Phigitting at the MdM

 Light and compact, brightly colored, with three prongs in play, and never still for a moment... the buzzword 'phygital' put fidget spinners into my mind ...oh, the naughties! 'Phygital' is a portmanteau term is used to describe, until someone thinks of a less clunky term (and please do!), the fusing of activities going on at the same time in the physical world and on digital platforms. 

Come to think of it though, the Museo del Metaverso is compact, brightly colored, with three prongs in play - it's active in Craft grid in Opensim and Spatial, a corporate-facing immersive VR platform, and in Second Life. 

Judging by the past year's activities at the Museo del Metaverso, called MdM for short, its founder Rosanna Galvani has been spinning up a huge success story with art shows, workshops, exhibitions, presentations, and conversations that bring together the realities in a masterclass of organization and commitment to education and art. Seen here at the Museo, dressed in dark business slacks with her signature top hat, Rosanna cuts a typically modern Italian figure of elegance with a touch of whimsicality that lifts the mood. The HG Address of the MdM is of course at the end of the post, where it belongs.

Rosanna Galvani

Rosanna Galvani: 2025 was both a fruitful and transitional year for us. My vision for virtual worlds is that they should be more than just a "niche" space but that they should take on greater cultural density: artists, curatorial projects, transmedia collaborations—all of this is growing. Over the past year the Museo del Metaverso has become more 'phygital' with a range of voices and languages and different events. These include digital clothing, 3D installations, and live discussions between participants in real and virtual worlds.

Thirza Ember: The fact that you've been able to generate enthusiasm for so many 'mixed reality'  events, what do you think that means about the way virtual platforms like Opensim are seen in the regular world?

Rosanna Galvani: It goes to show that art in virtual worlds is being seen as a valid field of research, experimentation, and enjoyment. I'll go further, the fact that we don't just replicate the real world is particularly significant. Inworld, we can reimagine the way exhibitions, social exchanges, and the interplay between audience and artwork happen. In 2025, this "reimagination" took concrete form on several occasions.

The special events that the Museo del Metaverso (MdM for short) organized this year were meetups and presentations to students in institutions, including the Clerici Foundation and Bennington College in Vermont. This kind of event is a win-win for the brick and mortar schools and of course for the digital community.

Rosanna Galvani: Institutions bring with them a history and a curatorial experience, and we contribute our innovation. This leads to genuine contributions to the debate on art, technology, and enjoyment.These collaborations give virtual worlds exposure to new audiences, including students, researchers, and faculty, and that makes art in virtual worlds more visible and inclusive. It also makes more robust and creative projects possible. Institutions provide human resources and expertise, as well as limitations that mean we have to work within guidelines. ON the other hand we offer the virtual environment, the platform, the idea of ​​a "fluid museum." The result is a productive hybrid with new exhibition formats, new languages, and new interactions.

Proof of the pudding was the recent workshop with Vito Bucciarelli and students, part of the "Languages ​​of Visual Art" project promoted by the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino. Here's a video of it, but be sure to go over to YouTube and subscribe to Rosanna's channel, so you can keep in touch with her projects and also, of course, support her by liking her videos. But back to the workshop...

Rosanna Galvani: It was a truly phygital event: we were in the metaverse, they were in the classroom, and we communicated in real time via Meet and YouTube. A rich, dynamic, and perfectly hybrid dialogue. I love the synergy. It's not just about "hosting" or "showcasing," but about co-creating, bringing together worlds that until recently were separate institutional art and that of virtual worlds, communities and platforms. This is what motivates us.

Even the roof of the MdM is full of theatrical artwork

As you probably know, Rosanna started the MdM in Second Life back in 2007. She brought her HQ over to Craft grid in Opensim more than a decade ago, for the advantageous pricing and other benefits. Nonetheless she still has close ties with SL, and with Spatial, making the most of all worlds and bringing their art to different audiences, in their own worlds. Each one is a discrete cultural environment, from the VR headset experience of Spatial, to the custom environments of Opensim, to the large and long-running community of Second Life.

Being digitally nimble (and no, you can't coin the word dimble... stop it...) gives the MdM more options, and spreads the risk factors.

Rosanna Galvani: Relying on a single platform would mean being subject to policies, costs, and updates that can all change. With a multi-platform approach, we can test, move, and adapt. It also allows us to create hybrid projects, events that move from one environment to another or combine different experiences. This is the foundation of our concept of a "fluid museum," capable of engaging with different technologies, communities, and languages.

One of the most important events this year was "Avatex" which literally brought to life as wearables the AI designs of Velazquez Bonetto the founder of the CARP and long time associate of Rosanna. She was thrilled.

Rosanna Galvani: It was a truly special moment. Seeing people wearing Velázquez's digital dresses and presented in a way that spans fashion, art, and the metaverse confirmed what we've long believed, that virtual creativity can be profoundly tangible as an experience. When I saw those models take shape interacting, changing avatars, and coming onstage I felt pride for our community which made the event possible, wonder at the transformation of the idea into a "digital body" and gratitude to Velazquez, for his vision of a dialogue between fashion, avatars, and virtual worlds.

Rosanna Galvani: At that moment I thought: there you go, we're truly building bridges between traditional and virtual fashion, between idea and avatar, between digital performance and social experience. For me, it was confirmation that the Museo del Metaverso is a place where dreams—or rather, invisible ideas—can become visible, shared, and collective.

This colossal floating structure holds most of the MdM's art

At its heart, and with all its outreach to more concrete parts of the artistic global family, the MdM achieves something that is not only impossible in real life, but would be impossible on more commercially minded worlds like SL The sheer quantity of art not only on the sim MdM but on the continuous regions in Craft, is breathtaking and would take days to completely explore, and it is often very down-to-earth themes that give rise to the most imaginative pixel art - subjects like pollution, immigration, and domestic violence. 2025 also saw the addition of Roberto Presicci to the Metaverse Museum team, as co-curator from Fall 2025 to Fall 2026.

Rosanna Galvani: We were looking for someone who like us was interested in art in virtual worlds, experimentation, and community outreach... and somebody with expertise in the field in both RL and digital worlds. My association with Roberto Presicci began when he got in touch to propose the MdM could work with him to put on the 'In Between' show. This involved artists well-known in Italy, many of whom had never been in a virtual world before, in an exhibition was held across three platforms: OpenSim, Second Life, and Spatial. It went very well so we decided to take him on board as co-curator. He will be taking a survey of the connections between works already in the collection, and coming up with new thematic exhibitions. He'll also be working on interactive cultural maps, making the most of the tools of the metaverse to boost the expressive power of the works, and will look into new ways to use art to tell stories using new and immersive modes of narration.

The announcement of Roberto Presicci's new role at the MdM was announced on the website
(photo courtesy Rosanna Galvani)

After a busy year, Rosanna is far from planning to put her feet up, if anything she'll be busier than ever having set a bunch of new goals, building on the methodologies that have been so successful this year, keeping up the whole cross platform and hybrid RL/VW events, trying out new ways to show art, and basically keeping on keeping on with their vision. They also want to reach out even more beyond the frequently Italian-centric events, and get more into the international field - could that be something you should get involved with? If so, get in touch!

Rosanna Galvani: I'm confident and enthusiastic: 2026 promises consolidation, but also new opportunities for an increasingly innovative, fluid, and community-based MdM.

HG Address: craft-world.org:8002:MdM