Recently first year students of Sculpture and Environmental Art [SEA] at The Glasgow School of Art were introduced to Second Life. The virtual world of Second Life is just one site of exploration in larger self-directed, five week project titled "Site-Place-Context". Lead by Paul Cosgrove, head of the SEA Department, the project was shepherded by artist Chery Feild and myself. What follows are some observations of the student work from across the project and snapshots of works and experiments created at the GSA inWorldStudio.
As could be expected, some took to working in Second Life while others chose different aspects of the project to focus on. The avenues of approach, to the project in addition to Second Life, included the world famous Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh Building, and Glasgow's historic Bellahouston Park, two rather precise locations with significant contemporary and historic presences. A description of the project can be found here on the project's blog.
What may or may not be immediately obvious if you've never ventured into Second Life is that it, in comparison to the other sites presented requires rather a high bar of computer and technical literacy before one can engage with with the environment in any sophisticated way.
Practically the project began with inductions to each of the locations which aimed to provide the students with a working knowledge of the sites, their use and historical context. The induction sessions to Second Life, differed in the amount of exposure needed to introduce the tools was significant and risked out weighing, context of the situation, the 'why'.
What is remarkable is that it was possible at all to take a group of 30, most complete novices, from creating an avatar, learning to navigate, and communicate and onto beginning stages of building things, in under four hours. In all this are the various frustrations with technology - Surl links that dont work, group permissions which don't aggregate as expected, computer foibles and the rest. In fact, with little surprise, it was these instances of technical foibles, that seemed to put students off the experience the most.
Complications aside, group activities like scavenger hunts, and competitions to create the oddest looking avatar were very useful tools to keep people (relatively) focused and engaged with the environment. Also regardless of the virtual space they occupied, the fact they were in the room together made the group learning experience more enjoyable. An overview of what we covered in the introduction can be found here and the induction handout here.
I feel that given the current approach, there is little to be done about the imbalance of technical overview vs contextual dialogue. Not surprisingly the vast majority of students found significant frustrations with the first two hours or so with the induction. I attribute this mostly to difficulties engaging the interface, and there is a lot of conversation in the Second Life community about improving this critical window in new users' experience.
As people began to reach their saturation point, after about two hours or so - I introduced a 30 minute version Another Perfect World, a documentary about digital utopias, produced by Submarine and originally aired on the BBC. The film is a great way to offset fatigue and is excellent primer for discussion with which to wind down the session and put the potential of the island into a broader context.
On the whole I found that students who sat in on additional sessions really began to feel more comfortable with the interface and environment. So as an overall estimate, about seven to eight hours of contact time seemed to be the 'tipping point' for real confidence - though there was a pretty high 'burnout' rate and most chose to come for a session scheduled on another day. When approaching this kind of project again I would consider breaking up the activities into two, four hour sessions, on consecutive days. The first session to introduce them to the interface and the second more directed to actual building and a tour of other engaging projects.
It struck me that even though for many Second Life wasn't chosen as a site of exploration, the issues and concerns many projects dealt with seemed to reflect the inclusion of Second Life in the discussion. I find this in a way surprising, because in comparison to Bellahouston Park and the Mackintosh Building, Second life resist specific, lasting histories, at least as we are accustom to thinking of it in an archeological sense - history just needs to be unearthed.
Overall within the dialogue of the student work there existed dead interesting struggles with space, its layering, physical presence and perception, in addition to thoughts of simulacrum and reproduction. On more then one occasion during tutorials and critiques Cheryl and I pointed students to the works of people such as Joseph Kosuth and his "One and Three Chairs", and thinkers such Marshall McLuhan, and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Not quite halfway through their first year, many of these students had yet to be introduced Kosuth and McLuhan and I cant help but think that inclusion of Second Life as a site for exploration and a tool for experimentation, contributed to the prevalence of these discussions within their work.
What may or may not be immediately obvious if you've never ventured into Second Life is that it, in comparison to the other sites presented requires rather a high bar of computer and technical literacy before one can engage with with the environment in any sophisticated way.
Practically the project began with inductions to each of the locations which aimed to provide the students with a working knowledge of the sites, their use and historical context. The induction sessions to Second Life, differed in the amount of exposure needed to introduce the tools was significant and risked out weighing, context of the situation, the 'why'.
What is remarkable is that it was possible at all to take a group of 30, most complete novices, from creating an avatar, learning to navigate, and communicate and onto beginning stages of building things, in under four hours. In all this are the various frustrations with technology - Surl links that dont work, group permissions which don't aggregate as expected, computer foibles and the rest. In fact, with little surprise, it was these instances of technical foibles, that seemed to put students off the experience the most.
Complications aside, group activities like scavenger hunts, and competitions to create the oddest looking avatar were very useful tools to keep people (relatively) focused and engaged with the environment. Also regardless of the virtual space they occupied, the fact they were in the room together made the group learning experience more enjoyable. An overview of what we covered in the introduction can be found here and the induction handout here.
I feel that given the current approach, there is little to be done about the imbalance of technical overview vs contextual dialogue. Not surprisingly the vast majority of students found significant frustrations with the first two hours or so with the induction. I attribute this mostly to difficulties engaging the interface, and there is a lot of conversation in the Second Life community about improving this critical window in new users' experience.
As people began to reach their saturation point, after about two hours or so - I introduced a 30 minute version Another Perfect World, a documentary about digital utopias, produced by Submarine and originally aired on the BBC. The film is a great way to offset fatigue and is excellent primer for discussion with which to wind down the session and put the potential of the island into a broader context.
On the whole I found that students who sat in on additional sessions really began to feel more comfortable with the interface and environment. So as an overall estimate, about seven to eight hours of contact time seemed to be the 'tipping point' for real confidence - though there was a pretty high 'burnout' rate and most chose to come for a session scheduled on another day. When approaching this kind of project again I would consider breaking up the activities into two, four hour sessions, on consecutive days. The first session to introduce them to the interface and the second more directed to actual building and a tour of other engaging projects.
It struck me that even though for many Second Life wasn't chosen as a site of exploration, the issues and concerns many projects dealt with seemed to reflect the inclusion of Second Life in the discussion. I find this in a way surprising, because in comparison to Bellahouston Park and the Mackintosh Building, Second life resist specific, lasting histories, at least as we are accustom to thinking of it in an archeological sense - history just needs to be unearthed.
Overall within the dialogue of the student work there existed dead interesting struggles with space, its layering, physical presence and perception, in addition to thoughts of simulacrum and reproduction. On more then one occasion during tutorials and critiques Cheryl and I pointed students to the works of people such as Joseph Kosuth and his "One and Three Chairs", and thinkers such Marshall McLuhan, and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Not quite halfway through their first year, many of these students had yet to be introduced Kosuth and McLuhan and I cant help but think that inclusion of Second Life as a site for exploration and a tool for experimentation, contributed to the prevalence of these discussions within their work.
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