Project: The SimGallery Project, 2004

The SimGallery Project is a collaboration between Rainey Straus and Katherine Isbister. The project brings an urban art museum (the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ) and the online game-world of the Sims together to create a collision between high art and gaming culture. Rainey and Katherine have built a virtual version of Yerba Buena Center in the Sims Online where they have curated a show and performance series within the virtual environment. In addition to the in-game show, the project maps the Sims aesthetics and game play back into the galleries at the Yerba Buena Center through a series of real life sculptural interventions. This real world installation further conflates the game dynamic and the embodied experience of the viewer visiting the real life galleries. Visitors can enter the online gallery in borrowed avatars at stations in the real life museum. The piece explores the fertile ground between art and gaming culture while thinking about the digital medium and investigating what art can be in an online communal space.