MMO worlds as containers for art...or as inspiration for art in RL

Some years ago while in school, I discovered my first MMO: City of Heroes. It became an obsession, of sorts. I worked at least as hard on developing not only characters, but stories surrounding them, as I did on any official school art I was involved in. Shortly after, I discovered World of Warcraft, or WoW or Warcrack...And immediately, I knew this was something wholly new. Not only did it encapsalate a tightly produced, highly polished virtual dollhouse of everything Warcraft, it engaged individuals, millions of them worldwide to participate together, to play together. Millions of people, playing together. This is highly idealistic, but at its heart, there is something, some *thing* I am (and have been trying for a couple years) to locate which is highly fertile ground for art.

My primary concerns, however, lie in the constraints of the behavior within the world. Very little of the actual environment can be affected in anyway. There was an artist I met that was making sculptures in the FPS Tribes2. Apparently, one could use geometries in the game to build fortifications and the like. Instead, he would make sculptures in the middle of the battlefield. In plain view. He commented on how he wouldn't engage the 'enemy' in direct warfare, but used all his energy to repair the sculptures if they were attacked. Attacking sculptures sounds like more fun to me. Then again, I wanted to 'assassinate' the 'Michael Jackson and Bubbles' porcelain sculpture in the SFMoma, see if I could frame it in the same way that Rauschenburg framed erasing de Kooning's drawing...maybe because he did that is why I didn't...but I supremely digress.

So, here I am thinking art thoughts + WoW thoughts + inevitably, when the subject of the web comes up, porn thoughts and hoping something coalesces. I believe there is a whole world out there for artistic investigation that is being completely, and utterly ignored right now. Like maybe as big as Andy Warhol and the aha! he must have felt when he realized that he could just paint Brillo Boxes and soup cans and Mao Tse Tung and it would be the highest of the highly ironic art.

I am thinking about this too much, but these thoughts have been stewing in me for years. I think they are related to thoughts I had, just before I graduated, when I realized that my whole world was now being parsed through a filter of art philosophies, post-modern/Neolism, and other such things very art school. I knew my work had to die in the form it was, in order that I might make work that was more immediate in its response to all that theory. Far too much of what is being made now is didactic and worse, so obscure that it doesn't end up meaning anything to anyone but a very select few. And really, they don't much care about it either, they've simply invested so much time and energy into their "knowing of" art that, even when the Emperor isn't wearing anything, they'd never say.

I'm going to go log on and see if I can drum up any ideas...

I'm realizing the tone of this is a bit soap-boxy, and I must admit I made the mistake of thinking of an audience of many when writing this instead of just writing it for you, I apologize for the violence. Please forgive me.