proximate comparisons; each of the multimediapresentations has a unique form of information retrievaland presentation. The table shows how the four projectsovercome specific problems inherent in traditionalmedia, and yet use traditional media to make their case.Finally, the table specifies the interactivity of each project.Tables Four and Five extend the information offered inTable One. Here we see how the projects were financed,published and distributed. These tables suggest theparticular problems facing new technology: publics haveto be educated to consume and use them, and publishershave to be willing to invest in the possibilities they represent. The addresses of the distributors are included.

SUMMARY

This review suggests that each of these multimediapresentations offers new ways of doing visual research.The range of projects is huge: some have a relatively modest scope, and others are almost unimaginably complex, expensive and innovative. In all cases, theseprojects draw upon traditional media and extend theirpossibilities. The review hopes to make the argument thatmultimedia may usefully extend traditional visualmethods, but that these projects are costly, demandhighly specialized knowledge and skills, and requireteamwork that extends from planning to projectexecution to distribution.

Avatara

by Donato Mancini, Flick Harrison and Jeremy TurnerVancouver: 536, 2003, DVD. 72 minutesProduced and distributed by 536, 536 east 20thAvenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5V 1M8 Can$20

Review by Maximilian Forte, University College of Cape Breton

William Gibson, a Vancouver-based novelist, who coinedthe term

cyberspace

in his 1984 novel

Neuromancer

,envisioned a set of virtual communities where interactiontakes place through computers as a sort of consensualhallucination revolving around a graphic representationof data abstracted from the computers of millions of users. The notion of the

avatar

came into play in the1992 novel

Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson whoenvisioned fictional, graphic representations of individuals in cyberspace. In comes a new film, perhaps anew ethnographic film genre, bearing witness to andbringing to life the worlds envisioned by both Gibsonand Stephenson.Kalki, represented by an animated, talking, purple horsehead, introduces us to the world of Traveler by interviewing a rather articulate, blinking bunny headwhich also lip-syncs words spoken by an actual person.The bunny head, the avatar of a member of thiscomputer-mediated association of chatters, is suspendedin front of Kalki, against a backdrop of rotating stars andcolourful geometric shapes forming a surreal landscape,

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the two avatars appearing to converse in the same place,while their human users are separated by thousands of miles.This is

Avatara

, a newly released film on DVD by 536, aVancouver-based international artists’ collective thatmounts exhibitions in both online and offlineenvironments. The documentary will be of especialinterest to those engaged in teaching and research at theintersection between visual analysis and new forms of sociability involving computer-mediated communicationon the Internet. Indeed, as there is no other film shotcompletely ‘in world’, not only is this an invaluableteaching resource, but also a priceless ethnographicdocument of a sensually stimulating online community that has been in existence for most of the past 10 years.Donato Mancini, Flick Harrison and Jeremy Turner, themakers of

Avatara

, explain that it is ‘not a cartoon’.Indeed it is a feature-length documentary of acommunity embedded in an online, three-dimensional,voice chat program called ‘Digitalspace Traveler’ (seewww.digitalspace.com/traveler/). Through 14 interviewswith 18 members, the film-makers cover distinct chaptersthat can be viewed separately or as one connected stream.The chapters appear under the titles of Introduction,Community, Identity, Art, Wars and Loss. In the process,‘life on the screen’ (Turkle 1995) is actually shown on thescreen.What is also striking about this film is that it was notundertaken by academy-based social scientists, but by independent artists, who in turn conceive their productas something between a documentary and an installationpiece. Jeremy Turner is an interdisciplinary artist, musiccomposer, curator and art critic based in Vancouver,Canada. Turner explores many digital media, focusingespecially on avatars, bots and singular audiocompositions. Turner encountered Traveler around 2001and introduced it to his colleagues, Mancini andHarrison, also based in Vancouver. Harrison is himself an active and recognized videographer, while Mancini isa prolific writer of essays on music history, (visual andtextual) poetry, and is an experienced interviewer.The film-makers’ original intention was to produce afilm about Traveler that focused more on the philosophy of being and existential issues as they relate to social lifeand identity in cyberspace, and these still do figure asprominent themes in the film. Indeed, a trailer to the filmconsists of a filmed, online interview with Pravin Pillay inTraveler, Pillay seen as zebra-striped sea horse floating ina blue sky over majestic snow-capped mountains. Pillay engages in a stream of philosophical musings over reality,questions of life, soul, meaning, duality of self and binary oppositions. The scene accentuates the film’s mode of portraying Traveler as a voyage through a mentaltopography; an exploration of the landscapes of theimaginary, inhabited by the creative projections of one’sself. As a result, the film would not only be useful forteaching in anthropology and sociology courses,undergraduate and advanced, but in a variety of otherdisciplines as well, such as media studies, philosophy andart history.Mancini explained to me that as the project evolved, heand his partners realized that the most fruitful approachwould be simply to document the community, knowingthat Traveler could disappear within a few years – inthese terms, a virtual reinvention of Boasian ‘salvageethnography’. Turner spent about six months becomingacquainted with the regular members of Traveler, in whatwas an admittedly difficult process of gaining trust, orbuilding rapport as ethnographic fieldworkers wouldphrase it. Mancini also explained to me the many motivating factors that led to the making of this film, andit is worthwhile to quote his words at length, given thesignificance of this project:Our affection for the software (we LOVE thesurreal, and strangely antiquated aesthetic of Traveler), our knowledge [that] thecommunity of Traveler is of some historicimportance and, not to sound overbearing,that it would be a small loss to humankind if there was no good record of the people, theplace, and the software. No one else was goingto do it, so we had to. We knew also thatnothing like what we had in mind had beendone before, and that a film made entirely ‘in-world’ would be absorbingly beautiful. Tome it’s like looking at ghosts moving aroundin an aquarium. Some viewers have actually been unable to watch it for the quietly screaming undertone of loneliness one candetect in some of the interviews.Loneliness, remedied through the development of onlinesociability, is indeed one of the recurring themes in thestatements of the main interviewees in the film. Onemember explained that even the level of medication forhis anxiety disorder had been reduced by his doctor as aresult of the positive effects of his participation in thisonline community. Another interviewee commented,‘there are qualities in many of these people that areadmirable … because of the people, that’s why we’rehere’, dispelling the notion that Traveler is a mere game

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