The Salt Satyagraha

photo by Christine A Butler

Article by Natasha Chuk on http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=308



Second Life is a 3-D online environment that is created and maintained by those who virtually inhabit it. Much like the Sims, users interact with one another in a virtually created world. What may seem like mere child's play is taken a step further by Joseph DeLappe's latest project, The Salt Satyagraha, in which he virtually recreates Mahatma Ghandi's Salt March. Ghandi's march, which was about 240 miles long, was in protest of the salt tax by the British in 1930. The project includes a virtual landscape of India and an avatar that resembles Ghandi himself. In order to reenact the 240 mile long journey, DeLappe leads the Ghandi looking avatar through virtual India by actually physically moving his own legs in real life by the use of a treadmill. Along the way, Virtual Ghandi meets others in this virtual India and welcomes strangers to join him in his quest for peace. It takes DeLappe 26 days to finish his 240 mile journey, which he took very seriously.
This Article was very amusing to me because it showed that a piece of Art like this can be used to recreate important events in history. 3-D online environments, such as Second life can be used as a learning tool in order to teach important historical event and show political expressions of peace or violence. I think its very cool that he used a treadmill to actually walk all 240 miles, must have been a work out !!