The preservation of knowledge about virtual worlds, including content and events, has become an area of investigation of media research and archiving departments at universities. Library science and museum collections divisions at several schools in the U.S. have been using virtual worlds for some time to facilitate student interaction and for distance learning applications. Museum collections staff at several museums are experimenting with virtual worlds as a means of presentation and interaction with digital versions of artifacts.
At a recent workshop that I participated in at Stanford University given by the Media-X group, entitled “Preserving Knowledge in Virtual Worlds”, I learned that the Stanford Humanties Lab with funding support from the U.S. Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) has worked with the Internet Archive to create a new Virtual Worlds Video Archive “dedicated to the academic investigation and historical preservation of documentation of virtual worlds.” The project is also supported by groups at the University of Illinois, the University of Maryland, and Rochester Institute of Technology.
This is a great step towards archiving virtual worlds so that the growing practice of using them for both fun and serious work is preserved for historical record and future study. While the collection is focused on moving images that capture the use of and important events in virtual worlds, it provides a basis for potential future expansion that might include virtual worlds platform software and related documents and images. Having the collection as a hub within the IA that people can contribute to and share will help broaden the accessibility of these videos for research and study. The collection features some interesting moments in virtual worlds history including OnLive Traveller, STARBRIGHT World, AlphaWorld, Oz, Habitat (!), Maze War, Club Caribe, early SL, and video of the final moments of EA-Land, Check out over twelve years of virtual worlds videos from many different companies and research institutions in this growing collection.
On August 1, 2008, the Exploratorium will webcast a total eclipse of the sun as seen from remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China near the Mongolian border. Our scientists and media development crew will capture dramatic telescopic images of the eclipse, which will be webcast via the Exploratorium’s website and in Second Life. The program will be hosted by Exploratorium scientists Dr. Robert Semper and Dr. Paul Doherty and feature NASA Heliospheric physicist Dr. Eric Christian who will show some of the latest imagery of the sun from NASA’s SOHO and STEREO missions, and explain how the solar wind can impact us here on Earth.
On Exploratorium Island in Second Life, we’ll host an eclipse viewing event featuring the live webcast, interactive exhibits, and music. You can view the eclipse webcast in the amphitheater on Exploratorium island as well as other sims including Sploland, Spindrift, Nanotechnology, UK Future Focus, Science School, and SciLands.
Avatars watch a total solar eclipse in Second Life
Putting on this event in SL is presenting some different challenges than the first time we brought a total solar eclipse webcast there in March 2006. It’s a great opportunity to continue to learn about putting on museum events in a virtual world. I’ll be sharing more details of the event as well as details of those challenges in the coming days.
Using digital design tools to develop ideas for and to prototype real world museum exhibits is an important aspect of contemporary exhibit design. The Tech museum of innovation in San Jose, California is experimenting with a twist on this by inviting people outside of their exhibit design staff to create exhibits virtually in SL that will be created IRL and exhibited at The Tech.
In The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, they opened up a design competition and gave in-world classes and workshops to help guide exhibit developers in using SL to realize their ideas. They selected seven winning designs and fabricated the exhibits which have been installed as a first exhibit in The Tech Virtual Test Zone Gallery at the museum in San Jose. Peter Friess, President of the institution, welcomed a group of San Francisco Bay Area museum and education professionals to the opening of the new exhibit at the Tech on June 4, 2008, along with Philip Rosedale, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Linden Lab — creators of Second Life and the Second Life Grid. Friess stated that The Tech was committed to using experimental methods such as prototyping and developing exhibits in SL as a way to develop new museum exhibits and that sharing information and practices about the approach with other museums and interactive developers was an important part of the museum’s process.
This past year, we’ve been seeing more and more physical devices connected to objects and avatars in SL, adding further complexity to mixed reality and augmented reality environments for exhibits and installations.
Artists have often been at the forefront of interfacing the real and the virtual and in exploring the grey zones where these worlds meet. New media arist and sculptor Joe Delappe re-enacted Ghandi’s historic Salt March of 1930, a protest against the British tax on salt at the time. At a gallery in New York and in Second Life this past March and April, Joe walked 240 miles on a treadmill he connected to SL to control his avatar MGandhi Chakrabarti’s virtual world steps, recreating the march. As much a performance as an installation, his work demonstrates the interesting time displacement effects and physical connections that are possible when RL elements are combined with telepresence and virtual environments. We often think of things in a virtual sense as being instantenous, so it’s somewhat jarring to put something like the slower speed of a real person walking next to flying avatars. With a nod to the Slow Food and Slow Art movements, real/virtual connections like this might allow us to savor our virtual interactions a bit more.
