Umeå Museologi + Kulturanalys Hösten 2009

Here are some suggestions for royalty free images:

del.icio.us

PicSearch (better than Google)

100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images

PictureTrail:
Online Photo Sharing, Image Hosting, Online Photo Albums, Photo Slideshows

stock.xchng -
the leading free stock photography

Creative Commons on Flickr
Open source images from Flickr

Kowloon Temple by Seb, from The Best of the Best in Second Life.

“Rather than tweak the environment to force real-world styles of collaboration, more might be gained by improving aspects of collaboration that users find troublesome, such as the permission system which currently prevents objects which have been made by different individuals from being linked together.”
Collaborative Building in Second Life

The agenda for the workshop is:

Building:
- Questions
- Prims
- More sites from instructional videos, guide books etc on how to build.
- Textures
- Balancing bandwidth demands
- Coding

Media and Second Life:
- Streaming – audio and video
- PowerPoint
- Linking – websites/URLs, linking to media files
- Parcelling land for URLs and streaming

Prims:
Prims are the objects which are used to build in Second Life. To create a prim, simply right-click the ground and choose Create. This will open the Create Pane on which you will see all the basic shapes available to you. You can also click the blue Build button at the bottom of your screen. Try to keep prim count low.
See Use and Abuse of Prims

Sites from instructional videos, guide books, help etc. on how to build.
Building Tools (includes links for free 3D modelling tools)
A Beginner’s Guide to Second Life By v3image (Google Book)
SL Tutorials Blog
Video Tutorials
Support
Building Resources
Ten Tips for Building in Second Life (video)
How to use the Building Grid (Important..maybe I have shown this before…but really important for collaborative building)

Textures
One of the few things that can be easily moved in and out of Second Life (uploaded, downloaded) is textures. These are the JPEG image files that give objects their appearance. A large collection of textures (10MB file) can be downloaded from here: http://secondlife.com/community/textures.php To upload and download a texture into or out of SL costs $L10. You should remember this when moving textures around and only move the ones you think you will need. All groups are running on a budget!
A sick amount of texture tools (many free) plus texture packs and instructions on making texture work well in your projects can be found here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Tools
JPEG files should be small, be careful when importing textures and make Adobe Photoshop your friend (that is an order)!!
Of course Google Images is good for finding textures. Picsearch is also good. Because this is a university project images must be copyright neutral to be used in the projects, but this is not such a big problem as there are thousands of sources for copyright free images on the web. Look for the Creative Commons License to be sure you can use the images. Flickr has a CC collection online. As well the Internet Archive is a treasure trove of CC images, audio and texts. Finally, suiting the museum theme of the projects, old images (over 70 years after the death of the creator) can be used freely.
I will go through textures further in the workshop.

Balancing the Bandwidth
It is fairly easy to create things in SL, but it is harder to create a project which is visually and aurally pleasing with a high degree of immersive interactivity, but that does not take an hour to load and has more drag than a transvestite bar in Sydney on a Friday night. Good building in SL involves trade-offs between efficiency and appearance.
Think carefully about how you put the elements of your project together. If a prim is not all visible only put texture on those surfaces that are seen. Be careful with running scripts. Work with scale and rhythm of the piece (Ill explain this more in the workshop). Cut corners and be creative.
Here is a short guide to lag/drag issues in SL and how to avoid it. Study the prim count in you area and the FPS reading. Learn the lag meter (video)
Path mapping is important. Think of your project as a three dimensional interactive world and then map out how it is to be experienced. Once you have a series of storyboards for you piece you can plan out how to minimize prims and scripts by only creating what it needed for the experience as you design it. There should not be any holes in the fabric of your SL piece but at the same time it should be smooth, efficient and effective. Read this quote and reflect on its design wisdom:

World of Warcraft’s avatars just have 1.500 polygons (and most of the MMORPGs do the same). They rely on insanely good graphic designers to get the most out of those 1.500 polygons — and get some help from the current generation of graphics cards to do a lot of special effects without any extra “cost” in GPU processing. These games look awesome because the graphic designers and 3D modellers can figure out beforehand what path your avatar will take, and make sure that all scenes are rendered with just 200.000 polygons. Granted, sometimes you get hundreds of avatars in a raid or so, and your graphic card will start to skip frames due to the extra polygons that suddenly require to be drawn, so lag exists elsewhere in the Metaverse, too! IDG Designs

Coding
Everything in SL runs on code. The coding language for Sl is called Linden Scripting Language (LSL). LSL is the Linden Scripting Language. This is the language all scripts in Second Life are written in. Its structure is based on Java and C. A script in Second Life is a set of instructions that can be placed inside any primitive object in the world, but not inside an avatar. Avatars, however, can wear scripted objects.
LSL has emphasis on “States” and “Events”. A door can be “open” or “closed” and a light can be “on” or “off”. A person can be “hyper”, “calm”, or “bored”. Many real life behaviours can be modelled with “states” and the same can be true for LSL programs. Minimally a script will have one state, the default state.
Getting Stared with Scripts
Scripts can be access, copied or pasted into objects by right clicking on an object, selecting Edit and then choosing the Content tab. Here you find the window for scripts that are attached to the object. Scripts make objects do things.
An introduction tutorial for LSL
The SL Script Portal
More on LSL

Media and Second Life
Streaming is done from the URL channel set to the parcel.
Streaming Music
Streaming Video

STREAMING VIDEO
In the Media tab of your About Land window, you can enter a URL for streaming video. The url must be to a stream that is Quicktime compatible, which includes .mov files, and various other formats too.

To be able to see the movie stream you selected, Second Life has to know which surface you want to display it on. This is done by designating a texture as the “Media texture” in the Media tab of your About land window. Be sure to select a texture that you don’t use elsewhere on the same land because any surface set to display that texture will also become a movie screen when one is playing. Once the Media texture is set in the Media tab, all thats left to do is apply the same texture to an object that you want to use as the movie screen, and its ready to play!

With a streaming movie URL set, a small Play button with volume slider will appear at the bottom of your screen, just above the Build button. Once you press Play your screen should play the movie for you. Do be patient, sometimes it can take a little while to get started. If you are having trouble, try testing the URL outside of Second Life in the Quicktime player itself. If it works in Quicktime player, it really should work in-world too.

STREAMING AUDIO
On the Media tab of your About Land window is a space to enter a streaming audio URL. The tick box above it allows you to avoid annoying the neighbors. There are many sources of compatible streams on the internet, perhaps the best known being www.shoutcast.com. Here are some simple instructions to follow:

Point your browser at www.shoutcast.com
Search for a music channel that you think you would enjoy, look for one that is not at its maximum listeners, and keep in mind that the higher the bitrate listed against it, the more bandwidth it will need.
You will see a small yellow button that says Tune In, for the stream you have found. You are now going to save this as a file. In most browsers, simply right-click the yellow button and choose Save Target As.. or Save Link As.. This will drop a .pls (playlist) format file onto your hard drive.
Using notepad or a similar text editor, open the .pls file and look for the URL listed inside it. Sometimes there are several, and they will usually include a port number. It will look something like.. http://12.345.12.888:80. Copy that URL then close notepad.
In Second Life, open up your About Land window, and go to the Media tab. Paste the URL into the Audio field. Close the About Land window.
You should now see a small volume control and Play button at the bottom of your screen. If not you may need to leave your land parcel and return. Press the Play button.
You should now be able to hear the music. If not, do check that your preferences settings are correct (see the Key Points above).

To purchase time on a shoutcast channel go to Shoutcast & IceCast professional stream rental from Jamie Otis
We should be able to set up a stream from the HUMlab servers. Just let us know what you want to do and we can work it out.

PowerPoint
Screens that are built for PowerPoint presentation can be purchsed in world. The script for enabling a Powerpoint object is avialable here:
A video tutorial for PowerPoint in Second Life
If you do not have PowerPoint and don’t feel like buying Word, why not try Open Office: a FREE Download which includes Impress. Slides have to be uploaded as textures (JPEG is best) and links are not active in slides. HTML websites can be embedded as images on objects in SL but not as interactive webpages. It is only a matter of time before this happens and when it does something like Slideshare will be usefull as then interactive slide shows as HTML pages can be access with SL. Slideshare is usefull anyway as a publishing and storage tool. While so much of the focus in the course is on SL, it should be remembered that digital museums are cross platform.

Linking in Second Life
The code for linking from objects in Second Life is:

default
{
state_entry() {

llSetText(”Click For Info”, , 1);

}
touch_start(integer num_detected)
{
key gAvatarKey = llDetectedKey(0);
llLoadURL(gAvatarKey, “Welcome to Humlab! View our website for info.”, “http://www.humlab.umu.se“);
}
}

Just replace the bold section with the message and URl you want to use. Paste it into the Content window of the Edit Object panel that I mentioned above.

Parcelling Land
In order to run multiple URLs you need to have multiple parcels. Be aware that media streams use a lot of bandwidth, so do not create more than is necessary. It will affect the overall function and appeal of your project. We will go through land division in the workshop today. In the meantime here is a video about dividing and joining parcels. When land is subdivided an extra URL is included with the new Edit Land panel.

Here is my own collection of links for online sites that deal with interaction and digital museum related materials.

Some images of how building is progressing on the HUMlab island with the Museology projects. If you are interested in visiting the island in real life, here is the link. Just click and follow the instructions:

http://xrl.us/HUMlabSL

“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.

While not strictly a museum related piece, I thought this would be of interest from the perspective of adapting across media, from a theater/literature work to a 3D world environment:

Foul Whisperings, Strange Matters
Virtual Macbeth is an island in Second Life which is dedicated to the exploration, adaptation and performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The island was designed by Angela Thomas (virtual worlds content designer), Kerreen Ely-Harper (director) and Kate Richards (producer). Funding was provided by Literature Board of The Australian Council for the Arts , and investor partner, the New Media Consortium.

You can visit the island from HERE.

The island is designed with target audiences of Shakespeare afficionados, Secondary and Tertiary educators and their students. This wiki is designed for both the general audience and educators. Please feel welcome to join the wiki and add in thoughts and resources.

I know that some of the groups are discussing gender related themes for project ideas. I have some examples of gender negotiation when it comes to Second Life that may be of interest:

A Womans Touch
A female only space in Second Life. This rule should be respected. It is not so easy to pass as a woman even if it is an avatar that is the point of presence.

As well there is A Womans Touch 2
A Womans Touch 2 (AWT2 as it is also known) is a sim in the Second Life. It is a place for all women to feel safe to have fun and enjoyment with other women. It is a womens only sim – we have lady cops who patrol and ask all males to leave. If they do not, we assist them in that effort .

Male dominated spaces in Second Life are common. There are many sex related spaces that are male dominated in SL but I choose to look at the imagery of male fashion. Men’s Second Style is a male SL fashion blog:

Men’s Second Style
Men’s Second Style (formerly Second Man, hence our domain name) was founded in August 2006 by Second Life resident Nicholas Shaftoe. With the then-pending demise of the SL forums and the general sense that there were not a lot of good choices for men’s fashion in SL, Nick decided to start a blog that would track new releases and give reviews of existing stores and designers.

For more on imaging the male in SL a Google search is enough (20 000 000 returns!!)

Very much related to gender and avatars is the work of Dean Spade, on the body, gender and ‘passing’. Dean Spade, Troubling Gender

“Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education, Museums, and More”
Video Stream
Presented by Barbara Galik (Puglet Dancer in SL) and Kitty Pope (Kitty Phillip in SL)
Location: Babbage Amphitheatre

Galik and Pope, who have been active in the development of the Alliance Information Archipelago and other virtual world library projects, will discuss where we are with library service in virtual worlds and where we are going. They will discuss the the fast progress (explosion) of the project to get to the high level of collaborative development that exists today. They also will discuss what we need to do moving forward to sustain and grow library services in virtual worlds. sustain and grow.

See: Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education, Museums, and More site

As well An Overview of Science-Related Stuff in Second Life

An interesting video about the post-colonial and museums

EXCLUSIVE: Kerry James Marshall discusses his relationship to museums during the installation of the exhibition “Black Romantic” at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, which features five paintings from the artists “Vignettes” (2003-07) series.

Kerry James Marshalls work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to folk art. A striking aspect of his paintings is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures, a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness.