‘The Second Life of Art’ reveals a new form of artistic expression and communication in the 3D virtual world of Second Life.

A user-created three-dimensional immersive world, Second Life is defined by its “residents”, who are represented by avatars that the users also create. This world, created by California-based Linden Labs, has its own internal economy and its own currency, known as Linden dollars, which may be used to purchase “land” from Linden Labs, or goods and services from other residents. To date, there are over one million residents in Second Life.

As immersive technology improves in its power to engage, researchers and educators are exploring the use of virtual worlds such as Second Life for everything from teaching, to social interaction, to artistic expression. The Australian Arts Council is already funding some of its artists to do work there, and universities such as Princeton and UBC have already created virtual campuses in Second Life.

Second Life and similar 3D immersive environments are where the Web was 10 years ago, in terms of development, and are rapidly moving to replace it. Immersive social networks such as Second Life are therefore exciting possibilities for the arts and the media. The convergence through cyberspace of real and synthetic places, via the internet, is increasingly blurring the lines between technology, culture and community. And as always, at the forefront are the artists, educators and social change activists.

‘The Second Life of Art’ explores the relationships between a wide range of creative communities and this new technology and how these relationships can effect change, both socially and artistically. In immersive 3D worlds like Second Life, our fundamental conceptions of body, space and identity are revealed to be shifting, deeply ambiguous, multivalent, and constantly emergent; not fixed, stable and defined. The cultural shifts that are taking place in Second Life as a concomitant of its multivalent ambiguity have created an exciting new language for artists. In Second Life, as nowhere else, artists can reveal the impermanence of art, the underlying significance of the fact that things created in the virtual realm are really just - virtual. The exciting thing is that even though the work produced in Second Life doesn’t really “exist”, it has the potential to reach many more people than any previous medium in the history of art.