Other-Worldly

Photographer, filmaker, and multimedia artist Douglas Gayeton is a new kind of digital storyteller. He creates immersive story experiences for virtual worlds and social networks, including Second Life, Gaia, Habbo Hotel and Sony Home—the first high-def virtual world (which released in public beta in June).

In case you missed it the first time around, here's a clip from one of Gayeton's better-known projects, Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey. He wrote, produced, and directed this documentary, the first-ever shot entirely within Second Life. The highest-rated video in the world on YouTube, Molotov Alva was purchased recently by HBO.



Gayeton is the chief creative officer at Millions of Us, a San Francisco-based agency that specializes in marketing programs in Second Life. He is preparing a one-man retrospective of his works for Slow Food Nation, a San Francisco celebration of the sustainable food movement that's to be held at Fort Mason over the Labor Day weekend.

I will be sitting down with Gayeton in Chicago in early September to hear about his plans for using virtual environments to raise awareness of social issues. "People sometimes use virtual worlds to redefine themselves and the world in a way that's closer to the vision that they have of it and themselves," Gayeton says. Watch this site to learn more about Gayeton and his thought leadership on the newest forms of social media for social change.

—Marcia Stepanek