The following notes are made after reading Richard Minsky’s paper The Art World Market of Second Life (Minsky, 2009) as well as reading various articles on his website (link).
Minsky’s article focuses on the dynamics of art that is exhibited and marketed inside Second Life (but presumably most of what is mentioned applies to other virtual reality sites). Because virtual reality worlds are not governed by the laws of physics, what can be achieved in terms of installations is often limited by our imagination. One of the artefacts mentioned by Minsky in his report, Starax’s Wand (link) operates very much like a magic wand that can ‘create’ objects at the command of whoever is holding it. Just like digital photographs, all art forms in virtual worlds are essentially code that can be manipulated to change rendering in a seamless manner. In addition to opening up creative possibilities, Minsky’s paper also mentions that art in virtual worlds can be instantly marketed to a wide audience and that a crowd for an exhibition could be summoned in minutes.
This is all possible because none of this exists physically, neither the artefacts nor the avatars appearing in front of them. And that poses a number of issues, perhaps the most prominent being that of permanence. An art object in Second Life or any other virtual world can only be rendered by a simulator, it does not have a life of its own. When the data behind that rendering disappears or the simulator becomes inaccessible, our enjoyment of the object is also gone, perhaps permanently (as outlined in this article by Richard Minsky). Interestingly, the issue of permanence is something that also mortifies analogue photographers, forever obsessing about the ideal regime for washing fibre based prints to archival standards (see for instance this). While a darkroom print will deteriorate with time, staining and discolouring until it fades away; the digital artefact can stay unchanged forever, but is prone to disappearing without warning and without a trace.
In the case of digital, at least there is the possibility of creating multiple copies, all an exact facsimile of the original (in fact, we could question the distinction between copies and originals in this instance), which allow us to have a backup in case the original or one of its copies is accidentally lost. But this also creates problems of its own. There is the issue of plagiarism and copyright violations, which in the virtual world of Second Life appear to be as likely as for digital imaging in the real world (Minsky, 2009, Pp 24-25), but something that does not get discussed much is the justification for limited editions in a situation where infinite exact reproductions are feasible at very low cost. This discussion takes an extreme turn when framed within the confines of virtual reality, but can essentially be applied to many forms of digitally-based art commercialised in real life. Minsky argues that there is no real justification for this, or rather, the justification that existed in analogue art forms (i.e. the cost of reproducing non-digital art pieces, in time and resources) does not apply to virtual reality art, but others believe it can be justified as a means for ensuring artists get fair remuneration for their efforts and collectors get value for their investment, even if all this is created by artificial suppression of supply (Minsky, 2009, pp 16-18).
Something that plages the digital world, whether we use a virtual reality site or social media networks in real life, is the fact that our rights are limited by the terms and conditions imposed by the platform owners. This affects our ability to profit from our creations (e.g. when the terms and conditions grant the platform owners free and perpetual rights to licence and sub-licence what we upload to the sites), but may also infringe upon our ownership rights, as many of these terms of conditions reserve ownership of all the code to the site owners, who can take the data (and our rights to access it) away from us at any time.
In the end, the risk of Second Life and other virtual reality sites is that by investing so many hours of our lives into things that do not exist or that, to be more precise, exist only by the grace of others, we may be losing out on the opportunity to build something tangible or more permanent in the real world. At the same time, the real world is not keen on giving us second chances and, even when we can pursue them, it can take many years of perseverance and hard work to achieve mastery. This is perhaps the main appeal of virtual reality, a world where you can start anew, and achieve your dreams or wildest fantasies, without the impediments of the physical world, even if it is only temporarily.
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Minsky, R. (2009). THE ART WORLD MARKET OF SECOND LIFE ®. [online] . Available at: https://www.minsky.com/minskyreport/ArtWorld_Market.pdf [Accessed 13 Feb. 2021].
Minsky, R. (n.d.). Welcome to the ArtWorld Market Report: a critical review and journal of the Virtual Arts. [online] http://www.minsky.com. Available at: https://www.minsky.com/minskyreport/ [Accessed 13 Feb. 2021].
Aenea (2007). Starax’s Wand. [online] Aenea’s Second Life. Available at: https://aeneaideas.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/staraxs-wand/ [Accessed 13 Feb. 2021].
Minsky, R. (2008). The ArtWorld Market Report: Zero Point Disaster. [online] http://www.minsky.com. Available at: https://www.minsky.com/minskyreport/zero-point-vanishes.htm [Accessed 13 Feb. 2021].
On different paths 