Einstein's Official Avatar is Coming to Second Life & There's a USD$2500 Contest to Recreate Him for the Digital Age (UPDATE: Deadline Extended)

The official avatar for Albert Einstein is coming soon to Second Life and social media to promote medical research, and there's a contest to create him, with $2500 in cash prizes for the top three entries. By "official", I mean it's being done with the authorization of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which owns the rights to Einstein's likeness, and by "coming to SL", I mean the avatar is going to make appearances in-world, as well as in machinima made for audiences outside SL, to promote medical research fundraising for the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada, or IMRIC. It's a campaign being run by Remedy Communications, the social media firm of Doug Thompson, a longtime SL advocate. (In-world, he's Dusan Writer.)

"We were approached by an international research collaboration that funds medical research across a huge range of conditions and needs," Doug explains to me via e-mail. "IMRIC requested permission from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which owns the rights to the Einstein image, to use it in an international fundraising and awareness campaign across social media and virtual worlds."

Here's how avatar Einstein will be used in this campaign:

"We'll be using the avatar for a bunch of fundraising and awareness projects," says Dough, "we'll be filming a machinima using the contest winner, and will be using the image to reach out to Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. We hope that our 'digital Einstein' can raise funds for new medical research and discoveries and that we'll be able to demonstrate how virtual worlds like Second Life remain at the leading edge of innovative content creation."

Note that the contest isn't specifically asking for a version of Einstein as he was in the real world, but "to imagine how he’d look if he took form in a virtual world." Picture an avatar Einstein with his most famous theorems literally circling around his head, say, or who warp space around him as he walks through SL.

"It really is like updating Einstein for the digital age," as Doug puts it to me. "I'm imagining all the creative things that creators in SL can do (especially now that mesh is here!) It will be amazing to see how people interpret Einstein and what it's like to see him in Second Life."

Read all about the contest here, and note that Einstein's avatar can be built in Blender, Maya, or other industry standard platforms, as long as he can eventually be imported into SL via Collada.

Update, 9/6: In Comments, Dusan Writer announces that the submission deadline has been extended: "September 16th at 11:59 PM EST is the deadline, extended from September 9th."

Comments

[melponeme_k]

I read that 2,500 originally as Lindens. I thought all that work for something like 8 dollars and 50 cents?

lol

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks, added a USD up in there to make that shit abundantly clear!

[jo yardley]

Goodness!
We have an Einstein avatar visiting us in 1920s Berlin!
I'll tell him :)

[o.O]

"which owns the rights to Einstein's likeness" ....

i guess it should say: "which claims there is a right to someones likeness, and they want Einstein's"

Fist time ever i hear there is such a "copy right". And when i see all the commercials around the globe using Einstein lookalikes i doubt this University ever tried to claim that right in front of a court.
I just cannot believe a look is copyright protected ... (if disconnected from the name) ... see also fashion, where everyone can copy everything without breaking any copyright if they just leave the protected logo away ...

[o.O]

this "right" btw would also imply that if you create now a slightly cartoonish full-mesh Einstein av (and anything else wont stand a chance if they are smart) and you go in second place, you are not even allowed to sell it (under the name 'Dr Feelgoood') !!!

[Nexii Malthus]

What the hell.

"Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which owns the rights to Einstein's likeness"?

They can take a stick up their hebrew university ass if they want to make such a fucking claim, they just lost all respect to me.

[Hamlet Au]

Einstein himself bequeathed those rights to the Hebrew university:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein_in_popular_culture

[foneco zuzu]

Lol, that what i call a good call from AH:)

[foneco zuzu]

damn fingers, Meant to say a good call from HA and a wise decision from AE, way to advanced in all.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

It's not different than the release forms any model signs to allow a photographer, movie-maker or videographer to use their image for commercial (or in this case, non-profit) purposes. You have the right to control the usage of your image by third parties.

The field is termed "personality rights" or "rights of publicity", and the coverage and enforcement vary from state to state. I would imagine that Linden Labs would be subject to California's Astaire Act.

[Pathfinder]

From their website:

"Submission: Submit no later than 11:59 PM (2359hrs) Eastern Standard Time, September 9, 2011"

Folk better get crackin'!

[Frans Charming]

Yea two days is too short.

[Dusan Writer]

We have extended the contest for a week, Pathfinder and Frans and all - sorry about that, we should have realized that we had turned it into a mad scramble! Web page will be updated shortly with an additional one week of time to create an entry!

[Hamlet Au]

Cool, what's the exactly deadline then (day and time)?

[Dusan Writer]

September 16th at 11:59 PM EST is the deadline, extended from September 9th.