New York Times Writer Sara Corbett investigates how a not-very-successful artist used the exploits of his avatar in Second Life to build his brand. She notes of the artist/avatar:
"Filthy Fluno was born into Second Life on May 20, 2006, created — or in game parlance, “rezzed” — by his human counterpart, a Boston-area artist named Jeffrey Lipsky, who says he designed Filthy as an “urban prophet/vampire figure” who is “impossibly short, impossibly thick and with impossibly big hair.”Lipsky is 37, a mild-mannered art-school grad with a traditional painterly mien. He can’t quite explain why he, a short, white Jewish man, chose a short, snaggletoothed black avatar, except to say that part of the fun of recreating yourself digitally is that every option — switching race, sex or even species — is gloriously open."
That article is quite long, but well worth the reading time: Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar ------>
