Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: On the Virtual Road

Cecil Hirvi’s new machinima, Elegantly Forbidden, is an entry in a contest to promote Hosoi Ichiba, a new region in Second Life®  that captures the look of medieval Japan. It’s a worthy place to show off the newest features of the Second Life client. It renders sky and water with a clarity that rivals photography.

I was taking a road-trip in my car, in the newly improved virtual highway net, when I caught up to Cecil and asked him for more information. You can view the video at this Blip TV address.

Ignatius : tell me a bit about your inspirations.

Cecil : First of all, the sim itself is a very beautiful construction.

Cecil : the details were so good, I just felt I could really do something visually pretty.

Ignatius : true—the best builds are just like that

Cecil : I hadn’t really stretched my cinematographer skills either so it looked like a good film to try out the fun light and water tools in the candidate viewer.

Ignatius : what was the toughest part, for you as a filmmaker?

Cecil : working with an actor who only spoke Japanese.

Ignatius : you use a babbler? [A Second Life translation device]

Cecil : I needed a couple of translators…the babbler is so inadequate.

Cecil : It felt like I was making a foriegn film

Ignatius : how so?

Cecil : Well, the Japanese culture is fairly unknown to me, and I needed a consultant on the set with me!

Ignatius : amazing—like a RL shoot

Cecil : Artotem Tolsen, helped me understand some of the finer details of the ancient Japanese culture….

Cecil : ...which is why the outfits on everyone is completely legit

Ignatius : and this story is based on an ancient tale? poem?

Cecil : Originally I was going to use haikus by Basho and others…but realized it would have been too difficult to match the words with the scenery..

Cecil : ..so I decided to write them myself

Ignatius : well, if I may be an biased viewer..they were very lovely.

Cecil : Thank you. I hadn’t written a haiku in ages and had to get to speed on them…

Cecil : fortunately my RL gf is taking haiku courses.

Ignatius : did you get feedback from your judges?

Cecil : the contest ends mid June…but its received a lot of hits on youtube in a short time and many people responded well to it.

Ignatius : cool..I’ll be sending more your way

Cecil : Great.  I guess there just aren’t many haiku-based machinimas out there! Lol

Ignatius : thanks for your time, Cecil. 

Cecil : Thanks Iggy! 

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