Reading Marcel Proust

Looking for the lost times... The time of Marcel Proust is a century ago, but seems to be more alive than ever, and very metaverse resistant. Proust had started to work on "A la Recherche du temps perdu" in 1909 and he had finished it in 1922, only just before he died of a cold. The seven parts of the work count 3000 pages altogether.

As I wrote today in my other weblog; in the Bibliothèque Francophone of Second Life (TM) are two events about Marcel Proust sceduled in the next 5 weeks.

The first event is going to take place on Thursday 4 September 2008 in the space called "Fraonesque", high in the skies of the island Ebeoplex, where the Bibliothèque Francophone has its grounds. Here, Véronique Aubouy will tell all who is interested about her lifetime project.

Since 1993 she has started to film people, who are reading aloud a page of the huge work of Marcel Proust "A la Recherche du temps perdu". Films are made with video and at several places like festivals and events. But also by webcams while people read a page in front of their computers.

The second event about Marcel Proust, that will take place in the Bibliothèque Francophone in SL on Wednesday 8 October 2008, is an actual contribution to the lifesize project of Véronique, and that is also where the centuries meet.
One hundred years after Marcel Proust was actually writing his major work, people will read aloud, a page each, while they actually sit at their computers, connected by internet to the metaverse world of Second Life, using a headset so they can speak with and listen to other people at their own desks somewhere else on planet Earth. They will each have an avatar that represents themselves in Second Life, so that they can be seen and filmed inside the world of Second Life, while they read their page aloud in their headsets' microphone and while their avatar is animated like they are reading a book.

The project was meant to run until 2050 in order to be able to film 3000 people reading one page each. This is acceptable, considering technical possibilities back in 1993, only 15 years ago. Considering the current time and the near future in which so many new ways of communication and multi-media options are open and available for everyone, I would rather expect this filming to be done much faster. It would even more exciting, if you allow me a bit of a daydream, that this very long film (about one week!) could be released in 2022, when it is 100 years ago that Proust died, and of course at the Film Festival of Cannes.

If developments in the next 15 years will be in the same rush as the last 15 years, I have all faith that this daydream could become reality.

More info (in french) also if you are interested to actually join the reading and to be one of the 3000 in the "Kiss of the Matrix".
http://www.lebaiserdelamatrice.fr/ Main website about the "Kiss of the Matrix"
http://sldirect.blogspot.com/ The official website of the Bibliothèque Francophone of Second Life (TM) and the Metaverse