Stephanie Rothenberg's and Jeff Crouse's Invisible Threads (2008) also uses Second Life as a framework, but comments on the intersection between virtual and actual world economies rather than qualities of representation per se. The mixed reality installation allows people to order, through a retail kiosk in the exhibition space, a pair of jeans, which is then virtually manufactured in a Second Life factory by worker avatars—representations of actual people around the world who have been hired through Second Life classified advertisements. The virtual jeans are output back into the physical world as actual jeans via a large-scale printer. Invisible Threads explores the ways in which virtual economies have begun to intersect with those of the real world. Items from online games are now frequently traded for real currency. Sweatshops in China engage in the business of “goldfarming,” where players of online games pay “farmers” (players who repeat mundane actions in a game in order to collect points) to gather in-game rewards for them in order to play the game at a higher level. According to Wikipedia,2008 figures from the Chinese State valued the Chinese trade in virtual currency at over several billion yuan, or nearly 300 million USD. Anshe Chung, the avatar that entrepreneur Ailin Graef created for herself, made headlines in 2006 for building an online business in Second Life–devoted to development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies–that made her a real world millionaire. It was the avatar Anshe Chung (rather than Graef, the person) who was featured on the cover of Businessweek, signifying the definitive arrival of the simulacra (in the Baudrillardian sense) as commodity.
