[Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG Reenactment of Valie Export and Peter Weibel’s Tapp und Tastkino, (2007)] From Plaintext Players to Avatar Actors: A Short Survey of Online Gaming Performance by Mathias Jansson:

Performance art emerged in the mid-1960s into the 1970s and was a way to push the boundaries between art and everyday life. Many artists saw performance as an opportunity to bring art directly to the audience without having to detour through the galleries, curators or agents. Performance therefore often occurs outside the institutions on streets, squares or other public places. It was defined as an antithesis to theatre and the ideal was to “create an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased.”(1) Famous performance artists from this time are Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden and Marina Abramović.

With that background it’s not surprising that performance artists today explores computer games and online worlds. These new digital worlds gives the artists an opportunity to meet a new public and basically bring their art into peoples livings rooms. With help of the Internet they can also reach a new and broaden art public all around the world. Online performance started in the early text based systems as MOO, MUD and chat rooms and have followed the technology development into 3D online worlds. One thing that surprised me when I did this survey was that so many artists have chosen to re-enacted famous performances from the history of art in different videogames and on-line worlds. To be witty you could say that many of these old performances have got a second life in Second Life. More here.