A Metaverse Art Rresidency: ‘Garrett Lynch Yoshikaze “Up-in-the-air” Second Life Rresidency’

This article discusses the artist Garrett Lynch’s residency in Second Life®1 at Yoshikaze ‘Up-in-the-air’, HUMLab, Umeå University in Sweden.2 The artist’s mixed-reality live performance and installation work in the ‘virtual’ world, part of a wider artistic practice on networks, focuses on the identity and role of the artist within an environment mediated by networked technology. The residency enabled the continuation of this practice and facilitated through the site of the residency the development of ideas of space and place as they relate to identity. Eleven works, predominantly performance based, were produced during the residency that explored the breadth of the Virtuality Continuum.3 Each investigated the boundary between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ and how creative practice can be produced at their intersection. Techniques of juxtaposition, framing, layering, folding, combination and mixing were employed throughout. Works involved performance across multiple ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ spaces and used specifically built props and environments in-world, performance software for a number of computing and mobile devices and Web 2.0/Second Life mash-ups. A number of recurring themes emerged in the development of work, including liminality, new frontiers, augmented or mixed presence and vision, which formed thematic strands of research. It is these thematic strands, their development and use that form the structuring of this article.