One and Three Virtual Chairs: Kosuth in Second Life Alejandro Schianchi Departamento de Arte y Cultura, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina alejandro@schianchi.com.ar Keywords: Virtual, real, art, object, reproduction, Kosuth, digital, conceptual art, copy Abstract: A recreation of Kosuth’s “One and three chairs” in a virtual world updates the idea of the seminal work dealing with the concepts of original, reproduction, language, and conceptual art. If in Kosuth’s work the relation between the three objects were made by the differents elements referring a chair: a dictionary definition, a photograph, and an actual chair. In this new virtual work the three elements are differents, as they can be recognized as a chair, a photograph of that chair, an the definition of the word chair, but at the same time they all share the same digital representation of the virtual world itself. 1. Introduction One and three chairs in a virtual world. One author’s idea as a work of art, a physical presentation of that idea, and a virtual presentation of that idea. Presentation and representation. A copy of a real work, or an idea. Exclusive and shared authorship. Difference and repetition of concepts, production, and authorship. One author’s idea as a work of art, the idea of another author based on that idea, and a presentation of that idea as a work of art. An old idea as new, again. 2. Real Kosuth Joseph Kosuth’s original work from 1965 is considered to be one of the first expressions of what is known as conceptual art. The term refers to works of art in which the idea takes precedence over the materialization of such idea. Conceptual art sets aside technical skills and considerations regarding composition, form and color amongst other traditional concerns involved in the production and analysis of a work of art. Though Marcel Duchamp and some of the experiences by Fluxus artists inevitably prefigured 20th century conceptual art, it is Kosuth’s “One and three chairs” that concentrates, like no other work of art, the debates on language, representation and presentation that were so popular at the time. A real chair, a photograph of this chair as it is actually installed in the room and a definition of the word “chair” pose a disconcerting mental and conceptual game in the form of a work of art.