As I’ve mentioned before, I have an unhealthy addiction to Second Life — an online, shared, virtual world (not a game, say Second Life’s makers). It’s an environment where the users create their own world, then live and play in it.
Simon Goldin, an artist from Sweden, wasn’t content to leave virtual creations in Second Life. He’s selected a handful of items from various residents and fabricated them in real life for an exhibition, calling the collection Objects of Virtual Desire.
Penguin Balls in Second Life
Penguin Balls in real life
Our interest lies in exploring the concept of product design in a virtual world and what kind of interpersonal value objects carry in this context. Further questions are raised by transferring these objects to physical space and a ?first life? economy. What is immaterial value-creation and can it be materialised? What does it mean to use a virtual world as a site of production?
The issues raised are relevant in a wider context, as value-production in the ?post-fordist? era has become increasingly immaterial. Nike, for example, exploits the physical function of a shoe to create and market immaterial values, so pervasive that the shoe itself becomes almost virtual.
Objects of Virtual Desire exploits the augmented value of immaterial objects to create and market tangible products, thereby reversing the process and highlighting the materiality of the immaterial. (link)
Among the items he fabricated are jewelry, butterflies, a Jedi orb from Star Wars, and one of my creations, Penguin Balls. In Second Life, Penguin Balls are big, bouncy, penguin-laden spheres that you can drag around and throw at people. It’s great fun to fill a crater with them and fly through them with a jet pack.
Simon’s penguin balls are two-meter infatable balls with an inflatable penguin inside. As much as I’d love to have one of these, I think I’ll have to forgo the pleasure, since the price is currently set at 3,300 Euros (about 3,969 US dollars). Ah well… I don’t have room in my apartment for one anyway.