A virtual-reality project by a student at the University of Southern California is featured in this week’s Vanity Fair. The student, Nonny de la Peña, strives to show the horrors of the Guantánamo Bay military prison using the virtual world Second Life. She has recreated the prison and treats digital visitors, or at least their avatars, as real prisoners—shackles and all.
Ms. de la Peña is on track to earn a master’s degree from the university’s Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities. She produced a 2004 documentary, Unconstitutional, about the erosion of civil liberties since 9/11. —Andrea L. Foster
Update: Ms. Peña reports that she had a partner in the project. The partner was Peggy Weil, a visiting assistant professor in the Interactive Media Division of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
