas Story, who had trained in the art of motion pictures, learned about a burgeoning art movement that used the metaverse as a medium:

"I quickly found the art scene in-world, and wanted to show my real-world photographs in a gallery, but I wanted to do more than simply hang them on the wall. In creating my first walk-through experience, I met and hired Desdemona, and she opened the door to my realizing what magical things were possible in Second Life, and quickly became my collaborator and muse.

"As our work expanded in size, complexity and interactivity, I also realized that what we (and by 'we' I mean the innovative artists of SL as a whole) were creating was a new medium that, at its best, can be numinous, achieving a sense of breath-taking wonder. Installations that, even if possible in the real world, could only be achieved at tremendous expense, but in SL such things can be done by anyone with the vision and skill to make them. There is a fundamental democratization happening in this process that is very appealing to me."

Douglas, I should say, also does decent profiles of other avatar-based artists: Read this guest post he wrote for me in 2007, on Bizarre Berry.

Comments

[Douglas Story]

Thanks for the nod, Hamlet. Describing my RL professional role as a filmmaker is a bit of a stretch. I write, produce and edit promos, segments and other short-form pieces, but an auteur ah ain't!

[Saffia Widdershins]

Douglas was interviewed about Ripple and his other work for the first episode of Metaverse Arts on Treet TV: http://treet.tv/shows/metaverse-arts/episodes/premiere-10jul10

[Corcosman Voom]

For afficianados of Douglas and Desdemona's work and/or SL History, their first collaboration has been maintained by the Chilbo Community Building Project. Go to the Chilbo Museum (it's in my Picks), find the orange sphere at the landing spot and take the teleport up. Their first build contains elements that fans will recognize as carrying through to their later, more sophisticated, pieces

And I very much enjoyed the Metaverse Arts on Treet TV interview.