Director Jason Spingarn-Koff's Avatar
Catfish, GasLand, and Restrepo are the buzziest documentaries this year, but I will assert that Life 2.0, which has lower-level awareness at this point (and no distribution deal) is one of the most potent docs I’m seen at the festival — or anywhere else in quite a while. Jason Spingarn-Koff makes the jump from television documentaries to his first feature doc; better said, he creates his own avatar and enters the 3D virtual world Second Life to chronicle the experiences of four people fully immersed in this environment.
In ascending order of disquieting alternate lives, there’s “Asri,” a 30-year-old woman who awakens around 6pm each day and proceeds to spend the next 15-20 hours online as the owner of a successful clothing store; in first life, “Ayya” is a young married male, but in second life she’s an 11-year-old girl; “Blunty” and “Amie” are married to different people (in different countries) in the non-virtual world, but in SL they’re together and readying for the first offline meeting. Spingarn-Koff’s video-camera holding avatar achieves a level of intimacy with his subjects in both first and second lives; I believe the director’s presence is therapeutic for each of his subjects to different degrees and his work offers jumping off points for discussion about how we can and cannot separate our everyday lives from those of our Internet personas, our desire for secrecy in first lives, and how human nature is exhibited in unflattering ways whether you’re offline or otherwise.
Asri in First and Second Lives
It’s not hard to telegraph what motivates Life 2.0’s subjects, or what can happen when, say, two people abandon their marriages and rush right into a new relationship, or the concerned wife of an SL addict realizes she isn’t a part of the world her husband considers more real. There are instances of abuse, neglect, and scenarios that bring out the pop psychologist in all of us.
The most unprecedented subject is “Asri”’s successful lawsuit against a fellow SLer who hacked her clothing designs and began selling them at cut rates throughout SL. “Asri”’s lawsuit connects with footage of an SL exec (San Francisco-based company Linden Labs created SL) describing the need for jurisdiction in the virtual world in order to protect everything from copyright to what you might call emotional felonies. It was interesting to note that only one Linden rep was profiled for the project, and I read the look in his eyes at a mixture of mistrust and … SL addiction?
Worth noting were the sounds of the audience’s reactions to the film, part disbelief, with some ridicule and empathy in equal measure. Right as the credits began, we all turned on our cell phones, checked Facebook, tweeted, etc. But that’s like totally different from entering Second Life, right?