This black cube floating on a virtual sea depicts ten virtual worlds other than Second Life, in a manner meant to reflect the current state of the virtual universe.  When you enter one of the galleries, for example the one for World of Warcraft, you will see screenshot pictures of what that world looks like, in some cases also including virtual artifacts.  All very nice, but when you decide to leave and enter the gallery for another virtual world you will discover that you are trapped.  There is no door between the worlds!  This, of course, is true for most of the virtual universe: Worlds are entirely isolated from each other, and your avatar cannot travel freely from one to another, let alone export virtual objects or money from one to another.

We do provide a means of travel, however, for the museum visitor.  Right-click on a wall, and you will get the option to teleport to another room - but we do not tell you which one!  If you want to leave the Claustrium altogether, click on floors or ceilings until you find an escape.  The metaphor of entrapment has one more feature.  The most direct way to get into the ninth room is to return to the teleport pad from which you entered, and use the nearby black monolith from "2001" to enter hyperspace.  Note that this is the actual, real, original monolith, not a copy.  How can we tell?  The only stable characteristics the 2001 monolith has are that it is black, has a ratio of dimensions 1 x 4 x 9, and transports you "elsewhere."  That's it!  Oh, yes: Once you enter the ninth room, try to decide which of the non-computerized virtual worlds is more real than Second Life.

Below is a picture of the Claustrium, with the teleport disk to the left with eight panels to enter each of the eight rooms representing other virtual worlds, and the 2001 monolith to the right.

Here are some features of various rooms you might want to know about.  Several of the virtual worlds conceptualize avatars differently from the way Second Life does.  In Second Life, each user is expected to have one avatar that represents themselves, but which does not have the user's real name.  In the room representing multiple worlds, the picture of the solar system was taken in ScienceSim, which uses the Second Life client software but is not hosted by Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life.  In ScienceSim you have just one avatar, but you are expected to give it your real name.  Across from the solar system picture is one of a spaceship, taken in EVE Online.  Although each user of EVE creates an avatar-like person, that person cannot act within the world and is purely symbolic.  Rather the user is represented by the spaceship!  Below are pictures from Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft that represent a different principle about avatars.

On the left we see Tobor and Nanobic from Anarchy Online.  Tobor is Nanobic's robot, that takes orders from him and is a secondary avatar, possessing a small degree of autonomy in that when Tobor is told to attack an enemy, he does so in his own manner and at his own speed.  On the right we see Alberich and Stephie from World of Warcraft.  These are co-equal avatars of the same person, who is operating each via a different computer that sit side by side on the real-world table top.  Indeed, World of Warcraft calls these "characters," not avatars, and it is assumed that many people will have multiple characters - I have 22 in WoW - each playing a different role in a fantasy division of labor, each with something of a unique personality.  The principle illustrated by these pictures is: The concept of avatar has often been treated too simplistically as the direct and unique expression of the user's personality.  The god Vishnu is said to have ten avatars, each representing a different quality of the whole god.  Secondary avatars are already like virtual robots, possessing a small degree of artificial intelligence, and perhaps being very smart and autonomous in future.  Alternate (or "alt") characters not only express aspects of the user, but can be fully formed fantasy characters, quite different from the user in many respects.

The eighth room in the Claustrium, representing The Past, points to the fact that only the present is real, and digital recordings of the past can be re-experienced within the rubric of virtual worlds.  The four black-and-white pictures in that room were actually taken by a professional photographer in my paternal grandparents' home at 34 Gramercy Park, New York City, sixty years ago.  The thumbnail picture below encapsulates the symbolism.  In a bedroom, we see a clock in front of a work of art, representing time and human creativity.  To the left of the clock is a picture of me as a small child, and to the right is a picture of my (now long deceased) parents taken about the same time.  Picture of pictures!  Images of memories!  Is the past real, or virtual?  We won't ask about the future.