Metaverse: What is it and How can it Influence our Life?

The future never looked so close. Despite those who still regard virtual worlds as science fiction, we may soon be able to leave dry land behind and explore the digital limits of the metaverse, those worlds within the world, potentially limitless and accessible through virtual reality headsets. A network of territories hosted on the internet, where the video game Second Life was one of the pioneers, in which each one evolves in the form of an avatar and one can now market, buy clothes or attend concerts. Last year, Travis Scott's, on the Fortnite gaming platform, brought together 12 million virtual viewers, connected in the four corners of the globe.

The art market is already in. As digital works multiplied, which exists only on screens and are marketed in the form of NFT (numerical certificates of authenticity and ownership), the Sotheby's auction house quickly understood its lucrative potential. In October, she launched her platform Sotheby's Metaverse, where she organizes auction sales of virtual works. At the moment, the most profitable are called Cryptopunks, pixeled miniatures of fictitious faces, whose prices reach up to 500 thousand dollars. "It's a new way of looking at art, with an entirely new market where 90% of collectors aren't yet familiar", says Michael Bouhanna, who co-directs Sothoby's digital business. It is even through Twitter that he gets in touch with young artists and collectors, who exhibit in the metaverse as they would in an art gallery. "Before NFT's, digital art was consumed in immersive installations that rarely crossed the market barrier", he continues. "Today, artists can sell their works much more effectively." The auction house has even reproduced its mythical London headquarters in the Decentraland metaverse, where you can visit its galleries, its NFT exhibitions and follow the sales live. Things that havea turned the heads of traditional buyers, who now share the ground with young gamers, whose purchasing power is counted in cryptocurrencies.

First described in 1992 by American writer Neil Stephenson in his dystopian novel The Virtual Samurai, the concept of the metaverse has taken hold since Mark Zuckerberg, eager to restore the image of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, renamed his parent company Meta and announced an investment of 10 billion dollars in the development of its own virtual universe. The company unity Software, in turn, bought Weta Digital, the special effects studio of director Peter Jackson, whose technologies used in Avatar and The Lord of the Rings should help it develop its own metaverse.

Because fantasy cinema, Silicon Vallet executes. The return of the Matrix and its cyberspace, created by the machines to enslave humans, has never seemed so current. In Player Number 1, adapted from the Ernest Cline's novel, Steven Spielberg brings to life the OASIS, a virtual reality video game in which characters embark on a massive treasure hunt. Once the real world is in ruins, the characters fight to reign in the metaverse. "What's fascinating about these films is that they show the ability of human beings to imagine the next stages of development and technology before we even have the tools to use them", highlights Miriam Ross, PhD and lecturer in cinema and virtual reality at Victoria University of Wellington. "They embody both our dreams and our fears that the technologies of the near future could transform our lives. And they have a lot to say about our current state of mind. For her, virtual relity also offers the possibility to delve a little deeper into the fictonal universe of cinema, where the viewer coud eventually interact with the elements and characters of a film, or even have an impact of its story. Waiting for this, apprentice directors passionate about games are already producing films within the metaverse itself, such as the British Joe Hunter, with his short films that present the avatars on the VR Chat platform. That's what the digital world is all about: escaping the real world to more inviting realities, where everyone can become the best version of themselves.

And becoming someone in the golden age of social media is, above all, projecting a convincing image. In Meta's introductory video, we see Mark Zuckerberg's avatar choosing virtual outfits, from jeans and the t-shirt to an astronaut outfit. Don't worry, we won't be forced to dress like a tech-bro in the metaverse, fashion has already taken a few steps forward. In the future, each brand will be able to have its digital line - that's what Natalia Modenova and Daria Shapovalova claim. They launched the digital clothing sales platform DRESSX, which offers both classic pieces and high-end sci-fi attire, which can be purchased in the form of NFT. Daria recalls that, in some countries like the United Kingdom, about one in ten people only buy an outfit to post it on social media, before returning it (Baraclayard survey). "These pieces don't need to be produced, they can only exist in the digital space. At the same time, both see this as the furute of content creating, a way to reduce fashion's carbon footprint by decreasing its physical production and making The platform recently allowed, for example, its members to virtually try on a Balenciaga signature haute couture dress, which only a select few customers could afford in the real world.