45-page sworn declaration - Business Insider

Mitchell
Silberberg &
Knupp LLP
Case 2:11-cv-10294-MMM-JCG Document 117 Filed 11/13/12 Page 37 of 45 Page ID
#:2029
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Avatar, the mind is fully conscious, not asleep or dreaming, and is receiving
sensory input from an outside source. In Avatar, the operators of avatar bodies
control them remotely using their minds, and rely on sensory input received from
the body in the form of images, sounds and physical sensations. They are not
dreaming. It is a real-time, real-world experience, with real consequences and
independently verifiable interactions between the avatar and other people, places
and things in the real world.
114. As previously described, I had explored the concept of a virtual body
in Chrysalis in the early 1970s: the wheelchair-bound man is able to use his legs
again through a virtual journey in his mind. In Xenogenesis in the late 1970s, I
explored the concept of a physical link between mind and machine.
115. In the early 1980s, I further developed this concept in Mother, in
which humans control genetically engineered aliens using psychic abilities coupled
with advanced technology. In Mother, as in Avatar, the human controllers are
scientists employed by a corporation that seeks to mine the planet. See paragraphs
60-66 above.
116. I expanded my experience with “telepresence,” or the control of
remote “bodies” when writing and making The Abyss. Fascinated by the robotic
vehicle used by Dr. Robert Ballard to explore the Titanic wreck, I wrote The Abyss
to include ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles). But since the story involved
contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, I made the cognitive leap to ask the
question: what would an advanced alien ROV look like? And so the story also
included the aliens’ version of an ROV, called the “pseudopod” in the script. The
pseudopod was a large tentacle composed of seawater, controlled and shaped by
advanced alien technology, which the aliens controlled from afar. The water
tentacle enters the human base and makes contact with them, observing them and
communicating by taking on the facial aspect of the two main characters. It takes
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DECLARATION OF JAMES CAMERON