Mixing It Up For a Good Cause

Betsy Book

Time to get that avatar into shape. A “mixed reality” event based on the American Cancer Society’s walk/run Relay for Life will be held in Second Life on August 27-28. 

Offline ACS Relays are team-based all-nighters, with each team attempting to keep at least one member walking or running on the track for the duration of the event.  This is the first time the ACS is offering a virtual version and they hope it will enable more people to participate who wouldn't or couldn't normally do so.

The virtual Relay is itself a team effort, organized by ACS Project Specialist Randal Moss, Community Director of the Acceleration Studies Foundation Jerry Paffendorf, and Second Life resident Keith Morris aka Jade Lily, with support from the folks at Linden Lab. Randal spoke about the origins of the virtual Relay and offered interesting insight into the challenges involved in merging real world events with digital environments at the inaugural Future Salon speaker series this past April. 

A Relay for Life intrinsically presents some interesting logistical challenges, as it involves real-time coordination of mobile avatars. While virtual world inhabitants are certainly no strangers to all-night online play sessions and this is one case where time zone differences will actually work in an event’s favor, it may be difficult to faithfully translate the sheer physicality of a run/walk into an avatar based environment.  In his Future Salon presentation, Randal acknowledged that exact replication will not be possible: “Nothing can ever be duplicated in the virtual world, and things need to be flexible. I had a couple of questions and demands on constraints and restrictions and regulations from some of the departments I’m working with, and I said, ‘You know what? We just can’t do that. It just doesn’t work like that. This is not the real world.’”

Ultimately I believe it is less important to produce an exact physical replication of an offline ACS Relay than it is to transfer the less corporeal elements of a walk/run event into the virtual environment – things like a sense of community and team spirit. If the organizers can give participants a real sense that they are part of a larger, worldwide effort and make them feel that by donating their time and money they truly are helping to make a difference, I think the event will be a success. 

What I really dig about the idea of a virtual walk/run is the way it uses virtual embodiment to overcome limitations of physical embodiment. This goes way beyond simply allowing people to participate who aren’t physically able to do so.  There’s just something inherently poetic about virtual bodies recreating the performance of a physical, corporeal event with the end-goal of extending the life of real, material bodies. It’s an interesting and purposeful breach of the magic circle.

For more information about how to volunteer, participate in, or donate to the Second Life Relay for Life, visit the event’s official site.