A description of the SL version of Walk A Mile, some proposals for a RL version and a detailed list of the ways in which the project satisfies the contest's judging criteria.

Contest Entry Criteria Statement:

Walk A Mile

Exhibit by Garvie Garzo

(With editorial input from L. Garvie)

Walk A Mile is an exhibit prototype for The Role of Technology in Art, Film and Music design contest at The Tech. In second life the exhibit features a treadmill, some cameras and a large movie screen in a 6X6m black box. The screen is disguised at first as a simple poster on which is written, “It is said that you should not judge another person until you have walked a mile in the other’s shoes”. The treadmill has a control panel comprised of six large buttons each bearing an image of a pair of shoes. Avatars can walk on the treadmill using a pose ball with a walking animation in it, and touch-select a pair of shoes button. When they do, the words on the screen in front of the treadmill dissolve to reveal a sequence of preloaded images of a walk taken somewhere in second life. These sequences are meant to simulate prerecorded videos or films of different walks. 

The SL prototype is designed to demonstrate one way that a real life exhibit about digital compositing could work. Rather than simply explain that weather forecasters typically stand in front of green screens and that their images are then composited with images of weather maps and graphics, Walk A Mile invites visitors to be a part of the digital compositing process. It also encourages visitors to engage in the imaginative exercise of walking in someone else’s shoes by seamlessly compositing them into films or videos made of another person’s walk somewhere. The use of a treadmill could solve a number of real life design issues. It serves as a way to correctly place visitors in relation to the hidden cameras, gives them a predefined role to play so that they will ‘fit’ into the movies, and also gives them front row seats to see both digital compositing in action and themselves as the stars. After the walk, real life visitors could be given the chance to have a behind the scenes look at how digital compositing works, and perhaps a bit of the history and uses of compositing generally.

Criteria fulfillment:

• Walk A Mile was launched as a project on The Tech Virtual web site on March 5 and installation at The Tech in SL was begun on March 6, and completed on March 12.

• Walk A Mile relates to the core theme of technology in film by showing how film compositing works, thus allowing visitors to participate in the use of a historically common, but still evolving and very impressive film technology. 

• Walk A Mile offers room for a great variety of educational content. Visitors can see and experience what it’s like to perform in front of a green screen, learn how and what compositing is used for in movies and television and also why digital compositing has replaced the older forms. Even the algebra used to calculate the chroma range that digital compositing relies on might be of interest to some visitors. Visitors to the backstage area could also learn how to make their own video or still composites using a computer and a graphics program such as Photoshop. Visitors can also explore why film as a medium is ideal for allowing us to ‘visit’ other places and to imagine that we are different people in different circumstances. Depending on the content of the films chosen, there are also great opportunities for geographical or cultural education as well. In short, a real life Walk A Mile might work primarily as an educational exhibit, but one so easy and fun to use that visitors wouldn’t perceive it as such.  

• Walk A Mile relates to the spirit of Silicon Valley on two distinct levels. The first is that it highlights the process of digital compositing as a major improvement on the older forms. Compositing software has revolutionized compositing in film and video. The older methods of compositing were more time consuming, much more expensive and prone to a number of small defects. Even when everything went perfectly, the older methods produced a final product of much lesser quality because the final product was 3^rd generation, a sort of film of a copy of a film. Digital compositing is cheaper, easier, and therefore more widely available. It also gives a superior final product because pixel alignment and replacement are part of the same process, meaning that at no time are any copies required. Allowing more people to do more things cheaply and easily while getting a better result is one of the fruits of the technological revolution that was cultivated in Silicon Valley. 

• On another level, Walk A Mile is an exhibit designed to encourage visitors in their use of technology as a medium to better understand themselves and other people as individuals. The exhibit invites visitors to see themselves in different contexts able to overcome distance and circumstance in order to imaginatively relate to the experience of others. Walk A Mile is an exhibit that intends to open pathways and connections while allowing people to see beyond their own horizons, which is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Silicon Valley.