This is what I did too yesterday evening

In France, and the most exotic corners of the planet, small compact groups wear their jeans to haute couture to vernissages of art galleries. This is what I did, too, yesterday evening. Away from the crowds, traffic jams and bad weather. I rode in all sorts of galleries around the world. I first visited in an abandoned warehouse where huge canvases painted with coal, pastel and oil, and selected strings falling of old beams corroded, have selected me a time. These works are those of an artist named ("dirty") Filthy, but they do not deserve this qualifier!

Outside, I then admired a collection of huge paintings on silk in variegated colours produced by Byron, an autistic artist. Later, in a gallery more conventional, which could have been in Paris or London, journalists-photographers set out their stories. Passing from one place to another, I felt the buzz of a village dedicated to the creation: reading groups, writing workshops, live jazz, parades of mode, all this occurring simultaneously. The interest of these works was uneven, of course. Much work lacking imagination, served as distraction. Many good ideas were badly conducted. Many tours were played to a reckless public and found also many insulting things. It made me think about what has been written by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, this comic strip which mocks so well of the world of the company: "creativity, it afford to make mistakes." Art, it is knowledge which keep. () But in this community, despite the errors, were discovered, of inventiveness and energy of the heart.

A range of computer

I advise you. This village is located in a very distant galaxy... but not further away than your computer, in a world called Second Life (). There, places and events are only a few seconds of each other, and there are in each location sufficient space to accommodate tens of thousands of people who urge. This site offers a rich mix of destinations, instant messaging, a platform design, a "peer-to-peer" network and a video game.

A space open and carefree

It also began as a playful experience. The site has become, since a serious place, having a function in the physical world (in real life). In the opinion of many people, it corresponds to the advent of the new era of the Internet, more than the sites of "relational networks."

Second Life are almost 1 million registered users and attendance increased by 20 per month. It will create a parallel existence although synthesis itself. "Citizens" spend a lot of time to invent an "avatar", a virtual character. Most of them are beautiful, thin and athletic, probably as they would like that others see. They spend much of their time to the creation, one of the features of the site. Second Life is a space open and carefree, where experiences cost nothing, where space is not a problem and where the physical constraints of the "real" world have no courses. Companies use to train their staff or to test stores, hotels, cars, technology. Last week, "the economist" reported that Second Life has allowed better understanding of schizophrenia, to teach at a distance, to simulate responses to terrorist attacks and of groups of people who have survived cancer. Why focus on this world unknown and unreal, where academics, artists, poets and musicians spawn with a good dose of crazy and sex tourists (as in the real world) Because that, in awkward language in the media industry, now us arrived at the "Web 2.0", the post-Internet generation. As Paul Gauguin: "art is either plagiarism, a revolution.".