Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to the Bastard Space!

["G.H. Hovagimyan" <ghh@thing.net>]

On Aug 1, 2007, at 5:27 AM, Stephan Doesinger wrote:

> Why are so many people fascinated and at the same time alienated by  
> the virtual world in *Second Life* (SL)?

gh comments:

When Second Life was first starting up and empty, a Swiss art  
collector who had invested $250,000 in SL approached me to do  
something there. He thought I might want to build a virtual art  
studio like Andy Warhol. I said I was more interested in creating  
performance bots that would interrupt people when then were having a  
conversation with a performance piece of some kind.  The art  
collector put me in touch with the developers who never bothered to  
respond. I also wanted to get paid for my work which I believe was a  
problem for them. Like all the other democratic art spaces online  
like youTube, everyone is an artist therefore no-one gets paid. This  
is the almost perfect global capitalist game. You take advantage of  
peoples natural desire to be creative and involved in art. You get  
them to create their own world and you get them to pay for it! This  
means they supply the labor for your product, they create the product  
and then they consume the product while you make the money. Amazing!

I remember the first VRML worlds in the 1990's they were rather  
boring. In the final analysis virtual worlds tend to devolve down to  
sex and money.  Obviously I don't like VR worlds. The couple of times  
I went to SL I found the whole experience numbing and retarded. As an  
artist I like the real world. I find that observing first life and  
discovering new ways to look at this world to be the crux of  
creativity. Second life is a sad reflection of real life. Second is  
stuck somewhere in the emotional level of junior high school.  I  
suggest that all the people who engage in second life should make  
giant cartoon puppet heads and wear them around during there normal  
fist life activities to see what would happen. I believe that virtual  
worlds are for people who aren't able to engage in their real lives.  
It is a retreat from reality.