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TEC-CH Blog: Museums in 3D worlds: Second Life

Friday, 20 April 2007

Museums in 3D worlds: Second Life

Apart from the king web 2.0, Second Life has been one predilect subject of discussion in the 2007 edition of the Museums and the Web conference, held in San Francisco, in April.
What can museums do in a 3D world? Second Life residents collect and display, museums are created out of passion and can exhibit real artworks or amazing new virtual ones, play with what the virtual allows and the real world does not contain, and above all offer visitors in virtual museums new ways of interacting with exhibits.
Museums increasingly use the virtual 3D world as field for museographic experiments. The Exploratorium in San Francisco created a virtual museum called the 'Splo, offering visitors/avatars new ways of experimenting science and perception. Walk from the Sun to the moon to see how eclipses happen; fly through the solar system; experiment lack of gravity.
Interesting aspects arise also from the surveys carried on visitors in the 'Splo: it appears that visitors developed a high degree of identification with their avatar, so that impressions and sensations they experience through avatars are actually experienced and take effect also in reality (jumping on a trampoline gets visitors dizzy!!). See the paper presented by the Exploratorium team at the M&W 2007.

More about the 'Splo

For an overview of museums and their activities in Second Life, you may check the paper of R. Urban, P. Marty and M. Twidale, from the Universities of Illinois and Florida at M&W 2007.

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posted by amalia @ 01:17   2 Comments

2 Comments:

At 26 April 2007 at 08:03 , Blogger Pilar Gonzalo said...

Hello Amalia,

Nice that you are posting about museums in second life. It is a very interesting topic indeed. However, I feel that the possibilities museums could have are just that, possibilities. I wonder what do you think about the specific topic of art museums and what exactly do you think are the challenges and opportunities second life is offering them. We posted sometime ago something on it at e-artcasting

It was wonderful to meet you Lugano-guys at mw2007 in San Francisco :-)

Pilar Gonzalo

 
At 27 April 2007 at 01:09 , Blogger amalia said...

Hi Pilar,
Nice to hear from you :) You have made an interesting point, as there is much diffidence around what museums may actually do in Second Life. I was diffident myself, and still am, about what the virtual worlds may offer for museums, especially art museums. The paper presented by the Exploratorium team, about the ‘Splo has got me enthusiastic about what can be experimented in the field of science and perception. Art museums, you are right, have a less promising path, an exhibition in Second Life is less than an exhibition onsite that displays only reproductions. As much as art holds high the imperative of authenticity and we are still going to see crowds of visitors craving to see the REAL Gioconda, even less would they appreciate the copy of the copy of the artwork, in a copy of the real world. Potential there is for creating art that transcends boundaries of the real, a path for artists, rather than for museums. However, I see potential for science museums, the paper mentioned speaks much better than I could about it. Cheers!
Amalia

 

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