Intervention #1 (in three parts)

A series of interventions about 'identity', 'place' and 'space' at I AM Columbia Island in Second Life.

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/I%20AM%20Columbia/141/189/22

Part 1:
The first in a series of interventions at I AM Columbia in Second Life employed a constructed two floor space. On the first floor was a large typographic construction designed to be seen from outside of the virtual ‘space’ of Second Life, on the Second Life map at slurl.com/. The SLurl map is generally used as a bridge for linking from the web into a ‘location’ in Second Life.

The typographic construction simply read, I’M NOT HERE.

Part 2:
The typographic construction was then removed from the ‘space’ and the SLurl map, still containing the image of the ‘space’ with the construction, remapped as a texture with the scale of 1:1 back onto the position formerly occupied by the construction. Meanwhile on the ground floor, a model of the ‘space’ was installed along with texts on the subject of space and place.

The ‘space’ becomes a map and the map becomes the ‘space’, a representation represented within itself creating an infinite regress with a noticable degredation of quality. This is only possible to view due to a temporal delay between Second Life and its mapping on the SLurl map and will ultimately disappear.

Part 3:
Finally flags were added to the ‘space’ as if designating it a ‘place’ and claiming it as a new nation under its own rule. It is an enclave state of mappings and remappings of the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’, landlocked within the boundaries of another territory, the virtual ‘place’ of Second Life and its representation of the 'real'.