"Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times"

"Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times" a film by Draxtor is finally ready to premiere. I hope you make time to watch it. Starting April 2, 2022 1 PM, SLT at the Film Threat sim.

We all lived through these pandemic times and the virtual worlds helped many of us cope. I believe the film will have a little of all of us in it.

Now, more than ever it is time to show that we are here in these worlds and they are not games, they are real with real people.

I know from my own experience that when the pandemic hit, we were all frightened and did not know what was going on. I could come here to second life and find people from all over the world who experienced the same thing. It made things a little easier for sure knowing that we were not isolated and we were all going through the same thing.

The virtual world helped me over and over again to be able to cope during the pandemic when we suddenly went to virtual teaching. Most of us have never done this. We had questions, how do we do this, how do we prepare and how will this work? It was a learning process, but being in the virtual world prior to all of this helped with putting this all together and presenting meaningful lessons for even the youngest students. 

I am looking forward to viewing the film and I know it will be a representation of all of us.

In the meantime go watch the trailer on Youtube.

Find out more about the project at the website here:

VIRTUAL CULTURES IN PANDEMIC TIMES

A research project based in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine
Researchers: Tom Boellstorff, Evan Conaway, Chandra Middleton, and Sandy Wenger
Filmmaker: Bernhard Drax aka Draxtor