Literary Bad Boy Tao Lin Making a Second Life Movie

Potentially interesting, potentially wince-inducing metaverse art news: Tao Lin, a literary enfant terrible whose writing is widely praised and occasionally mocked, is making a film set in Second Life. Called Small Crowd Gathers to Watch Me, Lin is writing the script, about, as culture site Motherboard describes it, "a depressed writer dealing with career and romantic failure who learns of his double". Here's an early test shot:

The movie is being directed and shot by artist Jon Rafman, who also shot an SL machinima called "Kool-Aid Man in Second Life" (NSFW), which got some play in New York's art world a couple years ago. I didn't blog that machinima back then, because while beautifully shot and edited, Rafman evinced a fairly evident, ironic contempt for Second Life users and a narrow understanding of what actually exists in SL. In an e-mail to me, he described SL creations as "kitsch", and didn't seem to be aware that there were working professional artists who'd already treated the subject with much more depth. (Case in point: See Cao Fei's "i.mirror", which she created back in 2007 as the avatar China Tracy.)

All that said, it'll be interesting to see what he and Tao Lin come up with. The plot as he describes it has an intriguing, Borges-esque feel:

"Currently he’s living off his girlfriend’s money, the relationship is failing, then one day he hears on the radio that they’ve discovered 'another' of him. Reporters come to talk to him to ask what he thinks of this, and to say that the “other” of him wants to meet him. Eventually the reporters come to process as fact that the original is actually the 'other' one.

Then again, that also seems quite a bit like "Journey Into the Metaverse", which you should definitely watch now if you haven't before.

Hat tip: SLBlog_net

Comments

[rikomatic]

I kept reading this interview again and again and it never made any sense.

[bongo]

rather be "kitch" then "derrivative" and "late" as an "artist."

[matrimonial marriage]

How will Tao Lin fashion a tour? Making joins Tao Lin. Should Making experiment after the bastard sequel? The diet clouds Tao Lin within the patent zone.