There are many variations on the potential afforded by the Internet to construct a fantasized identity. People spend hours tailoring their Myspace and Facebook profiles to reflect distilled, idealized portraits of their real-life selves. The virtual world of Second Life allows for the most integral and involved potentials of online self-transformation to date. SL is the culmination of Internet socialization: a place where the systems and orders of society are translated into digital terms and the trappings of genetics are eclipsed.
Over the past few years Beijing-based artist Cao Fei has explored the possibilities of SL through her avatar China Tracy. In 2007 she released the i.Mirror trilogy, a series of films that document China Tracy’s adventures as she traverses the virtual landscapes of SL. i.Mirror explores the nature of disembodied intimacy and relationships in a virtual world and raises questions about online consumerism and the implications of digital self-fashioning.
Recently China Tracy, with the help of a crew of fellow avatars, set out to build a city in SL that upon completion will function as an experimental art community, named RMB City. The preview movie of this city, now on view in the lobby of London’s Serpentine Gallery, takes us on a tour of RMB’s main attractions. Set to soft, dreamy music, the video gives an impression of the city as a sort of fantasy theme park or futuristic playground. A giant goldfish floats on a waterfall that runs through the buildings, a flying train circles the city’s perimeter and a missile platform hovers above, ready to take on any potential aggressor. All this activity is crammed onto a tiny island, surrounded by an expanse of sparkling blue ocean.
The architecture of RMB City is an amalgam of Chinese icons, from the Tainanmen Gate to Ai WeiWei’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The city is laced with humor and political implications, both in the choice of icons and their positioning. A statue of Chairman Mao bobs up and down in a sinking shopping cart just off the coast, and a dilapidated version of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium appears at the city’s edge, partially suspended in water. The claustrophobic, chaotic energy that emanates from this virtual metropolis and the collage of recognizable Chinese elements, both ancient and modern, reflects the state of Beijing as a rapidly developing city.
RMB is also a wholly utopian endeavor, where creative types will gather as fictional selves to generate ideas and charter the unexplored territory of a fully-fledged online artistic community in a parallel world. The words “My City is Yours, Your City is Mine” appear on one of the buildings, reflecting RMB City’s Manifesto, which describes the city as a place where “new orders are born… Everything in the old world united – human beings, landscape, faith and prophecies, rulers and wisdom.”
The creation of RMB explores how online economic practices mirror those in the real world. Institutions and investors have been invited to participate as organizers of the city, raising questions about ownership of virtual property and how bureaucracy might play out in such a situation. As such, the city prompts us to consider contemporary urbanism, the nature of city planning in a virtual world and the quickness with which online property has become a desirable commodity, sometimes surpassing the value of real-life property.
The exhibition also includes a white sculptural model of the city and laptops for logging onto SL to visit the RMB City Preview Center. RMB City won’t be complete until sometime this fall 2008, so until then you can view the Fei’s video below or log onto SL and explore the Preview Center.
Links: www.caofei.com
www.rmbcity.com
www.secondlife.com
Watch:RMB City:
Watch: i.Mirror:
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