Emergent imagination: A developing framework for the analysis of artworks in virtual worlds

This article proposes a framework for the analysis of artworks created in virtual worlds by extending Patrick Lichty’s four modalities of art in virtual worlds, identified as transmediated, cybrid, client/browser and evergent. Following a review of artistic practices in Second Life a selection of artworks from the ‘Kritical Work in SL’ exhibitions are analysed for the qualities of imaginative experience and the articulation of a new set of movements of the imagination from (and between) physical and virtual world spaces that indicates a potency of virtual worlds for the investigation and creation of artistic practice.