If you’re in a Gandhi mood today, you may want to pay Joseph Delappe a visit, because he loves Gandhi. Or really admires him. Or something like that. Because for one, he built this incredible 17-feet Gandhi statue (looking somewhat like a video-game character back in the days of Playstation 1 or something – what with the low-polygon count). Not only did he build Gandhi, he’s made an Instructable out of it – so you can make your own Gandhi in your own backyard too!
The reason that he makes it is perhaps somewhat more interesting than the sculpture itself. Joseph has an avatar in the online virtual world Second Life called (guessed it?) MGandhi Chakrabarti:
In March of 2008 me and my Gandhi avatar walked throughout Second Life for 26 days to reenact his famous 1930′s Salt March – the forward steps of my avatar in SL were controlled by me walking in real life on a customized treadmill.
… After walking with Gandhi in Second Life for 240 miles I decided it would be interesting to extract my avatar from this online world and recreate him in monumental scale…the process of creating the 17′ tall cardboard Gandhi using a variety of readily accessible (mostly free!) software tools, cardboard and a hot glue gun. The production of this sculpture took a total of 4 weeks, 6 days a week, 9-11 hour days with the assistance of an intern for two-three days of each week.
Here’s MGhandhi walking in Second Life:
[Artist’s Page]
