as the central speaker and facilitator. Aside from the Cyborg Manifesto, it constitutes one of Haraway’s most extended engagements with science fiction, and with a specific work of science fiction cinema in particular, as a central topic.

A review of Cécile B. Evans’ show Hyperlinks, at Seventeen Gallery, London 15th Oct – 6th Dec 2014. With lots of editing and writerly support from Anton Haugen and Michael Conner.

Cécile B. Evans, Hyperlinks or it didn’t happen (2014). Still frame from HD video. Courtesy of Seventeen. Media saturation in the internet’s “cut & paste” ecology has become so naturalized that contemporary film’s collaged aspects are not readily considered. Who are the subjects in, for example, a Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch film? And for whom do they perform? When I show these films in my class, my students switch tabs in their browsers, Snapchat each other, like photos, fav tweets—often on multiple screens at once—then state that this “work is about strange fake-tanned kids’ search for a toilet.” What has made this answer stay in my mind pertains to the word “about.” When used for these works, the banal statement “this work is about…” registers as a crisis of categorical closure that the simultaneous existence of disparate, accumulated content on a single screen constantly thwarts. Central to Cécile B. Evans’ show Hyperlinks at Seventeen Gallery in London is the video-essay, Hyperlinks or it didn’t happen, displayed on a high-resolution TV with headphone cords installed at a comfortable cartoon-watching height in a corner of the space. Entering at the opposite corner, I navigate the gallery space, attempting to link the objects together—a prosthetic leg atop an upturned Eames chair replica near a rubber plant that counterbalances a plexiglass structure supporting 3D-printed arms (One Foot In The Grave, 2014), another Eames replica sitting in one corner (just a chair), various prints on the floor and walls—before sitting down, cross-legged, on a thick-pile rug strewn with postcard-sized images. The film begins with a super high-resolution render of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s head floating over the shimmering image of a jellyfish. “I’m not magic, and please don’t call me uncanny,” says a synthetically-augmented human voice. “I’m just a bad copy made too perfectly, too soon.” The video lingers on Hoffman’s face. His lips do not move — at least, not in sync with the voice claiming to be the bad copy. “Fuck. Fuck FUCKING FUCK! I am full of him.” An audience laughter track plays. The bad copy’s hair flutters as his head bobs. The follicles on his nose look like they’d be the perfect environment for a blackhead to take up residence. The subject floating on the screen does not symbolize Hoffman, rather, it is an improper metaphor for the actor’s “untimely death’; for anything that transcends description, yet is saturated with meaning nonetheless. Hyperlinks is so full of meaning that, as the voice suggests, it is set to burst.

Evans wants us to feel uncomfortable at the absence of an uncanny feeling, and by referring to this lack directly in the monologue of the simulated voice, she sets up a relation the viewer and this, a highly stylized, digital avatar. Hoffman, the image-thing, is not really a metaphor, nor is he really a copy, a simulation, or even a simulacrum of a more-real body. Hoffman, the image-thing, is literal and actual, perhaps more so to the viewer than Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the flesh-and-blood human or his “untimely death” was/will/could ever be. In her 2010 essay A Thing Like You and Me, Hito Steyerl defines the image as a thing whose “immortality… originates… from its ability to be xeroxed, recycled, and reincarnated.” [1] Like the postcards strewn throughout Hyperlinks, the floating, self-referential Hoffman points out a literal truth: Hoffman’s head is an “improper metaphor” [2] for the image that it actually is. Catachresis, a term we can employ for such “improper metaphors,” is a forced extension of meaning employed when “when no proper, or literal, term is available.” [3] According to Vivian Sobchack, “catachresis is differentiated from proper metaphor insofar as it forces us to confront” [4] the deficiency and failure of language. In linking across the gap between figural and literal meaning, catachresis marks the precise moment “where living expression states living existence.” [5] The image-things of Evans’ film are similarly analogically hyperlinked to the metaphors they supposedly express. In several sequences, an invisible, green-screened woman wanders a beach with a man who we are told is her partner: the nameless protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, The Invisible Man. For a few seconds, we are confronted with Marlon Brando’s floating head, isolated from scenes deleted from Superman II (1980) to be digitally repurposed for the 2006 film Superman Returns, so the actor could reprise his role as Superman’s father two years after his death. The vocaloid pop-star Hatsune Miku serenades us with the song “Forever Young,” referencing her own immortality in the server banks and USB sticks that confer her identity. We then see, rolling onto a stage in Canada, Edward Snowden gives a TED talk on taking back the web, through a “Telepresence Robot” (an object that looks like a flat-panel screen attached to a Segway). As in a collage, the film splices and dices contiguous space and time, producing a unique configuration of catachretic associations, rather than a continuous narrative about something. Fictions are interwoven with facts, gestures with statements, figures with subjects. Moving about the gallery, the viewer hovers about the strewn postcard-sized images of a counterfeit Kermit the Frog, the render of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the “hologram” of Michael Jackson. The image-things in Evans’ work seem to exist beyond subject/object distinctions, outside of sense, above their own measure of themselves —selves that they, nonetheless, frequently seem to be measuring and re-measuring. The exhibition comes with its own printed glossary of terms listing references the video makes. The first term in the glossary is “Hyperlink”: A reference to external data that a reader can open either by clicking or by hovering over a point of origin. From Greek hyper (prep. And adv.) “over, beyond, overmuch, above measure.” Here again the figural and literal are called into question. In relation to what can one say the “external” or “beyond” of a hyperlink resides? Why is the etymology for “link” not also given? Though at first, the glossary seems to map the associations, the links, of the disparate imagery presented in the show, it is suggestive of the total-work, presenting an almost anarchistic circulation of imagery as a coherent system. The glossary’s reification of associations gestures towards also the internet’s systemic interpellation of our networked subjecthood; as well as in the film title’s reference to the phrase “Pics, or it didn’t happen,” the show’s contrast between a body’s lifespan and a circulating digital image seems to also echo of our status as “poor copies” of our digital semblances. The image-things in “Hyperlinks” serve – to hijack the words of Scott Bukatman – “as the partial and fragmented representations that they are.” [6] . Through the works’ superfluity of associations and meanings, I found myself considering the impossibility of categorical closure. If totalization means incorporating all disparate things, an ultimate difference erupts: a moment that also signals the deficiency and failure of systemization itself. What makes Evans work successful is this endless calling up of the specter of the beyond, the outside, the everything else, from within the perceived totality of the internet. With the glossary, the totality of the show almost feels performative, gesturing towards the systemic totalizing we confer onto art objects in a gallery space before, after, and, especially, during their imaging. But image-things are considerably more liberated than either objects or subjects. They are more real, precisely because we recognize them as images.

[1] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” in The Wretched of the Screen, e-flux Journal (Sternberg Press, 2012), 46–59.

[2] Vivian Carol Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 81.

[3] Richard Shiff, “Cezanne’s Physicality: The Politics of Touch,” in The Language of Art History, ed. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 150.

[4] Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, 81.

[5] Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (Routledge, 2004), 72.

[6] Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 40.

Cécile B. Evans, Hyperlinks or it didn't happen (2014). Still frame from HD video. Courtesy of Seventeen. Media saturation in the internet's "cut & paste" ecology has become so naturalized that contemporary film's collaged aspects are not readily considered. Who are the subjects in, for example, a Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch film? And for whom do they perform? When I show these films in my class, my students switch tabs in their browsers, Snapchat each other, like photos, fav tweets—often on multiple screens at once—then state that this "work is about strange fake-tanned kids' search for a toilet." What has made this answer stay in my mind pertains to the word "about." When used for these works, the banal statement "this work is about…" registers as a crisis of categorical closure that the simultaneous existence of disparate, accumulated content on a single screen constantly thwarts. Central to Cécile B. Evans' show Hyperlinks at Seventeen Gallery in London is the video-essay, Hyperlinks or it didn't happen, displayed on a high-resolution TV with headphone cords installed at a comfortable cartoon-watching height in a corner of the space. Entering at the opposite corner, I navigate the gallery space, attempting to link the objects together—a prosthetic leg atop an upturned Eames chair replica near a rubber plant that counterbalances a plexiglass structure supporting 3D-printed arms (One Foot In The Grave, 2014), another Eames replica sitting in one corner (just a chair), various prints on the floor and walls—before sitting down, cross-legged, on a thick-pile rug strewn with postcard-sized images.  

Cécile B. Evans, "Hyperlinks," Installation view. Courtesy of Seventeen. The film begins with a super high-resolution render of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's head floating over the shimmering image of a jellyfish. "I'm not magic, and please don't call me uncanny," says a synthetically-augmented human voice. "I'm just a bad copy made too perfectly, too soon." The video lingers on Hoffman's face. His lips do not move — at least, not in sync with the voice claiming to be the bad copy. "Fuck. Fuck FUCKING FUCK! I am full of him." An audience laughter track plays. The bad copy's hair flutters as his head bobs. The follicles on his nose look like they'd be the perfect environment for a blackhead to take up residence. The subject floating on the screen does not symbolize Hoffman, rather, it is an improper metaphor for the actor's "untimely death'; for anything that transcends description, yet is saturated with meaning nonetheless. Hyperlinks is so full of meaning that, as the voice suggests, it is set to burst. Evans wants us to feel uncomfortable at the absence of an uncanny feeling, and by referring to this lack directly in the monologue of the simulated voice, she sets up a relation the viewer and this, a highly stylized, digital avatar. Hoffman, the image-thing, is not really a metaphor, nor is he really a copy, a simulation, or even a simulacrum of a more-real body. Hoffman, the image-thing, is literal and actual, perhaps more so to the viewer than Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the flesh-and-blood human or his "untimely death" was/will/could ever be. In her 2010 essay A Thing Like You and Me, Hito Steyerl defines the image as a thing whose "immortality… originates… from its ability to be xeroxed, recycled, and reincarnated." [1] Like the postcards strewn throughout Hyperlinks, the floating, self-referential Hoffman points out a literal truth: Hoffman's head is an "improper metaphor" [2] for the image that it actually is.  Catachresis, a term we can employ for such "improper metaphors," is a forced extension of meaning employed when "when no proper, or literal, term is available." [3] According to Vivian Sobchack, "catachresis is differentiated from proper metaphor insofar as it forces us to confront" [4] the deficiency and failure of language. In linking across the gap between figural and literal meaning, catachresis marks the precise moment "where living expression states living existence." [5] The image-things of Evans' film are similarly analogically hyperlinked to the metaphors they supposedly express. In several sequences, an invisible, green-screened woman wanders a beach with a man who we are told is her partner: the nameless protagonist of Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel, The Invisible Man. For a few seconds, we are confronted with Marlon Brando's floating head, isolated from scenes deleted from Superman II (1980) to be digitally repurposed for the 2006 film Superman Returns, so the actor could reprise his role as Superman's father two years after his death.

The vocaloid pop-star Hatsune Miku serenades us with the song "Forever Young," referencing her own immortality in the server banks and USB sticks that confer her identity. We then see, rolling onto a stage in Canada, Edward Snowden gives a TED talk on taking back the web, through a "Telepresence Robot" (an object that looks like a flat-panel screen attached to a Segway). As in a collage, the film splices and dices contiguous space and time, producing a unique configuration of catachretic associations, rather than a continuous narrative about something. Fictions are interwoven with facts, gestures with statements, figures with subjects. Moving about the gallery, the viewer hovers about the strewn postcard-sized images of a counterfeit Kermit the Frog, the render of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the "hologram" of Michael Jackson. The image-things in Evans' work seem to exist beyond subject/object distinctions, outside of sense, above their own measure of themselves —selves that they, nonetheless, frequently seem to be measuring and re-measuring. The exhibition comes with its own printed glossary of terms listing references the video makes. The first term in the glossary is "Hyperlink":               A reference to external data that a reader can open either by clicking or by hovering over a point of origin. From Greek hyper (prep. And adv.) "over, beyond, overmuch, above measure." Here again the figural and literal are called into question. In relation to what can one say the "external" or "beyond" of a hyperlink resides? Why is the etymology for "link" not also given? Though at first, the glossary seems to map the associations, the links, of the disparate imagery presented in the show, it is suggestive of the total-work, presenting an almost anarchistic circulation of imagery as a coherent system. The glossary's reification of associations gestures towards also the internet's systemic interpellation of our networked subjecthood; as well as in the film title's reference to the phrase "Pics, or it didn't happen," the show's contrast between a body's lifespan and a circulating digital image seems to also echo of our status as "poor copies" of our digital semblances. The image-things in "Hyperlinks" serve – to hijack the words of Scott Bukatman - "as the partial and fragmented representations that they are." [6] . Through the works' superfluity of associations and meanings, I found myself considering the impossibility of categorical closure. If totalization means incorporating all disparate things, an ultimate difference erupts: a moment that also signals the deficiency and failure of systemization itself. What makes Evans work successful is this endless calling up of the specter of the beyond, the outside, the everything else, from within the perceived totality of the internet. With the glossary, the totality of the show almost feels performative, gesturing towards the systemic totalizing we confer onto art objects in a gallery space before, after, and, especially, during their imaging. But image-things are considerably more liberated than either objects or subjects. They are more real, precisely because we recognize them as images.

[1] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” in The Wretched of the Screen, e-flux Journal (Sternberg Press, 2012), 46–59.

[2] Vivian Carol Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 81.

[3] Richard Shiff, “Cezanne’s Physicality: The Politics of Touch,” in The Language of Art History, ed. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 150.

[4] Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, 81.

[5] Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (Routledge, 2004), 72.

[6] Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 40.

The code that puts a first-person-shooter avatar and reticule on top of random uploaded videos doesn't appear to be publicly available. That's probably a good thing because it makes everything much more stomach-churning.

GIFs have flashed across many a webpage, flickered within millions of MySpace profiles and glittered among innumerable Tumblrs. You've spotted them in animated advertising, email signatures, web forums and social avatars.

On embodied perception and becoming out virtual avatars http://t.co/Mg07N8vnO7 by @AustinConsidine on @motherboard – LadyBits (LadyBitsBytes) http://twitter.com/LadyBitsBytes/status/332985021566705666

On HP Lovecraft: Alex Fitch talks to Alan Moore about his final graphic novel that isn’t part of the continuing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen narrative – Neonomicon – which has just been published, along with its prequel The Courtyard, as a graphic novel by Avatar Press. Both comics follow on from Lovecraft’s tale ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ and Alan discusses why he chose that story in particular to explore further, plus the origins of The Courtyard in an abandoned short story collection called ‘Yuggoth Cultures’, and examples of Lovecraftian imagery in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga.

This year saw the invasion of telepresence robots—electromechanical avatars that allow you to be there without actually being there. Today, half a dozen companies are selling, or will start selling, these robots. I’ve tested two of the robots myself, discussing at length their technical merits as well as their practical shortcomings, and even helped a colleague build his own robotic self.

Although the technology behind these robots is fascinating, I’m also interested in the historical and philosophical aspects of telepresence. Telepresence robots didn’t come out of nowhere; they stem from a convergence of different technologies, each with its own history. The advent of robotic telepresence also reflects a moment in time when many of us are becoming ever more connected and available.

So what made these robots possible now? What’s so appealing about roaming around as a machine in a remote place? And where is this technology taking us, literally and figuratively?

To explore these theme

Lanchester allowed that computer games would never tell us as much about character as other forms of narrative, but pointed out two great virtues of the form: “The first is visual: the best games are already beautiful, and I can see no reason why the look of video games won’t match or surpass that of cinema. The second is to do with this sense of agency, that the game offers a world in which the player is free to act and to choose.” And both points are right. The best games do look great, and we do have a lot of choice, not just inside game worlds but among them. Raised on the flashing cursors of Zork, we’ve learned to adore the newer, pert, pretty avatars, so much sexier and more powerful than we’d ever dare imagine ourselves. We too have played the games with lush graphics inspired by Breughel and Bosch and Kurosawa; the first-person shooter games; the strategy games in intricately wrought alternate worlds or ages past; the Sims; the online worlds of Warcraft and Second Life; the spo

THE news of the day often includes an item about some development in artificial intelligence: a machine that smiles, a program that can predict human tastes in mates or music, a robot that teaches foreign languages to children. This constant stream of stories suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should think of them as fellow creatures instead of as tools. But such conclusions aren’t just changing how we think about computers — they are reshaping the basic assumptions of our lives in misguided and ultimately damaging ways.

I myself have worked on projects like machine vision algorithms that can detect human facial expressions in order to animate avatars or recognize individuals. Some would say these too are examples of A.I., but I would say it is research on a specific software problem that shouldn’t be confused with the deeper issues of intelligence or the nature of personhood. Equally important, my philosophical position has not p

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844), a prototypical nerd with few social graces and no head for business turns a watchmaker’s shop into an artist’s studio where, ultimately, he creates a clockwork butterfly in every way indistinguishable from a real butterfly except in its being even more beautiful. Although most of the story is about how misunderstood this nerdy clockmaker is, Hawthorne’s deeper concern is the fundamental mistake of supposing that the idea of artistic creation is not just to create something that is like reality but rather something that amounts to a new reality, a creation to rival God’s own. Indeed, as religion was already fading out of the Western cultural picture by the mid-nineteenth century, the story presents us with a foretaste of our own time in which, to an ever greater extent, we expect the artist to become God.

Or, if not God, at least a sort of godling, who makes his claim on our attention not by the likeness of his

by Daniel Rourke According to the film industry, to director James 'billions at the box-office' Cameron, Avatar is the first 'true' 3D movie. It takes the experience of cinema to the next (natural?) level, and it does it in a way that makes the movie industry gasp. According to the industry, Avatar is the 3D film that other film makers will be watching for years to come; Avatar is the Citizen Kane of 3D cinema. It is at this point that I could repudiate this position, arguing plainly, perhaps with examples from cinematic history, why Avatar is not a revolution, why beneath its faux-3D visuals it is the same old same old, re-wrapped and re-branded for the computer game generation. But, the truth is that I think Avatar is a triumph of film-making. Not because of its technical bravado or simple, effective characters, but because of something that Hollywood seems to have forgotten about itself: the mythic potential of cinema. Although Avatar is definitely not the Citizen Kane of 3D cinema, it might just be its Wizard of Oz. At its best Hollywood can be transformative. It can speak through its audience, mirroring the concerns of the generations. At its worst Hollywood is little more than a series of plucked-off-the-shelf set-scenes stitched end-to-end. Recent Hollywood vehicles that made a mockery of the art of film-making include Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Spider Man 3, Transformers, Indiana Jones IV and – dare I suggest it – both recent renditions of James Cameron's estranged Hollywood franchise, Terminator III and IV. Watching these movies is like being force-fed visual gruel. A luke-warm dribble of grey matter concocted to approximate the flavour and consistency of much richer, organically grown, cinematic equivalents. These films, each in their own way, do away with characters and conflicts, replacing them with up-and-coming stars and plot devices. Instead of scripts these films have sound bites, instead of cinematography and vision these films are filled with chase scenes and montages designed to pull the viewer from one meagre set-scene to another. Of course it is unfair to generalise about all modern cinema. There are plenty of superb films that come out each year, and for every great film of the 2000s it is possible to find 10 awful films from the 'Golden Age'. What my argument centres around is a specific kind of film, the kind that we attach the label 'Hollywood' to, whether it was imagined and produced in Los Angeles or not. Films like The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars: A New Hope or E.T.. Films of mass appeal that culminate in a kind of cultural hysteria. Films that grow to encompass the mythos of their times. Dorothy's adventure through Oz is a great example of where a specific film and the mythos of cinema came together. In an over-hauling of the spectacle of cinema Dorothy's journey to Oz mirrors the technical leap the film was built around. From the black and white plains of Kansas Dorothy is literally swept into the colourful land of Oz. Dorothy is taken from the cinematic old and brought into the cinematic new, her mythic tribulations aren't just those of a fictional girl: they are the tale of cinema, of audience anticipation and the new wonders that Hollywood would show us if only we followed their Yellow Brick Road. In Avatar James Cameron and his team have orchestrated a modern Wizard of Oz. Whilst following the mythic story arc of all great Hollywood blockbusters, Avatar maintains a pace and attention to necessary detail completely absent from the films listed above. What's more, and this is perhaps Cameron's cleverest slight of hand, the story that Avatar tells mirrors the unique experience that it wishes upon its audience. It is not just the residents of its utopian planet 'Pandora' that are perceptively transformed: we the audience are almost literally taken with them. The transformative insistence of the story plays out most readily when the hero, Jake Sully, speaks into his daily video diary. At one point, via admittedly clunky dialogue, he tells us face on, that the utopian life he has built on Pandora has superseded his human life as the "most real" of the two. Here Cameron's fictional tale attempts to reach out from one 3D world to another. Here Cameron says to the audience to give themselves up, as readily as they can bear, to the mythos of cinema. For me this is the pivot of Avatar's success. Not for a moment do I believe that its computer generated beauty, and single-dimensional characters are the components that raise the film above 3D spectacle. It is the insistence, inherent in every frame of Avatar, that one give oneself up to the experience that drives James Cameron's newest franchise. Myths are stories that transcend the simplistic dichotomies of truth and fiction, of the contemporary and the eternal. A successful myth will embody a relationship between its structure and characters that mirrors aspects of human nature we all instinctively recognise. The truths of a mythic tale are transcendent truths, that is, they are as true in single contexts (e.g. this character is evil) as they are true eternally and in all situations (i.e. as human beings we all carry within us the capacity for evil). Avatar tells us nothing about human nature that we didn't already know. Indeed, its character types and conflicts can be found again and again throughout the history of story telling. What Avatar does do is remind us of the mythic value of cinema itself, a myth that film producers and Hollywood executives would do well to utilise each time they plan their blockbusters. The mythic truth of Avatar is this: that cinema is THE story-telling tool of the modern era. To use that tool; to abuse it for the benefit of film stars and profit margins alone is sacrilegious to the form. Avatar, and films crafted with similar care and attention, should be emulated by Hollywood not for their potential for profit, but for their ability to deliver to us the myths of our time. It is sad to note that Avatar's success at the box-office will probably usher in a whole new generation of 3D spectacle from which rich story arcs and mythic character types will be amputated. A good myth demands to be believed in, for its receiver to suspend every ounce of their disbelief in order that its 'higher truth' may shine through. As you watch the Baftas and Oscars this week, consider Avatar's (possible) success as a parable. Like The Wizard of Oz, Avatar is a film that is asking to be bettered, a film that carries within itself the mythic ingredients necessary for the true Citizen Kane of 3D cinema to emerge. Here's hoping Hollywood responds to Avatar's mythic resonance, rather than its box-office statistics. Here's hoping that 3D cinema can bring us more of the amazing stories that Hollywood can proudly claim it has already delivered. by Daniel Rourke

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent. In the film, a group of soldiers and scientists have set up shop...

Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you'd be forgiven for asking if it's still going.

Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn't plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines.

Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their "second life" online.

And everything about this world can be customised for a price - new outfits, drinks in a bar, even a luxury mansion can be bought with Linden dollars.

Mentions of Second Life first crept into the UK media mainstream in early 2006.

A year later, newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and trend pieces. By the end of 2007 Second Life had secured more than 600 mentions in UK newspapers and m