ABSTRACT
This opening chapter provides a creative-practical perspective on Second Life through a survey of our work as visual artists, set against a theoretical and philosophical backdrop that combines poststructuralism and semiotics. Our practical examples of merged and created Second Lives draw on our mixed-reality installations in the form of encounters between Second Life and First Life. Starting from created communities in Second Life™ (cf. Sherman’s social encounters, and Fizek and Wasilewska’s creation of second bodies, both this volume), our aim is to provide a visual backdrop and practical examples to this underlying theoretical and philosophical discourse, where the disembodied participant and (re)-embodied avatar in our installations fi nd themselves in an increasingly social and political Second Life context.
