CF:  I think that animation has a huge cultural influence on the whole world, and there's an influence from the Japanese animation I watched as a child; but for the COSplayers project, my primary interest wasn't the anime itself. I wanted to focus on how global youth culture has captured China's younger generations, creating an entirely new urban lifestyle. The project is really a witnessing of urbanization.

CF:  Chinese youth all focus on Western culture — it's on TV, it's in books, it's everywhere. When we were younger, Western things were unquestionably good. Classic Chinese animation, like Sun Wukong from the '60s, can't engage the younger generations. When I tried to show my younger sister that DVD, she wasn't interested, because she thought the local animation wasn't good enough.

CF:  Zhang Anding (aka Zafka Ziemia), my composer for the Siemens Project, first introduced me to Second Life. He's very interested in new technology, and at the end of 2006, he said, "Second Life is a hit. You should play it." So I registered as "China Tracy" and began playing. At the same time, I received the commission for the Venice Biennale, and I had a sudden idea that maybe I could use this as a platform for a project. I really didn't know anything about Second Life then, but I had half a year, and I thought I could explore it and create something to send out.

CF:  Yeah, I think every day, sometimes for six to eight hours at a time. I usually work at night, so I would spend the whole night on Second Life. At the beginning, I would totally confuse my real life and my Second Life.

CF:  For me, Second Life is an entirely new kind of experience. It has different aspects: one is the 3-D world of the program, which is like an animated world — very colorful and very perfect. But beyond that, and related to cosplay, is the premise that people can choose characters that are very different from their real selves. They can use their character to create a "second life," to change their friends, family, and lifestyle — like switching a TV channel.

CF:  For cosplayers, they put on different costumes in their real life, but they're conscious of playing a game. When you're online in a totally new world, your physical self is more invisible, and it's your inner self that's revealed.

CF:  The video is about my experiences and my feelings within Second Life. I think I talk in my film about how I started to confuse my two lives, and so I compare them. The younger generation, like 15-18 year olds, I don't think they ask as many of these questions; that kind of lifestyle is their real life — they belong to a technological world — but for my generation, we will always compare virtual and real.

CF:  He's an older American man, a former '60s revolutionary who spent time in prison for a bank heist. A lot of our conversations are about communism in the US and its meaning in China now. When I first met him online, he looked handsome and young, so we spent time together and traveled a lot. Then I met him in real life, in a San Francisco Starbucks, and it was like meeting an old friend. I gave him the DVD of iMirror, but he was afraid to show his wife because she doesn't like him playing Second Life.

CF:  It's complicated — it's like a documentary. I was directly recording myself as I moved through Second Life, but as I'm watching myself, I'm also controlling myself; I'm simultaneously director and actor. But I enjoy exploring everything and not knowing what will happen in the next step. A lot of the process is waiting for something to happen, and I didn't try to make something fake. In the end, I had some 300 GB of saved chat dialogues and "real" captured footage, at the highest video quality. Of course, it's edited, so some montages use real dialogue with different images.

CF:  When I met the man, I was just watching him play the piano. He didn't know I had a "camera" then, though I said, "I'm a video artist," and he took me to lots of good places for shooting. But now when I talk to him and tell him that I'm shooting, he'll become a bit more shy and serious, so I won't always use the camera.

CF:  At the end of the Venice Biennale, I had been traveling for a long time and had seen a lot of different cities. I thought that maybe I could create a place that belonged to me within Second Life — my own city utopia. RMB City (RMB refers to "renminbi" or "people's money," China's official currency) is a Chinese city, but it mixes the different elements of China. I'm very interested in the city as an organism and have done a lot of research on cities in the Pearl River Delta, and I'm hoping I can use my knowledge to build a Second Life version of my vision of the Chinese city today. All the cities currently in Second Life are Western-style, so Chinese users can't find spaces that reflect their culture. I don't want to overemphasize the fact that I'm Chinese, but Second Life is a big world, and you want to build something to locate your own identity.

CF:  The first feeling is very strong — when you fall inside Second Life, you feel almost like a newborn baby, with a lot of questions to ask your mother, and children's questions are always so true. But it's also like a lover — after a few months losing yourself, you have to go back to your life and really work with your partner to maintain that relationship. In the end, I think this 3-D world is the future world. People complain that the technology isn't good enough now, and of course Second Life isn't perfect, but it's just the beginning.