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Art of Living a Second Life

April 25, 2007
Wagner James Au embedded journalist, Second Life
Pathfinder Linden community manager, Linden Lab
John Craig Freeman artist, Second Life
Eric Gordon assistant professor, new media, Emerson

Eric Gordon moderates a panel discussion about art practice in Second Life, an 3-D online world where real business is conducted using virtual dollars that can then be traded in the real world.

Called "the biggest digital art installation in the world" by Warren Ellis, Second Life is a highly imaginative, online, 3-D rendered environment populated with avatars (graphic representations of people). In Second Life you can teleport, fly, do not age, live in a house, go to clubs, take classes, make and view art, or just "hang out." Spanning more than 42,000 acres in real-world scale, Second Life is second home to over 2 million "residents," many of whom collaboratively create its content.

This lecture is a part of the 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival and produced in partnership with Emerson College and Turbulence.org's "OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media" series.

WGBH
Museum of Science, Boston
Image of The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World
Author: Wagner James Au
Publisher: HarperBusiness (2008)
Binding: Hardcover, 304 pages
Image of Second Life: The Official Guide
Author: Jim Rossignol, Celebrity Trollop, Aleks Krotoski, Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham, Paul Cézanne, Jeannette Cézanne, Sara Van Gorden, Richard Platel, Cory Ondrejka, Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au
Publisher: Sybex (2008)
Binding: Paperback, 416 pages