SFAQ_issue_sixteen

SECOND LIFE > REAL LIFE > SECOND LIFE
By COURTNEY MALICK
While RMB City is first and foremost a site of production and interaction for gamers,
it has also become a bridge between the Second Life community and others from
various galleries and museums due to Cao’s status as an international exhibitor. For
example, she conducted live interviews with Hans-Ulrich Obrist and other curators at
the Serpentine in London, in which both online and real life viewers could participate.
In this way, the project is digital in its framework and modus operandi, but its most
exciting meaning has come from the ways RMB City parses through a certain level of
abstracted mimicry, the deeply felt isolation of the vast urban development of China in
the last twenty years, and the fragility and instability of that environment today. In this
way, Cao’s artistic commentary relates more to China and its rapidly changing landscape
than to that of Second Life, which acts simply as a stage upon which she invites
participants to engage.
Another artist who has utilized Second Life as setting, not for the purposes of site production,
but rather pure exploration, is Israeli artist Miri Segal. In her 2007 video, BRB,
Segal and her assistant create avatars and enter Second Life for the first time. Unlike
Cao, viewers are able to relate to Segal as she appears new to the alternate world.
There, Segal, whose avatar is named “Muzza” and whose face is covered with a Google
search screen-skin, wanders through all kinds of strange and over-stimulating environments
with glowing colorful skies. She and her assistant, whose avatar is named “Roga,”
pass other residents, some of whom are half-human, half-animal, dressed in extreme
costumes, while others remain relatively “real life” in their aesthetic.
[Opposite] Cao Fei, RMB City, 2009. Courtesy of the internet.
[Above] Cao Fei, RMB City (Naked Idol), 2010. Courtesy of the internet.
Interestingly, when people speak, their words appear on the screen like sub-titles and
their hands simulate a typing motion. Conversations between Muzza and some of the
eye-catching characters she encounters diverge from the philosophical to the practical.
At one point a resident named “Bonnie” even begins to discuss her feelings about “SL”
(Second Life), in contrast to “RL” (real life), and her discontentment with its “fakeness.”
Another replies that despite having the ability to choose one’s own skin, “people are
who they are,” regardless of which version of life they are interacting in. To that, someone
named “Sensei” adds, “Second Life is one more screen upon which we cast the
shadow of our self.”
Questions of whether people are afforded a certain freedom to be more true, more
themselves, or less so, continue for some time. Then, as Segal explains in her account
of the experience, by using Second Life’s search engine and typing in “Love,” she and
Roga are suddenly transported to a sex park with flowering trees and large close-up
photos of women in an ecstatic state of pleasure plastered on white marble walls. Roga
awkwardly and somewhat abruptly begins a flirtation with a horse-man that quickly
turns into the kind of soft-core cyber sex many of us probably remember having in
obscure chat rooms in the mid-1990s.
Discussing “digital” art and culture seems to be a relevant distinction to make because,
though our lives are deeply intertwined with the Internet, we still maintain lives outside
its ever expanding, but nonetheless, inherent frame. However, digital has a much more
innate meaning to a certain community, so much so that no division between “real life,”
where interpersonal relationships are nurtured, and “going online” need exist.
This is Second Life, where daily activities from eating, to group meetings and lectures,
concerts, personal grooming, travel, and sex, all occur digitally. Neither the first or the
largest virtual community of its kind, Second Life has become by far the most popular
since its inception in 2003. For many users, its existence informs/intimates a totally
separated way of living for individuals who seem to prefer spending their time in a
fantastical environment rather than day-to-day “reality.” What may be surprising to
learn, is that for the past few years real life has continued to merge with Second Life
for the express betterment of institutions, colleges, universities and other pedagogically
minded groups and clubs.
Today there are ten countries with official Embassies in Second Life, including the Republic
of Maldives, Sweden and Israel, among others. There are close to one hundred
higher education institutions, including Harvard, that have virtual campuses within the
sprawling 29,000 regions that make up the Main Grid (Agni) area of Second Life, with
each region approximating 256 meters squared. There, students are able to congregate,
create forums and socialize in ways that are similar to those taking place on
actual campuses, while allowing international students and any number of guests to
participate in these usually privileged discussions. Further, classes are extended into
the digital world of Second Life, and issues raised by its rules and unique abilities are
introduced within real classrooms. In a study conducted in 2007 at the University of
Maryland University College (UMUC) by Joanna Zhang, an Instructional Support Specialist,
findings showed that not only is the practice of integrating college courses and
Second Life growing, but that more and more educators are finding successful results
from experimenting with teaching and learning activities within Second Life. Still other
pioneers are developing interactive learning materials by taking advantage of the building,
programming and scripting features in the game.
Since so many educational models seem to be thriving within Second Life, and for many
art is yet another, if less conventional, educational tool, it’s no surprise that contemporary
artists are attracted to the kinds of characters and worlds available for manipulation
within its realm. Does creating an art project within Second Life qualify one as a
digital artist? Perhaps this is a question best put to Chinese artist Cao Fei, creator of
an art-focused destination in Second Life called RMB City.
However, prior to RMB City, which was publicly launched in 2009, Cao worked mainly
with photography, video, performance and installation, and would therefore not be
considered a digital or “new media” artist by most. Though RMB City, as an ongoing art
project, exists exclusively in Second Life, one could argue that it’s more a geographical
and cultural project about China than one which investigates the world of digital media.
The city, which is actually an island unto itself, consists of a people’s factory, a new
village and a slum building. It was designed specifically to incorporate many of the most
iconic architectural characteristics of various cities within China: Beijing’s Monument to
the People’s Heroes (atop which rotates a large a Ferris Wheel), the Three Gorges Dam
from Tiananmen Square, the Grand National Theater, the rusted Herzog & de Meuron
Bird’s Nest from the Olympic Stadium, Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarters building,
Shanghai’s new Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the Filial Piety Temple of Guangzhou.
RMB City functions simultaneously as a destination for more than twenty million registered
Second Life gamers, or “residents” as they are often referred to, but also as a
hub for research and artistic production. Cao, whose avatar is named “China Tracy,”
organizes events at RMB, like mayoral speeches, interviews and Naked Idol, which is a
popular body contest for avatars.
Suddenly Roga’s lover disappears. She and Muzza move on to a desolate location to
visit an art gallery, in the form of a translucent oblong bubble where virtual iterations of
Segal’s photos and installation work are on view. Muzza’s camera captures two artists
discussing the question of individuality and their sensation of its lacking during moments
of “true creativity.” One of them interestingly notes, “So, as artists, we succumb
to our multiplicity.” Other works in the virtual exhibition complement the particular
context of Second Life in which they find themselves, including a rope noose hanging
from the ceiling, a swarm of bees, a large, porous, mesh wall piece that spells out TIME,
and an oversized, dirty ESC (escape) button built into the wall. Aside from Segal’s
photos and the noose, none of this work could possibly exist in a real gallery and it’s
easy to see how such an immersive space so quickly becomes truly representational
and theatrical, even more so than sites for exhibition and spectacle that exist in real life.
It’s not difficult to understand why Second Life would be a fruitful and compelling place
for experimental artists, whether or not they identify with categorizations such as
digital or new media. There is an openness and an ultra public way of interacting that
residents have created to liberate themselves from conventions of daily life. It allows
artists to interject art and discourse into common encounters in ways that do not
often happen in people’s daily lives. Interestingly, its imbrications with the real world
seem to be endlessly multiplying, which may perhaps be normalizing its ulterior nature,
eventually forcing residents who use Second Life as an escape to go deeper “underground”
within the grid.
To those of us who do not identify as gamers, such a world already seems like it is populated
and perpetuated by “outsiders,” people who would prefer not to socialize within
what are considered “normal” public zones. While projects such as Cao’s and Segal’s
seem to prove this, as both engage in somewhat unconventional behavior, they also
prove that gaps between real life and Second Life continue to be both pronounced and
bridged. Now that real world institutions like Universities and Embassies are injecting
themselves into Second Life, it seems likely that some of its liberating modes of excess
and identity transformation may spill over into real life.
Miri Segal, BRB, 2007, video still. Courtesy of the internet.
Miri Segal, BRB, 2007, video still. Courtesy of the internet.