Second life is a virtual three-dimensional on-line community created in 2003 by the American company Linden Lab The system provides to the users (called “residents”) the means to add to Second Life “virtual world” new graphic contents such as buildings, objects, backgrounds, the aspect of the characters, audiovisual contents, etc. The distinctive feature of Second Life world is to leave the users free to have the copyrights on the objects they create, which can be sold and exchanged within the “residents” using a virtual money (the “Linden Dollar”) which can be exchanged in real American dollars. At present Second Life residents are more than 5 millions all over the world (as of March 27th, 2007). To create and sell objects you need to buy plots of land in the virtual world of Second Life. Some “avatars” (the virtual representations of the characters) gained big amounts of (real) money selling the scripts of their objects which had been created to be used inside the virtual world. Second Life is used to promote conferences, musical and video files, artistic works, political messages etc.
On march 2007 Second Life world was located on more than 2000 servers with 34 Terabyte of data created from the users ( source Wikipedia).
People talk a lot about Second Life by now, there are many opinions about it, either in favour or against. Someone thinks that Second Life represents the platform of the famous Web 2.0 able to carry on an Internet revolution and others are convinced that it is not safe to invest money on it. Wired, the magazine which has become the Internet bible, claims that to invest money in Second Life is like to throw it from the window and within its many criticisms, it states that the technological frame of Second Life is inadequate and that it is only a place where unethical avatars can break the rules.
Anyway, beyond all positions, many companies, universities, political groups, governmental bodies have bought small and big islands in Second Life such as the University of Torino, Milano, Siena, Venezia, Cagliari and many other universities from all over the world; the Regione Toscana, companies as IBM, BMW, Reuters, Sony, Dell, Vodafone; political parties as “L’Italia dei Valori”; musical groups as Duran Duran, Irene Grandi etc.
Visionaria is one of the first festivals to be present in Second Life. This has been possible thanks to collaboration with Avatarc which allow us to use its island. Together with LoadingLab they will manage the spaces, create the avatars etc.
ROBERTO DINI
President of Visionaria Association
