Happy to see some french guys at the top level about the mariage between Internet & Culture and who are not afrid to make some experimentations

Concerning Second Life, what is interesting and not enough exploited yet is the context. The context is which pieces of art are displayed matter a lot: the building of the museum itself influences the way you see the paintings. So for example for the Dresde museum which reproduced the entire building in Second Life, it is a way of making the online and offline experience converge. Which is why it is also interesting, even if other mediums have other advantages (like the pixel argument you gave).

Finally, we all read all the articles announcing the death of Second Life, so we know that this is not a sustainable platform for creativity so far, but the horizons that it opens, in particular in the art space, are worth mentionning.

I’d also like to know whether Second Life really has a competitive advantage over other mediums, for museum-art? I would think that pixels are the most important attribute when looking at a picture, and you can do that just as well on a web-site, or in flash, if it needs to be interactive, as you can in second life.

And I have some other problems with it, which I think I wrote in a previous post of yours on second life, namely that the barrier to entry—starting a program just to see something, as opposed to entering a web-address—are too high for many, affecting visitor-numbers.

I guess I just don’t see the ROI of Second Life.

Actually the worst part is that I go on Second Life only to be aware of all the artistic initiatives that are going on there so that I can include them in my thesis, but I never went there just for fun, even with the strong incentive I have to check it out often. So I really wonder how they will manage to diversify their audience, which is particularly important since I am speaking about demcratization here.

What is interesting is analyzing the overlap, to try to understand if the Internet entices a new types of people to be interested in art, either by having a better understanding, or by having time to view art pieces in the comfort of a home, or by noy having the traditionnal bareers that you have in a museum (prices and atmosphere). And if this is the case, then the question is to know whether it will be sufficient to make people go to real museums or whether the online experience will be good enough to give a real artistic experience on a screen.

And there’s probably a great opportunity for those that can provide standardised, cheap, and measurable locations for businesses to set up in in second life (if this isn’t already happening), though I don’t know many people, apart from you, Fidji, that frequent that area much.