Have You Had The Girlfriend Experience?
For all the time people spend worrying about how to make their avatars look in virtual worlds, why not just get a real person to be your avatar, in the real world? That’s exactly what The Girlfriend Experience offers, though it’s hard to tell whether they’ve gotten many takers yet. The home page sums it up nicely: “The Girlfriend experience is a multiplayer game allowing you to enter into a real-life person and use this person as an avatar.” All this is done via Skype, which calls into question just how much fun you can have “playing” this person, but as a concept, it’s pretty interesting — at least, on some vague philosophical basis. Just what are the limits of avatarization? Or is this more of a performance, with the avatar/actor playing a role that’s written and transmitted in real time? The experience is being offered by Mediamatic, which bills itself as “a cultural institution in Amsterdam.” Unfortunately, the service is rarely available, and then only for short periods of time. We’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s actually had this strange out-of-body Girlfriend Experience. Log in and get your avatar to drop us a line. [Via VTOR.]
Feeds
FYI- before SL, Before the WWW, Before most people had even used a PC….
there was Mediamatic.
any claim is justified. if you read it here, you’d have read it there first;)
great magazine. hadnt seen an issue in over a decade.
cube3
The four flesh and blood avatars will be available on Wed, Thu & Fri from 20.00 - 23.00 Amsterdam time. During the opening the login time was only two minutes with a lot of people playing from the other side of the mirror wall. Should be easier to make contact now and everybody can play ten minutes at a time. Do check in tonight!
Some photographs are available on www.mediamatic.net/girlfriend or check video’s at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BPmgz1_eRA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLiSNhqugQE
Michel
I was able to get through to teh girlfriend experience yesterday around 1:30 pm Central time. The connection through skype wasn’t very good on my end, but they were able to hear me just fine. I often find that to be the case on my laptop when using skype. I was able to get my avatar to leave a comment at the Girlfriend Experience revisited on http://www.vtoreality.com/2007/the-girlfriend-experience-revisited/463/
I also discovered 10 minutes is a pretty short time to play with a living avatar.
I encourage other readers to give it a try, and report on there experience.
Thanks
Harold