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Jerry Paffendorf, Rik Riel, my friend Micah and I dropped in Saturday night at the 13 Most Beautiful Avatars show at the Postmasters gallery in New York. The prints on display were beautiful 36″x 48″ prints of avatars taken from the virtual world of Second Life by a pair of artists named Eva and Franco Mattes, who together constitute 0100101110101101.ORG. I don’t know where that number came from, but it spells 19,373 in binary (unless my calculator is broken). I spoke to Franco at the show and he told me a little but about their work and the process of putting the show together, but what I didn’t realize at the time is that he and Eva and a pair of hacktivist pranksters (or “restless European con-artists,” as they describe themselves) who have engaged in some pretty formidable and in some ways very 3pointD works of art in years past.

The prints on display were gorgeous, and from across the room looked almost like photographs. From up close, they looked almost like oil paintings. Franco says there was very little post-production manipulation done to the prints, only a bit of color correction and “something else secret.” The series was titled after Andy Warhol’s films and portrait series, 13 Most Beautiful Boys and 13 Most Beautiful Women.

The portraits are included in a small book published to accompany the show, which also describes some of the Matteses’ former projects, many of which have a peculiarly 3pointD flavor to them — or are simply very cool. Their writing on the interplay of identity between avatar and person is very perceptive. Their fascination with digital identity took on interesting form in their Life Sharing project from 2000, in which they not only shared with the world “the entire contents of their computer, transforming it into a Web server,” but “submitted to satellite surveillance for an entire year” in a related project (complete with map). This is proto-lifelogging, if it’s anything, so it’s no wonder they’ve now gravitated toward the metaverse.

Nor do they seem to be casual users of Second Life, having spent something like a year poking around in there. They know enough to be excited by it, but also to note, “While it is by no means a given that as a product Second Life will stand the test of time, the model of Second Life is destined to change our lives on the Internet, and probably life in general.” Very true.

A flyer for the show describes several other excellent art projects they’ve mounted in the past: “They created and released the code for a computer virus, erected fake architectural heritage signs, run media campaigns for non-existent action movies, and even convinced the entire populace of Vienna that Nike had purchased the city’s historic Karlsplatz and was about to rename it Nikeplatz.” [A note on the virus: Franco has said in an interview, “We’ve announced before what we were going to do. Our names and domains are written into the code. This is a big difference to the traditional cracking scene. Additionally, before starting to spread the code, we have sent it to all anti-virus software houses, together with an explanation of how to erase it. The main goal of our virus is just to survive.”]

This is excellent stuff, just the kind of thing most people could use much, much more of: harmless exhortations to question our perceptions of the world.

Speaking of perceptions, here’s Jerry and I, perceiving each other through the lenses of our cameras, while Aimee looks on:

And here’s Rebecca Galarza, standing in front of the portrait of her avatar, Lanai Jarrico, who runs the SL Enquirer:

I’m actually a bit fascinated by this photo, since Rebecca is not only beautiful but has the kind of style that would translate perfectly to a Second Life avatar — imagine those curls as prim hair! — which just goes to prove that you needn’t be seeking a better life to wrest satisfaction from a virtual world, just an additional bit of life to add to the one you’re already leading. She’s a great example of the malleability of identity, if you ask me. Lanai is very different from Rebecca, and yet they’re the same person. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to ask her why she’s chosen to be a veiled blonde in SL. If I find out, I’ll let you know.