The Australian Council for the Arts is offering an artistic residency and grant of up to $20,000 to collaborative artists to create a project in Second Life . It is open to Australian artists who are interested in developing their ideas in this virtual world. Details are on the Australian Council for the Arts in the Inter-Arts: Grants: Second Life Artist Residency section of the site.
The Second Life artist residency is an initiative of the Literature Board, Music Board and Inter-Arts Office of the Australia Council.
The residency is ‘in-world’ and requires artists and writers to explore the possibilities of inter-disciplinary literary, music/sound art and digital visual media practices.
The successful team will develop new artistic in-world practices and comment on the social and cultural layers that have evolved in Second Life.
Key requirements of the project are a clear strategy for harnessing both in-world and ‘real life’ audiences and developing public exhibition opportunities for the artwork in Australia.
The Australian has run a story that points to the tricky issue of recreating iconic buildings and sacred sites one commercial websites. In this case concerns have been raised that virtual representation of Uluru and the opera house in Second Life could be a breach of copyright. Designers of the BigPond site The Pond have a barrier to stop people walking or flying over Uluru as it is a sacred site for the traditional owners but tribal elders are considering implications of the site being used in games and virtual world.
Source:Telstra hit over virtual Uluru by Simon Canning of The Australian
Another story is that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s private island was bombed by an as yet unidentified attacker. Features that were vandalised include the Amphitheatre, the Ecohouse, media pods, Dreamtime Cove and the Sandbox.
No where Now here 