Niko Donburi

Niko Donburi is one of the pioneers of live, online musical performance in the virtual world known as "Second Life." He has been performing exclusively in virtual worlds for almost half a decade.

Niko's songs about Second Life are well known through out the virtual world community and were a staple of "SecondCast," "SL Under the Radar" and other popular Second Life podcasts. Niko was selected to be a live performer at the 2007 Second Live Community Convention in Chicago, Illinois, at which time he released his first collection of songs about Second Life, Tales from the Grid and was selected to be first musician premiered on treet.tv's Music and Arts on the Isle.

Niko has also been involved in pushing the technological boundaries of in-world live music performances. In September of 2007, he was asked to be the live musical performer for an event celebrating the opening of a virtual version of the German DIY store, Plus. Using cutting edge technology called "Lifecrawler", the show was simulcast from Second Life onto the web-- making it the first musical event in Second Life publicly viewable from outside of Second Life over a web-based application.

One year later, Niko again made virtual history as the release party performance for his second collection of songs about Second Life, The SL Man, was streamed to parcels of land located on more than 400 individual sims, or Second Life regions, making it the largest musical event ever held in a virtual world to date. The parcels were part of the virtual "Arbor Project," a movement to thwart the increasing commercialization of Second Life by planting virtual trees on small parcels of land throughout the main Second Life grid.

In 2010, Niko was the study of a doctoral dissertation research study of crafted identity inside of Second Life among virtually performing musicians entitled “Life as Art: The Interplay of Identities Among Virtually Performing Musicians in Second Life.” The study was undertaken by Dr. Deborah Wise/Flameheart Sol of the University of Colorado at Denver and was the basis for her doctoral dissertation.

When Niko is not performing, he spends his time taking portraits and other photos of his virtual world.