AVENUE Magazine February 2011

Enter Pia Klaar, machinimator who came to SL in 2007. With her machinima and her attitude in learning combined, she makes machinima that not only entertains, but also educates and shows other possibilities meant for Second Life.

I have stumbled upon her machinima, ‘Surreal’ recently and had been absolutely fascinated about her use of various places to present the art and theory of Surrealism in Second Life.

Curious, I went to contact Pia Klaar and started asking questions. Who is she? How did she get into SL®? How did she get into machinima?

Thus this article is born.

I came to know that Klaar has been in SL since 2007, after a colleague of hers mentioned how educators were using the virtual world to teach. Since her background was teaching and she also happens to love using new technology, she quickly signed up. “I was intrigued with SL, but also totally out of my element since I had never used any type of computer “game” before. So I spent the first couple of months taking as many in-world classes as I could: building, scripting, SL basics.”

She had this idea of Second Life as “a place for students to use as an educational means”.

Thus, she spent about a year in the Teen Grid to investigate the possibility. While in the grid, she met someone who helps teenagers learn machinima. She helped with the classes, and soon enough was filming the weekly newscast shows that the teens produced. “After filming