I’m delighted to announce the arrival of Tamsin Barzane’s Middle Passage Experience installation as a new permanent exhibition on solipCISM. I first blogged the exhibition back in early July when it was curated on Saminaka.  Prim limitations at that time meant, however, that the exhibition there could only be temporary, so I’m very pleased indeed to have been able to offer Tamsin space on solipCISM for an innovative and interactive exhibition that brilliantly exemplifies the educational potential of Second Life.  The snapshots below are from the current exhibition on solipCISM; my original blog is reproduced below the gallery.

Visit the exhibition at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/SolipCISM/218/243/23
and see also the video interview with Tamsin at:
http://archive.treet.tv/designing-worlds-middle-passage-experience

The original blog of 7th July 2009 …

I’ve long and often been greatly impressed by the innovative use of interactive 3D in the design of many of the museums, galleries, and cultural exhibitions I’ve visited in Second Life, some of which I’ll cover in future blog posts. The one I’m reviewing today may only have another week in Second Life before it’s removed to make space for others, so it’s with some urgency that I cover it here.

Second Life resident Tamsin Barzane–in real life a professor of African art and architecture in the USA–maintains the island of Saminaka, a virtual Nigeria. Tamsin told me that she had lived 6 years in Nigeria: “I’m an American who spent many happy years in Nigeria, and would like others to get a feel for the culture, history and fun Nigeria (real and virtual) have to offer.” Currently featured is an interactive role-play exhibition of the ‘Middle Passage’, the brutal and horrific transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the plantations of the Caribbean and Americas. (Click on any of the thumbnail images in this posting to view a pop-up full-size image.)

Exhibition visitors will select one of five male and five female identities by clicking one of the identity boxes (see the first picture, right). A folder is delivered to the visitor’s inventory, containing the clothing of the character, a short biography of the character, and a notecard of instructions:

“Your Remembrance experience depends on you taking on an African identity. Please wear the clothes inside, and read about your character in the notecard nested below. If you have a flip title, you may want to use it for your African name. When you get to the prow of the slave ship, please look for the box with your name on it before continuing to the American part of the experience at Safe Haven Landing. Thank you for taking part.”

A selection of the identities–the first male, the second and third female–are displayed below:

NAME: Hunsi (“Bride of the Spirit”)
ETHNICITY: Allada (in modern Republic of Benin)
DATE AND AGE TAKEN: 1724 at age 11

My kingdom of Allada was a wealthy trading state with several ports by the coast–so the inland Fon went after us, destroying our capital and killing or selling all who weren’t able to flee in time. My mother and I were captured, but she died of fever before I even entered the ship. She took me for my initiation into Gu last year; I am young, but like my god, I was ready to fight, even with only a knife at hand.

NAME: Ronke (“I have found someone to treasure”)
ETHNICITY: Yoruba from Oyo Kingdom (in modern Nigeia)
DATE AND AGE TAKEN: Taken 1835 at age 15

My father is the Bashorun of Oyo, serving our Alafin as a general. My dear mother had sent me out of the city to the farm, hoping to set up a marriage for me with our neighbor there–she is a big trader and knows his first wife. But the Fulani swept through the area–they said they were going to take our farms, our villages, our city. They made us march for weeks down to the most water I’ve ever seen. We waited at Badagry, all cramped in a little building, for two months, and I saw many die. When we boarded the ship, I wept for my sisters and brothers, my parents, even my mother’s co-wives and their children. No husband, no child to mourn me, and these beasts who talk through their noses are carrying me to a far-off place to be eaten.

NAME: Nzinga (“Born with the umbilical cord around the neck”)
ETHHNICITY: Kongo (in modern Angola)
DATE AND AGE TAKEN: 1619 at age 36

I had six children for my husband, 4 girls and 2 boys, when the Jaga swept in and took everyone in the village who hadn’t gone out to farm and trade. I came from San Salvador before I married, so I could speak some Portuguese and was used to the white traders. But they didn’t listen as I pleaded when the Jaga sold us to them at Loanda.

Dressed in African costume, and assuming the identity of the selected character, the exhibition visitor then proceeds, in role, through the “Gate of No Return” to the slavers’ ship (the image that of the notorious Brookes), selecting the on-board box that corresponds with that identity to find a slave costume and further notecards outlining the later story of the captives. For Hunsi, for example:

NEW NAME: Romualde
DESTINATION: New Orleans

The ship’s first mate bought me. We sailed to Haiti where most of my compatriates left, then transferred to a smaller boat and sailed here. He sold me again, and I worked for M. Kerlerec unloading goods at the wharf.

DIED AGE 45 OF MALARIA

I worked at the wharf for some years until I learned French, and a friend taught me how to figure and write. I was part of the Bambara Conspiracy of 1731, but no one revealed my name when the plan to rise up was thwarted. My master started to use me to collect debts, since I was good with numbers. He freed me when he died, and I went to work for a counting house. I married Jeanne, an Indian and a good Catholic. I am one, too, but my vodunsi Gu still calls me sometimes for worship. We have 6 children.

The exhibition is imaginatively conceived and well designed. Does it effectively recreate the experiences of enslaved Africans? no, probably not–the unimaginable horror of enslavement, transportation, and a short and brutal life of enforced hard manual labour could arguably never be reproduced successfully in any digital medium. Yet the exhibition very successfully encapsulates in graphical form a snapshot of perhaps the greatest crime against humanity in human history.

The exhibition was located at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Saminaka/59/90/31
and Tamsin’s blog (the Saminaka newpaper) may be read at:
http://www.saminaka.blogspot.com

I’ve written before about the cultural and educational African presences in Second Life, and documented elsewhere Tamsin Barzane’s impressive Middle Passage exhibition on Saminaka.  Back in early August Tamsin invited me to a meeting of Africanists convening on Friday 10th August in the magnificent Saminaka Library.

[2009/08/06 4:27]  Tamsin Barzane: Hi, Khoisan! Have been feverishly working on upcoming seminar (and off to breakfast soon), but wondered if you’d be interested (or available) in a meeting this Friday at 11 am SLT regarding Africa & Diaspora scholars banding together to meet?
[2009/08/06 4:28]  Khoisan Fisher: In short, yes! delighted to
[2009/08/06 4:28]  Tamsin Barzane: ; ))! great! it will be in the Saminaka library (though I’m not the organiser). Let me send an LM
[2009/08/06 4:28]  Khoisan Fisher: OK, thanks

Present were (avatars of) scholars from City University New York (CUNY), University of Delaware, Cleveland State University, and the University of Missouri, the discussion (which I’d logged but, alas, lost when my hard drive crashed a couple of weeks later) focusing on the creation of a Second Life “community of educators, educational support personnel and others interested in using virtual environments to expand and enhance learning in the fields of African and African Diasporic studies”.

With follow-up discussions at a couple of further meetings, the Ananse’s Web group was created mid-August, followed by its accompanying web site.

Ananse's Web at Ning.com

An African Festival and group launch event took place 1st to 4th October, with the following programme:

Thurs, Oct. 1.
5 pm slt Fireworks on the beach, masquerades, stilt walkers
5:15-7:15 slt Kickoff dance with first DJ

Fri, Oct. 2
5 slt – African music–talk & performance-“Are drums a family Event?”- by Oliha Yiwama (traditional priest, musician, anthropologist)
6 slt – Durbar— Nigerian procession of horses with African trappings
African Music Video Party or DJ to follow

Sat., Oct. 3
11 am slt – The “Rules” of Traditional African Art—informal talk & slideshow by Tamsin Barzane (African art historian in rl)
12 Noon slt – Decorated Nigerian-style canoe regatta (prize to the best-decorated)
5 pm slt – Masqueraders, stiltwalkers and acrobats—join in!
African Music Video Party, DJ or live performance to follow

Sun., Oct. 4
11-2 pm slt – Bryan Mnemonic’s lecture and launch of Ananse (off Saminaka, on Univ. of Delaware sim), followed by guided tours to several sims
5 slt- African spiritual traditions—talk by Oliha Yiwama (traditional priest, musician, anthropologist)
6- Following talk, masqueraders, stiltwalkers and acrobats—join in!
6:30 slt – Closing dance party with second DJ—African male and female dress competition; announcements of photo contest winners
Fireworks on the beach

Tamsin Barzane speaks on 'The Rules of Traditional African Art'

Bryan Mnemonic talks about his use of SL and social computing in teaching and learning

In preparation for the next academic year, beginning in four weeks from now, solipCISM has had an extensive makeover this summer, with much of the existing content redesigned, rebuilt, or re-textured, as well as much new content added.  The Welcome Zone has been largely redesigned and rebuilt, now with well-stocked freebie shops as well as freebie boxes lining the new quaysides.  The Library has been partly rebuilt and fully re-textured.  A new Centre for Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments will deliver educational resources and tutorials to both staff and students; and perhaps of especial value, adjacent to the Centre’s main building, is a complete guide to running an OpenSimulator server and managing a region either standalone, or in grid mode, or connected to an off-SL grid.  A new level at 4080 metres has a theatre, a bookshop of key readings for taught modules (full-text books or links to Amazon), shops from which students may sell their creative work, an exhibition centre, and a Virtual Life Research Centre.

Other than maybe better integration with the web, I’m not yet sure I quite yet see the point of this–Second Life running in a frame within a standard web browser (available for both Firefox and IE)–maybe because the documenttion is scant in English (3Di is a Japanese company), but it seemed to me worth posting as one to watch.

The 3Di OpenViewer plug-in (MS Windows only at the time of writing) can be downloaded from:
» http://3di-opensim.com/download/TestPackage.zip

See also:
» http://3di.jp/en/news/2009081201.html
» http://3di.jp/en/
» http://3di-opensim.com/en/
and Wagner James Au’s report at:
» http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/08/3di-openviewer.html

I first found these YouTube videos almost a year ago, but hadn’t thought to flag it in this blog. At that time, the company that was leading the development of Second Life on mobile phones was streaming mobile game service provider Vollee:

Vollee is a technology company which streams PC applications to mobile handsets. By hosting unmodified PC applications on servers, adapting them for mobile handsets and then streaming them over 3G networks, Vollee allows users to access PC applications and MMOs and rich virtual worlds such as Second Life.
The company’s VolleeX engine adapts Second Life for screen size and key layout, and then streams the the Second Life application to mobile devices. Vollee’s interactive video streaming platform optimizes compression to minimize bandwidth requirements and also leverages the 3G mobile networks.

Other than drawing attention to the opportunities for mobile learning with SL, I don’t think I need add further comment at this point, though I hope more will follow if ever I get the chance to play with this.

See also:

Second Life Wiki > Help Portal > Viewer > Vollee
» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Vollee

Second Life reborn on mobile via Vollee
» http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/second-life-reborn-on-mobile-via-vollee/2008-02-19

Many more fine projects this year, too numerous to list … Tower Bridge, the Taj Mahal, a fully functional fairground, the Parthenon, museums, … I leave you with one indicative video:

An interesting (though not new) issue has been raised in the SL Educators forum with respect to how avatars should attire themselves for formal (non-recreational) contexts such as lectures, meetings, and public events:

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:07:47 -0400
From: “Villano, Paul Mr CIV USA TRADOC”
Subject: Re: [SLED] Professional Attire Recommendation
To: “SL Educators (The SLED List)”
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I don’t have an answer to the request but want to thank the writer for asking it. I am continually embarrassed while attending what I think are professional meetings (incuding SLED events) by folks who are best called “scantily clad.” I know the idea of a virtual world is to wear what you’d normally not wear to a “real life” meeting. I don’t intend to show up in wings or an ancient warrior outfit to work anytime soon. But I am concerned over someone showing up in a bra or panties or close to it in Second Life at a professional meeting. Double standard? Probably. And yes, I guess I’m a paranoid prude, but I think I would have a difficult justifying my continued participation in or obtaining funding for what I am presenting as a valid educational research project when trying to explain sitting in a meeting with half-clothed women, cartoonish or not.

Since this addresses a specific aspect of behaviour in SL, and socially responsible behaviour in general, I’ll add my two bits’ worth.  Khoisan teaches, meets other professionals, and attends meetings, wearing his black suit, white sirt, and tie.  Admittedly he mischievously enjoys the Reservoir Dogs-cum-Men in Black appearance, and may often be seen sporting matching dark glasses; but he feels that the formal dress invites others to take him seriously.  My expectation of students is that, in the interests of public order during in-world lectures and of presenting the best possible image to SolipCISM visitors, will dress appropriately while on the island; and while their attire off-island will obviously be a matter of personal choice I’d feel happiest if, when wearing their Kingston group tag, they behave in a manner that brings credit to the university.  So am I too a “paranoid prude”? or is this just common sense?

I first came across this a few months back, but didn’t have time to blog it.  I still don’t have the time, but am at least posting a video as a reminder to come back to this.

PIVOTE is a virtual learning authoring system for virtual worlds. It was developed as part of the JISC funded PREVIEW project, where it was used to develop training material for Paramedic students at St George’s Hospital and Kingston University. Although based on the Medbiquitous Virtual Patient standard the feeling of all involved in the project was that the system could be used for any sort of structured learning in virtual worlds. The result was that JISC have funded the creation of PIVOTE – this open source project.
The key point about PIVOTE is that all the structure and information content of an exercise is stored on the web, not in the virtual world. This means that it is easy to create, and then edit and maintain, courseware INDEPENDENT OF VIRTUAL WORLD. And since even structure and content are separate you can have the same exercise but with different levels of student information – from loads of help and structure for beginners, to minimal information and structure for assessment purposes.
From here you can download all the code you need to use PIVOTE to run your own courses in virtual worlds. From our PIVOTE Information Centre in Second Life you can download a starter set of objects, and the Controller, and you can of course create (and hopefully share) your own. PIVOTE supports users in Second Life (and OpenSim) and on the Web, but it is possible to create controllers for other virtual worlds – why not do it yourself or add it to our wish-list (see Issues).

References

PIVOTE
» http://www.pivote.info

Medical News Today, ‘First Paramedic Course To Use Second Life’, 13th October 2008
» http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/125259.php

BBC News, ‘Saving lives in a virtual world’
» http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7686595.stm

My friend Dzevad yesterday alerted me to a blog piece by Owen Thomas, published in ValleyWag on Sunday 22nd February 2009, entitled “The End of Second Life” in which the author cynically, quite unfairly, but tellingly, writes:

Those who can’t do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most fervent journalistic promoters, like Reuters and Wired. It’s now pitching itself as an online schoolhouse.

How fitting, since Second Life, a piece of software which allows users to move “avatars” representing themselves around in a three-dimensional space and decorate themselves and their virtual land, resembles nothing so much as a failed academic experiment. …

What’s left for Second Life? Community meetings, underattended cultural events, and education. CNN uses its Second Life “island” to hold meetings with volunteer reporters. WGBH threw a virtual concert with a grand total of 70 attendees. And the Modern Language Association, that bastion of English-department wonkery, is pursuing the idea of using it to hold meetings.

Imagine a dry academic conference enlivened with a few space-alien avatars. Deans with mohawks and tight leather pants! Only compared to the life of a university professor might Second Life actually seem exciting. We look forward to the news that Linden Lab has sold itself to an academic consortium. It’s where the virtual world belongs.

Disparaging as he is about teachers, he’s probably right in his core argument: that Second Life may be consolidating around community meetings, cultural events, and education.  And this was pretty much my point in my previous blog entry … although, unlike Thomas, I see this as a good thing, not a bad thing.  The case for education has, I think, been made beyond dispute–it’s happening and it works; its potential for fostering and supporting new communities of interest is as great as that of Facebook or other social networking web sites.

As regards Thomas’s “Deans with mohawks and tight leather pants”, I must protest: those who know Khoisan Fisher will know that he, at least, always dresses in a smart black business suit, white shirt, and tie, and expects “space-alien avatars” to reflect upon the appropriateness of their appearance before attending lectures.

References

Owen Thomas, ‘The End of Second Life’, ValleyWag, Sunday 22nd February 2009
» http://valleywag.gawker.com/5158190/the-end-of-second-life

In my course overview in yesterday morning’s first face-to-face class of the module I stressed to students that we would and should be considering not the technologies alone but also the business case for developing in Second Life.  I’d cited Cisco, inter alia, as an instance of good practice.  Returning home in the evening, I opened my newspaper to find an article by technology journalist Rhodri Marsden on “the world of virtual offices” in which he writes:

Midlands legal firm Simpson Millar has made its own tentative forays into Second Life, led by Operations Director Craig Jones. “I attended a Second Life lecture that addressed its possible business applications,” he says, “but it was going to the lecture itself that opened my eyes to its potential. Normally, attending an event like this would involve incurring travel expenses and imposing my carbon footprint. But once I’d got over the strangeness of the experience, this virtual presentation was just like the real thing; a person in front of me, talking.”

As Second Life develops, it has become clear to the likes of Jones that while the media focus on companies selling kooky virtual clothing to make virtual currency, its biggest value to business is going to be its ability to bring employees together and save a great deal effort, time, and money. American technology company Cisco are at the forefront of adapting Second Life for serious business applications. They regularly hold virtual seminars on their products and strategies for staff, other businesses, and whoever happens to be wandering by; not only has it had the effect of educating, raising awareness and developing corporate links – it has simply made the company more accessible.

Indeed, tales abound of CEOs of large technology companies wandering around in Second Life and striking up conversations with graduates and customers – something that would rarely, if ever, happen in real life.

As a utopian vision of easy access and informal communication, the virtual office model has a lot going for it.

He goes on to warn, however, that:

what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate to successful implementation, and some companies’ efforts to embrace virtual worlds have been stymied by underpowered technology and the reluctance of all but a hardcore of geeks to show any interest. Reuters famously opened a Second Life bureau, but this closed late last year; the employee charged with running it, Eric Krangel, outlined the reasons. “The very things that most appeal to Second Life’s hardcore enthusiasts,” he said, “are either boring or creepy for most people… experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers, or having pseudonymous sex. It was about as fun as watching paint dry.”

I am unconvinced.  My gut feeling, even though I can’t at this stage muster enough firm evidence to back it up, is that organisations that fail to capitalise on the opportunities offered by multi-user virtual environments such as Second Life have probably missed the point.  It’s certainly no longer an issue of “underpowered technology”–although Second Life requires a broadband connection, a fast processor, half a gig of RAM, and a decent graphics card, there are few computers sold today that do not meet these requirements.  If our students with modest means can afford the kit, so can businesses and so will those who work for and with those businesses.  I can understand “the reluctance of all but a hardcore of geeks to show any interest”; but I am inclined to believe that reluctance has less to do with technophobia than with the failure of businesses to conceptualise meaningful ways of working in virtual worlds and to effectively communicate this to employees and partners.  And, yes, from the simple fact that all in-world content is user-generated it will inevitably follow that there’s as much weirdness and wildness in Second Life as there is in real life; but, as in real life so in Second Life, we have found ways to manage boundaries between work and play.

The greatest cause of disillusionment, it seems to me, is rooted in the failure to understand two fundamental realities:

• that Second Life is not, whatever the expectations and first appearances, just another mature off-the-shelf and ready-to-use technology like office suites, project management packages, or email clients.  Business strategies do not just pop out of one’s Inventory: all content, including conceptual and work-flow content, is user-generated;
• that Second Life is not ’somewhere else’, divorced from and separate from real-world activity: whatever one does in Second Life will deliver benefits only when it is anchored in and integrated seamlessly into the work one is doing in real life.

I’d argue that the hard truth of the matter is that those who are working with purpose in Second Life are still very much ‘frontiersman’, explorers at the pioneering edge of possibilities.  And we still have very little notion of what those possibilities are; but, in the words of Alan Kay, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.  Of over 10 million registered accounts, only 1,444,530 have logged in over the past 60 days and only 58,229 are (as I write) currently online, a very small population of “hardcore enthusiasts”, many of whom–those in for the long haul–are not “experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers, or having pseudonymous sex” but are rather forming solid communities dedicated not just to understanding but to defining how Second Life can be used to support learning, business, culture, and commerce.

References

Rhodri Marsden, ‘The new tools of trade’, The Independent, 10th February 2009.
» http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sustainit/the-new-tools-of-trade-1605552.html