RMB City Opens In London and Second Life: Metaverse-Based Art In An Internationally Renowned Gallery

Man Ray, Henry Moore, Andy Warhol... China Tracy.  Among the world's premiere galleries, The Serpentine in London's Hyde Park has played host to works from those legendary artists.  Last week, they were joined by Ms. Tracy, the avatar of the acclaimed Guanghzhou artist Cao Fei. 

That's where she debuted the latest iteration of RMB City, her metaphor-laden re-imagining of Beijing.  (Here's a good New York Times article on the project.) 

The Serpentine houses a plastic model of RMB City, and also a couple laptops running Second Life, so gallery patrons can explore the virtual version of the city.  The SL installation is largely constructed by Avatrian, a metaverse development company based in Cebu City, Philippines. 

I was in SL for the festive July 25th ribbon-cutting, but couldn't make it to Britain for the real world opening.  Fortunately, New World Notes partner Rezzable is based in London, and not only did they make it to the event, but took some photos.  (That's Rezzable's suave CEO RightAsRain Rimbaud with Cao Fei, at right.)

Here's the info on visiting RMB City at The Serpentine; the four sim Second Life installation is open now-- direct SLURL teleport at this link.  As a friend of Cao Fei, I am of course utterly biased, but I think it's an admirably ambitious project that perfectly captures an essential moment in contemporary history.  After all, the Chinese government is currently dedicated to creating a virtual version of Beijing for the Olympics, free from pollution or political dissent.  Fei's RMB City simply reifies that process several steps further, offering an even more idealized version of modern China that only exists as 3D graphics built by Filipino tech workers, housed on a San Francisco server network-- then showcased as art in a European museum.

All Serpentine photos by Vint Falken.

Comments

[Isadora Fiddlesticks]

yay Avatrian!

It's great to see a global collaboration in this project, a testament of what's possible in SL. :))

[Steve Memotech]

Nicely written James! You have pretty much covered everything about the event. By the way, only the RMB Preview center is open to the public for now (the city itself opens in October). Also, I believe you meant Filipino content creators based in Cebu and with an HQ in San Francisco. ;)