 Hello, I'm Alan Hudson, a freelance developer, mostly working now in Second Life, and I'm a former college and university lecturer, mostly lecturing in IT, multimedia and e-learning. A trifling history of the moving image will be a free-to-use resource for education and entertainment. It will exist in the virtual world of Second Life, building on previous new synthetic theatre developments. It will tell the history of storytelling, from the bars around the campfire to 3D cinema and, of course, virtual world applications. Second Life is a free-to-use virtual world available via the internet. Anyone with a PC, Mac or Linux computer and an internet connection can use it. There are also viewers with limited functionality for some tablets and phones. A very large number of universities and colleges around the world are now using Second Life, along with private companies and, of course, individuals. Users can create their own imaginative environment for static displays such as conventional art galleries, or for product promotions, you can even have live theatre, music, concerts and social gatherings. Various defence organisations use it too, but if I told you more about that, I'd have to kill you. I created New Synthetic Theatre two years ago to explore the possibilities of creating an automated theatre environment in which the audience's avatars are the performers in the show. Their avatars are manipulated and animated in time with the scenery changes and stream sound and music to create a dynamic environment to tell a story. Two shows are currently running, 99% and Jabba Jabba Jabba. 99% is a comment on the recent Occupy protests. In New Synthetic Theatre we can stage a riot. The avatars can get hurt, but we don't actually hurt real people. In Jabba Jabba Jabba, we hunt for the moon, visit colleges Kublacarn Pleasure Dome and finally hunt for the Jabba Wocky with our Vorpal Swords. Slyvy Toast with Gair and Gimbal in the Wave, where the borough grows, the moon grows. The next production, Gilgamesh's Flood Story, is in production. Gilgamesh is said to be the first story ever written down. Originally it was on cuniform tablets but now available on paper and even on Kindle. Using NST we can tell a story on a computer screen but engage the audience in a much more immersive way than using a conventional website. The audience can view the changing scenes from any positional angle and because their avatar is involved in the action it gives them a greater sense of being there. Evening live, real theatre there is a distance both physically and emotionally between the audience and the action. In NST they are in the same place and by being physically involved, albeit virtually, they are also emotionally involved to a greater degree. In order to attempt to fund these productions, the audience first buy a ticket at the ticket office. This can be a barrier for educators. Students and teachers have to have some funds which means someone has to put their credit card information into the second life system. Although the cost is tiny, about 30 US cents per ticket, entering credit card information into a system is often a barrier. Additionally, the lindons, the currency used in second life, have to be distributed around the class. Students make mistakes and there is often no reluctance to view a show a second time if this incurs a second ticket cost. To counter this barrier, the project will be funded by Kickstarter funding, allowing it to run for at least a year. If this works I have other ideas for further shows, for example the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and my father's last bombing raid over Germany in the Second World War, in which he was shot down and later captured. I hope these will show that NST can truly bring history alive. Perhaps a cliché, but I know from my own history education, it is very easy to turn students off even when the material you are trying to teach is truly fascinating. I'm reminded of the opening sequence in the movie Saving Private Ryan. It was only by watching this that I appreciated what it must have been like for a soldier at the Normandy landings in the Second World War. Using NST techniques I should be able to bring a similar reality to subjects. A trifling history of the moving image will engage the audience by involving them in the experience of how we have told stories and how these methods have changed with the introduction of new technologies. Thus we begin with the bard visiting our village and telling the stories verbally around the campfire, perhaps making the best moving images in our minds. Then we take part in a scene from a group tragedy in an amphitheater, then a dynamic and dramatic scene in Rome's Colosseum, followed by the London Colosseum in London's West End and a traditional proscenium arch. Nearby we visit a diorama and a panorama. These were experimental installations using static canvases with natural light and viewing platforms so the audience could see large vistas and scenes from history and myths and legends. In the diorama the whole seating area for the audience was rotated to see one image while the second image is being prepared. Then the audience are rotated to the second allowing stagehands to change the first image with the third. The building is constructed to catch the natural sunshine. Yes there is some sometimes in London and here we have the panorama in Leicester Square now converted to a church. Next we stand inside the camera obscura near Brunel suspension bridge in Bristol and see a moving image of the outside world projected onto the inside of the building. This ushes in the new technology of photography. We attend a lantern slideshow, sit for a photograph and then attend a cinema and see moving images of factory workers leaving at the end of the day and are nearly hit by a steam train. As we attend a series of performances we can also see how the technology works. The Geneva camera for an early camera and projector, the optics for a camera obscura, the rotating seating area for the diorama. All these will be built within second life so that visitors can experience what it would have felt like to be within these experiences. At the end of the show our avatar is taken to an exhibition area giving more information about the technologies we've just experienced and allowing them to ponder and view these in their own time. This free to visit show should be up and running during 2014. It will then be available 24 hours a day every day of the year for visitors, individuals, classes of students, anyone with an interest. I'm sure even with diligent research I will get things wrong and visitors will correct me but this is software and the system can be changed and improved as my shortcomings are revealed. Do please bring your students and to monitor the development of the project see this website newsynthetictheatre.co.uk