Staging Second Life in Real and Virtual Spaces - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 225

virtual object to blur the boundaries between the
real and the virtual worlds.
The third scene played heavily on the time
lag and 'clunkiness' of Second Life gestures. Live
actors mimed throwing the 'virtual' ball to each
other with significant delays between the ball ar-
riving in their vicinity and their attempts to catch
it (Figure 4). Th0e piece began with live actors
and the puppeteer-operated balloon after which
an avatar joined in with the game. This scene, as
with the first scene, progressed to a mock fight in
which the avatar and live performers took turns
knocking each other over with the balloon ball.
The fourth scene was one of the more effective
scenes for its simplicity and economy of staging.
The ball was transformed into a virtual mirror
ball accompanied by a musical piece and an ava-
tar entered and began to dance with the music,
employing 'bump and grind' gyrating movements
(Figure 5). A live actor was then revealed upstage
and danced with the avatar, emulating the avatar's
movements. The connections between the two
were most obvious when both avatar and live
performer were simultaneously dancing the same

movement. This scene also reflected the impor-
tance of physically separating the performer and
the avatar to better distinguish between them. As
a student commented:

The live performer and the avatar needed to be
standing a reasonable distance away from each
other […] so the audience could differentiate
between them (Anonymous, 2008).

The fifth scene integrated the Second Life
landscape with the live performer. The performer
mimed lifting off to fly with the Second Life
landscape falling simultaneously around them;
a technique borrowed from Méliès and known
in cinematic terms as the 'matte' effect. The
performer who lifted off was then replaced by
a performer lying flat on a hidden bench who
mimed flying through the Second Life landscape
twisting their torso sideways and up and down
as they seemingly passed between the projected
buildings and mountains. A kinetic integration
was achieved between live performer and the
projected Second Life landscape.

Figure 4. Live student actors play 'ball' with the virtual avatar actor