This was a crazy site that featured a dance floor that when you stepped on certain colors it made you dance and move in a variety of ways - arms, legs, hips, head, etc. It was really wild to watch your avatar get lose on the screen with very little control over what the body was doing.

Here is more about the academy - http://www.mysticacademy.org/

I believe Patrick (weeks 9-11 and week 12) is still working on his part of this final project, however, I wanted to go ahead and post the link for our final project for today’s deadline. We created this wiki and blog for a youth curriculum we began devising. The blog was kind of a test model to see what type of space we would be creating through our curriculum for youth. We have mostly used it to post our progress and thoughts about the project. Billy, Anja and I have posted our curriculums and added our comments on the project here (Anja), here (Billy) and here (Michael).

Please feel free to explore around and add your thoughts/comments about where this project should go, shortcomings and so on! Otherwise, this course has been great and it will be missed (I look forward to a dancing reunion)!

For my review, I went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s virtual exhibit in Second Life - Witnessing History: Kristallnacht - The November 1938 Pogroms.

When I was 16, I went to Washington D.C. for the first time. With nearly a week to myself, I set up a list of places to visit. One of the last places on my list, saved for the second to last day, was the Holocaust Memorial Museum (I absolutely recommend visiting it). I have never been more impressed with a museum, or more emotionally impacted by the material presented. Given, this particular museum has the benefit of extraordinarily emotional material, but the level of care and design that was given to every part of the museum was incredible.

Every aspect of the building’s architecture serves a purpose and helps to reinforce the museum’s effect. Upon entering, each visitor takes a replica passport from a bin. Each page corresponds to a floor, and as you journey through the collective experience of the Holocaust, you also journey through the individual experience of the person whose passport you hold. Mine was from a young girl about my age, not Jewish. The museum is experienced from the top floor down and is mostly self guided. There is an enormous amount of content - physical artifacts, written content, video interviews with survivors, photographs, and replicas. By the time I returned to the ground floor several hours after I entered, I had learned that she had been caught giving food to passengers bound for a concentration camp, and arrested.

I’ve been to many history museums, but nothing like this. It’s as must a memory museum as anything else - it attempts to keep these horrible events present - in the now. Through the multimedia and the excellent use of space, the museum manages to evoke very strong reactions in attendees. Knowing this, and remembering what an incredible experience I had visiting the museum, I was interested to see what sort of exhibit they had put up in Second Life, and I was certainly not disappointed.

The building reminds me quite a lot of the stone and brick museum - it’s clean and elegant. I can tell it’s a museum just by looking at it and it’s clear it was designed very carefully. There are a number of students milling around. As I pass through the entrance I am greeted by the curator, an automated guide that instructs me how to use the exhibits. I discover that I can interact with most of the things I see - I can touch objects, pictures, bulletin boards. They expand into note cards, walking me through the events that lead up to the series of pograms, and the events that transpired after. It’s clear that the same guiding principles that made the museum itself so powerful are at work here. Only instead of actual artifacts from the 30s and 40s, there are digital replicas. As I finished with the artifacts in the first room, I am told to touch the notebook waiting for me on the table. This gives me my assignment - to experience the recreated scene of the pogrom as though I were a journalist.

As I finish reading, the “wall” disappears, and I can pass into the village. The ground is covered in debris. Windows are shattered, walls covered in graffiti. The synagogue is burning, and inside an open building I discover a “hiding place”. Inside I find others, reading the exhibits on the walls about survivors who had hidden in such places. The center of the “town” is papered in historical posters and legal decrees, which are translated when moused over. After viewing them, I entered the synagogue where the recreation finishes and instructs me to leave and view the testimonial videos. Exiting the virtual town, I discover a viewing atrium lined with small video screens, each replaying a personal story about the events. Finally, after exiting the atrium I found information engraved on the walls directing me to the museum’s various web sites and projects. One click sends me there directly - seamless.

In addition to the physical museum and the second life cousin, I found an enormous amount of online content on the museum’s main site. Some content appears to be designed to commemorate the anniversary of events, other content is meant to coincide with other media events, such as television specials or movies. All in all, it was a very complete multimedia experience. They’ve done a phenomenal job of presenting very upsetting and emotional material in a way that actually encourages you to feel it, to step into the shoes of the people who lived this terrible history and grapple with it. It’s a phenomenal undertaking, and it’s done to great success.

This was an interesting art show of photographs of avatars from Second Life - funny how the documenting of people and their expressions of a virtual reality.

The photographer created a book for the images - http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/169383

This is a link to galleries in Second Life - a great resource - http://sasun.info/gallery_public.aspx

I had a wonderful experience at the Chlbo Communtiy Center. The flower paintings were fabulous plus they had an orb that you actually entered and it transported you inside a flower - it is associated with Brian Eno.

Here is the press release for the Art SHow - http://secondlife-newspaper-mace.blogspot.com/2008/10/chilbo-museum-press-release.html

The following is a blog entry I just posted over at our group’s Final Project Blog (Billy, Anja, Patrick and I). We will be posting an update on this blog as soon as we finalize the project! Feel free to cruise on over to our blog and wiki to view the entry and other details about our project, including our in-progress curriculum. Anyway, here is the full text of the blog entry:

I have been thinking about this project a lot — a whole lot. This semester I took “Global Youth Media” and “Networked Collaborations” at the same time. After the second week, I knew I wanted to combine these two sources of knowledge into something by semester’s end. I knew whatever was launched would just be seeds, something to nurture and grow as more time is spent dealing with the concepts that both courses presented.

The framework for this project is just scratching the surface of the potential behind these types of programs. We really are at a precipice right now. Digital technology is certainly becoming more widespread, but it is not ubiquitous. And, as I proposed in this concept paper, there is a great risk of leaving behind already economically and politically ostracized people. So, these programs are necessary, as they really will bridge the gap between those with fingertip access to digital technology and those with fleeting flirtations with digital technology.

In the “Global Youth Media” course, we have had countless conversations about abandoning those frameworks that are top down or bottom up. Instead, we should look at pedagogies that embrace a more circular model, one that is not so restrictive and linear. I think we have begun something here, with this curriculum, that moves in that direction.

Earlier in the semester in our “Networked Collaborations” blog I talked extensively about Joshua Meyrowitz. I said that Meyrowitz makes a compelling argument about the role television played in decompartmentalizing society and dissolving former hierarchies, all of which Meyrowitz claims led to the revolutions of the 1960s (As I said then, I have always found this argument a little deductive and technologically deterministic, as certainly there are other factors that led to the 60s revolution, that said, I still think Meyrowitz is compelling).

I believe the digital era is bringing about revolutionary shifts in group identity, socialization and hierarchy. In the wake of the digital revolution, we run the very real risk that these revolutionary shifts will only reinforce the same economic and political injustices that exist outside of the digital world.

But, I think that if I were to take anything away from what I have learned this semester in both “Networked Collaborations” and “Global Youth Media” is that there is reason for optimism. There are many reasons to be excited about the power of emerging technologies and collaborative tools to cause significant social change. There are many great pedagogies that provide “scaffolding” for a human rights curriculum that empowers people, giving them the skills to self-mobilize around issues that lead to their well-being.

There are many quotes that have lingered with me all semester, however one that has really stuck with me was in Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs.” In it, he argued that “Smart mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. … Groups of people using these tools will gain new forms of social power.” (Rheingold, 2002, xii).

This encapsulates the tremendous potential of emergent digital tools. A new brand of social power is emerging, but what type of social change will it bring if the “new” holders of the social power already have status and power?

So, we have to continuously carve out spaces in the digital world for young adults, especially those who may not have easy access to the networked tools. We have to create a generation of young adults who are not just media literate, but capable of producing their own media. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins said:

We need to rethink the goals of media education so that young people can come to think of themselves as cultural prodcuers and participants and not simply as consumers, critical or otherwise. (Jenkins, 2006, 259)

As is so often the case, it is always easy to find someone who has already said what we want to say— only much better! Jenkins’ quote embodies the spirit of this project. We have to help youth not just tap into digital tools, but then empower them to turn around and produce their own cultural texts. Additionally, we have to equip them with the power to critically evaluate the world around them. It is a tall order and certainly not one that any single project can achieve, but hopefully these ideas will contribute!

(As an aside, it has been tremendous working with Billy, Patrick and Anja. Billy did a great job of recapping how we have worked together throughout this project. I think we all brought tremendous ideas to the table and interspersed our own visions for what a youth media curriculum entails — exactly the benefits of collaborating via networks!).

What kinds of collaboration can be explored in educational networked spaces? How can this environment affect the exchange between teacher and student, or between student and student? How do methods of teaching and sharing change to accommodate a distributed nature?

How can one further the Second Life experience of collaboration and immersion, while taking into account various ethical issues and avatar behavior?  What experiences exemplify activity such as terraforming where participants can shape the world rather than change another planet’s evironments to resemble the earth?  And what of the various technologies revolving around a telepresence, in which the senses of the user are stimulated as to create a feeling of being elsehwere?  Not to mention the way in which  the user(s) may be given the ability to affect the remote location.  In this case, the user’s position, movements, actions, voice, etc. may be sensed, transmitted and duplicated in the remote location to bring about this effect. Therefore information may be traveling in both directions between the user and the remote location.

Consider where you might be for example when experiencing “The Letter Well” stand, where what you choose to type comes out of the well and floats skyward. Is this not an immersive digital environment in action?  Also the “SynthyCube” and the “Avatar Harp” where the patron-participant can walk into one of the two pods and what string he or she looks at, vibrates and sounds off.   Interactive art exemplified!  A true form of installation-based art, involving the spectator. 

To answer the questions, perhaps a consideration of the words of a few theorists regarding education, curatorial work, and collaborative/immersive environments is in order.  While at the Pencil Factory Gallery in The Port, an artists community in Second Life, and observing the work by Angrybeth Shortbread where the ability to engage a group of avatars in an interactive and collaborative manner is readily apparent, think of the following concepts:

·        Participatory culture–the collaborative relationship between artist, theorist and curator:

. . . the artist as cultural context provider, who is not chiefly concerned with contributing content to her own projects. Instead, she establishes configurations into which she invites others. She blurs the lines between the artist, theorist, and curator. (Scholz)

Then consider the same when at the roof and experiencing the UUID Polyphony—receiving, creating, participating, collaborating:

·        A vehicle for collective problem solving—skills needed for a student audience to participate in convergence culture.  To paraphrase Henry Jenkins, some of these skills may include:

Pooling knowledge;

The ability to share and compare value systems in what they see and evaluate;

To be able to make connections across “scattered pieces of information”;

The ability for individual audience members to express their own interpretations and feelings towards what they see through their own “folk culture” (their Second Life avatars, etc.?);

The ability to circulate and share. (176)

Feel like circulating and sharing your experience say with the SLTypewriter?  Proceed by connecting with others through multiple networked communities in an instant- Tweet a microblog where your message is transmitted through Twitter—your “scattered pieces of information” being interpreted and shared with others who may not be “present.”

Keep these thoughts in mind and ask yourself again, how can this environment affect the exchange between teacher and student, or between student and student? How do methods of teaching and sharing change to accommodate a distributed nature?  What effects do the SL interactive art experience have?

To quote Christopher D. Sessums:

. . . more than simply individual skills — they are cultural skills, that is, they are a part of the shared knowledge and values of our society.

Having mixed feelings?  Perhaps a little frustrated from a few technical issues as well as inexperience?  Feeling an increasing desire to get past these hurdles for a dynamic social, educational and cultural experience?  Perhaps your experience can end up being like Sarah Everts who feels that Second Life can be a strong tool for educators despite an initial awkwardness:

. . . there are also digital glitches that occur because Second Life is still a work in progress.  Despite feeling like a klutz, I am a definite Second Life convert. The draw is not simply its educational potential for visualizing complex concepts or for allowing geographically distant students to form a classroom community.  . .I like Second Life because it reminds me of the awkward early days of the Internet. 

What are your experiences as they relate to these theories?

Works Cited

Scholz, Trebor. “The Participatory Challenge.” Curating Immateriality: The work of the curator in the age of network systems. Ed. J Krysa. New York: Autonomedia, 2006. collectivate.net. <http://www.collectivate.net/the-participatory-challenge/

Excerpt from Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars.”

Everts, Sarah. “Second Life Science.” Chemical & Engineering News. Vol. 85, No. 26. 25 June 2007. <http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/85/8526sci3.html

Christopher D. Sessums: Blog:  Skills for 21st Century Learners: Preparing ourselves for participatory culture.  January 05, 2007.  http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/146395.html

This was definitely one of the best things I’ve been a part of in SL since joining. The structure of the event was more or less a crescendo/decrescendo of dance action. We began with a bit of dancing on the floor, and everything was more or less pretty simple:

Then once we got warmed up, things got interesting:

Then we ended by dropping all of our objects and falling alseep. For something that we barely choreographed not thirty minutes before performing, I’d say it was pretty impressive.

The sim for Brooklyn is Watching as a pretty graphically intense. There are floating blocks all over the place, and cars falling from the sky.The dance floor was an expansive green layout which definitely contributed to the fantastic landscape, contrasted against all of the dance moves. There were other avatars there hanging out and having conversations while we danced.

What I found most itneresting about the whole intereaction was the difference of self-consciousness between the virtual space real life. First of all, like in the Matrix, learning a dance move is as simple as downloading it. So nobody has to worry about their dancing abilities. On top of that, something about having a representative for yourself changes the whole game of self-consciousness. Because we are still talking to one another, our personalities are still coming through, so there is still some semblance of reality left. However, going up to somebody and dancing next to them wasn’t particularly awkward as it sometimes is in real life. I made the point in an earlier discussion that certain “physical” actions would still be considered unusual, such as getting naked in the middle of class. So it’s an odd, seemingly inconsistent line drawn between the etiquette of SL and the etiquette of real life. As a point somebody made, aelf-consciousness seems to be central to that.

But that’s probably over-thinking it. It was really just a fun time in a networked environment. I recommend, if Josephine decides t have another one, that everybody who can join in.

On a separate note, thanks everybody for a fantastic semseter!

PREPARATION
Our final group project evolved over the course of the semester- beginning in concept as a curated media art show in Rhizome, and culminating in a collaborative art event exploring an interactive exhibition in Second Life.

We began flushing out our ideas for the project on our group Wikipage - contributing collaboratively to our project proposal following group Skype conversations, as well as adding potential resources and academic material to the mix. The Wikipage ultimately stalled, and we forged forward with staggered Skype conversations and email exchanges over the semester, which were never free of technical difficulties!

After our introduction to Second Life, our group concluded it was more practical to explore art events in Second Life, rather than in Rhizome, because it offers more variety and more potential for interaction and group collaboration. Sensing a drought of networked events available for review, Adam suggested we open our project up to the rest of the class, as well as Josephine’s undergraduates, for attendance.

Over the next few weeks, we fleshed out our roles in the project, and moved forward with research, which included theoretical investigation, technical inquiries for documentation purposes, SLart history, development and discussion occurring in online communities. After exchanging notes through numerous other meetings via Skype, email and Second Life, we narrowed down our exhibition and unified our individual research. Guy provided theoretical background, Adam and I searched out the exhibition and planned the tour, and Frank took on the technical requirements to record the event.

THE EVENT
Our event was held yesterday evening at The Pencil Factory Gallery in The Port, an artists community in Second Life. We chose the Pencil Factory Gallery’s exhbihiton of work by Angrybeth Shortbread (Annabeth Robinson in RL) for its potential to engage a group of avatars in an intereactive and collaborative manner. The gallery space was conducive to group functioning and yet it also allowed us to explore outside areas within The Port that related to our discussion. Additionally, the artist Angrybeth Shortbread has a comprehensive blog as well as a website which documents and explains several of her artworks. We felt these additional elements would provide supplementary material, as well as the opportunity for those who weren’t able to access SL, to access the work.

We began with a good turnout from Josephine’s undergraduate class, and though I had a few technical difficulties getting started, I introduced the Gallery and history of The Port. Adam then spoke about a few points of potential discussion, such as telepresence, terraforming, interactivy and immersion.

Intro outside The Pencil Factory Gallery

We then entered the gallery to explore Synthy-Cube, a completely immersive environment comprised of green cubes that react to the presence and movement of avatars through them, by illuminating and sounding a tone. The group literally jumped right in, and made some noise!

Unfortunately my computer was having some issues, so everyone looked like clouds to me at that point.

We moved next to another level with a few more artworks such as the one below, where we explored the physical logic of the Second Life world.

We eventually headed up to the roof to experience the UUID Polyphony piece, which consists of a series of “speakers”, that record a unique tone specific to each avatar that approaches the work. The tone is then added to the Polyphony playlist, and is played in a random order from then forward. Because your tone is not deleted from the playlist, it lives on even after you exit the gallery, and so you are contributing and collaborating to the art work across time, and not necessarily only in the present. This work is a great example of the artist as cultural context provider- as she has created the conditions of a situation, provided the technology and circumstances for the artwork to be produced, but only by the visitors who then participate in creating the work. As one member of the group commented, we created a “class symphony” by simply collectively being in the presence of this group of speakers.

Later we moved on to the SLTypewriter, a piece that works across platforms and connects multiple networked communities at once. By touching individual keys on the larger than life typewriter your avatar records letters onto the paper and then submits their message by touching a lever, thereby transmitting the typed message into a Twitter update on www.twitter.com/sltypewriter. Take a look and you’ll see our entries.

The SLtypewriter transmits tweets to Twitter

Lastly, we flew off to another part of the island and explored a separate, somewhat psychadelic building, where we concluded our event with a brief discussion of the experience. Overall, we felt the night was very successful and elicited an engaged response from the group memebers who participated in the collaborative process of “activating” interactive art.

RESOURCES
Below I’ve listed a few resources for further exploration of SLart.

Virtual Artists Alliance Blog

SLART Magazine blog

comprehensive listing of over 400 art galleries in SL

short article on The Port

MORE TO COME
Stay tuned for additional postings from Frank and Guy with the video recording of our event and a brief theoretical “write-up”.

thanks!

I’d like to finally, formally invite everyone to our group’s final presentation on “Lasting Presence.” We set out to document physical places in transition and give them (or report on) their supplemental online presence. Laura says goodbye to physical polling places in Washington State, I reflect on some of the ways that New Orleanians are rebuilding their city online, Anja offers a presentation (with some wonderful footage she shot) on Chinatown, and Billy covers the erosion of the “non-place” of Coney Island.

We met in Second Life some months ago to discuss our original theme. We created a google group for communication and started a wiki (which hosts our presentations, created through Google Presentations). We really worked wonderfully together to flesh out ideas and stayed in good contact with ease through google groups (a godsend). For me at least, this was a rewarding, meaningful and painless collaboration.

Please check it out!

http://lastingpresence.wikispaces.com/