Can't make it to Paris? Visit the museum in Second Life ... the Louvre. Photograph: Jacques Brinon/AP
At this year's Venice Biennale, the Chinese artist Cao Fei reproduced her exhibition in the Chinese pavilion in Second Life. She isn't the first artist in real life to transpose her work into virtual reality, but her high-profile show introduced many in the art world to the potential of Second Life.
Until a couple of years ago, much of the art on Second life remained within the confines of virtual reality. This is not fractal art (a style that, thankfully, remains singular to Second Life), but real-life artists putting their paintings, photographs and sculptures into Second Life to reach a wider audience. It's another canny way, like YouTube and MySpace, of circumventing the established route for the up-and-coming artist - a practice that is often seen to begin with Damien Hirst et al and their now infamous DIY Freeze show.
In Second Life, there is a virtual Louvre, an artist colony and hundreds of galleries staging monthly shows with private view openings. Users can buy the work in the virtual world and have the real-life version shipped to them. The result has been that some real-life galleries are following the artists into the virtual world, keen to capitalise on this untapped commodity.
When the net art phenomena began in the 1990s, many were quick to herald it as a subversive forum where artists could showcase their art uninhibited by political, social or cultural constraints and without the endorsement of an institution. Second Life, with its utopian philosophy, seems to be at the heart of this. With more than 8 million users worldwide and growing, it's an easy place to promote your work with virtually no financial risk. The question is whether the interest now coming from the art market will change this democratic environment, and whether it will raise the game of the artists in Second Life?
