Alumni: EGS Alumni Micha Cardenas spent 365 consecutive hours immersed in Second Life

Former EGS Student Micha Cardenas will spend 365 consecutive hours immersed in Second Life - an online, 3-D virtual world - where she will exist as her avatar, a dragon named Azdel Slade. In an age when biotechnology has made it possible to alter the fundamentals of our food supply, our energy sources and even our genetic makeup, one graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, is pushing the limits of what it means to be human by exploring the intersections of biotechnology, art and virtual-reality in an immersive, durational performance titled "Becoming Dragon."

To fulfill the final project requirement for her MFA in visual arts, graduate student Micha Cardenas will spend 365 consecutive hours immersed in Second Life, an online, 3-D virtual world where users create avatars and interact with one another in a non-competitive way. Wearing a head-mounted device with a stereoscopic display that blocks all but the virtual world from her view, Cardenas will spend the entire duration of the performance in a laboratory at UCSD's Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA) at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

The performance will begin with a two-hour session on Monday, Dec. 1 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the CRCA Visiting Artist Lab 1613 in Atkinson Hall. It will continue until Dec. 17, and special guests, including artists Sandy Stone, Brian Holmes and Stelarc, will be attending the performance throughout its duration. <a href="http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/11-08BecomingDragon.asp">More.</a>