What a platformlike Second Life is good for? It depends on the interest and ability of the user, of course, but in general to spread “remote” contents with high graphic and emotional impact, which are made within the platform or that are conveyed through it. Not surprisingly, the visual arts (photography, sculpture, architecture) are among the most popular in the virtual world of Linden Lab, even using as a support prims instead of marble, photographic film, glass or concrete. However, in my opinion one of the nicest uses of Second Life can also be to create events that raise awareness about specific issues, from science to literature to art. Forthis reason I appreciate projects like Museo Virtuale, Imparafacile, Scienza on the Road andthe course of activities engaged at Mic by Maxi Lane (aka Marina Bellini) eand hercollaborators in the Imagin@rium project.

The most recent event I witnessed “in avatar and pixels” was a meeting with Graziano Cecchini artist of whom, as I think most of you, so far I only heard the eco on some media about performances as whenhe colored in red the water of the Trevi fountain, or when hethrew 250 thousand (500 thousand for other sources) colored balls by the steps of  Trinità dei Monti at Piazza di Spagna or the “attempted raid” in the Big Brother’s house at Cinecittà (a complete success for the intentions of the artist). Hear from the voice of Cecchini, as in reality all these performances (and others such as the creation of a formidable door made of rough blocks of marble extracted from the breccia medicea inconjunction with the opening of the Creativity Festival in Florence in 2010) have been the result of painstaking work, aimed primarily to study the context in which it would be carried out so as not to cause damage to monuments, people or environment, and then have always been designed to deliver a message "exploiting" the mechanisms of mass communication made me think how little filters, in most cases, about what are the intentions of an artist than the summary short and often distorted, making it the media in a country where even a few years ago a minister (Giulio Tremonti ) stated that “with the culture you do not eat”.

So Second Life can also be the tool to 1) promote more and better knowledge about the work of an artist and his/her motives 2) understanding what message the artist wanted to give and how he/she came to give sight to the performance or specific work of art 3) reflect on the constant risk of manipulation that we receive from the mainstream media. Second Life and virtual worlds (but I would say all social media) have often been negatively interpreted such as places for a futile, if not dangerous, avoidance didn’t surprise me before (as in the information world, I'll work good or bad for a dozen years now), but at this point to me is also clear why a country as Italy that only in its capital has more than 50% of the artistic heritage and that might come out of the current economic crisis just “rediscovering” and emphasizing its boundless cultural heritage with the use of new technologies, yet the current vulgate want that “with culture you can’t eat” and that therefore is unnecessary to deal with it, especially in a period so difficult. Gentlemen, open your eyes: Second Life can serve to reconnect to the real world much more than the “traditional” media, that’s perhaps why it’s so scary.