This was a temporary piece of collaborative virtual art. A space was dedicated for two weeks and I asked well known Second Life creators to come decorate it with their artworks or to create fashion items wearable by avatars. They were given a theme of drowning, and in particular the melting arctic ice and the plight and pain of polar bears' diminishing habitat.

The doors were opened to the public. Avatars were invited to come acquire the various fashion and explore the environment or interact with it in their preferred ways (i.e., with scripted breaking ice and a series of drowning poses specifically designed by two of the artists.) People were encouraged to take snapshots of their experience and post them online.

The response was huge. Thousands of people came to the event and hundreds of people took snapshots and posted them. Some of these resulting snapshots highlighted the environment itself, some of them focused heavily on the fashion. Others focused more on how their avatars were interacting with the environment, using the space itself as a way to express their own emotional sensations.

There were no restrictions on how visitors should interpret the work. In many cases people took straightforward literal snapshots of their avatars standing in the setting with no manipulation, as a tourist might. In some cases, more artistic people used light settings within the game or manipulated their images in photoshop afterwards.

Click on the images to be redirected to the flickr profiles of the snapshot artists.