This should give your head a pretty good twisting for a Monday morning.
I’ll let Wagner James Au explain it, because I can’t condense it any further and still get the story across:
“… last October in Manchester, a big screen display was set up in All Saints Gardens; the park was also recreated in Second Life. Meanwhile, video cameras in the real park record people who are there, and that live footage is merged in a chroma mixer to video captured in the SL version of All Saints.
The result is broadcast on the Manchester screen, so people there can watch themselves interact with avatars. But that’s just the beginning: the mixed reality video is also broadcast into the virtual version of All Saints Gardens in Second Life, so avatars can watch themselves interact with people in the real park, too.”
As Au points out, there’s a whole lot of reality layering going on right there.
“Liberate Your Avatar” was a public art installation by Paul Sermon designed to “expose the identity paradox in Second Life” – you can read more about it at the project’s website (which is where the image above has been borrowed from).