Umeå Museologi + Kulturanalys Hösten 2009

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

The thesis Avatars and the Invisible Omniscience: The panoptical model within virtual worlds is about surveillance and virtual worlds. It may be interesting for you as background study:

This research project extends the notion of panoptical surveillance into virtual worlds, and discusses the security and privacy repercussions virtual surveillance imposes on these communal spaces. An action research methodology has been used, involving the creation of artworks to engage experientially with the idea of virtual surveillance, and through an online questionnaire targeting the players of MUVEs. The artworks investigate a series of surveillance perspectives, including parental gaze, machine surveillance and self-surveillance.