Douglas Gayeton (aka Molotov Alva) shines in both lives, publishes sumptuous book

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Allow me to correct a common misperception about the quality of people who inhabit virtual worlds. While mindless jerks, drones and memes (not unique to virtual environments) certainly have a presence, scores of the most interesting folks I've met in any life first became known to me in avatar form. Take Douglas Gayeton, for example.

His acclaimed 2007 ten-episode film and documentary "Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator," was shot entirely in Second Life®, acquired by HBO and screened on Cinemax. He has created content for many social network and virtual world platforms including Gaia, Habbo Hotel and Sony’s Playstation Home. He lives in Northern California on a goat farm that produces Laloos Goat’s Milk Ice Cream. In 2003, commissioned by PBS and POV to document Italy's Slow Food movement, he trained his camera and his questions on the lives of people from the town of Pistoia, Italy.

Now a gorgeous hardcover book, Slow Life in a Tuscan Town, featuring recipes alongside his charmingly scribbled notes a top sepia photographs captured during his numerous visits to rural Italy, will be on the shelves next month, prefaced by Carlo Petrinim with an introduction by my culinary hero, Alice Waters.



I'm proud to call Douglas a friend and a member of our virtual worlds working group Not Possible IRL, and I've never met him in person. My hope is that someday we will cook for each other. I bet he'd like my risotto.