If you are in Italy or in front of your computer...

...you might find these two events interesting:

1. The conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games" is taking place in Reggio-Emilia, Italy, from the 25th to 27th of January.
Website with abstracts and programme with links to presentation papers: http://game.unimore.it/game/Benvenuto.html
They are also going to videostream the conference. I think it will be from this site: http://tv.unimore.it (No, they didn't, but clips will be available in about two weeks. (Yes, if you go here: http://tv.unimore.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=7 and then on Recording of the event.)

I do not know if anybody explicitly is going to speak about (our metaverse,) Second Life, but the snapshot on their poster looks rather familiar, doesn't it? Here it is:

From the Introduction:
The purpose of the conference is to initiate an investigation into how current research on computer games touches upon philosophical issues. In line with this purpose, the conference is interdisciplinary, drawing together researchers from very diverse fields: philosophy, computer game-theory, semiotics, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

2. Piemonte_share_festival: 23.-28. January 2007. Exhibition, conference, workshops...
Website: http://www.toshare.it/
Today, at the conference, at least one speach was related to Second Life:

New media art communities
SIMONA LODI - REGINE DEBATTY -
SIMON GOLDIN
Contemporary artists choose to create a community on “Second Life” similar to “The Port”. The logic of commodification, however, seems to go beyond claiming immaterial ownership on every level. Beyond the question of copyright and patents there is also a fundamental question of who the peer is in peer-production?

(We will probably be able to see the lectures on the website later..)

The Port is an artproject initiated by the artists Goldin&Senneby.
Another Second Life-related artproject by them was "Objects of virtual desire": 5 virtual objects reproduced in real life... exhibited in Bergen, Norway, 2005.
There is more to say about them, but not to night.

Plurabelle Posthorn