MCN2015

Remember the hype about Second Life? The hype may be over, but virtual worlds are not.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide engage daily in creation, exploration and interaction within thousands of massive multi-user virtual worlds, user-generated worlds in which the presence of museums is pervasive. The overwhelming majority of these museums are created not by professional museum entities but by users not otherwise affiliated with museums.

Offering an astounding array of topics ranging from mermaids to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to the Marquis de Sade to a variety of less easily classifiable spaces, these user-generated museums may often feature the familiar marble columns of a traditional museum, but their function has been radically redefined to serve their unique cultural needs. In a world in which reproducibility is infinite, physical authenticity is meaningless, socialization is anonymous, physicality is representational and content is peer-generated, what role do museums play and how does it apply to their physical counterparts?