In collaboration with Linda Kostowski.

Commissioned by Ars Electronica, this project aims to copy objects from Second Life's walled economy of simulated things. We export those into the real world by transforming them into lifesize papercraft models.

Export to World seeks to comment ironically on the design and production of merchandise in virtual worlds. At Ars Electronica in Linz, retail space on Marienstrasse was temporarily converted into a shop like those found in Second Life. Instead of the acquired object suddenly appearing in the purchaser's inventory, though, the new owner received a a two-dimensional paper representation of it which he/she could manually fit together into a three-dimensional object on site.

The final results are paper representations of digital representations of real objects, including all the flaws that copying entails. The truly interesting and unexpected moment for this project was when we put the objects outside to take photos for the documentation. On the pictures, the objects give a bizarre, almost photoshop like impression, which we attributed to the fact that they had been modeled after a real object. Now they somewhat visually collided with their origins and produce the mentioned effect. In fact it was so strong that some didn't believe they were physical objects at all when captured on a photo.