videoludica. game culture 

""The Hotel That Time Built: The Regenerated Dante Hotel, Phase 1" is a machinima made in Second Life that documents a Stanford Humanites Laboratory (SHL) project called "Life to the Second Power: Animating the Archive," conducted in collaboration with the film and media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose archives are housed at Stanford University.

The project was partially funded by the Daniel Langlois Foundation. In the Lab, it was a collaboration of the How They Got Game Project with Michael Shanks' Presence Project, as well as Lynn herself. Henrik Bennetsen, Jeff Aldrich and Henry Segerman all have contributed and continue to contribute to the project.

Moreover, Lynn's latest film, "Strange Culture," will premiere at the Sundance Festival next week, including two showings inside our project space in Second Life -- on Monday, the 22d at 3pm PST, and on Weds., the 24th, also at 3PM PST. "Strange Culture," in a nutshell, concerns the Steve Kurtz affair, with ramifications that cut across art, politics, science." (via How They Got Game)

Update

David Carr of The New York Times wrote:

"Another Sundance film, "Strange Culture," premiered at the Egyptian on Friday, but will get a second premiere today on Second Life, the online virtual community, including a live Q. & A. with the director Lynn Hershman Leeson, and the stars Tilda Swinton and Peter Coyote, among others.

Ms. Hershman Leeson, an established filmmaker and artist, made "Strange Culture" to bring attention to the case of Steve Kurtz, an artist and professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who called 911 when his wife died of heart failure in her sleep.

The medics who responded to the call became suspicious of his art materials - his work centers on germ warfare and genetically modified foods - and called the F.B.I. Agents in Hazmat suits showed up immediately and began impounding his computers, books, his cat and even his wife's body. Mr. Kurtz was detained as a suspected bioterrorist, eventually accused of mail fraud and is now part of an ongoing federal trial.

Ms. Hershman Leeson, 65, felt that the film needed to get out quickly by all means, and after working with the Stanford Humanities Lab to create a digital archive of her work on Second Life, building a theater there and premiering the film seemed like a natural step. Admission is by invitation only so that demand does not swamp the servers.

"These are important social networks that we could not have had before," she said over coffee in Park City last week. "By having the film both here at Sundance and on Second Life, we have two streams that we hope will eventually become many. And that's really exciting."

Link: Read the full article

Thanks to Henry Lowood for the information.

Link: The Hotel That Time Built: The Regenerated Dante Hotel, Phase 1

Link: Life to the Second Power: Animating the Archive

Link: Lynn Hershmann's New Projects

Link: Strange Culture at the Sundance Film Festival 2007

Link: Strange Culture on CNET