An Emergent Second Life

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For 27 years, the PTTV collective has played an important role in the tradition of media criticism, paying special attention to the inner workings of media production. The media landscape today, with the proliferation of new content providers, creates complex relationships and convergences among everyday and corporate forms of production, distribution and consumption. Media criticism no longer can take an "outside" vantage point, but must instead account for our general immersion in a veritable media ecology. This program, hosted by anthropologist Jason Pine (Purchase College SUNY), focuses on identity in the virtual world Second Life and what it can tell us about identity in everyday experience. It suggests that self-designed experiences may enable us to articulate emergent identities for ourselves and others. The program combines a live studio audience, videotaped testimonials of Second Life users who express profound personal investments while creating their avatars and environments, and experimental machinima (machine cinema) to evoke the experience of virtual self-design and world-building. Co- Producer and Director, Bianca Ahmadi; Associate Producer, Juan Rubio; Editor, Juan David Gonzalez; Content Director, Jason Pine.