I stumbled on Douglas Gayeton’s book signing tonight at Clic Gallery on 255 Centre Street and spoke with the photographer for a few minutes.

Una Scampagnata 45 x 24 inches, Digital Print car of Clic Gallery, NYC

I found the photographs interesting to look at, though at first, I didn’t understand them.  Upon closer examination, the photographs appeared to be more like constructions with a code written on top of them to explain what the construction meant.

And, that’s exactly what Douglas Gayeton said me tonight.  This is his first show and his first book, but somehow, we got on the subject of Social Networks and it turns out Douglas Gayeton has a long history as someone who created online communities, as well as an experimenter in Second Life, which I didn’t realize, when I spoke to him, else I’d have brought it up, as well.  According to Wikipedia…

Gayeton ultimately left Propaganda Films in 1994 to start his own media consultancy, Gayetonstudio, where he created interactive projects for dozens of clients. Most notable are: “Plugged In”, precursor to the first teen channel on AOL (1995); “Vanishing Point”, first original content acquisition for MSN (1996); “Yahooligans”, animated series for web and television for Yahoo and Fox (1996); “Plugged in”, first teen channel on AOL France (1997); “Zap!”, first kids channel on AOL France (1997); “Very Small TV” and “Very Small City” (later renamed www.yafoule.com), online community for Vivendi (1999).

Gayeton also provided creative support to Electronic Arts, Viacom, Sega, Intel, and National Geographic. An in-depth survey of Gayeton’s interactive work is featured in The Interactive Writers Handbook by Jon Hamsel (ISBN 978-1885452115).

If I had known he’d been into so many things – I’d have taken more advantage of the the chance meetings that fate seems to put in my path, so often, these days.   But it was fine, as it was.   A couple of glasses of Red Wine, and about 10 minutes of conversation was enough – I got enough information to write this post.

And, in a weird way,  Gayeton’s connection with Millions of Us, was probably one I could afford to leave alone:

Following Gayeton’s experience making Molotov Alva he joined MTV to work on their virtual world projects. This was followed by a brief stint as Chief Creative Officer of Millions of Us LLC, where he developed content for a variety of social network and virtual world platforms including Gaia, Habbo Hotel, Scenecaster, Zwinktopia and most recently Sony’s Playstation Home, the world’s first high definition virtual world.

My own connection with Virtual Worlds, though the work I did at IBM.com’s Virtual Business Center, a few years ago, and with Code4Software.com, puts me more at odds with shops like Millions of Us, Rivers Run Red and Electric Sheep, than for them – I always felt the larger Second Life shops were more like glitzy, commercial production companies that did some interesting stuff, but, at the end of the day, were ghost towns, since hardly anyone visited these sims after they were launched.

But, at the end of the day, I’d be proud to have a resume half as full as what Douglas Gayeton has up at Wikipedia, right now – he’s clearly going after a vision of what he wants to achieve in any art form he plays with, including photography.

And, getting back to the photographs, Douglas explained to me that it took him a lot of work and a long time to do his photographs, and the process was simplified over time, to what it was, in the photos in this show.

I’m glad I went to Douglas Gayeton’s opening at Clic Gallery tonight – it just shows, the world is a very small place and it’s easier and easier to reach the 6th degree of separation (will I find Kevin Bacon there ?).