Wagner James Au / New World Notes

I'm sad to read the news that the real life owner of Tutsy Navarantha, acclaimed Second Life-based artist, recently died. Many SL community members have already posted farewells and memorials on his RL Facebook account. 

He created until close to the very end, such as this poignant image, "Alone Against the World" on Flickr last March. (Cajsa's tribute to his SL photos is here.) My fondest memory of him can be watched above — 2011's award-winning "Journey into the Metaverse", one of the best Second Life machinimas ever made. I interviewed him about it then, getting a glimpse of his artistic vision and a bit about his fascinating first life:

A filmmaker originally based in Paris, Mr. Navarantha combines real world documentary footage he personally shot in India to tell the story of an avatar whose identity becomes so strong, he reshapes the identity of his owner. In the process, the story brings us back to the origin of the word “avatar”, from Hindu theology, for “godly incarnation”.

“The relationship between an individual and his avatar necessarily poses many questions about our psychology and also our future,” he tells me. For many reasons (social, political, cultural), he believes virtual worlds will continue developing. “This will create a new kind of social relationship,” altering even our romantic and sexual interactions. As that happens, “We can say today that the boundaries between these two worlds slowly fade.”

A friend showed Mr. Navarantha Second Life three years ago. “I was immediately fascinated. Computers, cyberworlds and all appearances of new art forms have always been a passion for me. It was natural [fit].” And so he’s used his filmmaking skills to make many machinimas, which you can see here.

As for Tutsy Navarantha, I said he was originally from Paris, but as it turns out, he followed the trajectory of the avatar and his owner from the movie:

“I just made the choice to live and work in South India,” he tells me.

Visit the Facebook page of Tusty's owner, Basil Vignes.

Thanks to Glasz DeCuir for the reminder!