Umeå Museologi + Kulturanalys Hösten 2009

The work has been fantastic. Thanks to all the students involved. The URL to access the island from the net is http://tiny.cc/6ZS2v. From here you can teleport to it, and it can be sent out to friends and family wanting to attend the opening next week. Thanks again for all your efforts- it has been great. /Jim

From our first meeting a few ideas sprang up regarding Second Life, Virtual Worlds and Machinima Film. In this entry I am only going to deal with the first one, more on the others shortly.

Second Life
At this stage it is important for both groups to get to know Second Life. Explore the spaces and places of Second Life. In the presentations today the groups showed us:

Museologi
Classic Paintings Gallery Dottyback
Roma (SPQR) Ancient Rome
Birka Viking Village
Frank Lloyd Wright Museum
David Rumsey Map Museum
Dresden Gallery
Cultural Arts Museum (Tiffany Painter): Childhood Memories
StormEye (Douglas Story)
Pop Art Lab (PAL)
Native Lands (Red RocK Mesa)
Virtual Harlem/First Ethiopian Church/Train Station

Kulturanalys
Magic Mall
Isle of Lesbos
Gender Square: Gender Equality in First and Second Life (excellent collection of papers on gender related issues)
BLU Dancebar
Sadie’s Dyke Bar and Butch Store
Club Galaxy
Dragqueendom
Space, Ibiza
Buddha Centre
Shaolin Gardens
Ambrosia Dance Club

My suggestions
Bodily Beauty in Second Life
Zindra Official SL Adult Content Island
Furries

Avatar and Identity
Life Across Boundaries: Design, Identity, and Gender in Second Life
Review of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet
Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (NY: Routledge) 2002.
Shaowen Bardzell and Jeffrey Bardzell, Docile avatars: aesthetics, experience, and sexual interaction in Second Life
Rune Klevjer, Doctoral dissertation: What is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-Based Singleplayer Computer Games (pdf). The public defence took place 9 February 2007, with 1. opponent Espen Aarseth and 2. opponent William Uricchio.
Avatars R Us? Discourses of Community and Embodiment in Intercultural Cyberspace by Paul McIlvenny
Judging yourself by appearances: hey say you can’t judge a book by its cover – an exhortation against judging the character of people based on factors they have no control over. Nonetheless, people do do it, and frequently. There are some interesting aspects to this. One is that we judge ourselves this way. The other comes when we can choose those covers – for example, our avatars.
Peachpit: The Three White Girls from YouTube: A Modern Day Fable > What It Is, Part Two: The Three White Girls from YouTube
What is real online? Does it matter? Author Mark Stephen Meadows explores the role of the avatar using the stories of three white girls from YouTube and the debate that resulted from their collective fame.

The Museologi Groups

Group 1:
Jani Pellikka
Peter Westling
Cecilia Douzette

Group 2:
Ellen Mägi Hurtis
Elenora Klingestam
Michelle Stensson Larsson
Johan Olasson

Group 3:
Victor Brog
Anu Kjäll
Stina Lindh

Group 4:
Lina Ingvarsson
Marcus Hammerstöm

Those people who were there for the presentations of inspirational areas and are not on the list should contact Jim as soon as possible:
jim.barrett(at)humlab.umu.se

Welcome to HUMlab and the new term. This is the administration blog for both the Museologi and Kulturanalys program courses that will be run in HUMlab this term. Much of our work together will take place in the online virtual world of Second Life. There are a million things I would like to tell you about virtual worlds and Second Life (I have been working with them since 2003) but I thought maybe we should just start with a simple introduction to Second Life (hereafter SL).

SL is an adults only, multi-user persistent (means that it does not go away when you log out, but continues on, like the world does when you are asleep – believe it or not) social online virtual world. Sometimes these sorts of things are called MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) or to be more precise, as SL is not strictly speaking a game, a MUVE (Multi User Vitrual Environment). The most important feature I think that defines SL is that it is social. There is no goal or quest as part of being in SL, like there is in World of Warcraft or Starcraft and other such MMORPGs. The people who use SL make it what it is. It is for this reason that SL is perfect for a number of things that are useful in higher education:

* As a stimulative environment it is possible to replicate a lot of situations and behaviors in SL from the worlds of fashion, language, physics, sex, architecture, genders, religion and more. Often these situations and behaviors are just the users themselves as they communicate with each other and express themselves. Everything you see in SL (buildings, clothes, programmed behaviors) is made by the users, for better or worse. The population of SL is several million but no one is sure. Being able to access such large groups of people and their creations means it is easy to gather information and watch how people express themselves within the frame of ‘culture’ in the virtual world. It is important to remember that while the word ‘virtual’ does have some meaning in relation to SL, everything that happens in the world has a basis in what can be called ‘reality’.

* As a tool SL can be used to create films, build a three dimensional archive, hold meetings, teach classes, build communities, meet people, make art, advertise, do market research, hold religious services and worship, create online museums and probably a lot more.

* SL is used as a teaching and learning environment. For the rest of this term SL will be your environment for the course. An island has been created for the museologi students to experiment and create a project for each of the groups. The kulturanalys students, who will have a base in a re-creation of Umeå University’s Lindellhallen will be using SL as a type of research field and for the raw materials for a film.

For our first meeting Stefan Gelfgren and myself (Jim Barrett) will introduce ourselves and SL. We will show you around the HUMlab islands in world and speak about how we can help you and what is expected of you over the coming months. This is going to be an amazing experience for everyone concerned. Again welcome!

Once you have opened a SL account and created an avatar you can teleport to the HUMlab Island in Second Life by clicking or pasting this URL link: http://xrl.us/HUMlabSL

Dear Jim

I’m sorry for taking some time to answer, it’s been a busy few weeks…

Your Second Life project seems interesting, and I’m sure it raises a few questions that the current legal structure in the higher education area is not equipped to deal with. However I will do my best to answer the questions you raise in your e-mail.

Firstly the university should not, and may not, encourage the students to use copyrighted material in violation of intellectual property laws. As I understand your e-mail the use of the particular materials has been primarily an initiative by the students? I do believe the university still has a responsibility to educate the students on the lawful use of such material and to – within reasonable limits – ensure that our students does comply with IP-laws when fulfilling their assignments. There is a certain room in the swedish intellectual property laws (Upphovsrättslagen) to use materials for scientific and artistic critique. This right does not however include the right to use movie-works such as the documentary from SVT. The Harry Potter photos could, depending on the context of their use be argued to fit within the artistic/scientific critique allowed by the law, but I’m afraid the law was not written with virtual museums in mind, and I think the outcome of a case trying that particular legal question would be hard to predict but likely not to include the right to use them in a virtual museum. My recommendation is therefore to ask the students to remove both the SVT documentary and the Harry Potter images.

The students could also contact SVT and ask for permission to use the movie, as well as the studio owning the Potter photos. As for the policy you requested, the university jurists has written a letter to Utbildningsdepartementet calling for a renegotiation of the copy-agreement which regulate our right to use copyrighted material in the educational context, to allow for a broader use of such material in the growing digital educational arena. As of today there has been no response, but with a little luck there will be a better agreement available in the future. In the meantime, if there are any specific questions that arise, don’t hesitate to contact us with questions.

Best regards

Markus Naarttijärvi
Bitr. Universitetsjurist
Umeå universitet
090 – 786 63 93

“Second Life’s unusual libertarian model – in which users can build everything from scratch – confirms it as the most creative of the virtual worlds, but also the most difficult. Rosedale admits it could take a “day of total suffering” to get used to it. Others would say weeks. But it offers opportunities for all, including older people, because, thanks to the anonymity of avatars, no one knows how old you are. Different generations can meet in a way they don’t in real life”
From Victor Keegan, The Guardian (Full Article)

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The goal of the project is to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore aspects of Chinese culture and history.

You can use this website to learn more about the project, or click the button below to visit the Download page where you can view the requirements for experiencing the Virtual Forbidden City.