The Arts in Second Life

A Rich Creative Medium, an International Audience

Second Life is the future right now, offering endless possibilities
for artists.Close Quote
— Nick Rhodes, Duran Duran
Creative People

Artists of all kinds have found a powerful new medium for creative expression in the Second Life® world. Musicians, designers, directors, photographers and architects use the Second Life platform to develop exciting new work and expand their audience.

Musicians
Real-world musicians and DJs are migrating to Second Life as the ideal platform for sharing their music and expanding their audience. Big name acts like Ben Folds, Chamillionaire, Suzanne Vega and Jay-Z have used Second Life for both intimate performances and arena-style concerts. Homegrown heroes have launched their careers from Second Life stages. Welsh singer-songwriter Melanie Fudge plays in-world as Mel Cheeky and has sold more CDs through Second Life than any other method. Folk singer Frogg Marlowe, who got his start in Second Life, has since appeared on MTV. Live music events take place in-world every day, in all genres and time zones, and on the weekends there are upwards of 50 events to choose from.

Machinima Directors
Second Life is a machinima-maker's mecca where directors can film whatever they can imagine — with set pieces of Mars or Milan, costumes from the 1st century or the 21st century — and agile camera tools allow for dynamic cinematography. Plus the Second Life world is an ideal screening environment, where videos can be played before a live audience or set up for on-demand viewings by individual visitors.

Designers
Second Life designers create a booming trade in fashion and decor. Looking to add style and personality to their avatars, residents flock to in-world stores and buy clothes, hair, avatar skins and all the accessories to suit any tastes – from casual to couture. Designers get unique effects by uploading their own textures and manipulating hundreds of appearance settings built in to the Second Life creative tools set. Creating virtual goods has turned amateurs into professionals and resulted in real income for some designers. Their stories and more are reported with panache in Second Life fashion blogs and magazines like Second Style http://www.secondstyle.com/.

Artists
The virtual world offers artists an extraordinary creative medium. The embedded building and scripting tools allow artists to add multi-dimensionality to their work — light, sound, 3-D sculpting and motion. And, Second Life is an ideal format for sharing that work. On any given day, hundreds of in-world galleries and museums are host to shows by artists from around the world, displaying everything from photography to paintings, the real to surreal.

Architects
Second Life is an ever-expanding world filled with diverse environments, from cityscapes to fantasy lands, all created by the residents. It's an architect's paradise. There are no limits to what they can create — scale models of real-world houses or fantastical structures unbounded by physics. Builders can work simultaneously on the same project, and all members of a team can see the work as it develops then tweak it on the fly. Real-world clients can walk through a virtual model of their home.

Creative Tools

Built-in, easy to use creative tools give every resident the power to change the world. Professionals and beginners alike can quickly learn to make anything from hairstyles to houses, personal photo galleries to interactive art installations. Second Life offers an environment unlike any other, merging many of the best qualities of the Web, online games, social networking, user-generated content, creativity applications and telecommunications technologies. Residents also benefit from these unparalleled tools and features:

Build & Script
Residents use simple 3-D modeling tools embedded in the Second Life platform to create clothes, buildings, landscapes, sculptures and whatever else they can imagine, and they can animate objects and avatars using the built-in scripting language. Because everything happens in real time, creative work can be highly collaborative.

Images & Textures
It's easy to convert digital photos and designs from popular graphics applications into an Second Life-compatible format and import them to the Second Life servers. All images can be applied as "textures" to objects and avatars for an infinite variety of creative results.

Audio & Video
The Second Life platform supports streaming media, and enabling it is as easy as copying and pasting the artist's media server URL into a control panel. DJs, musicians and spoken word acts can put on live or prerecorded performances in-world.

Intellectual Property Rights
Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, decided in 2003 to break away from industry standards and allow users to have intellectual property rights over what they create in-world. Built-in features allow creators to label work as their own and flag it with the level of copy permissions they want to assert over their work, e.g., all-rightsreserved or freely modifiable and transferable.

Micropayment System
Since they own the rights to their work, Residents can sell and trade their objects, scripts, and animations for pleasure or profit. The in-world micropayment system allows Residents to easily pay other avatars for products, services and entertainment. Similarly, the audience at a concert or film screening can pay a "tip jar," or event organizers can charge for admission. Some talented residents have been able to quit their day job and live off what they make selling their goods and services in Second Life.

Second Life offers professionals and amateurs alike a vast canvas for imaginative expression. Artists, musicians and creative people from around the globe have already made their mark on the virtual world, and the wonders have only just begun.

Resources

For further information or to talk with residents making art in Second Life, contact Lewis PR at secondlife(at)LewisPR.com