In the recent issue of CIAC’s Electronic Magazine, no 31/2008, artist and academic Patrick Lichty (SL: Man Michinaga) has an interesting essay entitled Why Art in Virtual Worlds? E-Happenings, Relational Milieux, and “Second Sculpture”. In it, he considers the work of several prominent artists using Second Life and gives a very useful framework for viewing SL works in terms of RL art history. Excerpt below; read full article here.

“THE NEW CITIZEN/ARCHITECT: CAO FEI/RMB CITY
In RMB City, Cao Fei plays with (dys/u)topia in assuming the role of a virtual developer for an interpretation of Olympic Beijing. The city contains virtual analogues of the Koolhaas’ CCTV headquarters, pandas on construction cranes, a Duchampian (Ferris) wheel and many other signifiers of emergent Beijing. In addition, Cao Fei, reflecting the opening real estate sales scenes of iMirror doubles the speculative aspect of the signified city by offering development opportunities in RMB.”