New World Newsfeed: China Tracy Sells Second Life-Based Artwork for $100,000 Real Dollars

Recent dispatches from the outside world...

Flying Avatars Admire the Artwork - New York Times

Is art made in the metaverse about to hit an 80s-style boom time?  Last month, I mentioned ARTNews' cover story on artists who use Second Life as a medium; the other week, I noted an academic appraisal of hyperformalism founder Dancoyote Antonelli (whose works are already selling well in SL.)  Now comes this write-up in the Arts section of the New York Times, leading paper of the art world's capital city:

AT the Art Positions fair in Miami in December, the Chinese experimental artist [China Tracy] sold a work to a private collector for $100,000. It wasn’t a painting or a sculpture... Rather, all that money bought a piece of virtual real estate in the online world Second Life.

As such, it's one of the most prominent SL-to-RL rights deals in the world's five year history (SL users retain the IP rights to their content), joining the "Molotov Alva" machinima/HBO deal and the Tringo SL game/Nintendo Gameboy port.  The article doesn't make it clear exactly what China Tracy sold, though apparently it's related to her virtual real estate site in Miami last year. Click through to read about the real world artist behind the avatar; my profile of her first SL work "i.Mirror" from last year is here, my mixed reality interview from July is here; details on her ongoing RMB City project in Second Life here and here. (Full disclosure: she's a good friend.  Fuller disclosure:  I just e-mailed her a WOOT of congrats.) Hat tip: Joey Seiler.