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Gchatting Jon Rafman About Second Life Films, Professional Gaming and the Future of Online Personae

Montreal artist Jon Rafman is the director of the Rhizome-commissioned short film _Small Crowd Gathers_, to be filmed entirely in _Second Life_. I talked to the film’s writer, Tao Lin, about his take on the project, but wanted to learn more from Rafman...

Montreal artist Jon Rafman is the director of the Rhizome-commissioned short film Small Crowd Gathers, to be filmed entirely in Second Life. I talked to the film's writer, Tao Lin, about his take on the project, but wanted to learn more from Rafman about the significance and logistics of working and directing entirely in a virtual world. Rafman’s most recent film, Codes of Honor, was also filmed in Second Life and explores the world of professional videogaming — the transient childhood glory particular to a culture of guys in their late-twenties and past their prime. Rafman interviewed gamers at the much beloved, now shuttered Chinatown Fair Video Arcade, then used their stories as inspiration for the film's nostalgic protagonist.

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I spoke with Jon on Gchat (he was even nice enough to Skype with me, share screens, and take me on a little tour of Second Life) about his new projects, why technology mimics our pre-existing structure of the world, and why DDR is more emo than Street Fighter.

me: I talked to Tao about his screenplay and his other literary endeavors, but I'm also particularly interested in the Second Life aspect of your film which he didn't know a lot about. Tao told me you're an expert. How did you first encounter Second Life?

Jon: I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm an expert, but I have been active in Second Life for a half a decade now, so let’s just say I know my way around. I have always been interested in virtual worlds in some form or another. Like Tao, I used to play MUDs when I was a kid. And like a lot of people in the 90s, I was obsessed with the idea of virtual reality. In fact, Linden Labs was originally developing a virtual reality system before it gave up and founded Second Life. In addition to this, I've always been very interested in role playing, but never had any friends to play Dungeons & Dragons with growing up. Early on I was very curious to explore the various role playing communities that existed in Second Life. But I only started doing the Kool-Aid Man in Second Life project [a guided tour of Second Life led by Rafman in avatar form as the iconic Kool-Aid Man] a couple years after I joined around the same time I got really into professional internet surfing culture.

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Still from “the Kool-Aid Man in Second Life”

me: right

Jon: For me exploring SL was an extension of my practice of surfing the internet for artistic inspiration; SL is a 3D version of the internet.

me: What are some other examples of how you've used surfing the internet as art? I know you did a project with google maps?

Jon: My 9 Eyes project is Kool-Aid man in Second Life's sister. Both projects start off similar ways. I begin with a sort of pure joy of finding a new virtual world to explore. But this pure artistic excitement eventually leads to a critique of the real world that these virtual worlds reflect.

Still from “9 Eyes”

me: And you've recently released another short film created in Second Life. I read your essay on that project.

Jon: Yes, the new short film is titled Codes of Honor which investigates the world of pro-video gaming, specifically pro-fighting game culture

me: Can you talk a little about the creation of the narrative in the film?

Jon: Over the course of a year I went to Chinatown Fair arcade every day and got to know the East Coast pro gaming scene interviewing all the top players. In a way the world of pro-gaming is another virtual world with its own hierarchies and myths, so it felt like it was a logical extension of my web surf practice.

me: But the film seemed to be about youthful achievements in video gaming—about not being able to follow up on early successes

Jon: Definitely. As i spent more and more time at the arcade, I started to learn about the history of the scene and the great gamers from days gone by. It was these stories of the legendary gamers that most fascinated me. I became intrigued with the various forms of nostalgia, loss, and regret that exist in these gaming communities.

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me: Do you think these things exist more so in the video game community ?

Jon: Yes, for sure. For one thing that arcade scene in America is practically dead so there is a lot of nostalgia for the days when there were upright cabinets in every other corner store in the city. On top of this the games themselves are constantly changing so it is much harder to leave a legacy behind than in other traditional games and sports. And an individual’s hand-eye coordination peaks when they are in their late teens so there is a very narrow period when you are at the top of your game.

me: right

Jon: Moreover there is no money or very little money in gaming

me: it's similar to professional athletes but with an even shorter timespan for greatness

Jon: Except for the fact that you can’t do it as a job really in America except for maybe a very very small handful of gamers. The rest do it for the sheer honor of it for the intensity of a hard fought match. My point earlier was that aging is accelerated in these communities and you had gamers who were 28, 29 years old talking as if they were old fogeys way past their prime reminiscing about the good old days back in 98. Wait a sec let me pull up a perfect video to illustrate this

me: sure

Jon: in this video you hear old NYC, they also mention Eddie Lee which was the inspiration for my main character

me: he's talking like a war veteran

Jon: exactly

me: this is your interview?

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Jon: yes, the whole arcade hustla youtube channel contains hundreds of hours of interviews with local top gamers as part of the research for Codes of Honor.

me: I used to go to that video arcade sometimes

Jon: where?

me: the one in the background. chinatown

Jon: wow, so you know it

me: yeah

Jon: remember how it smelled like rotten Chinese food and teenage sweat?

me: yeah, it was gross I played DDR. it had a few machines

Jon: yeah that's a whole different scene

me: I liked it yeah, a weird scene

Jon: more emo

me: hah

Jon: street fighter is more thuggy

me: yeah, street fighter is definitely tougher than ddr

Jon: Actually no Street Fighter is is sorta for everyone. When SF4 came out a few years back it truly united gamers from all spheres. The Marvel vs Capcom
scene is truly thugged out, that's where I learned about money matches. Every Friday night there would be the most insane gambling at the arcade in its heyday. Let me show you something. This guy survived off Marvel vs Capcom money matches for years:

me: How do you feel about the benefits of realities like SL? Do you think it's simply entertainment taking another form or that it doesn't differ from personal interaction in a meaningful way? i guess i think about whether the internet and places like second life are fundamentally altering what it means to think about ourselves and to interact with others or if that's just a red herring. Just a new means of doing what people have always done

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Jon: I think there is a general uncertainty consisting of where and how and what is my real or physical self when I am in a social relationship on the internet. Internet personas or avatars often demonstrate to me that the concept of a pure physical real self is a false one. What we see as the most fundamental aspects of ourselves are mediated at the most abstract level through society and culture. Avatars (be they on Facebook or Second Life) have become the social representations of ourselves. We are unable to navigate through the social worlds of the internet without avatars. Moreover, what we chose to reveal online often points to how much our 'real' self is a construction. That said, however, I don't think this is something fundamentally new. Throughout history, people have had to project forth "avatars". Perhaps the way we construct our identity is different but i think it is just a more extreme form of what has been going on for hundreds of years. The way I phrase it is that technology doesn't alter our consciousness. rather, the technologies that have become popular (like photography or the Google search engine) make manifest how we already structure our experience.

me: Will there be improvisation in Small Crowd Gathers?

Jon: the main actors won't be improvising. As you saw from our skype conversation, the welcome areas in SL can be very chaotic wild interesting places. SEECOY (the co-director) and I are going to hang out at these places and record conversations and recruit avatars to participate in the film. Or we might just use the recordings that we gather in these welcome areas and re-stage the scenes with our main characters in them. Does that make sense?

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me: ah i see

Jon: perhaps the cinematic analogy would be how Robert Altman made his films, through editing together many conversations going on simultaneously. Often times Altman would set everyone up with a wireless mic and tell everyone to improvise. None of the actors knew when they were being filmed because he would shoot from far away with a telephoto lens. Similarly in Second Life no one knows when the camera is on them.

me: do characters speak in SL? they don't type in a chat box?

Jon: SEECOY and I haven't decided on how to incorporate text yet. We know we want text to be a part of the film, but we are not sure if we should incorporate text exactly how you experience it in SL. The film is not really about SL so we don't feel the need to mimic the Second Life interface or anything

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