Because I Am Not Here: Second Life Based Artists, Four Selected Case Studies

Second Life (SL) is an on-line virtual world ‘inhabited’ by avatars that are designed by actual life users (SL residents). In SL identity, sociability and subjectivity are important and permanent aspects of the goal of having a second (virtual) existence.

My doctoral thesis (in progress) is centred on the work of 4 artists in SL and how they play with autoempathy, identity an subjectivity in the liminal shifting of aesthetic regimes (that rely upon temporalities rather than spatialities) present in their SL artwork. This is what Anna Munster calls the distribute aesthetics1 of virtual worlds.

Lacan Galicia, my avatar in SL, works in four case studies concerning these subjects. The expected findings of my research can contribute to the discussion of the theories of digital aesthetics and interactive virtual worlds at large.